Stereotypes have a bad status, and for a good reason. Stereotypes are often used to justify injustice and discrimination, validate persecution, enable exploitation, rationalize violence, also it shields corrupt power structures. It can also facilitate inter group hostility and coax to toxic prejudices. The following is the data and information shared by Captain Raghu Raman under the topic “Why our stereotypes will kill us” with excellent motivating factors along.
On 22nd of July, 2011 Oslo was struck by a very vigorous car bomb that went off just next to the Prime Minister’s office where eight people were killed immediately and hundreds were severely injured and the remaining Norwegians, panic and struck had a big question in their mind that, Why they’ve been attacked? Why they’ve been added to the cities that have been attacked by Islamic Jihadists??!
Many reasons were found after that Norway has been contributing to the troops to the NATO war, until they got time to revive another simultaneous attack was faced by them in a school summer camp, where more than sixty nine people were shot dead. All around names were popping that the attack was done by Jihadists, it’s al-qaeda, and so. But none was correct, and there it was found that it’s a handiwork of a man named Anders Berbick, who was a Norwegian and entirely hated Muslims and actually protesting against the multiculturalist policies of the Norwegian Government.
On the other hand, a man named Salim Durrani, has many names operated in the valley for about ten years and used to move in and out. He has done several good deeds to the nation, bound as a devout Muslim appendage by his ak-47. He’s been linked with the name Mike Smit of Indian Army who had served in the valley.
Now this has definitely lead you to the conclusion in the starting which was wrong that Anders Berbick must be his nation server and Salim Durrani a terrorist. This exhibits that very often we take data or information that comes to our brains and we stereotype it so quickly because we are parochial and trivial people that deals with many inputs of inputs that absorbs some pattern and hops to a judgement.
We humans always make our own perceptions towards the person or the things happening, so quickly without digging out the actual truth. One of the founding principles of our country is the core value of tolerance and tolerance like wisdom is the ability to clutch to contrary ideas within the same mind and assess each one on merit before coming to a conclusive judgement. Stereotypes usually think the worst out of every scenario and directly jump to judgements and that is also usually in the worst case scenarios. Also wrong judgement worst case scenarios can also change physiologically and the mind changes how you behave biologically. Stereotypes over generalize about an entire group and blind us to some characteristics. Stereotype could have an impact on us personally and negatively, which can be called as Stereotype threat.
Stereotype threat can become self-fulfilling prophesies for those defined as having them, some automatic associations also linked with stereotypes which is an example of how stereotyping affects us on a very personal level which could have a negative impact on our self image and performance and our interactions with others.
It has also mentioned in fundamental duties of the citizens of India article 51 a which has been added up by Captain Raghu Raman in the Ted Talk, “it shall be the duty of every citizen to promote harmony and spirit of brotherhood amongst all people of India transcending religion, linguistic regional or sectional diversity.
Somewhere and somehow we all have witnessed stereotyping, but it’s prominent to acknowledge it how it all affects your behavior with others since we won’t be able to reduce the impact of stereotyping without first acknowledging it.
Roli Sharma
MBA I Year
Batch: 2019-21
