Stereotypes

[Bakiryu]

Are stereotypes something society creates? Or are they embedded in the deep dark corners of our brains? Are we born prejudiced then? What do you think?

[Granny5]

Are stereotypes something society creates? Or are they embedded in the deep dark corners of our brains? Are we born prejudiced then? What do you think?

I would think that it's created by society. No one is born thinking that all cheerleaders are airheads or that very intelligent people are not socially inept. It's a social creation that the races were considered different, women were less than men, blonds aren't very smart, and that the poor are only poor because that's what they deserve. I believe that we are all created equal but we are taught that some are more equal than others. This thought may not be spoken out loud these days, but it's still there.

[Bakiryu]

Yes, but aren't children prejudiced to one another since very young ages?

[papayahed]

I have a Sony.





HaHaHaHa, get it??? Stereo Types....HaHaHa

Seriously though I'd agree with Gran - it's all learned.

It reminds me of a video I saw of the church from Topeka that protests at soldiers funerals - the small kids, ~4-5 were spouting the same prejudices as the parents - just like little parrots.

[Bakiryu]

:lol: I have a sony too!

[Scheherazade]

Baki,

Would you like to share your views on this issue with us first?

[Bakiryu]

Well, from my experience with young children they tend to mistrust everyone who is unlike then. Stereotypes are always present in our minds but society stokes them to their full growth. For example if it was just 20 children growing together in a an island, 100 or so years later there would be numerous stereotypes and division.

(I don't pretend to be an expert I'm far too young) stereotypes are with us since birth.

[TheFifthElement]

I have a Sony.

I'm prejudiced against Sony.

[higley]

I think that stereotypes are fulfilled as often as not, and that may be because we are products of society if we like it or if we don't--even if we choose to go against the norm, it is often (not always) because we weigh the social standards and deliberately turn away from them. But we still consider them. We still measure our actions by them.

It's funny how a lot of the students at my college (an art school) think they are brazenly defying stereotypes by their dress, music and reading, while in actuality they are perfectly filling out a stereotype that's obvious to everyone but them.

Not saying it's impossible to break out of the mold, just that some might not be as good at it as they think they are. I think the only real way to be completely individual is to be practically oblivious to stereotypes and not consider them in the least in your actions/decisions.

[Bakiryu]

Yeah Higley, tried that and just found out that everyone is being stereotyping me from my actions! :bawling:

[Nossa]

I believe that for the most part we tend to dislike whoever/whatever oppses us or whatever is unlike us. We want to feel superior, and therefore we wanna show the 'other' as lower, by whatever standards.
Another point is that we get used to calling someone or something what everyone else calls it, we don't questions its truth, we're more comfortable with what we're accustomed to. So basically, I think it's both in ourselves and it's also encouraged by the society to a certain extent. But it's all in the human nature, the idea of Me and The Other.

[NikolaiI]

I think that stereotypes are fulfilled as often as not, and that may be because we are products of society if we like it or if we don't--even if we choose to go against the norm, it is often (not always) because we weigh the social standards and deliberately turn away from them. But we still consider them. We still measure our actions by them.

It's funny how a lot of the students at my college (an art school) think they are brazenly defying stereotypes by their dress, music and reading, while in actuality they are perfectly filling out a stereotype that's obvious to everyone but them.

Not saying it's impossible to break out of the mold, just that some might not be as good at it as they think they are. I think the only real way to be completely individual is to be practically oblivious to stereotypes and not consider them in the least in your actions/decisions.

I was watching...uh...Babar...and the storyline of the show had Babar trying to convince Rataxes that a sea-serpent in the lake, and her daughter, were not evil monsters, but gentle creatures. Rataxes only thought Babar was scared, and didn't want his son to think he was scared, so he kept going after the sea-serpents, and only stopped when the mother serpent picked up his son out of the lake and put him back on the boat.

So anyway, then Babar and Rataxes went back to the shore, where Rataxes was then enthusiastic about the sea-serpents, and wanted to set up a 24/hour a day Elephant/Rhinocerous (Babar and Rataxes) vigil, to let people know that the lake was safe and the sea-serpents were gentle. So, Babar convinced Rataxes that the sea-serpents were safe (yay!!!) but then we see: Rataxes was acting the best he could on his information, which is no less than what he and Babar were doing after Babar had enlightened him. So, even though we may see that our unprejudiced views or whatever are correct, we're still no better than anyone else: doing our best, acting our best with the information we have. So, a reason to be careful to be thoughtful.

And I think you're entirely right about the way to avoid being a stereotype: be here, now. It reminds me of "Bad Faith," by Sartre, where he begins by describing what bad faith is, basically acting. The waiter whose movements are jerky and precise, because he is acting a waiter. He's not being a waiter, but acting one. Anyway.

[papayahed]

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060212_racefrm2.htm

The link kind of speaks to the issue in only that babies show a preference which makes sense...


Yeah Higley, tried that and just found out that everyone is being stereotyping me from my actions!

Even on this board?

[Shalot]

Do people try to use stereotypes to establish their own identities? I went to Wal-Mart (yeah another Wal-Mart story) and there this poor kid there. She had two lip rings and a bad dye job, bad make-up, she was obese, and she wore all these chains and safety pins and then a tee shirt that said "People Hate Me"

It was like she saw someone on a show or in a music video that represented an outcast, and then she mimicked them through her own dress. In order to avoid being an outcast, she embraced the whole outcast image and persona. It seemed like she was trying to say, "If I put it in your face, it won't be anything new when you make fun of me about it."

I am thinking that a lot of young people are influenced by television, music, and the images they see more than they realize. As you get older and wiser, you learn to laugh at it but when you're young, you see someone with a safety pin in their eyebrow and you think that represents rebellion. When you get older it just looks foolish.

[Bakiryu]

Yeah, usually people cling to a stereotype so other wont hurt them or to have their own identity. Specially popular with teens too @

(I love my piercings!)

[Pendragon]

Yes, people sterotype by what they learn, but they should know better by now. I have been in many parts of the country, and people up North tend to dislike my Southern accent as if all Sounterners were hicks. My IQ would blow them away. I learned to modulate my voice a bit. Many here think all Yankees (Northern people) are jerks. Not so, I have found many warm hearted. When my mother fell and busted a leg on a trail in NC, a guy with dreadlocks helped me and my brother get her to safety, while nicely groomed people pushed rudely by. It's a sterotype that cost me everything I had build up over the years as a minister-- i.e., all Bi-Polar people are strak raving crazy or devil possessed. Right! :rolleyes:

[Oniw17]

Of course stereotypes are cultural. My little brother doesn't think his black cousin is going to rob him. It's ridiculous to thing seteotyping is natural. People(even babies) just have a social fear of people or things(or types of people or things) that they're not used to seeing. I've had black neighbors my whole life,and I don't even remember wondering why people have different skin tones until around second grade when I was exposed to racist family members. Other stereotypes mostly come from comedians, and sometimes from the news. Some do tend to generally express the truth though, like that every public housing project has an old lady that all the little kids call grandma and another lady who comes down yelling about her kids and saying her husband will beat your ***(then her husband comes down later, respectful as hell, exactly the opposite of her, trying to talk to you calmly). A lot of stereotypes are way off too, like that all asians are smart and suck at sports, or that anyone who's remotely intelligent is a nerd. Most stereotypes are pretty lame though. The best thing to do is judge everything through your experience, as if nothing existede before you were born(because you don't know for sure that it did).

[BibliophileTRJ]

As a living, breathing, walking stereotype; I'm staying out of this conversation.

[LadyW]

What do you think are the major labels for teens in society today?
Any thoughts on them?
For the older members of the forum, in your teenage years, were you labelled as anything in particular?

[SleepyWitch]

What do you think are the major labels for teens in society today?
Any thoughts on them?
For the older members of the forum, in your teenage years, were you labelled as anything in particular?

I think today's teens are only half as bad as they're cracked up to be.. if you (I don't mean you, LadyW, I mean people in general) talk to them for more than 2 minutes running, it often turns out they have interesting dreams and goals, even though they may appear materialistic, vapid or shallow at first glance.... well at least some of them are OK...

I was often labelled as a lesbian when I was a teenager, because I wasn't interested in boys at the time. Just for the record, I wasn't interested girls, either, but it might have been a good choice, seeing as most boys my age were really immature, ugly, dull or macho :D

[LadyW]

Ah deffinitely...
Suprisingly, at the age of 14/15 males are still rather immature unfortunately... well, alot of them anyway.
But I deffinitely agree with you, the bad reputation of teenagers has definitely been exacabated a great deal. There are alot of people in their teens that I cannot stand due to their narrow mindedness, prejudice and narcism. But then again I'm sure people of other age groups embody all those qualities.
As a teenager myself I often feel slightly hard-done-by because of the modern day perspective on youths... it's hardly fair really when quite alot of us do have more than half a wit.

[aabbcc]

Well, I am 17 years old I was never labelled in any particular way.
I attended schools in which there were not present any classifications of people according to the music they listen to, way they dress, which subculture they identify themselves with, etc. Not that that was a product of maturity, it was simply a cultural thing - we saw those labels to be something typically American, any place we saw them were Hollywood movies, and we never really applied them to ourselves and people of our age. Perhaps from time to time, when generalising a phenomenon of youth subcultures, we used those labels, but nobody was permanently labelled in our mind - or at least that was the view I had of the whole situation. There certainly was not any division based on that.

Now, regarding stereotypes other members of broader society have towards teenagers... I never felt particularly affected by that; perhaps because I look older than I am or because people I hanged with were always a couple of years older (my best friend is 19, and amongst the younger ones in our group), so I generally adopted a lifestyle and manners atypical for a teen, but even despite that, I did not really notice any greater stereotypes.
What I did notice is that people around me never liked ignorant, arrogant and childish people, regardless of their age. I was always talked to with respect and never put into any typical stereotype because I was a teen, but then again, I always had that kind of attitude myself and never behaved as your stereotypical teenager. Therefore, people were accepting and my age was never an obstacle for anything. Even though many people automatically assumed I was older than I was, even upon figuring out I was still a teen by age nothing changed between us.

I am the same myself, I do not particularly care whether somebody is 14 or 24. Certainly, it is more likely that I am going to have more in common with somebody who is 24 due to social circles I am most often in, and general interests, but I would never a priori think of somebody who is 14 as of immature teen who cannot possibly be interesting to me or my friends. After all, precisely because of lack of such stereotypes, I am in the group of friends I am in - because I was the youngest and the one who was not stereotyped and disregarded because of her age.

[Bakiryu]

What do you think are the major labels for teens in society today?
Any thoughts on them?
For the older members of the forum, in your teenage years, were you labelled as anything in particular?

major labels? pretty much the same as they've ever been.

Punk, goth, prep, jock, emo, weirdo, outcast, nerd, populars, wannabes, brains, fangirls, japanese kids, otakus.

some of them are actually very correct and there's safety in numbers. teenagers today like to conform to an stereotype or belong to a group.

right now, since I moved, everyone around me is 'gansta" and I'm "that strange white girl" not really a label but an sterotype.

[SleepyWitch]

major labels? pretty much the same as they've ever been.

Punk, goth, prep, jock, emo, weirdo, outcast, nerd, populars, wannabes, brains, fangirls, japanese kids, otakus.

hahahah, little Baki, you're cute. we didn't have emo or fangirls or japanese kids 10 to 12 yrs ago when I was a teenager.

[Bakiryu]

hahahah, little Baki, you're cute. we didn't have emo or fangirls or japanese kids 10 to 12 yrs ago when I was a teenager.

*le gasp!*

no!

(emo is pretty old! but it was pretty underground then and kids have always liked comics)

[blazeofglory]

Are stereotypes something society creates? Or are they embedded in the deep dark corners of our brains? Are we born prejudiced then? What do you think?

This is a profound question indeed. We are capable of being stereotypes and such elements or genes are our inbuilt prosperities and they are in the vein and cannot be erased and they are indeed instinctive.

But prejudices are not inborn propensities and they are acquired behaviors as a matter of fact.

[subterranean]

Probably, just probably, streotype can also be a result of a system.