"Coloured people are violent". "Coloured people are drunkards". "Coloured people are uneducated" they say. Stereotypes. Stereotypes being the crude byproduct of simply existing within a society. It is a fixed cliché way of seeing an individual or a group in a particular way and in doing so they are reducing us to a single story. "The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." For example I once went out for coffee with a white guy and the first assumption he made of me is and I quote "I thought you were some typical rough coloured girl from Cape Town". Furthermore, he mimicked my accent and said, it's as if we speak two different languages.

Through stereotyping we find exoticization in the form of colorism, where there is a hierarchy of complexion. Both external and internal exoticism glorifies individuals that are lighter in complexion as opposed to being darker in complexion, conforming to white supremacy. Moreover, it leads to darker complexioned individuals being deemed as inferior, contributing to the alienation and othering of these said  individuals. Othering also plays a role in the "them" vs "us" mentality.


In conclusion, stereotypes within any group reduces these respective people to a single story. Showing us as one thing and one thing only negates and flattens out our experiences which ultimately makes up the building blocks that shape us. We can only be free of stereotypes once we tell our side of the story but until then we watch others create narratives for us, illuminating our differences as oppose to our oneness.