In his book Whistling Vivaldi, Claude M. Steele illustrates how stereotypes and biases affect our personal successes and development. Imposed upon him as a child, Steele opens his book offering his personal experiences with segregation and discrimination merely for the color of his skin. These experiences served as a footing as Steele and his colleagues began a series of experiments to discovery and explain how when people find themselves in a situation that could potentially confirm negative stereotype(s) about their race or gender their performance is vastly effected. Steele calls this theory stereotype threat “a standard predicament of life” (5).
At eight years of age Steele illuminates how he discovered that being a “black” child made him different from other kids and placed restrictions as to what he was allowed to do and when he was allowed to do it. Growing up early 1960’s in Chicagoland, Steele encountered a societal trend labeled, “racial order” (1). Racial order marked its place when Steele realized that because of his dark skin he was obligated to …show more content…
Utilizing the turnaround in performance of the popular NBA basketball team, Seattle Supersonics, Steele compares this “explanation of underachievement” to being akin to that of the constrictions women and minority students face and states this to be a “long standing tradition of how to explain the psychology of poor achievement” (45). Daryl Scott, an intellectual historian labels the culprit here to be “psychic damage” (46). Not fully convinced Steele moves to answer two questions: First, was stigma pressure a general phenomenon or did it only effect those of a “special vulnerability”? And second, whether strong black students would be affected by stigma pressure
At eight years of age Steele illuminates how he discovered that being a “black” child made him different from other kids and placed restrictions as to what he was allowed to do and when he was allowed to do it. Growing up early 1960’s in Chicagoland, Steele encountered a societal trend labeled, “racial order” (1). Racial order marked its place when Steele realized that because of his dark skin he was obligated to …show more content…
Utilizing the turnaround in performance of the popular NBA basketball team, Seattle Supersonics, Steele compares this “explanation of underachievement” to being akin to that of the constrictions women and minority students face and states this to be a “long standing tradition of how to explain the psychology of poor achievement” (45). Daryl Scott, an intellectual historian labels the culprit here to be “psychic damage” (46). Not fully convinced Steele moves to answer two questions: First, was stigma pressure a general phenomenon or did it only effect those of a “special vulnerability”? And second, whether strong black students would be affected by stigma pressure