An Epiphany About Americans

   Before switching into art history, I was taking world issues. I thought it would be somewhat interesting to learn about issues that were happening in the world. I was very wrong but that's not what I wanted to talk about. I was dozing off in class yesterday when the teacher brought up that a American minister from Florida was going to burn copies of the Qur'an(the Islamic bible) as a protest to 9/11. The first thing that popped into my mind was "Americans are freaking stupid and crazy. They're actually thinking of burning these books because a few people of that religion caused the 9/11 terrorist attacks? Americans are really ignorant. Not every Muslim is a terrorist!" As I was about to put up my hand, the girl across from me spoke up. She said; "Americans are soooo dumb. They're the ones who have soldiers in Afghanistan killing innocent people everyday. More people were killed in this war than World War Two! I can't believe Americans could be this stupid." Now, this post isn't about how dumb or ignorant Americans are, it's about how they're not. After she said the "More were killed in this war" comment (I don't know how much of this was true or not), I realized that her and myself had done exactly what the "Americans" had done. Categorized a group of people for a sin or a problem that only a few of them had done or caused. Not everyone in a America is a loony Republican just like not all Muslims are terrorists.
I actually had a epiphany in the most boring class in Westdale. Categorizing people is unfair and also very, very ignorant. You can't categorize a entire religion based on their background or what a group of people of that religion did! Not every Russian is a Communist, not every German is a Nazi and not every Canadian is a happy-go-lucky fisherman who talks funny and watches hockey. From now on, I will stop categorizing people because of their race, religion, sex and so on. For it makes me look very foolish and very ignorant.