The Extermination of Stereotypes
“So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved,” John F. Kennedy once said. This signifies that people should acknowledge the differences but focus on the similarities between each other. If people emphasize the dissimilarities, there is no way to come to a conclusion of camaraderie. The media is creative in how it influences ideas about humanities. History also plays an important factor in how Americans generalize a group of people. Single stories play the role of classifying into a one stereotype as well. These components give birth to psychological towards a unique person. Thus, the media, history, and single stories cause stereotypes, creating psychological effects on individual people within a variety of ethnicities.
The media drills images into the one-sided American view of an ethnicity. The media’s job is to find information about anyone or anything interesting enough to be put on the news. To illustrate, it is easier and more “interesting” for a “photojournalist to take a picture of an African American, for example, in a riot” (Lester 1) than to show them as an educated figured in society, such as professor. This situation exemplifies that society easily visualizes outsiders in accordance with their stereotype rather than contradicting it. Another common stereotype that the public sees that is shaped by the media is the fact that all people who live in any part of Africa are either deprived or starved. The commercials on television show famished Africans of skin and bone; the media is trying to guilt people into donating to the tragedy. This creates an image in peoples’ heads of all those in Africa hungry. The reality is that there are parts of Africa that are striving. “Because the only things I have seen and heard . . . were negative, it is all that I could imagine,” (Adichie). She is telling people that if they only see the one side of an event on television, it is all that they can portray in our heads. Obviously, the media’s only success is in stereotyping.
History classes teach Americans—with a bias— acts that distinct countries have committed against America. The schools in America yield to teach their students about the good of different countries and ethnicities, but they are more than happy to show them the bad. For example, Japan bombing the U.S. at Pearl Harbor symbolizes the hatred of Japan towards the U.S. The last ounce of information that districts tell people is that the U.S. set off an atomic bomb in Hiroshima and that the U.S. had then assumed all Japanese Americans were somehow linked to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, representing the immediate conclusions and assumptions Americans have against all those who are within a race of people commit a single serious act. Then the U.S. took it upon themselves to put all of the Japanese Americans into internment camps. This shows America that the government is bias as well, and it neglects to teach their citizens the negatives of their own country. Another example in history that leads many people to a stereotype is slavery. Separate races make a generalization that African Americans are lazy when it comes to school or simply just uneducated. People also think that they all use slang. As Greene said in “Color Me Different,” “I was irritated that this girl thought that just because I did not speak black English, I was not a genuine black person,” (78). People most likely think of African Americans in this manner because Americans subconsciously know that slaves were not allowed to be able to read or to write. In conclusion, many ideas about groups of