I've traveled a crazy path up a Mt. and now just made it to the top! My journey is not over but truly just beginning... This is my life during my time at the Food Network.
I learned something today while interviewing for the class project. Not only did my partner stereotype other people and groups unconsciously but we were also stereotyped. Never before have had I realized bluntly that I stereotype. When my partner and I went to interview strangers on campus we looked around to see who looked like they might be ‘ok’ with some of the questions that we had to ask and as we did this we found a couple that we assumed were teachers. Based on their type of clothing and from how they were older with briefcases we naturally thought for sure they were teachers.
Now this isn’t really a negative stereotype but then it occurred to me that if unconsciously I presumed that this couple were teachers and indeed they were not; that I probably do it a lot more with a wide variety of groups and genders ect. without even realizing it. This relates to class in the sense that we discuss how there is prejudice in the world, stereotypes and racism everywhere but we always tell ourselves that, ‘we’ are not like that. But maybe it’s more that we do it and don’t even realize that we are doing that. It struck me because now I am wondering if I do this more and if even sometimes consciously.
Something else that I learned during these interviews is that I felt that I was being discriminated against because I was viewed as an ‘a typical American girl’, example during my second interview I spoke to a Chinese woman and I asked her several questions on race and prejudice and she seemed very offended when I asked these questions. Luckily to save me my partner came and brought up a good point because I had asked if the girl had ever felt that other people put her into a stereotype for being Asian and she just glared at me, however my partner came (Italian with a thick accent) and said for instance do you have a stereotype for Italian woman? And she looked at her and laughed and said of course! You all love to cook and are great at it! And we talked about ‘that kind of stereotypes because it was more comfortable.
Later it made me think of the chapter that spoke of the Emic/Etic perspective and how I to her was an outsider and by asking her these questions I made her feel uncomfortable and that perhaps I was being intrusive. So I was truly on ‘the outside’. But what if I had been Asian? I have to ask myself if she would have answered my questions better and actually given me more information about how she truly felt because all her answers were ‘yes, no, not really, maybe’.
Sometimes we feel more comfortable with people that we feel are more like us because they would understand better and when they are an outsider if we know that there is already an stereotype on us that we are much less prone to justifying it for them…
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I learned something today while interviewing for the class project. Not only did my partner stereotype other people and groups unconsciously but we were also stereotyped. Never before have had I realized bluntly that I stereotype. When my partner and I went to interview strangers on campus we looked around to see who looked like they might be ‘ok’ with some of the questions that we had to ask and as we did this we found a couple that we assumed were teachers. Based on their type of clothing and from how they were older with briefcases we naturally thought for sure they were teachers.
Now this isn’t really a negative stereotype but then it occurred to me that if unconsciously I presumed that this couple were teachers and indeed they were not; that I probably do it a lot more with a wide variety of groups and genders ect. without even realizing it. This relates to class in the sense that we discuss how there is prejudice in the world, stereotypes and racism everywhere but we always tell ourselves that, ‘we’ are not like that. But maybe it’s more that we do it and don’t even realize that we are doing that. It struck me because now I am wondering if I do this more and if even sometimes consciously.
Something else that I learned during these interviews is that I felt that I was being discriminated against because I was viewed as an ‘a typical American girl’, example during my second interview I spoke to a Chinese woman and I asked her several questions on race and prejudice and she seemed very offended when I asked these questions. Luckily to save me my partner came and brought up a good point because I had asked if the girl had ever felt that other people put her into a stereotype for being Asian and she just glared at me, however my partner came (Italian with a thick accent) and said for instance do you have a stereotype for Italian woman? And she looked at her and laughed and said of course! You all love to cook and are great at it! And we talked about ‘that kind of stereotypes because it was more comfortable.
Later it made me think of the chapter that spoke of the Emic/Etic perspective and how I to her was an outsider and by asking her these questions I made her feel uncomfortable and that perhaps I was being intrusive. So I was truly on ‘the outside’. But what if I had been Asian? I have to ask myself if she would have answered my questions better and actually given me more information about how she truly felt because all her answers were ‘yes, no, not really, maybe’.
Sometimes we feel more comfortable with people that we feel are more like us because they would understand better and when they are an outsider if we know that there is already an stereotype on us that we are much less prone to justifying it for them…
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