Several weeks ago, Nina Davuluri, the daughter of immigrants from India but born and raised in the United States, was crowned Miss America. Immediately following the pageant, Twitter exploded with comments from irate viewers who called her an Arab, a terrorist, a foreigner, and not a "real" American.
Several days later, Columbia University professor and medical doctor Prabhjot Singh, a Sikh, was out walking in Manhattan when a group of teenagers shouting "Terrorist!" and "Get Osama!" attacked and beat him. Singh ultimately wound up in a hospital, where he underwent surgery for a fractured jaw.
Both of these situations raise the troubling issue of stereotyping, which most people have experienced at some time or another, due to gender, age, size, religion, and so on. Being stereotyped can be annoying, because it involves being viewed superficially, as a generic caricature of a person, rather than the unique individuals God created us to be. But for ethnic minorities, stereotyping has much deeper ramifications. Keep reading
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