“We need to stop categorizing and generalizing people. Wrong.” What?!

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Reading “The Children are watching” by Carlos E. Cortez made me ponder a little deeper on stereotypes. There were two specific sections that caught my attention a little more than the others. One was “Generalizations”, and the other was “Media as Generalizers and Stereotypers.”

Generalizations i thought it was interesting because he mentioned “stereotyping is a critical social issue,” and that it’s “fundamental to understanding media multicultural education.” Moreover, he talks about how stereo and stereotyping are powerful evocative terms. Additionally, when i read “We need to stop categorizing and generalizing people. Wrong,” i was confused and was in disagreement. This little quote made me think for a couple of minutes and then started to realize that we all stereotype from time to time. It may not be intentional, but might be accidental.

Additionally, “Media as Generalizers and Stereotypers” was another section that was appealing to me. In this section, he touched on how media may be a source of stereotypes. I would have to agree with him. The media mediums have so much power now a days, that it’s simple for them to repeat and expose a story and turn it into a big deal. Lastly, he also mentions how the news media can increase the consumers development of stereotypes of a certain group due to the repetition of the story.

9/19/15 stereotyping

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I found the article to be a bit confusing and all over the place a bit however, I am grateful to be taking communications as a career because I am learning to be insightful on these issues in media. I agree with Cortes that we all generalize and I’d go as far as to say stereotype in some way even unintentional. I believe it is very important that schools start to teach youth and even adults in college the difference in generalizations, stereotypes and depictions.  First I point out the depiction of Dora The Explorer my daughter loves that show and the character has dark skin for example, my daughters both are very light. I understand the depictions of things. I believe they are used and lean towards generalizations what that being said I feel as if the stereotypes then would come in just my opinion on how I view things from my perspective. I must admit that I’ve been guilty of falling into stereotyping when I was younger as a teenager me and friends found it funny. until we were stereotyped by others and felt judged for what we were not. I do think media had a lot to do with why we acted like that and music played a huge part in  it also. As I read the articles I couldn’t help of thinking of Maury and how the show generalizes people of poverty as dead beat dads, or Springer who stereotypes what society calls trailer trash, and Steve Wilco’s show that claims to be different and getting the truth from “Scumbags” who aren’t good parents. I get it and I see how this affects myself and the other 100,000 viewers watching these shows. it saddens me to see how the media portrays us. However the news also does all 3 things also and on a larger scale, I know that our youth learning these differences at a young age can indeed help shape a world more aware of such lies.

Bishop Pine Research

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My self, Zack Buckley, and a junior student also interested in this project Dulce Lopez will be working on the foundation for future research on the Bishop Pine Tree. The Bishop Pine is a relic species and a good indicator as to climate change because they are heat intolerant. The rise in global climate change is making it difficult for this tree to continue to thrive. The main objective of this project is to get a clear census of the population on Santa Rosa Island. This will be accomplished by gathering a few data points on each tree. The data consists of: Diameter at Breast Height (approx. 1.3m), Height of the tree, whether or not it is reproductive, and how healthy it is. These data point will be accompanied by a GPS tag and a accuracy for further GIS analysis.

This is the main focus of my capstone
This is the main focus of my capstone

Blog 2 Louie Galang

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Well, after reading the article, it feels like that some of the thins I’ve noticed about my childhood and the retroactive observations I’ve made looking at the things my brother watches had been somehow proven right. That generalizations do exist from the very beginning, and can be a very slippery slope towards stereotypes. The generalizations come from lots of places, and not just the media. I think my parents had a minor hand in the act of instilling some of these generalizations, even some negative stereotypes, not just the media he consumes. I’ve also been the general product of many of the outside forms of generalization teaching, where I had to learn “Fear” and “Distrust” over various generalized people, cultures, and subcultures. Yet with the exposure to these same factors, I changed “Fear” and “Distrust to “Curiosity” and “Understanding”. I had never experienced black culture until my stepfather came into my life, and showed me so much more than the southern caricatures provided by the media, and that he learned  much about the Filipino culture, being a part of my family as he is now. Then with my brother, who is of both cultures, he will be playing on a different field than I am, who is of mostly one culture. He will have a much wider representation in the media now, along with a much more diverse future ahead. With that come new and different generalizations that I would want to help him understand, before the stereotypes form.