An Essay Sample

Natasha Ruble

Gillian Estes

ENG 100A

Final Draft

4 October 2016

Passing Judgment

“I'm inclined to reserve all judgment, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.”

-Nick Caraway, The Great Gatsby by Scott F. Fitzgerald

Everyone knows what it feels like to suffer from harsh judgment and no one enjoys the feeling of unwanted attention. It is well known that feeling judged and misunderstood can be fraught with anxiety and insecurity, yet all of us have been the bully and the bullied. We all make snap judgments and we all have opinions of others that form without provocation, despite whatever high standards we try to hold ourselves to.

One of the simplest forms of these judgments would be a stereotype. Merriam Webster’s definition of a stereotype is: “to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same.” There are endless stereotypes concerning women, men, straight, gay, tall, short, introverted, extroverted, just to name a few. Some of the more harsh stereotypes are attributed with race or ethnicity, with slurs to go along with them as a means to degrade, dehumanize, or humiliate the victim. Wesley Yang, in his essay titled Paper Tigers, speaks about this same idea of stereotypes that we all internalize, “But while I don’t believe our roots necessarily define us, I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry that we use to sort through the sea of faces we confront”(Yang, 521). Yang understands that all of us have underlying presumptions within ourselves about others and that these presumptions aren’t always true. He considers himself a Twinkie which refers to his appearance being Asian, but he lives a very Americanized lifestyle and all of his friends are very American therefore he considers himself yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Stereotypes are something that our society tends to perpetuate simply because we have been taught for so long that some stereotypes are true and sayings like “Stereotypes are there for a reason” or “It’s not a stereotype, it’s always true” prevail among those who do not want to admit they are the ones who are wrong or that they are potentially hurting someone by using a racial slur or associating a characteristic with a particular person based on appearance. Some of the stereotypes we place on people are not even ones we consciously decide upon.

In Blink!, Malcolm Gladwell’s second book, he writes on the effect that snap judgments have on us. A snap judgment is when we view something and without conscious decision, we formulate opinion or beliefs in a matter of seconds, sometimes less, because our brains are constantly trying to make sense of the world around us. Gladwell states, “We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for”(Gladwell, 69). We all want to be fair in our judgment but sometimes when our subconscious gets ahead of us it becomes a catalyst for stereotypes. Once one person or event confirms a snap judgment, it transforms into a stereotype or assumption in our mind and we make a connection that otherwise would not have been made if specific circumstances had not occurred. However, is the snap judgment always negative?

These stereotypes constantly bombard us in our everyday lives and we make snap judgments constantly without our knowledge. The assumption made can be viewed as good or bad, but that does not justify its intention and it does not validate the meaning behind the assumption either. Just because a snap judgment or a stereotype is viewed as “good” or “nice” does not make it positive. There is no such thing as a positive stereotype. How can we differentiate between the good and the bad stereotypes? Who is to say that one stereotype is positive or negative? Different people have different views of what is positive and what is negative and that is what validated these stereotypes in the first place: no one saw them as harmful or as an extreme negative. Stereotypes have no reasoning behind them except past experience and always leave people feeling alienated.

How can we avoid stereotypes? The first problem with stereotypes is that they have been ingrained in our society for centuries and through many generations. It has been apart of cultures and been handed down through families. There are still people alive today that think that blacks and whites should be separated, although there are a lot less than there used to be half a century ago, but this assumption still exists for some. Addressing the problem of stereotypes will take time and effort to actively work against its perpetuation. Secondly, a level of understanding that stereotypes can be applied to everyone. With the current status of our culture, stereotypes are already being put on everyone but we have to actively be aware of these and try to stop ourselves from doing this. We need to break away from our insidious need for labeling others and ourselves just for the sake of feeling special or separating ourselves from others. Labels were created to put others down and to validate one’s own feelings. Finally, we must be more sensitive to the harsh stereotypes that are placed on people and be aware that some stereotypes may seem like they have good intentions but are not based on valid information. We must stop assuming that something is okay or isn’t “that big of a deal” and begin to understand that with the wide diversity that is throughout our entire society, it is up to us to allow for each individual to participate and have equal treatment.

So, stereotypes are atrocious, and can we -- as a society and culture -- ever reverse them? Can we work against the negative views we have about each other or are we always going to assume the worst?

Works Cited

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.

Tag, By. "A Quote from The Great Gatsby." Goodreads. Goodreads, n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.

Yang, Wesley. "Paper Tigers." Emerging: Contemporary Readings for Writers. By Barclay Barrios. Third ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010. 520-35. Print.