Just Walk On By Brent Staples

Our experiences are the ones those clarify the world around us. Every individual is different and time changes every individual. We find particular individual differences among the members of our own social group. How can we imagine not having differences with people of other social groups? as members of group change significantly. The ways we think, we hear, remember and the inferences we make creates stereotype. Stereotyping can build up an aggressive action upon the victim towards others and it can also lead to difficulty in making rational decisions on a person. Stereotyping builds up fear upon the victim towards the society.

Stereotyping is based on unconscious bias. Stereotyping can be done by anyone and to anyone. As per my experience,

He portrays the racist tendency of people to assume black men are potentially violent and dangerous. He describes about a white woman’s reaction when she and him were walking on same street but on the opposite sides during the night. He says that women seemed to be worried, she felt uneasy and she thought that he was ‘menacingly close’. He even shares his experience on how he was taken as a burglar, mistaken as a killer and forced out of a jewelers store while doing assignment for a local paper. The reason behind being kicked out of the jeweler store and women running away was because he was a black man. During that period black men were stereotyped as rapist, murderer, and gang members. These names upon a person’s personality can hinder ones feelings and can also affect ones confidence level. Thus stereotyping can cause a person to miss opportunities and the person might face difficulties in building relationships with specific types of people. (Brent

In my opinion stereotyping has become like a superstition. Children these days pick up subtle cues from their mothers and use them in the form of stereotypes. Children and parents don’t realize that they are mistaken by falsified beliefs. In my opinion it is not worthy for a person to quickly correlate positive and negative terms with black and white faces or by race. One particular race might get teased with nicknames like rude and disrespectful. Various nationalities are stereotyped as friendly or unfriendly. These situations arise stereotype threat. In this situation s/he has the fear of doing something that would accidently confirm a negative stereotype. Even if the person does not believe the stereotype s/he may experience threat. People find very disturbing to accept stereotypes, they have pain of being treated unfairly. I opine that people perform poorly when they feel they are being stereotyped. They face obscurity in making rational decisions. Stereotype people also build in aggressive action towards others. Thus stereotyping should be controlled and those who are being stereotyped should have different