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

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.