When doing the reading for the week, I became very aware of my own stereotypes. I realize that, like most of us, I have these categorizations of people that belong to a certain group. These categorizations include my perception of Indian people like spicy food, African Americans to be very proud of their race and Asians in general to be very smart.
On Sunday, when the weather was beautiful, I was having ice cream outside. As I was enjoying my ice cream I was also people watching all of the other ice cream eaters. There were many people out there including lots of families with children. One of the families drew my attention because I happened to hear the dad talk about his one year old daughter. I noticed them because the father was talking about college and the method he was going to use to pay for it and that he was going to encourage her to apply for scholarships.
My stereotype of Asians was confirmed by this short conversation the father was having with his friend. At first, I thought his concerns were slightly farfetched because he still had at least seventeen years to worry about that. However, I realized that this stereotype was positive and that it was good for this gentleman to be concerned about his daughter’s future.
After discussing stereotypes in class today, I remembered my encounter from this Sunday. I realized that this positive stereotype was harmful because maybe the father was stressed about living up to the expectation that people of his same group. He wants to make sure that his daughter also fulfills the expectation that Asian people are very smart. This stereotype is also harmful to the poor one year old because she already has her future planned out for her and may not be able to obtain her individuality. I’m glad that I realize the harm of these quick stereotypes, even if they are positive, and I will try to keep people’s individuality in mind.
References:
Dr. G’s 3.1.10 social psychology notes.
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It's interesting the way that even positive stereotypes can have a negative effect on the individual; it's kind of like what we learned before about people preferring to be in relationships that confirm how they perceive themselves, even if it's negative. It's stressful when people have unrealistic expectations for you to live up to, and having it based on something like race, which you can't control or change, could definitely be trapping.
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