African American Stereotypes: The Trayvon Martin Case

Stereotyping

A stereotype is to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. Stereotyping has become such a common thing in our society that they are often used in; in job interviews, in the media, and even when people meet one another in person. African Americans have been subject to stereotyping due to the color of their skin dating back to American colonization. Slave owners perpetuated the idea that African Americans could not think for themselves or are educated. The African American stereotypes are closely associated with their social status. For example a successful African American is perceived as educated and hard working. In contrast, an African American living in the projects
I have seen many different examples of this but one that stood out to me was the Trayvon Martin case. Although this case had many different points of views and opinions the news portrayed him as a thug by using certain pictures and referencing and highlighting some of his teenage activities most likely because of the color of his skin, with out much information about the case when it was first released. Television shows are guilty of portraying this also. For example when Jerry Springer was airing the show would consist of a couple and a home wrecker, most of the time all African Americans, they would fight using profanity and improper English embarrassing them selves on national T.V. The African American stereotype has most likely been around the longest. This stereotype dates back to slavery and was very relevant in the fifties and sixties. One example is shown by Claude M Steele when he stated; “and I learned that we black kids could not swim at the pool at our area park, except on Wednesday Afternoons. That is just one example of how harsh it was to be an African American in that day. Even though our nation has gotten past that and taken great strides in getting rid of racism there are still certain prejudices and
There have been times have been walking down the street in the middle of the day and I noticed that certain people would give weird looks and avoid walking next to us. At Night it is even worse, there have been numerous times where Jay and I have been walking back to my house just minding our business and we get followed by the police only to get stopped right before my house because we “look suspicious” and have to go through a long annoying process of questions and then sent on our way and told to “stay out of trouble”. I thought about this and realized all of these things were happening because Jay was an African American male with Dread-locks. This doesn’t change my point of view on jay because I have known him for so long and can trust him; this amazed me and made me realize that things like this go on every day all over a country, and should be something we plan on