Stereotypes and 'grouping'

Well, one thing that stuck out to me in the reading was the addressing of the issue of 'stereotypes.' This is a subject that has come up in a great many discussions I've had with people, and is even one of the big themes in the 'free zone' that they talked about non-stop during the orientation week. The way I see it is that many times, we'll consider a person more a part of a group or label that is easier to address and deal with than actually spending the time to get to know the individual. It is something that's easy to do, and is seen most everywhere in society - I think that it even is in play when we consider teacher-student relationships, and boss-employee relationships more often than not, as it's kind of a 'shortcut' to interacting with others to get out of actually getting to know them and reserving judgment for when ignorance is gone.