Why the labels? Why the stereotyping?

“Since you’re Asian, have you gotten plastic surgery to have double eyelids?”

Believe it or not, but I have received this question multiple times in my lifetime. There is something about our society today that urges people to be placed into certain categories based on how they appear. It is believed that all teenagers are troublemakers, everyone who wears glasses is a nerd, and that all Asians don’t do anything except study. To go with that last point, one well-known Chinese person, Jeremy Lin, fit the usual description of “nerdy, bookwormy Asian male” from Harvard, as quoted from a Berkeley blog. However, he has defied many racial stereotypes including the belief that all Asian people are short and un-athletic. Becoming a professional basketball player caused quite a stir amongst the public. An Asian NBA player was practically unheard of, and there had never been a player before Jeremy of Chinese or Taiwanese descent.  In fact, “Both fans and competitors hurled racist slurs at him”, says biography.com. I don’t understand what the huge deal is with this. All the other basketball players had never had this sort of issue. There shouldn’t be anything different about a Chinese person than, say, a Caucasian player. At the end of the day, everybody is playing the same game with the same goal in mind. No single person can be defined by a label. There is so much more to everyone than just “that person who is like everybody else”. People are much more complex than what their outward appearances show. Labels are superficial and unnecessary in today’s world. We can’t call people something that they’re not.