Classification

I ran across a blog entry elsewhere in the blogiverse that grouped a certain sector of people together and denounced them firmly and it irritated me. The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous the post seemed. The way the writer seemed to believe that all these people were the same as the few they have known. It's like saying all people who eat apples like the color red. With all the many, many, many people in this world, how can we say that "all" of anybody are one particular way? For everything someone likes, loves, or believes, there is someone out there who will oppose them. There is nothing that everyone will agree on. It's just the way the world and humans work. We all do it, though... even the best of us, and especially those of us who refuse to admit it. We create images in our mind of what certain people should be like. For instance, we do this with religion. We do this with the wealthy. We even do it with people's hair color. No matter how big or small the issue, the fact remains we are classifying whole groups of people by our perception of a handful of people. It irritates me, and I'm sure it does other people, too. I am guilty of this, too, and I have tried to make an effort to eliminate as much of the classification from my life as possible. It still shows up every now and then, but that's the way people are and will always be. I wonder, though, where do these perceptions (could we call them stereotypes?) come from?