Diversity can be seen in all aspects of life. Every person is different. The differences in people’s culture, gender, and background can be seen as a way to define who people are. In order to understand each other and get along, intergroup relations should be positive and equal.
When people are different from each other, stereotypes can be formed. This is the beliefs about behaviors and attributes of people in certain groups (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012 ). Often times, stereotypes are formed and are not an accurate belief of who people really are. This type of miss judgment can cause people to be discriminated against. Discrimination is when there is an action directed toward a person or group based on their membership (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012).
Although stereotypes and discrimination can happen to many different types of people, African Americans are one group of people that find themselves discriminated against. When thinking about this, schools do not always make it easy to prevent discrimination.
Although I have been out of high school for a few years, my oldest nephews go to high school. Since this school is from a small town, we only graduate about 40 people a year. With that being said, there are few African Americans in the school. Last week at my nephew’s football game, there was one African American on the team. While most of the players seemed to have a close relationship, this child was only talking to a few of the other players. When questioning my nephews about this, they had informed me that some player’s parents did not want their child being friends with hi, because his family may be involved in violence and drugs. This type of stereotype is often seen when referring to other races.
Unfortunately these parents were stereotyping this child and allowing their children to discriminate against this child just because of his race. The parents should have encouraged contact hypothesis, or the group work of people from different backgrounds. To do so, the children would be equal. This would allow them to play better together and be able to share a goal of winning. With this contact hypothesis, the children would also be able to get to know each other and decrease the discrimination since they would know how the child really behaves.
References
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.) (2012). Applied Social
Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.).