Maggio Ana 1
February 18, 2015
Prof. Mark Hoffman
CRT 100
Prejudice?
Stereotyping is in our daily living even when we don’t intend to. According to Heilbroner, Robert “Don’t let Stereotypes Wrap Your Judgments.” There are major causes of stereotyping, we are all prejudice. Whether it be judging on people’s names, age, appearance, nationality, popularity, or even their tone of voice. It is something most of us humans learn in our early stages of life. Our parents, friends or society itself has made us that way. As we start to live life we come across different types of people, from all different neighborhoods, different families, who grew up with different values etc. If we meet someone and we end up disliking them that stays with us for a great amount of time even though we might not think of it in that way. For example if we get into a bad fight with a friend or a classmate and let’s say their name is Robert, the next person we meet named Robert we are tend to judge them on the Robert we already know, without even getting to know him first. Just because we know someone or heard of someone with the same name we unintentionally tend to immediately make a picture in our mind of what that person is really like. Age is a great factor too. Every year as we get older we tend to think of ourselves as mature and in a way “know it all” or wiser than the young. As college students we view middle school or junior high school kids as immature humans, we see them in the train or on the bus and instantly get a sense of wanting to look disinterested in what they’re doing or talking about. How do we know they haven’t grown up in a high educated home where the topics of conversation go beyond the ordinary conversations of a teenager? We tend to forget that just a few years ago we were those teenagers who thought just like the most of them do. 2 A person dressed in a suit and tie is more attractive to the eye than a person wearing sweats and sneakers. When we walk by Wall Street and see all these men with their clean haircuts, ironed suits and polished shoes we tend to think they are wealthy and most likely have a better life than the life of a casually dressed person. If we see someone wearing sweats and sneakers we tend to think they’re like any ordinary person, with a regular job, a regular paycheck, middle class, and not much going for themselves. Yet we don’t know if that person in sweats and sneakers is on their day off and just got out of the gym, and is on their way to their loft in some expensive neighborhood, and has luxurious plans for later tonight. From what we see on TV, from what we hear on the radio, or what we read on magazines or newspapers we are ignorant and think we know what type of people are from certain nationalities. When we hear someone speaking an unknown language to us we instantly think “oh their different from me”, some might even feel intimidated by that other person. As Heilbroner writes in his essay “stereotypes make us mentally lazy...substitutes for observation.” We tend to know a few people from a certain race or have heard of stories of certain people and tend to judge the rest by what we already know. Just because Hispanics are known for their love for soccer doesn’t mean they all find soccer exciting. Since American football is one of the greatest sports the United States is known for it doesn’t mean all Americans are fanatics and impatiently waiting for each year’s super bowl celebration. Race is one of the biggest stereotypes, it goes hand in hand with skin color. We all judge greatly on skin color no matter neither which country we are from nor where we were brought up. There is a