The Hidden Shackles Beneath Stereotypes From the societal constructions of the ghetto to the notorious reportings of police brutalities, society ignorantly relies on the belief that racism no longer wields its detrimental hold on aspiring racial minorities. Although racial equality made major advancements following the Civil Rights Movement, minorities still find crippling difficulty in advancing the socio-economic ladder in the country that boasts “the land of opportunity.” This is largely due to the covert killer that is racial stereotyping, for what innocently seems as an assumption of one’s race, incidentally leads to socio-economic barriers that confines them to lower classes of living. Even the most superiorly talented
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LaFerriere demonstrates this in a dinner conversation he has with Miz Literature and Miz Snob. As LaFerriere is unable to relate to Miz Snob on many of the films she references, he can detect her racist judgment that he is another “culture wash-out Negro.” Out of pure pity for Miz Literature’s embarrassment, LaFerriere begins to fully elaborate a lie about his personal affiliation with one of the films Miz Snob references. Amazed at their naivety, LaFerriere comments, “when you consider that these girls were sent to a serious institution like McGill to learn clarity of thought… But they’re so full of Judeo-Christian propaganda that when they get around a Negro, they immediately start thinking like primitives. For them, a Negro is too naïve to lie” (106). LaFerriere means to show that these stereotypes, such as the “naïve Negro,” have been so deeply imbedded in societal thinking that even people who are educated fall prey to this false propaganda. On the subject of the “Negro,” whites think like “primitives” in the sense that they will believe any myth told about blacks, no matter how absurd, without even using the logical reasoning these “serious” institutions teach. This is due to how widely these beliefs are held: recent studies show that nearly half of Americans believe that blacks are inferior in abstract and artistic thinking (Plous, Williams 804). Just like a rumor spreading through social media, the greater the number of contributors to the use of a stereotype, the greater the impact and spread it has in society. This is extremely problematic for many aspiring minorities such as LaFerrirere, for their economic success depends
LaFerriere demonstrates this in a dinner conversation he has with Miz Literature and Miz Snob. As LaFerriere is unable to relate to Miz Snob on many of the films she references, he can detect her racist judgment that he is another “culture wash-out Negro.” Out of pure pity for Miz Literature’s embarrassment, LaFerriere begins to fully elaborate a lie about his personal affiliation with one of the films Miz Snob references. Amazed at their naivety, LaFerriere comments, “when you consider that these girls were sent to a serious institution like McGill to learn clarity of thought… But they’re so full of Judeo-Christian propaganda that when they get around a Negro, they immediately start thinking like primitives. For them, a Negro is too naïve to lie” (106). LaFerriere means to show that these stereotypes, such as the “naïve Negro,” have been so deeply imbedded in societal thinking that even people who are educated fall prey to this false propaganda. On the subject of the “Negro,” whites think like “primitives” in the sense that they will believe any myth told about blacks, no matter how absurd, without even using the logical reasoning these “serious” institutions teach. This is due to how widely these beliefs are held: recent studies show that nearly half of Americans believe that blacks are inferior in abstract and artistic thinking (Plous, Williams 804). Just like a rumor spreading through social media, the greater the number of contributors to the use of a stereotype, the greater the impact and spread it has in society. This is extremely problematic for many aspiring minorities such as LaFerrirere, for their economic success depends