Can society and can drive a wedge
Can associating things be beneficial to you? In most of my essays, I follow the same kind of pattern, where I read about something in English class and I get to thinking about some kind of question that I get really intrigued about. After reading the stories (or poems) of Chicana Falsa by Michele Serros I got to thinking “Is it bad to associate people or things? Can it provide us with a beneficial purpose?” After researching this topic on the internet for a little while I have come to the conclusion that many stereotypes that are enforced are negative, but some can be used in a beneficial way to solve problems or to evaluate a situation.
Before I start this essay I want to explain my stance on this issue. There are many types of way that we associate things. These things are learned at the start of our birth and are also learned all throughout our lives. From nature to nurture we develop an opinion and bias towards different events we have faced in our lives and I think that in many circumstances, that this can be developed into a very valuable skill to provide insight and a good perspective on a situation. This being said I would like to state ways that I think that this type of trait could be not beneficial. Times, where people judge on a racial or religious bias, can be detrimental to this society and can drive a wedge between everyone creating a semi-segregated community.
As we are developing more and more I think that we are improving our acceptance of others.With this being said I would like to start this essay. In the book Chicana Falsa by Michele Serros, the poem titled “La Letty” really shows the conflict Michele faced when growing up with her own sister. She was labeled as a “Fake Mexican” and not a real member just because she didn’t follow the same path as her sister. “MEChA don’t mean sh*t” (La Letty) What she is talking about in this quote is that just becoming a member of an ethnic club doesn’t justify her as being “Spanish” enough for her sister to accept her.
She is brought down to a point where she even questions her own ethnicity, even though this is something that you are born with and there is no way to make it up. These types of assumptions provide only a way of harming and reduce people’s confidence, casting them out as outcasts because they did not “hang with gangsters and thugs, or stay out late with older guys”. This also happens from the mouth of her aunt in the poem “Annie says” also written by Michele Serros.
Remember that she is about 12 in the period of time that this was written. To be brought down by her sister and now her aunt as well has to be extremely demoralizing. Her aunt criticizes her “You could never be a poet….you never will. ” (Annie Says) When your own family saying what you are or what you can is based on things you can’t change is not a good way to spend your childhood. The correlations and assumptions that I am promoting are some that help you navigate and understand things in a more perceptive way. You learn these things absentmindedly, little patterns that you remember and correspond to each other as you grow and develop into an adult. Judging things not based on race or religion, but off of logic is the best course of action.
When you really think about it, many of the things that you have faced going through life has given you a perspective of whether you deem the action as good or bad. Growing up, we all absorb information that people are taught us and began to develop connections to different things. For instance over our lives, we start to associate things with color. One reason we do this is explained in an article by canva.com. This article explains how “Adding color to documents has been shown to increase recall of that technical information by up to 82%.” (canva.
com). In a split second, you can analyze color faster than words, and that might make a major difference The color green is commonly associated with money or the environment. The color yellow can correspond to warnings, such as a railroad stop or a hazardous waste sign. The color red is commonly associated with emergencies or danger. Things included in this are firefighters, emergency exits, and traffic lights. The website wonderopolis.org is a site that explains that when police cars use red and blue lights, it is to accommodate for some people who may be colorblind. It states that “Using both red and blue lights thus helps to alert all drivers, even those with colorblindness.
” (Wonderopolis.org) In a situation that looms with panic, this association can help people get to safety and find a way out of bad situation. Another thing that we do is assume what’s happening in this situation without even knowing what is really going on. One example of this is what people are wearing. If you are at an event where everyone is dressed up formally then you can tell logically that this is a higher-ended event. If you are a big company you will want to maintain a good image to the public (you don’t want your workers showing up in pajamas) so you might enforce a dress code policy to look like a successful, well-organized business. On the idea of how businesses generate its appearance on of its main tools is its logo.
How better than to provide a cool image for your consumers to look at while showing off your company. An article by stickybranding.com talks about how the logo is “..
.a symbol to signal to consumers a certain level of quality, experience, and trust.” (stickybranding.
com). Logos are everywhere from shoes to food to even taxi companies, it helps to enforce their brand and to show its success. While searching up sources for how uniforms help determine you I found a cool video talking about their way police forces deal with riots and how they attempt to keep the peace.In this video titled “How to deal with riots” it indicated that in every riot, the police force is always dwarfed by the number of rioters. Because they are all marching for the same reasons they fell united, and stronger then if they were just protesting on their own. To combat this police try to dehumanize themselves as much as possible.
Donning on tactical vests and harkened helmets they try to look ominous like they are significantly different in comparison to the rioters. Standing in organized formations they move as one, generating the images that they act as on and it gives them the feeling that they have control of the situation. In reality, the video explained about how the primary goal of the police force is not to stop the riot itself, but to contain where the protests go (like steering it away from residential areas or crowded places and to give the crowd an option to disperse on its own. This is the best and the safest course of action that they could take while showing that it has been a proven to be an effective way to stop riots. Lastly, I think we should always think before we act. This helps us solve problems more effectively, and to grasp a better understanding of a situation as it arises.
The question that I had at the start was “Are all assumptions we make bad? Can we use them to our advantage? “. I think that in this essay that I have provided a clear stance that in the right circumstances, using a bias can be a beneficial factor to our critical thinking skills by helping us make good choices.
