Stereotypes into Our Society

Brandon Axtell

Palm Beach State College

M/W 12:30

Response #2

        For the past 100 years, your identity has affected your success, individualism and development. Popular culture has adapted this ignorant thinking and social norms such as stereotypes into our society. Through personal experiences and examples from the authors I will explain this phenomenon.

        First off, from the second we exit the womb we are being classified. Your parents immediately want to know if you’re a boy or girl and from that moment on, your identity will affect you one way or another. All of the authors in these readings felt strongly about identification and in “Are we worried about Storms identity” the author used the experience of her own child being identified by gender in a school as an example. The genotype of her child was used as an assumption that one day he will be a big, strong security guard. Yet I thought the political truism went something like “were all equal”. Why couldn’t the girl standing next to her child be the security guard or why can’t he be a nurse. Even embedded in the English language we have gender assignment. When you refer to someone as Miss or Mr. and in Spanish verbs are masculine or feminine. This is because gender assignment is embedded in our culture and we all make assumptions of someone before we even say hello.

        In addition, in “at the root of identity” the author explains how stigmas and stereotypes directly affected his life. I once heard that we aren’t born with hate, we are taught it. Stereotypes towards race are “normal” and ever since the 1950’s this has been happening. Mr. Steele paints a picture of when he was first exposed to stereotypes. He first says he didn’t even know there was a racial order and he was only seven or eight. Based on this, I inferred that on the other side, white kids weren’t aware of this racial order either, until they were taught.  These stereotypes are the result of humans’ intersubjectivity. Just as fast as you could be stereotyped for having memory loss, you could be stereotyped for being black, or fat. Also, the food we eat, subjects we prefer and sports we play classify us. Mr. Steele explains this as “living under a cloud”. This “cloud” shapes all of our lives and whether you’re black, white or Asian; your demeanor will identify you.