Cherry Juliana Sudartono
SSY 101
Professor Lawrence Rushing
Stereotypes
In this busy world of ours, we hardly have the time to actually spend our time
with our acquaintances and learn all about their personalities. Instead we tend to
stereotype people that we are going to meet. Stereotype can be defined as preformed and
over simplified ideas or pictures which we carry in our head based not on our own
experience, but on what others and our cultures have thought us. For example, if a friend
is going to introduce us to “a Harvard graduate”, the first image of the person that we are
going to meet that we have in our mind, is usually a preppy, smart and probably rich guy.
That is a stereotype.
Brent Staples, a renowned black journalist of New York Times, is one of the
victims of the stereotype against African-American. Often was he mistreated and judged
just because of the colour of his skin. People are always afraid of him when he was
walking during the night, one of his favorite pastimes that have always helped to give
him a peace of mind. Ironically, his presence alone, and also his appearance, a bulky six
feet two inches with a beard and long haired black guy, has always given his walking
companion the feeling of unease whenever he was around. People often cross the street
so as to not walk pass him, women ran away from him, thinking that he is a gangster, a
rapist or perhaps even killers! There was even a time, when cops thought that he was a
robber just because he seemed to be in a hurry to be out of a building. Though these
misunderstandings might not seem grand at first, slowly it will surely affect anyone’s
state of mind. This is exactly like being accused of committing a crime you did not
commit, but is worse, because it happens on a daily basis. These mistreatments have
affected Staples’ health, his mental condition and his trust on other people. Thankfully
Staples were able to overcome this condition, however, what about other people who are
not as positive as he is? Who knows what might become of them.
There are a lot of terrorist activities in South East Asia; in fact a lot of terrorists
are produced in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia. So, being an Indonesian has its
own downside. Some people stereotyped Indonesians as terrorists, or at least have some
connection with terrorist activists in one way or another, which is sad because it is not
true at all. This happened to me once, even though not in a major scale, it has given me
some troubles in gaining entrance to America when I first came here. Thankfully, I
haven’t had many problems in gaining my VISA, however I met someone on the
American Embassy back there in Indonesia and she told me that she had applied twice
and paid a considerable amount of money and yet she was still denied a visa to visit the
United States. When I arrived here, and the immigrations officer saw in my passport that
I was Indonesian, I was asked to go to a different room and I was interviewed I had to
show proofs that I am a student in America. Even though I know that it was just a
“standard procedure” as how they told me, it saddens me because being an Indonesian
doesn’t mean that I had anything to do with terrorism.
I had to admit that even I stereotyped people. It is just a natural thing that happens
to everyone because of our cultures and the people around us that has given us these
perspectives about other people of different race or culture or even class.