Stereotypes

We started the week off by reading an interesting story about a sociologist studying poor,young African Americans in Chicago. Originally, the sociologist was going to conduct surveys on how it feels to be "black and poor". But during the process, he came to realize that conducting surveys won't be as effective as a qualitative data-which is data gathered from observing. Through this sociologist we learned that a research doesn't have to be conducted by surveys, but can also be a first person observation we analyze.

The second day we made identity molecules of ourselves. We started with just our name, but then connected it to certain groups we assosciate with. As we create more bubbles, and more gruops that we belong to, we started to realize how all these groups affect us and make us who we are. Then, we listed our statuses in each of the groups. For example, one of my groups were family. Inside my family, I listed my statuses as a daugther and a sister. When we finished listing our groups and stasuses, we talked about role conflict. Role conflict is when we feel obligated to do a certain thing in one group, but it directly conflicts with a role in another group.

The most valuable lesson I learned this week was our lesson on stereotypes. The scariest part of stereotyping, is that many times we unconsciously do it. If a guy dresses nice, we automatically think he's homosexual. If there's an African American we assume that he or she is not as smart, or rich.
We saw two videos in class: one about the angry eye experiment, and the other about a violinist.
The footage of the violionst clearly showed our problem of stereotyping. The violinist was playing at a station with a shirt and pants. He had his violin case open, and added some change to it. Just the night before he sold out a big theater. However, throughout the hours that he played, everyone just assumed he was another homeless, poor, man playing for cash. Very few people stopped to see and appreciate the expensive, exquisit violin playing, and instead just walked past. Due to the fact that he seemed like a homeless man, people didnt appreciate his playing as much.

This made me reflect on the unconscious stereotyping that I do everyday. The violin footage really stung, because if I was in that station I probably would've acted like the majority of the people. Recently at our school, there was an assembly with speakers from different support groups that we have. One of the support groups was the minority group. An African American girl explained all the subtle differences in treatments she receives because she's Black. For example, if a white student is goofing off during class people just think he's funny. But if a Black student does the same thing, people think that it's because he's stupid or doesn't take school seriously. These subtle ways that we have trained ourself to think are stereotypes. I want to become more mindful of the things I think or say about others based on stereotypes.