Stronger than We Realize

If someone were to ask us if we are prejudiced, our immediate answer would be "NO!". No one wants to be portrayed as having biases against people, especially people different than ourselves. If we really stop and think about it though, each of us see people and situations in terms of stereotypes, whether or not we realize it. In his article "Considerations of Media Effects", Bradley W. Gorham discusses how ingrained these stereotypes are in us and how we use them daily, sometimes without even noticing it. We have these pre-determined biases because of the media and their portrayal of races and gender. We even use stereotypes to determine what someone will be like before we meet them, based on their appearance or background. He talks about how news media usually broadcast stories about black men that portray them as dangerous, further cementing that stereotype. He also discusses the concept of "ingroups" and "outgroups". Ingroups are the groups we feel we belong to. For example, some of my ingroups are female, college student, and Christian. Those are the circles I belong to, the circles I feel most comfortable in. Outgroups is anyone who we don't feel like we can relate to at all. It was argued that we attribute good qualities to our ingroups, and assign bad attributes to our outgroups. These characteristics may or may not be true, but we have them based on our feelings towards the groups. Media has developed these stereotypes and reinforced them over and over, making them widely known. We often use stereotypes daily without even realizing it because they are so deeply established .

The movie Mean Girls is a somewhat exaggerated but also somewhat accurate portrayal of high school and the trials, heartbreak and ignorance that accompanies that time of life. The entire movie is based on stereotypes of kids in highschool: the jocks, the popular girls, the geeks, the artsy kids. One part of the movie jumped out at me as I thought about how we use stereotypes to determine what someone is like before meeting them. We use stereotypes to assume what they will look like, how they will act, even what they'll be dressed like. In case someone hasn't seen Mean Girls, here is a brief summary: Cady is a former homeschooler (coming from Africa where her mom and dad were research zoolologists) who enters highschool and has to learn how to navigate herself through new ways of doing things, cliques and cute guys. In one of the opening scenes, the principal enters the classroom to notify the teacher of Cady's arrival from Africa, to which the teachers turns to an African American student and welcomes her. Later in the movie, after Cady is introduced to the popular girls and mentions coming from Africa, one of them asks "if you are from Africa, why are you white?". Both of these illustrate previous assumptions held by these women that if someone is from Africa, obviously they will be black. I'm sure neither of them thought too much about it before they demonstrated their held assumption, but it came out as ignorant. That is a commonly held stereotype. What other beliefs did they have about Cady or about people from Africa? And how many of us would have reacted the same way they did?

watch the clips below from the movie (scenes mentioned above are listed by times next to link)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpceLiwn_Pw 3:24

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-IcOF9f7Y&feature=related 0:43