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Some Thoughts About Stereotype
In the story ―The Myth of the
Latin Woman
‖,
Judith
Ortiz Cofer discusses how she
was treated by various people due to
their conception of her as a Latin woman. Her
strong theme discusses various
stereotypes that Latin women are subjected to such
as
they are being viewed as uneducated,
hot tamale, and labeled as submissive workers.
Judith
Ortiz
Cofer
believes
Latin
women
are
stereotyped
as
sexual
firebrand
because of their dress.
Clothing was always
a
big culture
clash.
She states that she
learned
to dres
s from her mother, ―as young
girls, it was our
mother who had grown
up on a tropical island, where the
natural environment was a riot of primary
colors,
where
showing
your
skin
was
one
way
to
keep
cool
as
well
as
to
look
sexy.
‖
In
America, people think that
Latin
girls
were
colorful
clothes
and show
a lot of skin
because they are prostitute or easy to
get with. The author proves this is untrue after
going to her first high school dance
with a boy who tried to kiss her but she rejected.
In everyday
use, the concept of the stereotype is used in
various contexts: usually
the word
stereotype is used to refer to members of some
kind of collective: firemen
are
courageous, blondes are less intelligent, Africans
are poor, and the Latin girls are
hot
and
so
on.
When
a
person
makes
inferences
with
a
new
person
or
about
some
social
events,
they
use
their
existing
knowledge
to
reduce
the
uncertainty
in
the
situation.
The
less
one
knows
about
the
object,
the
more
one
uses
stereotypical
generalizations.
Americans
are pushy and the English are reserved, right?
Wrong, says a new study,
which
reveals
there
is
no
truth
in
this
sort
of
Cultural
stereotypes.
There
was
no
correlation
between
perceived
cultural
characteristics
and
the
actual
traits.
These
stereotypes
focus
our
attention
on
some
certain
features
,
which
is
not
good
at
understanding one culture
comprehensively .When we walk on the street, for
instance,
just to get to a certain
address, we may not be able to tell how many
barber shops we
passed during our
journey. However, if we walk on the same street to
find one, our
attention is tuned to see
the barbershops' signs. Cultural stereotypes work
in the same
way: they focus our
attention on certain features, and amplify them in
our observation.
In this way, we see
what we are taught to see, and at the same time
our observations
also confirm the
stereotypes.
In the article, the author
mentions one facet of the myth of the Latin woman
in the
United
States
is
the
menial,
the
domestic.
The
myth
of
the
Hispanic
menial
–
the
funny
maid,
mispronouncing
words
and
cooking
up
a
spicy
storm
in
a
shiny
California
kitchen
–
has
been
perpetuated
by
the
media
in
the
same
way
that
―Mammy‖
from
Gone with the Wind
became America’s idea of the black
woman for
generations. So when the
author took her first public poetry reading at a
restaurant in
Miami, she was mistreated
as a waitress because she was a Latin girl, and
Latin girl
are treated as uneducated.
The
less
we
know
about
the
other,
the
more
we
hang
on
stereotypes.
If
the
stereotype
is well-grounded and justifiable it may help to
orient oneself in a certain
situation.
Stereotypes are only offensive when they are
perceived as being negative.
For
example: How many times have you ever heard a
black man stand up and angrily
deny
that all black men have huge penises? That
statement is a stereotype, but I don't
hear anyone complaining about it. There
are other stereotypes that are accepted and
even repeated by the very group being
targeted. Chinese are hard workers, Swedish
women
are
beautiful,
Italian
women
are
excellent
cooks,
Black
women
are
strong,
Bi-sexual
women
make
better
lovers
and
so
on.
But
if
it
is
unjust
and
loaded
with
negative emotions, it will harm the
interaction without question, and also often
results
from, and leads to, prejudice.
Some groups in society -- such as blacks, women,
Jews,
gays and lesbians -- have all
experienced the effects of negative stereotyping
and lack
of
positive
images.
The
Americans
looked
down
on
the
blacks.
In
the
university
classroom,
the
professor
sa
id,‖
the
Black
men’s
IQ
is
clearly
lower
than
t
he
W
hite’s…‖
Among
the
250
person
on
the
spot,
Rice,
the
only
black
stood
up
excitedly,‖
This is no
scientific basis. The Black do as hard as the
White. We can do
what the white can.‖
With father’s
studious edification,
Rice becomes the first black
female
secretary of state in
American, who
is
full of
sense
of calling to defend the
color
self-esteem.
Her
success
is
so
inspiring
to
the
people
who
are
striving
to
eliminate the prejudice. When we break
through the prejudice to love our own skin
color,
gender
and
so
on,
we
should
improve
ourselves
more
hard,
and
show
our
ability to the world, to
prove those stereotypes are so ridiculous.
Why
we
stereotype?
The
following
three
points
are
important.
First,
the
field
of
view. From the time that
we
are very
young children,
human beings are constantly
striving to
process the world around us. We struggle to put
things into some type of
order, and to
see the world in a way that makes sense to us.
Imagine a preschooler
playing with a
set of blocks. He may put all of the blue blocks
in one pile and the red
ones in
another. He may also sort the blocks by their
shape or size. Throughout our
lives,
from
the earliest
years on,
we classify people by these same sorts
of criteria;
boys
and
girls,
adults
and
kids,
fat
and
thin,
tall
and
short.
As
we
go
through
life,
whether consciously or
subconsciously, we are struggling to make sense of
the people,
places and things around
us.
The question is that most people’s
views are limited. We
all know that the
less variety of input that a person receives early
in life, and the less
experience
they
have
with
any
other
people
group,
the
more
likely
they
will
be
to
develop a
stereotype. Additionally, when a person with
limited experience with any
other
group
of
people
has
a
negative
experience
with
that
group
first,
they
are
far
more likely to apply a stereotype to
all people who fall into that group.
But why our views are so limited? As
far as I am concerned, the education system
and
ourselves
should
pay
the
great
responsibility.
As
for
education,
there
are
still
some disadvantages in it. The main
question is that people are always
pursuing the
marks, and
always pursue the knowledge utilitarian. Every
teacher and parent would
say,
your basic education and
go to the best university
But what will
they do
after graduate from school?
Seldom gives answers to this question. In Chinese
high
schools, students
study
very
crazily. They study
more than twelve every day! They
live
in the school and never watch TV
, read
the newspaper or play computer games.
Students never really have a hobby. If
you ask them for what are their hobbies, 99%
of them will say, I like music, sports
and reading. But most of them don't know the
difference
between
jazz
and
blues.
On
the
other
side,
the
content
of
education
is
definitely imperfect, we should learn
many things by own if we want to understand