Stereotypes Through Simple Living

Cheyanne Easter Processor: Temple English 066 1 October 2012 Otherness Everywhere you go you catch yourself either stereotyping or being stereotyped just by the simple she lives in a big house she must be rich or he’s Asian he must be good at math. Stereotyping is usually a negative habit on all human beings but it somehow weasels its way into social acceptance. Now, more than ever and somehow we end up accepting it with no concern.

Allport (1954) theory was that thinking ill of others without warrant that people make their mind u’ without any personal experience. This pre judgment is worldwide it happens everywhere including every race white, black, Hipic to what gender female or male. We are all human we all do it. One group we tend to target the most, our middle aged black men, we pracive them to be a gang member or drug dealers by their own appearance. But would it be wrong to say that hip hop may have an effect on the way people look at African American men in our society.

While watching an episode of the Tyra Banks show rerun an episode about stereotypes happened to be on where Tyra did an experiment where she put a group of people from all backgrounds showed them a picture of different cultured individuals and asked what and how you felt about them just by their appearance. The first picture appeared of a middle aged tall black man wearing baggy jeans, boots and an oversized jacket. People assumed right off that bat that he must not be educated, he must be on welfare trying to support his kids and baby momma was some white female’s exact words.

These comments were even coming from the same race “that he must be strapped with guns and running the street as a gang banger” one African American women stated. It was sickening for people to make all these assumptions just based on their theory of stereotypes by a certain individual. He was later brought out face to face with these people to find out that he’s a very successful antrapranoer and has already earned 4 degrees. He says it the same reaction he gets from individual all the time, “it’s hard on me and that everything I’m hearing today I have to carry the weight of every African American male out there”.

He explains that those type of stereotypes are the ones he has to live up to on a daily bases. You could relate this man’s experience with a young African American boy that was murdered because this man thought he was being “suspicious”. Trayvon Martin a 17 year old teenage that was shot for the simple fact that he was a black male wearing a hoodie walking through a gated neighborhood. Federals say this could indeed be a hate crime. What went through George Zimmerman’s head to shoot this innocent boy was it the first time Zimmerman’s done such type of prejudgment on black males, no.

At the very least, a situation of 46 emergency calls made by Zimmerman over the past six years documents his attentiveness about keeping his neighborhood safe and orderly. The calls include complaints about unruly people at the pool, potholes, dumped trash, and kids playing in the street. In recent months as the neighborhood saw an uptick in crime, including burglaries and a shooting, Zimmerman’s calls had focused on specific suspects, the majority of them young black males.

Zimmerman assumptions about these people made them his target. Some people say that this doesn’t exist in current day society but this right here is a prime example. To willingly kill a young black kid due to the fact that he walked into this residence or for the simple fact that he was cutting in-between houses, walking very leisurely for the rainy weather and looking at all the house gave Zimmerman the right to shot this innocent kid that caused death by his own prejudgment it devastates me to the bare bone.

This problem will never stop. People tend to fill their head with what they want to believe. Is it wrong to say that maybe” hip hop” had a little influence on the killing of Trayvon Martin, editor in chief of GlobalGrind. com, a site about the “hip-hop” side of pop culture said “Even if I have a black hoodie, a pair of jeans and white sneakers on, in fact that is what I wore yesterday, I still never will look suspicious.

No matter how much the hoodie covers my face or how baggie my jeans are, I will never look out of place to you,” he wrote. “I will never look suspicious to you, because of one thing and one thing only, the color of my skin. ” Thus, clothing lines and particular clothing items popular within the hip hop culture are Stereotyped and ignoring simplistic understandings of hip hop culture lead people to assume the role of a ordinary African American that lives day to day in our society , as drug dealers, gang bangers or want to be rappers.

Do hip hop rappers influence people to assume that black men aren’t safe to be around if they portray the image of rapper, is it all about getting money, smoking and having a gun. It’s sad to say these stereotypes can just come from material clothing you not only see it in hip hop fashion but in the holocaust people could see right through you that you were a Jew, during this semester we’ve been reading a book called Maus were it takes you into the life of one Jewish man valdeck spingleman that survived the worst externmation of 11 million people.