We all have encountered some type of stereotype or prejudices. A stereotype that I had to face was age prejudice by me being so young sometimes people don’t set the high expectations for you that other people would at an older age because they expect for you to make mistakes. At times my mindset isn’t where most kids are at my age. I skipped pre k and I am supposed to be in the 8th grade. When I tell people my age they be like ” OMG you are young to be the grade that you are in” this is a perfect example of what I am stating that people sometimes think that you have to be average and can’t go over and beyond your years.
Sometimes when it comes to making decisions in life or coming up with ideas aren’t as important if a grown person would. I feel as if the accomplishments that youth make in today’s society isn’t recognize but when something go wrong or bad they are quicker to recognize the flaw rather than their perfections. Living in this day of time it is hard to be a 21st century child and knowing how to stay on the right path and knowing how to not be easily influence when it comes to things then people choices to look at you differently.
I realized that people are quicker to criticize you rather than praise you for the things that you may and may not do. This are some of the things that today youth have to face with age prejudices. Another issues that comes with youth prejudices is young girls and how older people may look at them. This one time I was at a basketball game and by me looking decent (pretty) and in a group with a bunch of “boys” which were close friends or classmates that I use to attended school with at Weldon Middle School.
This lady told her daughter which was my friend mom “look at that little girl being grown around all them boys I wonder what she be doing”. Sometimes I like to have the company of males at times because they are “chill” or relaxed and don’t cause drama as much as females do. When you may be going through things you may reach out to your close friend and sometimes they may share the information that you shared with them. That’s why I like to have guys as friend sometimes because you can see the boys perspective of point of view on how things may happen or the reasoning for it happening.
Some stereotypes that I had to face and still do is being a preachers kid because the preacher kids get the stereotype that they are the worst kids and get into a lot of crazy and wild things . To me when your dad be in the ministry it is hard for the child because people are looking at you and every move that you make. As soon as you make a mistake people are so quick to talk about you and point out everything you did do rather than you didn’t do. Well this situation is the opposite for positive things they will point everything you didn’t do rather than the things you did do.
Sometimes these are some of the things that you will have to face when your life may be different from other people. Also having this title comes with a lot of limitations and restrictions when people look at you they look at your title and based your actions on that and judge you. I am going to tell you about a time that I had an incident dealing with propaganda which was bandwagon meaning you do things because everyone else do it, One day me in my friends was in the mall and my boyfriend at the time choice to attend so I told my mom about him going making sure that it was okay and that I could still go knowing that he was going to be there.
So, we all are in the mall walking to footlocker and see a past teacher that I had in middle school. She speaks to everyone and gives them hugs, she says out loud “who is the oldest out of your group of friends? ” the girl that was the oldest replied. The teacher walks over there and whispers to her “keep an eye on her that’s the preachers daughter and you know how they do. So when the lady left my friend told me what she said so of course I felt some type of way because you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.
This is an example of bandwagon because she know that there is a stereotype when it comes to preacher’s daughters and she use that like everyone else did and used tat against me because of the history/ stereotype. The type of conflict resolution that I used was compromising because I told my mom and father about the situation and they talked to her about it. My mom and dad basically stated that I’m not her equal and she don’t need to be making remarks the way that knowing that I can’t respond to her the way that I wanted to without being disrespectful.
The way that my mom and dad compromise (compromising is when you take some to give some) my mom basically told her you have to give respect in order to get respect. She apologized to me, my mom and dad and hope that I didn’t take it to offensive and that type of behavior won’t happen anymore. I feel as if prejudice comes from learn behavior at a young age or that it is something that past experiences in the past can change that point of view for everyone else. This also can come from a most common thing that you may see in that race, culture or place that happens a lot such as a precedent then you start to have this look on everyone else.