In-Class Online Lesson #11

I stand here today to share my views on the topic stereotyping. Can stereotyping be prevented? No. It cannot be prevented. Think about it. Is it correct to stereotype people? Of course not. Than why do we still stereotype people? An example of stereotyping would be "Asians are smarter than Americans. In this example Asians are looked at as being smarter because their education systems are more strict than that of the Americans"

Firstly, we have to understand what is stereotyping. As many of you would know, stereotyping refers to standardized and simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions. We tend to stereotype people by piercing together pieces of assumptions of his group. His group can refer to his school, his race, and his country. Lets look at the example I have given at the beginning of my speech. We tend to think that Asians are smarter because Asians have a stricter education system compared to the Americans. The stricter education system in Asia would be the assumption while Asians being smarter would be the conception. As long as there are assumptions, stereotyping would not be prevented

Secondly we have to understand the different kinds of stereotyping. There are many types of stereotyping. One of them would be unconscious stereotyping while the other is conscious stereotyping. Unconscious Stereotyping refers to Stereotyping someone without your knowing while Conscious Stereotyping refers to purposely stereotyping someone. Examples of unconscious stereotyping would be attractive men and women are nicer people or Hwa Chong and Raffles Institution boys are smart. An example of conscious stereotyping would be assuming the character of a person by his actions and clothes. Unconscious Stereotyping would be impossible to prevent as it is the process where the brain pierce the assumptions and information together automatically without your knowledge that would change your perspective of that person. Conscious Sterotyping however, is possible to be prevented.

In conclusion, Stereotyping is impossible to prevent even though it is possible to minimize by controlling yourself to prevent Conscious Stereotyping. By minimizing stereotyping, we would be able to make the world a better and fair place to live in.