Jayden Zhou, PD 6, 2/1/24

Blog #3
Jayden Zhou, PD 6, 2/1/24
Modern Mythology 2024
Topic: Socio-Political Consciousness

    One day, a boy wearing a pink shirt goes to school for the first time. He is very nervous as he does not know what his fellow classmates will think about him. When he enters the classroom, there are a few snickers surrounding him. A few questioned why he was wearing pink, and not any other “masculine” colors. Days have gone by and as he kept wearing a pink shirt, he drew more attention. One person eventually asked why the boy kept wearing a pink shirt, and he simply replied that it is his favorite color. Rumors spread over the whole school and before the boy knew it, everyone started pointing fingers and mocked him for liking the color pink.

    The next day, the boy did not show up to school. He did not show up on the subsequent day either. Nor did he show up on the third day. Or the fourth. His classmates did not believe it was a big deal, nor did they pay attention to it. It took over a week for them (and the school) that the boy, being a very talented person and such, committed suicide.

    Although this example is a more extreme case, stereotyping and judging others based on their looks and appearance can be extremely dangerous. Even though we can not see it, it causes harm to someone. It also creates bias and we tend to link characteristics/attributes they may possess before even meeting someone.

    Stereotyping can be found everywhere. Even I am guilty of stereotyping others. Last summer (based on a true story), I did some volunteer work at an afterschool program. I was tasked with helping/tutoring students (mainly those going to 4th grade), as well as being a teacher assistant. When I first walked into the classroom, I glanced around and “easily” identified who I should watch out for (“troublemakers”) and who I expected to do well on homeworks/tests. Now looking back to this, most of the students I expected to do well were Asians. This is due to the stereotypical idea that Asians are good at learning, especially when it comes to math. However, there were a few I identified as “good” that did not do well whatsoever. In fact, they were the worst performing out of the rest. On top of that, some of the kids I identified as “troublemakers” behaved as if they were a teacher’s pet. Separating these kids into “groups” also led to some bias when I was grading their work. I rushed grading those that typically performed well, while spending more time double checking those that typically performed worse. This was mainly because I expected those that did well to make zero mistakes and those that did poorly to make a lot of mistakes. However, the flaw of my mindset is that I forgot to take into account that people can improve over time or perform worse over time. Me stereotyping these kids ultimately created bias in my grading policy, even though I unintentionally did that.

    The only way we can prevent stereotyping is if we all stop stereotyping and judging things based on appearance. This way, there will be less bias when meeting someone new and most likely positively affect how we interact with one another.