what are stereotypes and where do they come from?

Stereotypes are is a instant judgment of someone for the way they look, talk, act, etc. Stereotypes come from three places, in my opinion, the first one is you have one bad encounter with a certain type of person and everybody else that looks like him or her is automatically like that person so lets say a old person cuts you off on the highway so for a while at least you must think that all old people are bad drivers that is a stereotype. The second is one that your parents teach you, if a parent teach as a child to hate black people or Jewish people or white people or what ever kind of people they hate that child will hate that group of people too until they can think for themselves and even then it doesn’t always happen, that they stop hating I mean that is a stereotype of hate. The third way is those know one s that you are force fed when you watch television or tthe ones like all blondes are dumb or what about the one about all Asians being smart then the rest of the world or what about the one where all a Americans are rude cowboys or the one that all English people have bad teeth or what about this new one that started September 11, 2001 that all people that look middle eastern and that are at airports must be a terrorist. That is why I hate stereotypes they start playful and silly and get serious and stupid fast. Not one of those stereotypes that I mentioned before are true. I am a firm believer in people are people and you have smart people and not so smart people in any country, culture, whatever same goes for looks and manners and everything. Who are we as a people to judge any one on what they look but then again we are all guilty of it in some way. Why blame someone for what they look like and not get to know the person on the inside? I think people do it because its easier not to care, easier not to care about that person who is so rude or that person is so loud everyday you wonder why do they have to be so loud or that person who cuts you off in traffic you say to yourself how did the person ever get a license or the person that act dumb to fit in and you wonder why they do it or the person who is so cocky you just wonder what there hiding.