Stereotypes

Stereotypes

Introduction

The term 'Stereotype' is interpreted as a simplified and widely shared vision of a place, an object, an event or a group of people united by certain recognizable characteristics or qualities. Although, many people tend to view stereotypes as a form of caricature or inversion of some positive characteristic possessed by members of a group. Often the ideas attached to Stereotypes tend to exaggerate the fact to a height where it becomes abhorrent. Precisely it can be stated that stereotype is a general or a common belief regarding any incident or a group of people. Stereotypes tend to be based on some of the prior assumptions in relation to the group of people based on a single incident.

That, single incident is then used to measure or gauge the people of that group. However, many experts believe that stereotypes tend to extract its roots from the idea and principles behind biasness (Andrew, 2007). Rather the term is considered by many as interchangeable with the with the term stereotype. However, stereotypes are generally used in a negative connotation and sometimes serve as the basis for any discrimination.

Discussion

My Experience

As far as my experience is concerned I came across different stereotypes which were not only based on Religion, Cultural but also targeted the people on the grounds of the gender. After the 9/11 attacks the people closely associated the religion of Islam to terrorism. In fact the people following the religion of Islam were labeled as terrorists by many groups as this had a bad effect on the overall societal structure. I personally know of people who were rejected in a job interview based on their name and religion. Plus the Muslims and especially those with beards were specially checked at the airports and on the other places on the grounds of security (Susan ...