Stereotypes have evolved in the past few years and they have taken many turns from increasing in severity all the way to diminishing from people’s minds. In the Harlem-Renaissance novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, by Zora Neale Hurston, society is reflected during the racist eras being filled with stereotyping and the stereotyped people’s reactions to cope with the situations. The main character, Janie Crawford, continues to progress through her life and path towards rediscovery in her life. Janie learns to overcome racial and gender discrimination in the South through her experiences in her life and defies societal implications. These racist ideas have manifested themselves in society so much that unspoken rules had been developed to suppress
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By being Asian, I somewhat feel obliged to further myself due to some of the stereotypes; not all stereotypes are bad and demeaning. The classic Asian stereotype is that we are all really smart people. In my opinion, that is a label that I would proudly have if I could achieve it. By having that general expectation solely by race, I strive to meet the expectations and push myself to be more intelligent. Without that extra push to drive myself to a higher expectation, I would never have such relatively positive attitude towards school. However, there are downfalls that come with racism and many of these negative attitudes become dominant over the positive ones. When Janie warns Tea Cake about going out of the house because she is afraid that Tea Cake will be dragged to do labor, Tea Cake replies, “’ Ah got money on me, Janie. Dey can’t bother me’” (Hurston 169). Tea Cake believes that with his status of being the middle class with enough money to afford a sustainable living that he will be able to bypass the prejudices set ahead of him. What he does not realize is that the society is still against him and his kind. Even though he is different from “the rest” of “his kind” through his wealth, the general grouping has automatically put him in the lower class based only on race, even though if Tea Cake was white, that money would be able to accomplish wonders for him not only economically, but socially and politically too. Racism has casted its shadow and diminishes Tea Cake and the rest of black society so fluid mobility is practically a mere
By being Asian, I somewhat feel obliged to further myself due to some of the stereotypes; not all stereotypes are bad and demeaning. The classic Asian stereotype is that we are all really smart people. In my opinion, that is a label that I would proudly have if I could achieve it. By having that general expectation solely by race, I strive to meet the expectations and push myself to be more intelligent. Without that extra push to drive myself to a higher expectation, I would never have such relatively positive attitude towards school. However, there are downfalls that come with racism and many of these negative attitudes become dominant over the positive ones. When Janie warns Tea Cake about going out of the house because she is afraid that Tea Cake will be dragged to do labor, Tea Cake replies, “’ Ah got money on me, Janie. Dey can’t bother me’” (Hurston 169). Tea Cake believes that with his status of being the middle class with enough money to afford a sustainable living that he will be able to bypass the prejudices set ahead of him. What he does not realize is that the society is still against him and his kind. Even though he is different from “the rest” of “his kind” through his wealth, the general grouping has automatically put him in the lower class based only on race, even though if Tea Cake was white, that money would be able to accomplish wonders for him not only economically, but socially and politically too. Racism has casted its shadow and diminishes Tea Cake and the rest of black society so fluid mobility is practically a mere