An Influence of Stereotypes

Stereotypes have a open-ended power on the individual. What is a stereotype and the true power they hold? How do stereotypes affect an individual? You are an individual living in america that is supposed to be free from hatred, oppression, and subjugation. If we are supposed to live free from all of theses dividing things why do we throw stereotypes in our culture?. If we take a deep look into movies, books , commercials , music ect.. There is a pattern of us telling groups of people what they are to represent. Legally blonde, The breakfast club and countless other classic movies in our pop culture raised generations to learn who they are. This lead to our generation, friends, and family to think they are nothing more than what they have been told to be. Stereotypes are bullying us to believe segregation is okay so we end up in a path of havoc; But we have to choose if we will follow it through havoc or fight against it.

A stereotype is a popular oversimplified image or idea of a type of person or thing. We all know what people say and think about us should not matter to us or affect us in anyway. As humans with emotion and feelings we start to allow stereotypes to have control or power over us .This happens when stereotypes reach our insecurities, our flaws, our every imperfection. Stereotypes have so much power over us because we allow them to. We do not give it a boundary or limit so they hit us in our weakest areas.

People allow stereotypes to control them a lot more than what we think. This can be shown in Multiculturalism Threatens American Culture Paragraph 5 ,They are part of a global crisis in national identity, coefficients of the sudden collapse of self-confidence in the West”a collapse that shows itself in everything from swiftly falling birthrates in "old Europe" to the attack on the whole idea of the sovereign nation state. It is hard to avoid thinking that a people that has lost the will to reproduce or govern itself is a people on the road to destruction. Places like the sovereign nation or old europe have undergo so much stereotypes and hate throughout years and even centuries. As people, all of this will finally hit us whether we like it or not. These people lived terrible lifes just for them to be called the enemy in a place that is opposed to gives dreams and help. They finally allowed of all this to happen to them to the point they have given up. The government they once had fallen and now runs reckless because when they did stand strong others only found the problems with them. They give up trying to reproduce because lack of resources and the fact they don't want to make those monsters you speak of. They also don't want to bring a child into a world of hate and sin because it would destroy them like it has done before , like it has done to them. Bullying is stereotyping if you did not really know. The people of the sovereign nation or old europe were bullied to the point they completely shut down and gave up.

Bullying is a terrible epidemic that is happening to children, adults , and everyone. Stereotypes brought bullying, because every stereotype is a form of bullying. In American born Chinese Page 187, Today, when timmy called me a.a chink, i realized.. Deep down inside. I kind of feel like that all the time. Timmy told the group of asian kids in his class that they are chinks. Chink is an ethnic slur usually referring to a person of Chinese ethnicity. The word is also used against people of East Asian appearance. This seemed to have bothered them since the term is seen to be offensive. The girl in this story breaks down crying and you can tell that she is sad. She been told this term and probably others her whole life .This type of mental abuse brought on by a stereotype that one person thought was okay to throw around caused major bullying. Stereotyping is a form of bullying and bullying hurts people emotionally and mentally just as much as physically.

Mental and emotional bullying is something many people look over. In certain ethnic groups they are not even allowed to talk about the mental and emotional abuse they go through just because we have them stereotypes that they have to follow. In Model minority stereotypes Paragraph 15 it says "The evidence outlined here indicates that Asian Americans are not necessarily mentally or physically healthier than other ethnic groups." Asian americans are not mentally or physically healthier than other ethnic groups like people may have believed they were. Asian americans have a higher risk of mental health issues. People don't really know this since asian american like to keep that information disclosed. If you are an Asian americans it bring dishonor to your family if you do have a mental health issues, fail in school, or delinquency. New asian americans face barriers like this everyday trying to live the american way but stay in the traditional way too. Making younger and older asian immigrants have a higher chance of mental health issues. When we say Asians are smarter asians are better they can be affected by what others say ect . We put stereotypes on them that are already forced on by their families. The reasons Asians Americans have such a higher risk of mental health issues is because they are bullied by themselves, their families and us the American way.

How far does this mental issues may go on an individual. Well in American born Chinese Page 194, Now what would you like to become? In this page there is no real context on any stereotype that was truly said but there is a greater meaning hidden in this page. Jin has be stereotyped his whole life by his peers, outside people and everyone else. He's been called chink F.O.B kind of people everything you can think of. He finally allowed everything that was said to him finally get to him and his mental health. He started to not want to be himself anymore , he wants to be someone who he believes is normal or okay to be like. In this photo he changes from this black haired asian boy to a light colored eye blond boy. They don't look nothing alike or even are close to the same people. This shows how stereotypes can go so far to affect the individual idea of what is accepted in this world. He believed he wasn't to ever be accepted in this world if he didn't look like the American ideal . In a way he was right , people accepted the light colored eye blond boy over the black hair asain kid. We allow these stereotypes to go so far because it was the way we were raised , it was in our culture or pop culture.

Pop culture has been something that has affected generations and their thought process for years.Modern popular culture transmitted via mass media and aimed particularly at younger people. Movies, music , books, and everything else kids are interested in today is called pop culture. Now how does this involve stereotypes well like said before stereotypes are bullying because someone belongs in a certain group but where does this idea come from. There?› a stereotype about blondes that they are dumb and brunettes are smart. The movie legally blonde? the biggest stereotype is Elle and her blonde hair and fashion goals making her dumb. This stereotype of blonde women being dumb has plagued humanity for a long time. Another stereotype in this is when the brunette was shown to be hardworking, smart and earned her way into harvard they made it so that she couldn't be nice and only uptight. This movie made people to believe that women could only be 2 things, blonde pretty? bubble head or a smart uptight brunette.Was that the image we wanted our future generations to learn? Why was this what we allowed our children (boys and girls) that they can be only 2 things? Dumbo made in 1941, an american childs classic.

I can talk about other movies, shows but this movie was targeted to children this movie was what children loved , even i admit to loving this movie. In this movie like many many other disney movies of that time period racism was a huge thing that was shown in between the lines. These issues has been there since disney started. Another issue is the use of stereotypes which are used to represent characters in dumbo. We have previously seen the reinforcing stereotypes of Arabs in the disney movie Aladdin. They also use slang words such as calling each other brotha and speaking in southern accents with mutilated grammar. This wasn't fully shown but it was there, our children watched and loved this show but they also watch and learn how we want them to see people or different race. When i say that popular culture has everything to do with the stereotypes and the way we decide to treat people of different groups is because we learned at a young age this.

We may have learned or even had this instinct to stereotype people from a very young age. We may have even allowed it to have no boundary or limit. We did though allowed it to hold power over us and define who we are. History though has taught us that humans are actually very capable to break every chain that stereotypes put to divide us. In Is the American Idea Doomed? Paragraph 7 it says radical to claim that a nation as new as America could have its own idea to give the world, it was destabilizing to discard rank and station and allow people to define their own destinies, and it bordered on absurd to believe that a nation so sprawling and heterogeneous could be governed as a democratic republic. Many people did not believe that americans can have such and amazing impact as they did. They undergo a stereotype that america a new nation couldn't uphold a great thing like the american idea. Everyone believed they couldn't do it until they did. Americans wanted to make the american idea a place where people could be who and what they what to be. They wanted to make this a place of hope and they did for the longest they gave a new idea of what they wanted america to symbolize in the end they proved they were more than a stereotype. America is not one of the best places in the world but it is surely not the worst. Getting over any type of stereotypes it is bumpy and hard but there is an end to it.

WASP was one of the many things we as a people had to get over to better america and get rid of stereotypes on us as people but not just individuals. You can not end stereotypes alone but you have to work together slowly. The End Of WASP-Dominated Politics Paragraph 9 , "The Supreme Court, for the first time in its history, does not boast of a single justice who is Protestant. " The supreme court has been stereotype since it started. Depending on the area or place you come from, you may have heard a new things about the good/bad parts of the supreme court. One of the most common stereotype is that the supreme court is nothing more then "angry white men in a robe . Yes maybe at one point itn time that was somewhat true but now it really isn't. That stereotype ends now with our generations and the generations after/ before. We no longer are what people say because we changed who we are and our court with it. We invited so much diversity in it and yes it was a struggle but we did it. We have different sexes, ethics , religious background in the supreme court so that stereotype cannot stand anymore. We became more diverse after breaking the chain of stereotypes. We started to strip all our stereotypes that divided one by one together.

Stripping stereotypes took time but every different year , every new law that was getting passed we started to get there more and more. The End Of WASP-Dominated Politics Paragraphs 16-18, "Catholics, who used to be public enemy No. 1 for a lot of Americans, have been totally embraced, by the Republican Party especially," Preston says. Civil rights laws began to break down barriers for black Americans, while the 1965 immigration law ended quota systems that had for decades heavily favored immigrants from Western Europe."All these immigrants started coming in from Latin America and Asia, many Catholic or not Christian,".

In the ?60's people slowly but surely started to take away all the stereotypes that once were on others. They knew they were the ones who inflicted they most pain so they were to the ones who needed changed it. Americans did started off slowly but impacted amazing. We had a lot of fights on whether this would be a good thing or not . In the end of all the conflict we knew we had to accept that this was a terrible thing and we needed to put things like this in past. Americans do not have borders .Crazy to think we have people to come together as one even if they weren't born here on our land. They are still considered the people of here they are american for having the same mindset as us and the same dreams.

Stereotypes have a open-ended power on the individual. They never had a boundary or limit on us. They invaded our cultures, our happiness, our insecurities. Stereotypes put chains, built walls just to divide us all so we can know that we are different from each other in every single way. They split us apart and made us lonely. They had so much power on us , the only thing is that we allowed them to have that power over us. The control, the walls , the chains everything we allowed stereotypes to do that to us. We have the power to break the chains tear the walls down and we have done it before in history so many times it actually is what america was made on it is the freedom we talked about and supported as people for centuries. Stereotypes made us find and face our individuality. Stereotypes were never bad but they were never good. They are nature a basic instinct we have . We as individuals choose whether we want stereotypes to be good or bad. What is the effect of stereotypes on the individual ? Well every stereotype we have we choose the effect of them.

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