My Stereotypes

Stereotypes, labels and generalizations are all things that have influenced how I view myself and others. That’s not the way my parents wanted it , but society is inevitable. Growing up in the suburbs of outer Columbus allowed me to see more diversity than most Ohioans see at a young age. I’ve lived in the same house my whole life in a neighborhood of many cultures. My neighborhood gang of friends during elementary included seven kids with three different races between us. Until around high school age, I just saw them as friends because I didn’t realize how they saw me; to five out of the seven friends, I was a white friend. Even though we went to the same school and lived in the same neighborhood, I had privileges that I had no idea about …show more content…
It’s impossible for me to make a list and know what exactly these opportunities are because they’re based on other people’s thinking. I never realized how schools can use whatever textbooks they want to portray each race as they like. In history class, white people were always the smart, noble heroes with the occasional mention of Martin Luther King or Sacagawea. Yes, white people are responsible for slavery but we stopped it too so that still makes us the heroes, right? I thought school was the one pure thing that always held the truth. It’s not that my school was lying to me, but the whole truth of things weren’t always told. I was made to believe that viewing others through colorblindness was the fairest thing to do. I never understood completely what colorblindness was doing or how it was affecting …show more content…
It astounded me that I had noticed this fact, but I had never really thought anything of it. I also didn’t realize what affect it had without me actively noticing. Although I see people representing the same race as me, women are very much underrepresented in the number of statues. This lead me to think about how the way history is taught and how it misrepresents women as well. Once again, I was baffled at how I used to think that school was the place that held the most honest truth. Since taking this class, I’ve come to the realization that society is truly setting women up to try our hardest yet always come in second place to men. Despite the fact that my parents are very accepting people, I pretty much had my role in my family assigned to me when I was born. I was the final daughter to complete my mother’s heritage of four generations of all girls. This left very little room for creating a self that wasn’t like the previous generations or like my eight older cousins who were all girls as well. I learned quickly what being female in my family meant. At the average Thanksgiving growing up there were three males and eleven females. Naturally, the women of the family took over everything or else it wouldn’t get done. This implanted the idea that the role of women was to be the good housewife, and it didn’t seem like a bad job or our only job, it just appeared as my