Stereotypes In A Seat In The Garden By Thomas King

Society will continue to judge humanity based on race, culture, and intelligence. Stereotypes affect how citizens determine their future. Demonstrated in the excerpt “The Hunger of Memory,” Richard Rodriguez faces stereotypes when he travels to the United States to achieve a higher education. Likewise, in the essay “Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie is assumed to be less intelligent based of his ethnic background. Both of these authors’ futures are influenced differently based off the prejudice situations they face. Whereas Rodriguez perceives differences as continuing in a stereotypical humanity, Alexie perceives differences as expanding beyond stereotypical standards.

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

The book Seedfolks is about a trashed empty lot in Cleveland that turns into a community garden. It starts with a little Vietnamese girl who is trying to connect with her deceased father. The book continues on with other characters’ points of views and background stories. The book ends with a time skip to at least a year and a half later, with the little girl planting her lima beans in the garden. Ultimately, the book Seedfolks has a lot of stereotyping and a lot of symbolic features. The book Seedfolks shows that many humans struggle with stereotypes, when learning more about a person might break this mindset. There are many ways Seedfolks shows stereotypes. There is stereotyping from other characters, stereotyping from the book, and characters who have never stereotyped or whose stereotype broke.

Stereotypes have a way of getting inside your head, and sometimes you end up in a tough situation without even knowing it. In the novella, House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros describes the lives of several women of who live on Mango Street. In the community, stereotypes are given to women, which most of them succumb to. The girls tend to get married young to someone they do not love and end up trapped. Very few women actually made the smart decisions and made a successful life for themselves without a man. Despite the power of negative stereotypes given to women in Esperanza’s community, individuals who are strong and determined enough can overcome the unfavorable outcomes.

Stereotypes and discrimination have been in our society since this country’s founding. In our current society, many of these stereotypes are projected through movies. In the article “Whistling Vivaldi” Steele makes frequent comments about the differences between black and whites stating if you are any color other than white you are in fact less intelligent (2). This is the core problem, in our day to day lives, stereotypes get thrown around like they are facts, without any questions involved. Wither you are white, Black, or Hispanic, we all function the same on the inside.

The book Seedfolks shows many forms of stereotypes. In the book, there is a lot where one girl, named Kim, decides to plant Lima Beans. Those Lima Beans basically became the inspiration for the garden. Many characters went to the garden to grow their own foods and chat. The town called Cleveland (which is located in Ohio) was finally being brought together no matter what race. However, since there are many different races, there are many different opinions on those races. Some of the characters, like Amir, Ana, and Sae Young, stereotype people in the garden because of past experiences. In Seedfolks, stereotypes are everywhere and a majority of the characters struggle with being stereotypes. The book shows that stereotypes are wrong because diversity actually brings people together and most of the time, stereotypes harm many people.

The novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee is set in a small town called Maycomb in the 1930s. In this novel the people of Maycomb discriminate against people that they have no background information about or people that are different in some way. An innocent black man is convicted of a crime he never commits, a man is stereotyped to be dangerous and scary and there are gender stereotypes.

In certain situations, stereotypes can be negative, which in hand, can harm certain ethnicities, racial groups, religions, and other backgrounds. This often alienates certain groups from mainstream societies, as if they are an "other." This further in hand can, lead to heated friction and division among groups, which is not a good thing, and is the "cancer" of a benevolent, developed society. Certain examples of negative (falsified) stereotypes are that African-Americans are violent, Asian-Americans are bad drivers, Latin-Americans can't speak English properly, Middle Easterners are misogynic, White Americans are racist, etc. Of course, these stereotypes in all cases are NOT true, yet sadly the general population tends to seek them as true.

Throughout the years, racial stereotypes have played a major role in society. Even today, one combines racial stereotypes and prejudice thoughts before one even says a word to the person. Just seeing an African- American man while in a parking lot and pulling out ones phone, can be a simple example of modern-day racial stereotypes.

In the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson used stereotypes throughout the book. Stereotypes the school into groups Like the Jocks, Cheerleaders, marthas and goths, I see those same stereotypes in the movie Mean Girls.

Stereotypes. In the novel “The Trouble With Lemons” by Daniel Hayes, and he uses common stereotypes to cause the plot to advance. A stereotype is a group of characteristics imposed upon a group of people that have something in common, whether that be by race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. In the novel, Mr. Blumberg makes stereotypical assumption that kids who aren’t supervised all the time, are the ones who will make the most trouble.

“To believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same” is one of many definitions for a stereotype. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary makes it seem like it’s nothing at a;l and something small and innocent when, in all honestly stereotypes are cruel and wrong. Using stereotypes in our daily lives should not be allowed because it causes people to think less of themselves and limit themselves from one 's full potential. Having these stereotypes in our minds really limits our thoughts and opinions about certain things or people. Both essayist Judith Ortiz Cofer, and Brent Staples have personally experienced stereotyping and people thinking wrongly of them. In Cofer’s essay “ The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria” and Staples “Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Spaces”, they talk about what they have been through with racial stereotyping and what affects it has them, personally. But even with those stereotypes in play they both prove that stereotypes do not determines someone 's future and people are able to prove stereotypes wrong.

     Even Tayo himself believes in part of the stereotype. Before he thought a white man would steal his cattle he thought that an Indian or a Mexican would have done it. He himself believed in the lies that the white man has started about the Native Americans. Although he finally realizes what they are a learns to hate them. The lies about the Indians just hide the lies about the white man and Tayo believes that the lies will destroy the

These are only a handful of stereotypes that are made in the book. Alexie points out the romanticized/savage portrayal of Indians in the past century. Not only are the stereotypes made by the white Catholic Priest, but by the Natives people themselves. This illustrates that the representations have ricocheted onto the Natives themselves. They also believe they are supposed to represent the Hollywood version of Indians.

When I was only a little girl, I had been told that true beauty came from within. Yet as I grew up, I noticed that looks mattered. From their attractiveness, race, age, or gender, anyone’s image was always up for scrutiny. Under those circumstances, I grew up thinking that if people were to judge me based on my appearance, that I should judge them the same way. Though, as I became older, I at some point learned that how a person looked wasn’t always in their range of control. A person simply isn’t born with the choice of picking what they look like, nor are they born with the choice of having a genetic disorder or disease. In that case, I believe that nobody should be defined purely based on what they look like.