The Main Reason People Categorize And Make Assumptions

To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.

People are told and conditioned what to believe the things that they believe. People label others in order to learn more about the person that they are. People examine the ideologies and the actions that other people portray along with those beliefs. People expect a certain label to be followed by a specific attitude or action based off this label, which is not true. This would be unintentionally stereotyping a certain group.

Society has a way of making assumptions based on one’s physical characteristics. Often at times we categorize individuals to a particular social group. In regard to society’ perception of an individual this however, contributes to the development of social construction of racism. Most people want to be identified as individuals rather than a member of specific social group. As a result, our social identity contains different categories or components that were influenced or imposed. For example, I identify as a, Jamaican, Puerto Rican and a person of color. I identify racially as a person of color and ethically as Jamaican and Puerto Rican. According to Miller and Garren it’s a natural human response for people to make assumptions solely

It is most often assumed because it is likely that this depiction is shown in some form of media such as a television broadcast, a news article or a book or even a skit such as those performed on Saturday Night Live (SNL). Often, these are what many use to categorize others. They do not see it as being hateful or stereotypical as they will blame it on the media and that they were not taught any better. For these reasons alone is why Recitatif is powerful to make the reader think outside the box when it comes to race and stereotypes to understand a person should be explored rather than

I learned early on not to judge a Jelly Bean by its color, and that it was an unrewarding practice to group together these individual candies because when not every bean fit into a color category, I forced it to. The same can be said for people. Each and every one of us are unique individuals, and it is virtually impossible to effectively ‘sort’ us into groups - even more so as our society progresses. Identifiers such as race, religion, sexual orientation - even gender - which we once used to group people together, now make up the many cracks in modern American society. It is this action of separating the Red Jelly Bellies from the rest that creates an almost immobile American mindset: you are a Red… you must be a cherry.

Societal views have been changing since the beginning of time, and they still are morphing, but one that has not changed is labeling others because the rest of the world does. People used to think that African Americans were a disease and were not

From a societal standpoint, these stereotypes that would identify and categorize others is one of the contributing factors that make society judge and discriminate others. To name a

Sociologists argue that race is a social construction because they believe that passively everyone automatically makes assumptions. They argue that race impacts daily life even if we are not aware of it. This can be seen from different people and races around the world such as Caucasian, African, and Asian. Someone might automatically assume a trait that someone has by just looking at him or her. On the other hand, determining race can be different in each different country. For instance, In the United States, someone who is of darker complexion might be considered black. In a country further south, they might not be considered dark at all. In my opinion, I think that this also has to do with the type of tendencies

People are natural evaluators of everything they come across, and they attempt to acquire insights as they evaluate other people. Stereotypes are the beliefs that people hold concerning other human groups after gaining insights about them. Racial stereotypes have been common among African Americans and the whites. In the 20th century, African Americans were stereotyped as contaminated and dirty by the whites; maybe because of the insufficient income they are said to earn. The whites also associate African Americans with substance use.

Dividing, categorizing, and grouping ourselves with what is familiar is perhaps human nature. We look to find what we have in common with others to help identify who we are. Of course there are different ways to do so, such as political beliefs and religion. Yet, what seems to be most prominent in our history is grouping people based on race. Just looking into recent years minority groups were not given the the same rights as whites, because of their skin color. Admittedly, “white” is a generalization and doesn’t demonstrate the struggles some, such as the Italians and Irish, faced. However, these are struggles/discriminations are completely different in experience.

Have you ever judged a person by their age, gender or appearance rather than really knowing them? When you meet a tattooed man on the street, your first impression of him might be bad, i.e. a negative categorization, since tattoos are associated with criminals and unemployed people. However, he could be a person who does volunteer and works as a business manager. People tend to automatically categorize a person into groups by visual judgements, demographic features, personality and own perceptions or beliefs (Billig & Tajfel, 1973). Social categorization is a process of classifying people into different groups based on their similar characteristics and group memberships. It is a natural part of social perception and serves a basic epistemic and identity function in organizing and structuring people’s knowledge about the world and make things become manageable in daily life (Bodenhausen, Kang & Peery, 2012). It occurs spontaneously without much thoughts (Crips & Hewstone, 2007). In social categorization, we usually form a general conclusion about other people and begin to respond to them as a member of a particular social group than as individuals. It allows us to communicate and connect with those who share the same or similar group membership. Social groups that we use in social categorization can change under different situations and over time. Whaley and Link (1998) discovered that there is a strong association between categorization and stereotype-based judgments. For

In this article the authors made a superb explanation about race/ethnicity. The article stated that society (United State) view everything into a category. The reason why society view race/ethnicity into categories is for Census purpose. Consequently in viewing race/ethnicity into category a stigmatization is behold on different ethnicity that can’t signified with some races. Although, some ethnicity have some phenotype features similarity, demographically speaking there may not be no relations. Therefore leaving a stereotype that certain race/ethnicity are the same and plainly speaking no relations. Subsequently, leaving a vast majority picking the ethnicity before

The cognitive approach of the 70’s “made the simple but profound point that we all use categories- of people, places, things- to make sense of the world around us” and that is why stereotypes were developed “to make sense of the world around us”. A stereotype is a widely believed mental image or an idea of a particular type of person or group. Stereotypes are based on truth, but most of the truth is exaggerated; whereas, misconceptions are views or opinions that are totally untrue because they are based on untruths. Misconceptions are actually influenced by having Stereotypes. Misconceptions and Stereotypes may sound alike, but they are very different from each other.

Historically, humans have always been separated into groups based on appearance, whether that is concerning body shape, the clothes we wear, or the color of our skin. Stereotyping is a natural instinct that humans have because they feel the need to classify people in order to not feel threatened by them. Humans feel an obligation to know and understand people but do not necessarily want to be associated with them, thus they place people into specific groups, labeling them. One of the primary ways that we stereotype people is by their race. Being a minority that has always been prejudiced against in America, African Americans are often judged because of the way that they speak. Black students have struggled in academic settings that use Standard English, such as in the common American classroom. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) harms Black students through discrimination on standardized tests and in classroom environments.

In today’s reality we face stereotypes and misconceptions everywhere in the world. Every so often these two are compared and mistakenly thought of to be prejudiced and discriminating. A stereotype is based on an exaggerated truth used to categorize a group of people and misconceptions are formed from stereotypes but based on untruths. Prejudice is when people are not liked for their opinion and discrimination is when someone is treated differently for their opinion. We get most of what we hear and see from media, news, and magazines.