Brittany Ubaldini Blog Post 3

1.
Italian American's have been stereotyped for years as loud and obnoxious, short-tempered, violent, eating a lot and forcing others to eat a lot, having guilt-tripping and intrusive mothers, and being extremely proud. I believe people try to find their places in society and life and in order to do that they search within their culture's stereotypes. Teachers can help the younger generation with these stereotypes by encouraging the children to try things and do things outside of their comfort level of their ethnicity's stereotype. Parents can help their children by not exemplifying the stereotypes of their race within the household, the younger generation will tend to follow the examples their parents provide. Society can help by being more open minded and less focused on these, mass media and role models of the race can help to change the views by not enforcing them through jokes or acting how their "expected" to act racially. Although I wish we could change many of these racial stereotypes, I don't think it will happen because society is so set in it's ways and people are always going to group individuals into categories, however it is an independent decision a person has to make to not group themself into any stereotype.

2. A label I had for a very long time was "overly religious" and "someone's girlfriend" (I'm going to say someone so I can protect their identity) these two labels coincided and had extreme effects on me. Yes, religion was a huge part of my life however the stereotypes that followed this label effected the way people viewed me, it caused people to assume that just because I had certain morals meant that I judged them for theirs or thought they were going to be"condemned". This was NOT the case at all! I never once voiced these things or preached so I don't know where these people got this from. People thought I was overly conservative and didn't know how to have fun just because I was religious but this also wasn't the case, if the people had just sat down with me and had a conversation with me they would have seen how accepting I was and how I am very liberal with certain things as well. These labels effected me so much that when I got to college I tried to minimize the overly religious label and I got rid of the "someone's girlfriend" label. The "someone's girlfriend" label was so hard because not only did my friends and everyone I knew group me into this category, but so did my parents and family members. I decided I needed to find my own identity and become Brittany Ubaldini not just "someone's girlfriend". Now if I choose to stray away from the "overly religious" label I'm judged and people "condemn" me because I'm not living the perfect life they expect me too. Every mistake I make is closely watched and evaluated and judged. Judgement is basically just ignorance because usually when a person judges all they do is assume. When we judge people we place them into these ignorant stereotypes and labels and can possibly do irreversible damage. The best effect I've experienced from having these labels and getting out of them, is learning that you define yourself and not to ever let anyone else tell me who I am. I am my own me and you are your own you, no one has the right to tell you how you are. I also learned not to judge ever, because you never know what that person is experiencing in their life at that moment or what stereotype they're trying to follow... or get away from.