Stereotypes In 'Alas, Babylon'

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.

Considering the environment in which James grew up certainly had an impact on his life. Some of the influences in his life were being poor, racism, his parents and the church. The areas that affected his moral development stem from when he grew up, doing the time of segregation. Segregation had an impact on how he viewed the world. He felt that everyone should be treated equally. James’s moral belief was that blacks should have a choice, and have the same opportunities as others. When he saw the separate drinking fountains for whites and blacks, he recalls the mental pain, but for him only God could take care of. He used his music as away to communicate how he felt. Growing up poor affected James’s emotional development. He never wanted any handouts.

Everyone in the world has their own identity but some are still searching for it. Many base their identity on race, religion, culture and language because it’s easier to belong to a certain group. However, there are some people who struggle with finding where they belong. For instance, James McBride in The Color of Water wonders who he is through most his childhood and some of his adult life. Mcbride tries to find himself by learning about his mother's background. After evaluating his mom’s past,culture and race his own issues with himself were made clearer because now he finally knows where he came from.

James grew up in a racist and segregated part of history. Often times racial slurs were used to describe people of African descent during the time James was growing up. Even during school James would be called these horrendous names: “...someone in the back of the class whispered, “James is ni**er!” followed by a ripple of tittering and giggling across the room” (McBride 89). The fact that small school children call blacks these names shows how racist the many people are and the hatred and discrimination that blacks face. These experience taught James how people treat those that appear to be different. Another experience that taught James this was when he and his family went to the Jewish store and were discriminated against. McBride had many experiences in which he and his family were discriminated against whether it was by the police or store owners: “Some of these Jews can’t stand you” (86). All in all, incidents with people who have a particular dislike for blacks shaped James into the way

Stereotype, someone who is regarded as embodying or conforming to a set image or type. This is the main component of the S.E. Hinton novel The Outsiders. The stereotypes in the novel are the Socs and the Greasers. The Socs are the rich kids who don’t have to work for anything, while the Greasers are the poorer kids who have very little. They both live in the city of Tulsa, one group on the Northside and one on the Southside. Outside of these boundaries no-one knows of them but the hatred for each other still plays on their minds.

James McBride’s memoir The Color of Water, compares two troubled, young lives in which they are victims of racial prejudices and alienation. In this novel, Ruth McBride, the mother of the author, encounters the most alienation of all characters mentioned because of her religion and family decisions and social circumstances. Ruth endured several struggles that impacted her perspective on her religion, Judaism, and the society where she feels unwelcome. Ruth’s relationship with Dennis, a black man, was an impediment to her keeping close contact with her family. Coming from a Jewish heritage, “They said kaddish and sat shiva. That’s how Orthodox Jews mourn their dead” (McBride 2). Realizing that starting a new life would be better than tending

Stereotype: A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. Have you ever stereotyped someone? Something? Anything? Taking a look at a visual argument that is made up of five cartoons that have to deal with different issues. Different issues but all rely on the same thing, stereotypes. Society has a tendency to make incorrect judgments of others based on various stereotypes that have been established over time.

In the book color of water by James mcbride talks about his mother Ruth's and how she had ups and downs in her younger life till now when she is a widow and how she a has this habit of riding her bicycle through the all- black neighborhood in which James and his family lived. In “The Color of Water,” by James McBride has many themes. Each theme he is trying to get a point across and he tries to make us understand what him and his family went through as being Jewish and African American. He tells about his past and his parents past to give us an idea of what they all went through. In this book he brings you into their lives.

In order to escape the racism he experienced, and any other struggles in his life, James turned to music and books. These two things helped

There are many stereotypes regarding heroes and what physical characteristics they should have and/or what they should look like. Tim O’Brien may not ride horses and have a six-pack with long curly hair, however, he does have what every other hero has - the personal traits. On the Rainy River is an autobiography by Tim O’Brien, that’s about his experience with war at a young age. In the story, there are multiple occasions of when Tim does specific actions that can be related to those of a hero. Through a pair of archetypal lens, it is clear that due to Tim O’Brien heavily symbolizing as a hero in the story, he struggled with his internal decisions as a consequence.

Stereotypes are a common tool used to judge others before fully understanding a situation or considering different points of view. Writers often use or create these stereotypes to get their own point across. Mencken, a writer that covered the Scopes trial, is an example of how stereotypes of southerners such as the Tennesseans, were used to compromise the outlook on how the trial was conducted and portrayed. Evidence shows that urban writers, such as Mencken himself, unfairly portrayed Tennesseans throughout the Scopes trial by insulting their intelligence and their overall demeanor.

Racism is a major problem that has affected not only the way the people today live but the way James McBride portrayed the lifestyles of his characters in the book The Color of Water. Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. Basically what that means is that people portray their race as the better race and will discriminate against any and all other races. Racism has not personally effected me, but it has happened an exorbitant amount of times throughout the world we live in now. Also, racism has struck James McBride’s main characters, Ruth McBride Jordan and both Hudis and Fishel Shilsky.

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.

The storyline where James is the narrator takes place from the 1960’s to the mid 1990’s. James grew up during the civil rights movement and while his siblings loved the idea of Black Power, James was scared for his white mother. He never felt like he fit in due to his mixed background and even when he asked his mother about it, it was just brushed off. After college, he hops around from job to job, never feeling satisfied, saying that “the part of me that wanted to understand who I was began to irk and itch at me” (205). He couldn’t ignore it, so he set out to learn about his mother’s past so he could understand the present and future.

According to Dictionary.com a stereotype is something conforming to a fixed or general pattern, especially an often oversimplified or biased mental picture held to characterize the typical individual of a group (dictionary.com).