1). Are you, or have you ever been a member of a group that has been stereotyped? Does your experience reflect the concepts identified in this chapter? How? Are there differences? What are they?
Yes, in past experiences a group of friends and myself were stereotyped. My most memorable experiences of being stereotyped in a group was when I was in high school. My group of girlfriends and I always seemed to stick together because not many other girls “liked” us. When I mentioned the word like, I say this because many girls seemed to be not being fond of us. Because we were all able to get along with each other well and hang out with the popular group of boys, we were envied. We were stereotyped as the pretty rich white girls. Many others did not like that we were able to get along with everyone and hang out with all the popular people. So we were generalized and stereotyped to something that we were not. People made assumptions about us that we were stuck up and rude, when we were not. The language use of others was hurtful and rude. We were called many names because of the relationships we had with others and social environment we were in. Nonverbal communication was a key factor for us during this time. Not many people had the intent of telling us how they really felt about us, but by many of the nonverbal gestures like facial expressions and the habits of the ways they stared. This experience reflects some of the concepts used in this chapter as I have examined about. There is not much difference in the context of the terms. I tried to use concepts from the book that reflect my experience specifically. One I did not mention could have been a cultural or diverse difference. Some of the people may not have liked us for who we were because we were popular or because we were white. Even though nothing was ever mentioned to us, this also could have been a reason we were stereotyped. Stereotyping is a concept that we used because we do not like someone or we judge him or her on the outside because of what they look like. If the other girls would of given themselves the chance to get to know us, they would of found out that my girlfriends and I were really nice and fun girls. We were not the stuck, rich white girls they thought we were.
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In high school we are all put into categories. Jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, outcasts, you name it. Chances are you whether you liked it or not you were part of one of these groups. Kids can be rough and they spare no expense in trying to raise their level of acceptance among others. It is basically un-avoidable in a high school setting to be stereotyped. I was always viewed as a Jock and getting special treatment from the teachers, which was so far from the truth it was ridiculous. In fact, at my school we had it even harder because teachers wanted to kill that stereotype so there was no leeway for us.
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