In the immortal words of the hilarious Briton, Eddie Izzard, which would you prefer: tea and cake, or death? As a human with free will and an affinity for all things sweet and quenching, I would choose tea and cake over death. Clearly my preference shows that I am a being that favors life. Sadly, other choices we make as people in American society are not so humorous or facile. Our choices in life make up the stereotypes that pervade society and condition a mass thinking that is detrimental to American culture.

So, let’s play a game, shall we? There is a college guy who plays tennis, reads Shakespeare, shops at Banana Republic, belongs to a fraternity, stays abreast on contemporary politics, and enjoys a good episode of “Seinfeld” every now and then. Got a mental picture of what that person looks like? Good, because it’s me.

It would seem that these days anyone can fall victim to a so-called stereotype. However, in all fairness, some of these stereotypes are bad and some are, well not so bad. For instance, some years ago I nearly flew into a rage when someone complimented my proficiency of the English language by prefacing, under their breath, that it is so rare to find a young black man with those capabilities. It gets worse. Over the summer, I was ridiculed for my preference of orange soda over Mountain Dew. This high school student went on to say that he silently predicted that I would drink the orange soda because all black people love it. Sorry for mimicking Dave Chappelle, but here I thought I liked the orange goodness because my taste buds enjoyed it, when actually I have a genetic predisposition to orange soda, and chicken apparently. What this friend of mine didn’t know was that I rather fancy iced tea and Starbucks’ many different coffees; two drinks that typically aren’t associated with, say, the proletariat in east Compton, L.A.

Furthermore, my predilection for tennis has garnered me some unwanted pensive looks (“Huh, you look like a football player to me”). The laundry list could continue for days, but the main point still remains that these assumptions aren’t fair. Why should people who choose to ignore conventional wisdom be nominated as an exception to the rule, as an anomaly? People seem obsessed with attaching a human association to a word. Why is it strange to imagine a Mexican-American man or woman born into poverty with limited spoken English in the home applying and getting accepted into Harvard? Why is it strange to envision a successful and extremely bright engineering major as a black woman? Or, why is it strange to picture an Asian-American as athletic, socially adept, and better at writing novels than differentiating equations?

I hate to play the blame game, but society dropped the ball on this one. Everything from advertising to the public school system conditions us to believe or think a certain way about groups of people. As far as advertising goes, why do you think Abercrombie & Fitch was accused of being classist, racist, and body obsessed? Look at an old advertising catalogue on the Internet and I can guarantee you’ll notice a sea of blonde hair, six-pack abs, small waists, and the background of some random country club with polo paraphernalia in view. I now realize that it may be too late to announce this caveat, but my intent behind writing this isn’t to castigate upper-class white America, because I truly believe that all people fall prey to unfair stereotypes insofar as to include religion, political leanings, and sexual orientation. While I’ve sometimes tacitly prided myself on being the dreaded exception to most stereotypical rules, I must admit I do inadvertently adhere to a certain rainbow-colored stereotype. I can’t seem to stay away from that shoe department at Nordstrom’s.

Williams is a Coffeyville junior in English and pre-law.