Neighbors

The other day in class the topic came up about people judging their neighbors when they move in based on their race and nothing else. From this conversation, the idea arose about knowing your neighbors without even having talked to them before. To an extent, I understand this concept, because in my neighborhood there is one specific woman who is extremely friendly and often gets to know the neighborhood newcomers before anyone else and then anyone else she talks to in the neighborhood gets the whole rundown shortly thereafter. That being said, it generally takes a long while for this information to circulate and become common knowledge, and on top of that, even the most friendly neighbors don’t truly know anybody from an introductory conversation. What I mean to say is that it takes time to really know whether or not someone is a good person, and anyone who immediately judges a family that moves into a neighborhood is being ignorant and making an irrational judgement call. This is true regardless of the involvement of race in the situation. However, judging a new family in the neighborhood based entirely on their race just makes this practice even worse.

Stereotypes

I was watching this online clip of Tyra banks sho on sterotypes, and she had this man who was being used as a model and he was in a room isolated by himself, and there where five people white and black who were judging him and saying what came to their mind when they seen him. The things that the people were saying about the man were that he was a gang-banger, a drug dealer, had about 3 different baby mommas, and that he was someone they would try to avoid if they saw him walking around at night on the street. They said that they based all of these judgements and assumptions off of the fact that he was a black man wearing baggy clothing. In acutality it was later revealed to the people that he was working on his Phd in sports pyschology and had no baby mommas at all. We should not pre-judge people before we get to know them just becasue of what we may see that person wearing or what color that persons skin is. These stereotypes are stereotypes that have been embedded into society for decades. In order for us to start making advances as a society we must first move past these stereotypical views that continue to fluorish through society.