Ignorance is Bliss!

A regular day at Howard University seemed to have turned bitter in
seconds as I was sitting in my dorm on my laptop web surfing and I came across
a very ignorant and disturbing video. This video happened to be on a social
network website known as Facebook. “What BYU students know about black people!”
happens to be the title of the video and it consisted of a white man disguised
as a black man going around on the campus of Brigham Young University asking
students questions about African Americans and black history month. As a
result, majority of the answers were ignorant and happened to have come from the
ethnicity of Caucasian people. What I found really disturbing was that when the
question “How do you celebrate black history month?” was asked, you heard
answers like “I just eat fried chicken and drink grape juice” or “listen to
Jay-Z for the whole month”. With responses like these, I seem to question
whether stereotypes against any culture such as blacks and/or Latinos actually have
reasons to exist.

Does stereotyping have any reasons to exist? In this defense, stereotypes have their reasons as to why they exist because they are an oversimplification of the truth and many exist because of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and unfounded assumptions. They happen to spread because of propaganda, that being anything from movies, advertisements, commercials, etc… This depiction has brought many stereotypes amongst the culture because
most people believe what they see and hear whether it’s a rumor or not; rumors
hold weight believe it or not. Another reason stereotyping exist is because “categorization” saves time and makes it easier to predict the social world in general. According to Wikipedia, sociologists say that even though stereotyping is inexact, it is an efficient way to mentally organize large blocks of information. Psychologists say that categorization is an essential human capability because it helps us simplify, predict, and organize our world.