Ashley Green-Thompson Ashley Green-Thompson
People love generalisations. We encounter one experience, and it isn’t long before we conclude that this is how things are all the time and in every situation.
Generalisation is a useful tool that allows us to develop an understanding of a broader situation, group behaviour, or population. It involves the identification of common patterns or characteristics across specific instances and then using those observations to formulate a description of the situation, group, or population. It helps us as we navigate life and the situations and people we encounter, but we must always allow space to critique these conclusions we draw. When we claim patterns and behaviours as universally true all the time, we enter the realm of the sweeping generalisation that paints everyone and everything with the same brush, no exceptions.
The most current and far too widespread generalisation today is that South Africans are xenophobic. It’s a reputational disaster that is at odds with my lived experience in this country. It’s a generalisation that doesn’t hold water to characterise 65 million people. We are not all products of an assembly line churning out little xenophobic babies.
