Let's take off your sunglasses !!

Stereotypes, this is a word we frequently use in our blog. We are telling stories about many kind of stereotypes to make you understand the use mass media make of them, but we haven’t yet posted something that can make you comprehend how people feel when they are stereotyped by someone and I believe this video is a good example of it.

In the moment we start stereotyping someone we immediately hide the personality of that person.  We begin to cover him/her with adjectives (in our mind), this process makes us interpreting every word she/he says, action he/she makes  with our interpretations of the way of doing things without really understand the meaning they give to the word or the action they are doing. I think it is like looking at the landscape in a sunny day using sunglasses, you use them to protect your eyes from the sun radiations and by doing this you can’t see the really color of the landscape because you have the filtration of the lens; at the same way when you use stereotypes you are subjected to the filtration of you own opinions and you use them to protect yourself by the unknown word you have to face. Through this process we prevent the person from showing us his/her personality preventing ourselves from something important at the same time.

The following video is an example of how the world is stereotyped. It is made by some students for a school project, they made no scientific research but used their previous knowledge to do it. This video is made in a humorous way without any intention of offending someone. It is a good opportunity to start thinking about the way we use to classify countries and people. 

What do you thing when you hear German, Italian, Cines or Palestinian? Let’s change the way you look at the world, blot out the adjective you use to describe people! Let’s take off the sunglasses and look at the world with its own colors!

Silvia Bettiol