When walking down the streets of downtown Chicago there are many eye-catching things to see: beautiful skyscrapers, architecture from all kinds of eras, shops with luxury items, and homeless people. Coming from a middle-class, white, Catholic family we were told since we were very young to keep our distance from “those” people while walking, as they might want to harm us or steal our belongings. I never realized just how close minded we were, my family never considered the hardships or reasons for why these people are left without a home and in some cases without a family. As it was mentioned in the article written by Marcia Abramson (1996): “Our prejudgments, influenced by our personal and cultural history, shape our thoughts and actions.”
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Our textbook defines as a stereotype as a “fixed mental picture of a member of some specified group based on some attribute or attributes that reflect an over simplified view of that group, without consideration or appreciation of individual differences.” (Kirst-Ashman, 2013, p. 61) One example of a stereotype that Chimamanda had herself used was after learning that her housekeeper Fide’s family was worse off than her own. She was surprised when she saw the gorgeous items that his family made; because of the way her mother spoke about his family she was under the impression that this poor family was not capable of making anything so beautiful. She had been given a framework of what a poor family is supposed to behave like. “The problem with stereotypes is not that they’re untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” (Adichie, 2009) This example Chimamanda gave is similar to the stereotypes that I had as a child towards the homeless people, I did not think they were capable of anything because they couldn’t even find a place to live, my lens of looking at the world was very small, I had a single
Our textbook defines as a stereotype as a “fixed mental picture of a member of some specified group based on some attribute or attributes that reflect an over simplified view of that group, without consideration or appreciation of individual differences.” (Kirst-Ashman, 2013, p. 61) One example of a stereotype that Chimamanda had herself used was after learning that her housekeeper Fide’s family was worse off than her own. She was surprised when she saw the gorgeous items that his family made; because of the way her mother spoke about his family she was under the impression that this poor family was not capable of making anything so beautiful. She had been given a framework of what a poor family is supposed to behave like. “The problem with stereotypes is not that they’re untrue but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” (Adichie, 2009) This example Chimamanda gave is similar to the stereotypes that I had as a child towards the homeless people, I did not think they were capable of anything because they couldn’t even find a place to live, my lens of looking at the world was very small, I had a single