Stereotypes In Friday Night Lights

It is not often that a white male can consider himself a minority. However, throughout my life, the way I view the world has absolutely been rare. I was born in a small, rural county in southern Pennsylvania and have lived there since. The county fair and the fall festival are the only “exciting” things that occur every year. We do not even have the stereotypical small-town Friday Night Lights to look forward to as none of the three schools in the area can field a high school football team. However, there is one aspect of this area’s culture that is very befitting to the small-town stereotype: the vast majority of staunch Republicans. Everywhere I go and everything I hear is laced with conservative ideals and values. One would think that a …show more content…
Granted, both of my parents are also minority, liberal-minded people, so that may be true. But I do not believe that. I prefer to believe that I have always formed my own, independent thoughts and beliefs about the world. When I witnessed an event taking place, my first thought was always, “What do I think about this?” It was not, “I wonder what my parents would say if they saw that,” or “My friends would have thought that was cool.” I chose to look at everything with an open, unbiased mind. But also, I think there was more to it than simply making my own decisions. I did not and do not want to be like the masses. I did not want to fit in the cliché. With constant reminders of how similarly everyone around me thought, I knew I wanted to be different. Of course it was not easy at first to let others know that I was different from them. The fear of retaliation and loss of respect was enough to deter the vocalization of my ideas when I was younger. However, as I matured, I found pride in my belief system and became more vocal about it. It did not matter what the other people said or thought. If I spent my life worrying about that, I would never have found out who I truly was. On top of that, I discovered that being different was not such a bad thing. Being different was actually pretty