When a person says the word stereotype, the pictures or thoughts that used to come to mind were either racial or negative stereotypes. I’ve recently come to change my thoughts and opinions on what I thought a stereotype is. The actual definition of a stereotype from dictionary.com is:
“a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.”
I used to feel that a stereotype was something derogatory about a group of people. After discussing stereotypes and their meanings since the beginning of the semester in various classes I now have a completely different understanding of stereotypes. A person can surely say that they are not racist or they never think about stereotypes when talking to or discussing other people. Where in reality, to me a stereotype is:
any type of thought or action that is thought about a single person or a group they belong to based on seeing the person, knowing a certain group the person belongs too, or by some action that person does.
A stereotype is not necessarily a bad thing, “what matters is the character of the stereotypes,
and the gullibility with which we employ them (Lippmann Ch. 6 Part 3).” To me this means that if you believe and make stereotypes out of every little piece of gossip you hear, then in fact you are making the stereotypes negative. Whereas, if you hear a bit of gossip for example that some organization on your college campus is “smart” or “nerds” or “the brains” it could be true. I feel that what each person needs to do in this situation is if you hear something about someone or an organization, research it. If you’ve heard that this organization is full of smarty-pants research their combined GPA and compare it to other organizations on campus. If it’s true, it is a stereotype, but a positive one. If it’s not true than you might just find out something about that group of people you would have never known before.
The way I see it now, is that a stereotype can be positive or negative. It is the way that you let it affect you, how easily you believe it, and how you treat those people in that group based on that set stereotype.
“a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.”
I used to feel that a stereotype was something derogatory about a group of people. After discussing stereotypes and their meanings since the beginning of the semester in various classes I now have a completely different understanding of stereotypes. A person can surely say that they are not racist or they never think about stereotypes when talking to or discussing other people. Where in reality, to me a stereotype is:
any type of thought or action that is thought about a single person or a group they belong to based on seeing the person, knowing a certain group the person belongs too, or by some action that person does.
A stereotype is not necessarily a bad thing, “what matters is the character of the stereotypes,
and the gullibility with which we employ them (Lippmann Ch. 6 Part 3).” To me this means that if you believe and make stereotypes out of every little piece of gossip you hear, then in fact you are making the stereotypes negative. Whereas, if you hear a bit of gossip for example that some organization on your college campus is “smart” or “nerds” or “the brains” it could be true. I feel that what each person needs to do in this situation is if you hear something about someone or an organization, research it. If you’ve heard that this organization is full of smarty-pants research their combined GPA and compare it to other organizations on campus. If it’s true, it is a stereotype, but a positive one. If it’s not true than you might just find out something about that group of people you would have never known before.The way I see it now, is that a stereotype can be positive or negative. It is the way that you let it affect you, how easily you believe it, and how you treat those people in that group based on that set stereotype.
1 comment:
I liked your comment on my blog...many things that we talk about I can relate to education, so it is nice to see that other education majors are doing that also. I think that having a unjudegmental attitude is also important because it can teach children (our students) a lot about how to approach the world. Kids are going to spend a lot of time with us as teachers, so we should offer them a postive attitude as a model
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