Short Summary: Effects Of Stereotyping

Robel Tsegay
ENGWR 101
Anna Joy
Essay # 3
04/02/2013
Effects of Stereotyping

“Stereotypes are a kind of gossip about the world, a gossip that makes us prejudge people before we ever lay eyes on them” (Heilbroner 373). People stereotype because they are unable to obtain all the information they need to make reasonable conclusions about other individuals. Stereotypes make their victims struggle with other people’s negative assumptions, and can have very harmful consequences. Stereotypes have many negative effects, and victims of stereotyping suffer from isolation, harassment and hate crimes. One possible effect of stereotyping is isolation. Some people have suffered from isolation due to negative stereotypes.
In the United States suspicious characters and criminals are thought to be “swarthy” or dark and they are discriminated and harassed because of false stereotypes (Heilbroner 372). Brent Staples is an example of a black man who struggled with his appearance, because he was mistaken for a criminal, murderer and a rapist when in reality this was not really true. Due to young black males being drastically overrepresented in street violence Staples had to face a lot of harassment (Staples 344). On one occasion Staples while working as a journalist in Chicago he was mistaken for a robber. The security guards treated him like a criminal mistaken who showed up to rob somebody (Staples 345). He had no way of proving that he was an editor who graduated from the University of Chicago showing up to do his job but being black was good enough for him to be considered a burglar . Innocent black men have been facing such humiliation and harassment due to negative stereotypes. I myself became a victim of such a stereotype. Last week early in the morning on my way to school, I was running to catch the light rails trying not to be late school. A police car stopped in front me as I was crossing the road. A white police officer in his forties came out of his car rushing and stopped me. He pulled my backpack from my back forcibly and threw it to the other side of the
In America Arab Americans have been stereotyped as terrorists and bombers. In the book Zeitoun, Zeitoun, for example mentioned the discrimination against Muslim Americans after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC.” Since the attacks in New York, he would say, every time a crime was committed by a Muslim, that person’s faith was mentioned, regardless of its relevance” (Zeitoun 37). Anyone who looked Middle Eastern was considered a terrorist or anti- America, simply because the individuals who participated in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were Middle Eastern and Muslim. Since then, people of Middle Eastern decent have been discriminated against and have become victims of hate crimes. In 2012, in Brooklyn New York a man got stabbed six times for being a Muslim. A white guy in his early twenties attacked a 54 year old Muslim man from Iraq. He told the Muslim man he doesn’t belong here in America because he is a terrorist and he should go back to his country. He took out his knife stabbed the Muslim man six times in the back, slashed his head, and cut his thumb and the tip of his nose. Innocent Muslims have become victims of hate crimes because of fabricated stereotypes. The people who destroyed the World Trade Center were Middle Eastern doesn’t mean that everyone who is Middle Eastern is a terrorist. Stereotyping all Middle Eastern people as terrorists and dangerous is incorrect. It