People want to know how old they are, where they come from, what is their ethnic, they are men or women. People really like categorizing. But categorizing keep stereotype. For example grandfather is too old to start study, Hispanic is lazy, woman can’t be a president. So someone said people categorize just for their convenient or control other group, it is bad custom we must not do that. However is it really bad itself? If not why people categorizing? And what is the important thing when we categorizing?

 Human beings, as a social creature, categorizing is natural. We want to sense of belongings and we have belonged to a group naturally since we were born. When we were born, we were member of family. May be when we were in new born unit, nurse made a group like smile group and cry group. We were member of school, we were member of peer group, we were member of a club. Whether someone made us do it or we did it on our own, we belong to a group as a whole life. We are categorizing and categorized.

According to social identity theory, people belong to a group inextricably, it is important for people to what group I belong to and they want to make a positive self-realization in that group. After they become a member of a group, they categorize as an in-group and out-group which the member were different from our group’s characteristics. And naturally, people define their group that ‘we are more superior than your group’.  because people identify with group they belong to.

But most important thing when we categorizing is not only purpose but effect. If we categorize people just for convenient, it is natural and ok. but that categorizing make discrimination, it is not ok. Of course, we can’t predict all effect and there are many unexpected effect like race-conscious admissions policy[1]. Some categorizing or grouping makes majority and minority, according to the number of group member. It just number, but people, majority group think it is right to treat minority group with disdain. This thinking causes bad effect of categorizing.

Categorizing that is made in daily life is not always bad rather natural. Categorizing is the natural habit of human and they categorizing for their conforming identity. But it effect can more serious that we expected. For example they make majority and minority group, and cause the conflict between of them. So we aware natural trait of categorizing and don’t treat it is inhuman behavior but we must consider the effect before categorizing.