stereotypes-Emily Song

Growing up in the states and spending most of my teenage years in America, I struggled with common racial stereotypes that people had about me. Whenever I moved to a different school in the States, the students’ first impressions of me were always “a Chinese girl who can use chopsticks properly and do martial arts.” Because there are many Chinese restaurants in the streets and the population of china is immense, the usual stereotypes that Americans have on Asians are that we are all Chinese and eat rice. Therefore, my friends would always ask whether I can speak Chinese or eat rice every day. Also, once in a while when my friends learned new words or phrases in other Asian languages that I had no clue about, they would come up to me and show off of their new language skills in languages that I could not understand. In addition, after we watched rush hour together, they even thought I can perform Chinese martial arts just like Jackie Chan.

It is true that I am black haired Asian who knows how to use chopsticks, but it neither is true that I am Chinese nor learned kung fu or any kinds of martial arts. To be honest, I abhorred all the stereotypes or labels that judged my identity. However, ironically I too had stereotypes on others and still tend to judge others by their first impressions and stereotypes. Whenever I see a tall man, I assume that his parents must be tall. Also, whenever I see yellow haired foreigners in Tae-jeon I assume them to be all American hakwon teachers. Even though I try not to, I have a tendency to judge people by their looks and actions.

I believe that we all tend to classify people by their looks, actions, and tones. Therefore the stereotypes we create will only harm each other for the unclear assumptions may cause conflicts and bring discord within the society. The biggest problem of stereotypes is that people may lose their unique identities that all have as individuals. As stereotypes categorize people in certain social groups based on their physical appearances, it prevents people from having self identities. Furthermore, this becomes an obstacle in getting to know others as we view people only in limited facets. On the other hand, even the positive stereotypes will bring pressure to those who feel the need to conform. In other words, stereotypes will only cause mental pressures for the ones who need to meet the standard and stress to those who receive negative stereotypes by others.