Thursday, March 24, 2011

STEREOTYPES DERIVED FROM SYMBOLS

      You're walking through campus. It's just a typical day. As you make your way to your next class you are just one of the crowd doing the same. While you may see your best friend, old lover, or last year's lab partner, there are also several individuals whom you have never seen and never will again. All of the people that you see most often have specific characteristics about them that cause you to naturally form an opinion on them before you even interact. If you see a girl with blond hair, this may spark an immediate reaction of curiosity on how she got into the University of Texas because she most definitely does not look that smart. Yet, if you see an asian, most often, one automatically assumes they worked hard and have an outstanding GPA. Maybe you see a person wearing glasses, of which you then associate them as being naturally intelligent. As you can see, it's so easy to take some physical characteristic about a person and place them in category not relating to that idea. Qualities such as ethnicity, disabilities, or traits can make us in a matter of seconds form an opinion on someone. Even though these symbols lack substance and truth, society has still created them and caused us to look at people differently because of them.

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