Stereotype threat
Monday Jun 22, 2015
Imagine you are in a office filled with people of the opposite sex and you are tasked with giving a speech about gender equality in the workplace. If you are imagining correctly then I have no doubt that you are feeling uncomfortable. Stereotype threat is that uncomfortableness. Stereotype threat is the experience of being in a situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one of your identities is relevant. In this situation your gender is one of your identities and it may seem very relevant. what makes the stacks even higher is imagining that a promotion you have been waiting for is riding on this speech.
I have never actually been in this situation but in hind site I can recall several situations for which I felt stereotype threat. Honestly they are too many to mention and they all carry about the same weight. The ones that usually sticks out to me are when I am in a room or group composed of younger white individuals. This sticks out to me the most because it happens so often. I am not anglo-saxon, I am mixed. Often times in these situation I try extremely hard to not fit into the stereotype of a black person. I try not to use slang, I try not to dress “ghetto”, I try not to cuss when speaking, and if I do speak it is generally of a higher degree then is needed. In fact this has become who I am. As Professor Steele points out, this is not uncommon and it’s usually do to having to adapt to these stereotype threats in an effort to lessen there effect. This was not always the case for me, as a child I grow up on a island where almost everyone was dark skinned and in fact begin a light skinned individual presented more of a stereotype threat. However the important thing to remember about stereotype threat is that it is situational. You may not even feel it until faced with a particular situation and time. the other thing to understand about stereotype threat is that it has variable levels of intensity, and that intensity is based on cues. these cues are often subconscious and subtle. My example of this would be when I was attempting to major in drama at Napa Valley College, i’d been through a few auditions and i began to notice that no matter how much I studied I was never given a lead role, after discussing this with my fellow actor and hearing there stories i started to see the cues, no one black, no one out of the ordinary, someone the Napa community, could relate to. I was always given the role of the fool. or the inconsequential character. and just like Prof Steele explained, I decided not pursue a major in drama. the solutions Prof Steele presents are to limit the cues, for example having more leading roles occupied by non-white individuals of equal talent. Other solutions are to dispel the stereotype before the situation or activity takes place. For example the speaker in the opening scenario being told by the boss that the office was really looking forward to his speech and that the promotion was already set.
My solutions go forward will continue to vary depending on the situation and the threat but i feel i will be a lot more appreciative of the knowledge that these stereotype threats are real. I can take pride in the fact that I have so many different things and groups I identify with and furthermore take pride in the acknowledge meant that these things are important to me. I plan to eliminate as many cues as I can, and continually fight my own beliefs of stereotype for which i may identify with.