Yes, Virginia-there is a good reason why people "stereotype" and why it's actually not a bad thing. It is right to give people a chance to be judged by their character-but only after personal security concerns have been reasonably measured and met.
As Dalrymple notes:
"But stereotypes are useful as rough guides."
"It so happens that on the
day before I wrote this, I appeared as an expert witness at a murder
trial."
"There was a security check at the entrance to the courthouse but
the security men gave me only the most cursory of inspections, on the
grounds that 60-year-old men in business suits carrying bags full of
documents are very unlikely to be bent on causing (physical) mayhem."
"But
they searched very thoroughly the man behind me, more than 30 years my
junior, tattooed, with a chunky gold chain around his neck and several
rings that might have doubled as knuckledusters, a shaved head, scarred
face and scalp, unnecessary gold dentistry, and eyes that sparkled with
malignity. Lombroso would have had a field day with him."
"In short,
they profiled him, without necessarily knowing that that was what they
were doing; and since violence and intimidation in public areas of the
courthouse are far from unknown, it is difficult to see the different
way in which we were treated as completely unreasonable. If you don’t
want to be taken for a thug, why go to such efforts to look like one? It
is very unlikely that the man did not know that he looked like a thug."
However, the world is now run by people who refuse to see reality, and refuse to concede that there are real threats, coming from certain directions and not others.
Therefore, like sheeps, we shuffle along, obeying our "security" betters. The shoes come off at the airport. The disabled children and elderly grandmothers are searched, my own hands were tested for explosives at an American airport not that long ago.
Such is the world we are living in-run by terror deniers. Global Terror Denialists.
