Stereotypes and Conforming
Thomas Chatterton Williams, a scholar who received the record-breaking number of comments for writing the Washington Post (BookBrowse), detailed his young adult experiences in his memoir Losing my Cool. Through his high school life in New Jersey, college life of Georgetown University, and current time in France, he has search hard for his authenticity of racial cultural identity. Through experiencing setbacks and compliments, Williams gained spiritual growth and found out what he loved, successfully “losing his cool.” Throughout the text, Williams argues that even when a stereotype is negative and harmful, people may conform to that stereotype in order to assimilate into the social norms.
During Williams’s versatile era, there was a universal stereotype that …show more content…
Williams treated black people as his model and was deeply influenced by them. He put the ideas of black kids he met in the barbershop as the standards of hip-hop standards; he regarded the people he encountered on the basketball courts as signs of basketball for black people. In this case, he started to consider Hip-hop as a spirit and stated that “Hip-hop is more than just a genre of music” (Williams 63). While asked by a black girl to keep the anniversary of Notorious B.I.G’s death in mind, Williams was confused why African-American people have to recall this person at first. Then he tried to be “A proper Roman when in Rome” (Williams 39), influenced by the lyrics by black rappers “Jay-Z told us straight up: We don’t love these hoes” (Williams 50). Also, when Williams found out that he was surrounded by the basketball culture, he thought “You’re black, and you’d better know how to hoop” (William 62). In order to fit the stereotype, Williams even stopped hanging out with his previous
Thomas Chatterton Williams, a scholar who received the record-breaking number of comments for writing the Washington Post (BookBrowse), detailed his young adult experiences in his memoir Losing my Cool. Through his high school life in New Jersey, college life of Georgetown University, and current time in France, he has search hard for his authenticity of racial cultural identity. Through experiencing setbacks and compliments, Williams gained spiritual growth and found out what he loved, successfully “losing his cool.” Throughout the text, Williams argues that even when a stereotype is negative and harmful, people may conform to that stereotype in order to assimilate into the social norms.
During Williams’s versatile era, there was a universal stereotype that …show more content…
Williams treated black people as his model and was deeply influenced by them. He put the ideas of black kids he met in the barbershop as the standards of hip-hop standards; he regarded the people he encountered on the basketball courts as signs of basketball for black people. In this case, he started to consider Hip-hop as a spirit and stated that “Hip-hop is more than just a genre of music” (Williams 63). While asked by a black girl to keep the anniversary of Notorious B.I.G’s death in mind, Williams was confused why African-American people have to recall this person at first. Then he tried to be “A proper Roman when in Rome” (Williams 39), influenced by the lyrics by black rappers “Jay-Z told us straight up: We don’t love these hoes” (Williams 50). Also, when Williams found out that he was surrounded by the basketball culture, he thought “You’re black, and you’d better know how to hoop” (William 62). In order to fit the stereotype, Williams even stopped hanging out with his previous