Thursday, January 15, 2009

Stereotypes Amongst Us...in Life...in Media...

Stereotypes have always been amongst us. In fact, the first ever cases of human prejudice date back to the cave paintings between Homosapieans and Homoneanderthals (Neanderthals) over 30,000 years ago....

Aimed towards "separating" an individual...Stereotypes play a major role on how we view one other with a negative or positive label.

A great negative example happened at the famous corner of Lavell Edwards Stadium and University Ave....known as either "Gamers Corner" or "Apples to Apples corner." (where you can purchase various family board games and discount prices.)....A volunteer for the Obama campaign decided to put up his donation stand the day of the BYU vs. New Mexico game at that same exact spot...

I remember like it was yesterday....It was the end of last September and I drove a fellow co-worker to Sundance...The traffic was brutal, bumper to bumper...While waiting for the light I noticed the Obama stand with only one person at it...We both looked at each other and decided to stop...

Me and my collegue, Tavia walked up to the stand...We noticed a gentleman and a lady in the shade folding shirts...The gentleman was of Indian descent (from India, not Native American)...While talking to him about his stand a car of six-screaming-male BYU fans, faces painted blue...pulled up screaming, "Don't vote for N******...Vote for the White Guy!"

Little did they know that the lady in the shade, folding the t-shirts was African American and the wife of the Indian gentleman.

A moment of silence occured on that corner...I quickly felt remorse for the unkind stereotype, that my only response was to break the silence by extending my apologies.

The Indian gentleman smirked and said you don't have to say your sorry, we've been hearing it all day.

Before that car, I was set to donate $15 to the Obama campaign....

After the car, I donated $100 dollars total...

I donated based on my beliefs and principles, in hopes that...if just one dollar of that 100 could change the world just a bit...maybe an event like this wont happen in the future!

It's kind of "Old Hat" or "Old News," but Obama brokedown many barriers to become the very first African-American President of the United States. With 5 days left until is Inauguration, Barrack Obama has been the talk on every tv show, news show across the world, based mostly on his color of his skin.

To this day people in the media still play the race card. Just a few weeks ago on Bill O'Reilly, Dennis Miller still has trouble beliving that our next President is going to be African American, that he used a lyric from George Clinton's Paraliment Phunkadelic hit song, Chocolate City, "That the White House is only temporary C.C." Referring to the song, Miller finished the lyric by saying, "As soon as Obama gets into office it will be known as the Black House."

2 comments:

  1. That is a really sad and frustrating story. Even if the lady at the corner hadn't been Black, what a terrible and hurtful thing for them to say. Very distressing considering the school those fans represented.

    As far as the 'Obama broke down many barriers' statement... I slightly disagree. I think I get what you are saying, but what I think is really happening is that 'we' are starting to break down our own barriers. Maybe that's a subtle difference. I'm just trying to say that the exciting thing is that Obama wasn't elected by himself. There was a majority of the nation who voted for him. And, I will also add- there are people even among those who didn't vote for him who are proud to have him as their president. (Myself included.)

    Obviously your story illustrates a need to keep working at this problem, but I think there is still hope for our society.

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  2. That story was mortifying. This is a chilling example of the racism that surrounds us, even in 2009. Amazing. I would like to know your thoughts on stereotypes and how they play out beyond racism, or even with racism, because as I see it, racism and stereotyping are very different things (though one can certainly lead to the other).

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