No one ever chooses how they were born. However, the societal standard has a nature of selecting the supposed ‘to bes’ by their likes and dislikes. The minorities are people who have some characteristics that mark them off from the ‘ordinary’ individuals. Hence, they are denied access to some rights that are availed to other people. Women are humans who identify with the female gender, whereas LGBTQ identifies with different distinct groups. The acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning. As such the society is torn between the deserving and the undeserving of specific rights. Culture is often indifferent or instead not in unison about their views on such groups. The minorities tend to exist in many groups. They are segregated in the race, tribe, refugee, immigrant, sexuality, ethnicity, linguistic, and nationality. The misconceptions formed within the society are the root cause of lack of jobs, housing, job losses, and even health deterioration. These are referred to as ‘misfortunes which are linked to the minorities within the society. This paper will mainly highlight societal norms and culture resulting from living as a minority within a community.
How Stereotyping Affects the Minority Groups
- May Affect Carriage to Pursue Certain Careers
The minorities identify in terms of different races and ethnicities. For instance, Asians and Vietnamese tend to be stereotypes about the size of their eyes (Celeste et al., 2016). I have heard one confession from a daily TV show, presenter Jennie Mai, who had difficulty entering her media career. Many people in her surroundings kept saying that she had too small eyes to keep her on TV, alleging that the media women have big eyes. This was wrong as the presenter has moved from different professions while advancing her career, and currently has over 15 years and counting being on the TV show.
- Affects students’ performance
Burges & Greaves assesses the stereotyping effect upon the ethnic minority and white students. The outcome shows that the minority are either under-assessed or over-assessed in the English testing system (Celeste et al., 2016). Another experiment was conducted amongst students in oncology clinical trials (Niranjan et al., 2020). According to the responses received, the colored or ethnics minorities were less promising, whereas other withhold their trial chances from the minorities, from their contextual perceptions. Others had to eschew race as a variable in recruitment whereas had to undertake tailored strategies for recruitment.
iii. Misconceptions about mental and clinical health
Another concept in stereotyping is called model stereotyping. In Asian Americans, they are usually considered to have lesser problems related to the mental health of clinical symptoms (Cheng et al., 2017). However, an experiment was done with exposure to different conditions, and the results revealed fifty-fifty percent of symptoms amongst both races and ethnicities. Hence it disqualified the set misconceptions related to the health ability of Asian Americans.
- Segregation
Those who identify with different sexual orientations, from the traditional male to the female attraction, are segregated in the classrooms or public gatherings. Many fear having the same trait, which as per societal values, is considered evil.
Degree of Social Stereotyping In the Media
The truth is that stereotyping never ends though it may decrease in terms of extent. In TV, prolonged exposure is seen as an indication of lack of esteem for the black people especially, on the flip side, it is a boost f self-esteem amongst the white male youths (Sandhu, 2020). Additionally, Hollywood acting tends to cast the white men as heroes, whereas the rest of the casts in other groups are subordinated amongst ‘other’ groups like; sexual objects, sidekicks, or villains. Many adolescents from Native American suffer from the Native American mascot’s image portrayal on TV, which causes them to be highly suicidal.
Examples
Most of the origin of the black people is through immigration or victims of colonialism. In the media industry, most film of suffering in the time of colonialists is cast by black men, which causes people to relate the blacks with suffering.
A recent protest against the ‘Black man,’ George Floyd America, led to movements whose critical plan was to stop police brutality. The lamenters alleged that the police have a norm of arresting the ‘Blacks’ with no significant reason but to subject them to cruelty.
The ‘ellen’ show is hosted by a woman who is gay. She mostly talks denial of the right of expression by such kinds of people in the society has advanced the equality gap.
Conclusion
The minority have, since time immemorial, struggled with acceptance in the community. However, the process of stereotyping is faster to conceive than to let go. No wonder the perceptions live on. As a result, many as affected in their self-esteem, which causes depression in most cases and low performances. For instance, the media industry is trying to bridge the gap by mixing the roles, where black actors and stresses can be given positive heroic roles. With such initiatives, maybe there will be nothing like minorities amongst us.