It all started with a haircut. I’m taking a class called Creative Non-Fiction, in which the assignment is to go anywhere in St. Louis and write about it (great class by the way, you should take it). For my first piece this semester, I decided to go to a barbershop on the Loop called Studio 7, on the corner of Delmar and Limit Avenue. Now the friend who told me about the place did not describe it as any normal barbershop, but rather as a “black barbershop.” Walking over, I trembled with excitement at how cool this experience was going to be. My mind was filled with visions of the classic barbershop, maybe a Motown record playing, some weathered, gray-haired old-timers working side by side with the new school, hip-hop generation. Essentially, I projected my entire viewing experience of the movie Barbershop (not Barbershop II—that movie sucks) on what I thought this haircut would be like. And the best part is, because I had to write a long piece about this, I recorded the entire thing. Listening now, I can hear my excitement on the walk over. This is actually what I said to my friend that I went with: “I want that classic old school vs. new school vibe. I want the old guys that have been there forever to pull me aside and say ‘Let me tell ya something bout this establishment,’ and I want the young guys to roll their eyes, you know what I mean?”

As it turns out, Studio 7 has about as much character as Chancellor Wrighton on sleeping pills. The entire place is painted monochrome red, it’s only five years old, there are no posters on the walls, no memorabilia, no Chuck Berry autographs—nothing. It’s a place to get a haircut and yes, a lot of black people go there—but I would ascribe that simply to neighborhood demographics as opposed to any inherent “black” quality of this barbershop.

So I got my hair cut (they did a great job, by the way). On the walk back, I thought about my prior assumptions about the barbershop and if there was some inherent racism in them. I had assumed this place to be a bastion of black identity, a place where people came to “be black”—stereotypes that I embraced so wholeheartedly that I was shocked to find that I was wrong.

I don’t think stereotyping is necessarily racism. Stereotypes are stronger than we think; they penetrate the most basic fibers of our thoughts from a young age. In a functional way, they help us assimilate and classify the huge amount of information our brains must process on a daily basis. Sure, there are racist stereotypes, but we often cannot run from them. Ever try looking at a list of words without reading them? It’s really hard—near impossible—to avoid the automatic impulse to read. Stereotyping is a similar impulse.

Maybe we are all, on some level, racists. Or maybe racism occurs when we fail to question our assumptions, to push back on the views of the world that are already hard-wired into our minds. Furthermore, racism feeds on an over-extrapolation of our experiences. For example, when we judge Person Two based on the actions of Person One, even if they have no connection with each other, we are in danger of succumbing to our own stereotypical thoughts.

So was I racist the other day, walking down the Loop, assuming that no less than Cedric the Entertainer was going to open the door for me and give me a buzz cut (Barbershop reference to the confused)? I think I was. It didn’t even occur to me that my projection of this barbershop would be wrong, and that is a dangerous gray area between stereotyping and racism. Unfortunately, I believe this is a ubiquitous occurrence. We see it all the time in society—from the unwarranted arrest of Henry Louis Gates last year, to any time you go through airport security. My advice? Never take your thoughts at face value.