Todd Pruzan on cultural stereotypes

“We all paint the people we’ve never met and the places we’ve never seen in broad strokes, based on what we’ve read or heard or seen on TV. Of course, we make such judgments at our peril, but hoary cliches persist and survive because we find them useful. Often, when we want to know how to think about or engage with a representative of an unfamiliar culture, stereotypes are all we have to start with. I remember one morning ten years ago in London, when I told a Jamaican-born cabbie I was visiting from Chicago. He asked me two questions: if I knew Michael Jordan, and (more cautiously) if I owned a gun.”
–Todd Pruzan, “Global Warning”, The New Yorker, April 11, 2005