When you look at me... Do you really see me?

Stereotypes are generalizations or judgments (positive or negative) our society makes towards a group of people based on broad similarities that we perceive all members of that particular social group to possess. What we want to see is what we base stereotypes on, because our society can not handle what the world really is.

In Chapter 6 of Walter Lippman’s Public Opinion he states: “…we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.” This quote proves to me that Lippman was a brilliant man. Due to our society labeling various social groups according to their “similarities” or “personalities” or where they have come from. For example, my hometown is very close to a city that has been labeled as one of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the United States. When people hear the name of the city they shutter in fear of the people that live there and the apparent “danger.” However, what they do not see is that there is violence in every city, and right now the mayor of the particular city near me is working hard to change things, and has. For example, friends of mine had a hockey game in that city a few weekends ago. All they have heard of the city is bad things so when they talked to me about it, they told me they were a bit afraid of going there without really knowing where they were going. I told them they would be surprised at how clean and how wonderful parts of the city were, and how beautiful the convention center is. When they returned to school that afternoon they were in amazement of the arena they had just played hockey in and the city around it, stating that it was like nothing they had pictured. They, like other people often do, perceived the city by what they heard about it. Mostly, rather than finding out about people or places, our society fears the stereotype.