Labels are useful for categorizing things. They tell us what we can expect to find based on what label is on an object. A label can save time because if you know what is inside a thing then you know what to do with it. But does a label on a person function the same way? Do we know everything about a person by what their label is, just as we know a product on a shelf by its label? In all the efforts to maintain political correctness, is it only through labeling people, as we do food and other products, that we can remember to treat people in way we believe is in their best interest?
I took my first psychology class in high school, and I loved it. I was so excited to learn and understand the human psyche that I couldn’t wait to talk to my aunt, who is a psychotherapist. I thought I would impress her by telling her the characteristics of people that we knew, and prove I could spot someone who was bipolar, had ADHD, or had a personality disorder. I was stunned when she wasn’t impressed by all I had learned. She looked at me very calmly but seriously, after I spouted all my new knowledge, and said “I don’t like to label…people cannot be summed up by one word, no matter what the word.” I couldn’t believe she didn’t know what I had just thought I learned; people could be categorized and then you know what to expect and how to treat them. I wasn’t sure she was as good at her job as everyone said!
It took a few more conversations and a few more psychology classes in college to understand how wise my aunt’s statement was. If we give someone a label, then we are identifying them as whatever the label says they are. We are not only missing the other parts that make that person whole, but we are categorizing them in a way that they may also identify themselves as. The real detriment is when someone is labeled, the label can become more the focus than the person.
Labels work well for marketing, drawing attention to certain aspects that are deemed most important. Labels don’t work for encompassing the whole of anything, or encouraging more than the label entails. Which is where the real detriment lies when people are labeled; when a person is categorized, they may get comfortable within those confines and not reach further. If someone is told what they are, and treated based on that identification, then what is the encouragement to become all one can? Labels aren’t encouraging; they can be detrimental.
If categories are to be made, wouldn’t it be far better to make a category for nice? Labels have brought us far from the basic tenet of The Golden Rule. In returning to that creed of treating others as we would want to be treated, where would the place for labeling lie?
