Over the last couple of weeks, I have had the pleasure - if you add stopovers to the count as well - to have visited six different countries, and in this context, I am saddened by how easily we tend to generalize: people who come from the country X, behaves in a way Y.
Of course, we can look at things as statistics and add up percentages of people from different populations who have given characteristics, but there's one thing that's important to keep in mind: when face to face with a another person from another country, it's extremely important not to generalize. Basically, you do not face "a person from the country X", which is why you should not form the assumption that "this person behaves in the way Y". No, you are faced with an individual, to whom you owe the common courtesy to assess her based on her personal characteristics - not based on statistics for people who come from the same country as she does.
And there are many other contexts in which the fact that a person belongs to a group of people does not automatically justify us categorizing her as belonging in a certain basket - as long as we do not know the individual person, we have no basis for categorization.
(Translated from Noget om enkeltpersoner)
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