September 21st

“Struggling with Stereotypes: Users and Abuses of a Critical Concept”

This article was an interesting read to me for multiple reasons. In this article the author starts with explaining how certain words “can lose their power through overuse”. I thought to myself how true this is in everyday life. So many people say slang words or joking insults without really even knowing the meaning of the word to begin with. However the word is said so often so it seems socially acceptable. The main topic of this article was to dissect the meanings and issues revolved around generalization and stereotyping. This article surprised me in the way that it was not at all trying to say that these two topics need to be erased or looked at as a problem and nothing more. In fact the author flat out disagrees with the idea of getting rid of labels and generalizations. The author is more concerned with the public being able to make educated decisions when looking and interpreting at the world. The article gave great detail how the media is a huge factor to generalization, as the creators don’t believe they are stereotyping, when they essentially are creating a “group stereotype”. Meaning an individual could cause a label for the whole of a group of people when that is simply not the case at all, since everyone is different. The author also did a good job at not just blaming schools for the negative sides of generalization and stereotyping, instead he spoke about the difficulty of explaining such topics as they have grey overlapping areas. Another part of the article I found very interesting was when it talked about how group knowledge needs to be open to change. It sounds easier than it actually is, because people don’t like to change, if they have a particular view since they were little then they are pretty set in that thought process for the future. Labels, generalization, stereotyping etc. are a part of our world that will never go away. However if more people where open to looking at change, not necessarily accepting it but understanding it, I think it would make a difference. The article also concluded that when studying these concepts in the media it is important to look at patterns to understand just how the media causes “group generalization”.