Stereotypes

Our society of today is one that is essentially a melting pot of many different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations, an due to this abundance of different people it has led to the formation of many positive and negative stereotypes. According to lecture material, a stereotype is a special type of role schema in which we hold a broad set of beliefs about the characteristics that members of a particular social category, in this case such as gender, age, race or sexuality, are most likely to portray. Such generalizations can be positive and negative as well, as they do give information about certain people or groups but these generalizations don’t represent the entire group and are not completely accurate or applicable to the person or group. I feel that more should be taught about the effects that stereotypes and stereotyping could have on one’s mind, as unfortunately stereotypes are commonly acknowledged and referred to in our society, even if they are blatantly false and/or offensive. I believe that it is important to learn more about the effects of stereotyping because it can have a serious effect and impact upon one’s social behavior, and since stereotypes tend to incorporate information that is both offensive and false using them can lead to undesirable social interactions. According to the Journal of Social Issues, there is a consensus about the differing characteristics of men and women that exists across groups that are differing in sex, age, marital status, and education, and that masculine characteristics are positively valued more often than feminine characteristics. Positive masculine traits form a cluster entailing competence, whereas feminine traits reflect warmth-expressiveness, and these sex-role definitions are incorporated into the self-concepts of both men and women, as they are considered desirable by college students and healthy by mental health professionals (Journal of Social Issues 2010). It is important to take note of one’s own experiences, as they can have an influence on how one interacts and label others. Individual experiences are entered into a person’s judgment, but done so in order to confirm the original stereotype that he/she had learned, and since human beings at times tend to exhibit all kinds of behavior he/she could find confirmation of their views, and by omitting cases that contradict the stereotype, the individual becomes convinced from association with a race that its members are just the kind of people they always thought they were (Katz & Braly 2010). I feel that it is ignorant to automatically label groups due to a single exposure that one had to this group or an individual of this group, but nonetheless this is common for many people to tend to incorporate stereotypes in their social behavior. Personally, I can relate much towards the use of stereotypes and the effects it can have, and I have always been against the use of stereotypes in general. Being a Hispanic male born and raised in the island of Puerto Rico, not only was I exposed to the many stereotypes, both positive and negative, used in society, but I also have experienced racism and discrimination directly through the use of stereotypes. Some of the common stereotypes given out to Puerto Ricans are that they all carry knives, always stealing cars, and that they depend heavily on welfare/government aid, and I had to endure these stereotypes often, whether it was through playful joking, ignorant comments, or harmful attacks. Many of these stereotypes have origins that stem from culturism, which is a term that describes the belief that one’s own cultural group, whether its based on ethnicity, economics, education, etc., is somehow better or worse than some other cultural group, and culturism may explain why the media tend to be slow in regards to covering human catastrophes in remote sections of the world such as in Rwanda, Somalia, South-Central, Los Angeles, etc. (Lester 1997). Culturism, otherwise known as ethnocentrism, is common in our society today, as the United States is a melting pot of many different ethnicities, cultures, and races, so I feel that this is important that more research should be performed upon the subject. Personally, I am no stranger to the concept of ethnocentrism, as I witnessed it firsthand both here in the United States, when I was growing up in Puerto Rico, and everywhere that I travelled as well. Many people invoke pride and honor in regards to paying homage to their heritage, thus only contributing more towards ethnocentric ideologies, and would do whatever it takes to fulfill a sense of honor no matter how ignorant, discriminative, or unaware of how they present themselves towards others. The main question that I have the most interest in regards to the use of stereotypes is how much has the use of stereotypes changed and whether the use has risen or lowered. An effort to study the persistence of ethnic stereotypes over time was performed, so a degree of acceptance among students in assigning characteristics from a list of 84 adjectives to different races was determined, and the main conclusion drawn from this study was that the present generation of college students is more reluctant than the previous generation to make stereotyped generalizations about the character of ethnic groups, especially the ethnic groups that they have had little to no contact with, and that the generalizations made tend to be based more on cultural and historical realities and less on fictitious caricatures or their parents' prejudices (Gilbert 1951). This goes to show that the current generation is more open and accepting of other ethnic groups, and that they tend to stray from the prejudice and ignorant philosophies that were somewhat common in the previous generation (Gilbert 1951). In conclusion, I feel that stereotypes are nonetheless still common in our society today, whether it is for the use of prejudice behaviors and attitudes, or whether it is for profiling and labeling. I believe that more research should be performed upon the uses of stereotypes, as they not only are common but also can have an impact upon the perceptions that people have of the various ethnic groups, with many of them being false or offensive.