One concept from the assigned reading that we have not discussed yet that has interested me is about stereotypes and prejudices. The textbook describes stereotypes as “generalized 2nd-hand beliefs that provide conceptual biases from which we make sense out of what goes on around us”. Stereotyping is very similar to judging in that we make assumptions about people. Everyone has been guilty of stereotyping. For example, if you so someone walking down the street wearing all black with gauges in their ears, and black hair, people might think they are gothic. That would be you stereotyping that person into a specific category because of what they look like, and what you think all gothic people look like. Prejudice is described as a special kind of stereotype in that a negative social attitude held by members of one group toward members of another group. I can honestly say that I have not witnessed an account of prejudice, but I have seen plenty of movies, such as The Help, that deal with prejudice. All types of stereotyping is not the right thing to do, and hopefully people will be able to reduce the stereotypes they have about groups of people.
I agree with you that stereotypes are damaging and I think people use them because they aren’t trying to learn about the other group. Stereotypes are negative even ones that could be considered positive still box people instead of allowing people the freedom to be unique. I think everyone deserves to be judged not from their ethnicity, sex, and religion but by their character. I have not seen the movie The Help but I heard it was a great book/ movie and I’m happy that these issues even if they were in the past have not been forgotten. The timeframe of this movie is not our generation so I think it is important for this knowledge to be available for us.
ReplyDeleteI think that stereotyping is most often learned from the culture in which we come from. We learn to think of those you described as wearing all black and having gauges in their ears as gothic because that is what we learned from those around and those in our culture. I think that what perpetuates these stereotypes most of the time is media like television, movies, books, and magazine. The media is what puts a title on our stereotypes, that is where we really learn what gothic is. A lot of the time we can’t help but stereotype people because that is how we are talk to see the world. I think what is important is just to recognize instead of stereotype. And also, be careful not to judge others based on what we initially “recognize”.
ReplyDeleteHello Kylie Jones, I like the concept you picked about stereotypes because it’s something that is always happening around us. I do agree with you that we all have been guilty about stereotyping. We are not directly taught to stereotype because we don’t have a teacher that tells us, make assumptions about every person you see. However, our culture makes it okay for us to stereotype because we do not get punished when we do, unless a law is broken. When, we first meet someone, we will get a first impression of that person, where it’s a good or bad first impression. In a case like this, we can be quick to judge based on what we see in front of us.
ReplyDeleteSadly, stereotyping is a subject that is all around us. Although we may not want to take part in it, we do. I like how you compared it to judging because they are similar. When we judge, we take the first impression and then go from there. When we stereotype, we take what we have heard and apply to our actions based on what we see. When the two are worked together, we take what we know (the stereotype) and judge a person on their first impression with a stereotype already in mind. Stereotypes are always going to be there, we just have to decide if we use them or not.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. I agree that this topic was a very interesting topic in the chapter. It gave us readers a good idea on what the differences are between these two terms. People get these terms confused all the time so it was good reading about the differences. Like you said everyone is guilty of stereotyping. I believe that there are more stereotypes in todays society then prejudices. I think that is because prejudices have turn into stereotypes. We stereotype certain things about certain groups but don't think of them in a negative aspect like prejudices do.
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