Pop Culture: The Cause Of Stereotypes

Today, marginalized groups are painfully aware of the outsider status they’ve been assigned by the majority. Pop culture consistently represents the “Typical American” as being white, middle or upper class, Christian, heterosexual, usually male, and able-bodied. Our American government reflects these same qualities as well; in “115th Congress Sets New High for Racial, Ethnic Diversity,” The Pew Research Center wrote that in the most diverse Congress yet, only “one of five” of the members are of an ethnic minority (Bialik et al.). Though perhaps not deliberate, the domination of characteristics such as these represent a larger issue in our society, one of prejudice.
At the root of every social injustice, from racism, to sexism, homophobia, …show more content…
The issue of our society, as well as every other society, is that “humans tend to prejudge others on the basis of limited knowledge,” instead of working to learn more about those who are “different from us” (Rosado, “Understanding Prejudice”). This has been seen in the past, through the ethnocentric perspectives of Europeans as related to people around the world; their ignorance about these groups dictated how they saw their behavior: as uncultured, and inferior to theirs. Unfortunately, this kind of ignorance is not an archaic relic of the past. For example, although mandatory segregation is no longer legal, there is still a degree of separation between the minority and the majority. These patterns in society today lead to the fact that “most whites have almost no […] first-hand experience of life in […] communities” of ethnic groups to which they do not belong (Rosado). Because so many white people do not have any factual evidence for how the lives of those they are different from are live, this allows them to base their perceptions of these groups with second-hand information, or stereotypes. These stereotypes further the isolation, because the majority then does not desire to associate with the minority, encouraging this ignorance. It is a toxic cycle that is unwittingly repeated, generation after generation. This is also true in the cases of many other groups within the power dynamics …show more content…
This leads to mistrust, and more deeply, fear of these groups. These perceptions often connect two unrelated factors, indicating a collective gap in logic. Samuel Cohn, in “Plague and Prejudice,” a historical paper, studied this trend through history. He argues that in times of crisis, people have blamed the “Other” as the cause for epidemics such as AIDS, The Black Plague, or syphilis and cholera. Blaming, as in these cases, homosexuals, Jews, or foreigners, engendered a justification for mistreatment of these groups, albeit a false one. Their fear of the situation quickly created, through association, a fear of this different population. Beyond these instances, there is also a larger role that fear plays in those with prejudices. In an unequal society, people want as much power and resources as they can get, power in this case being the “capacity to act” (Rosado, “Understanding Prejudice”). When this power is threatened, people “become fearful […] and react” (Rosado). By lashing out, people hope to retain some form of conservatism, and thus retain their power that they hold. This also can be seen through the lens of insecurities, a form of personal fear, which would allow “people who are having problems with their own sense of self” to use marginalized groups, such as homosexuals, who “symbolize unacceptable