During our last session of IFP, we discussed microaggressions, which are brief daily verbal or behavioural acts that can communicate hostile, derogatory or negative attitudes to minority groups (it can be intentional or unintentional). These microaggressions could range from assumptions such as “You’re Indian, so you must be good at math.” to detrimental assumptions such as “They’re wearing hijabs hence they are terrorists”. These assumptions and stereotypes really do impact these people in multiple different sectors, including education and opportunities; employment and income; health and welfare; conflict and violence; politics and power; and intentions and assumptions.
Stereotyping others could lead to immense levels of conflict, hence being a barrier to peace. For example, in terms of education and opportunities, multiple people do not get access to education due to where they are from, despite being at the same intelligence as other applicants. In countries like South Korea, society puts an intense amount of pressure onto the student to do well in their studies as they believe that only those who do well in school will be successful in the future. This pressure that students have, due to the stereotypes in South Korea, has lead to the suicide rates of teenagers in South Korea to increase rapidly as they believe that they will never be good enough or fit the stereotype. This shows that stereotypes based on one’s background or intelligence leads to intense pressure on the individual, hence leading to immense amounts of internal conflict. Here is the brainstorm that our group did on the impacts of stereotyping on an individuals education and opportunities:
These stereotypes could also lead to physical or verbal violence, such as bullying or riots. For example, in terms of intentions and assumptions, if one stereotypes someone as dangerous due to their skin colour or religion, it could lead to immense levels of conflict and violence. An example of this is the USA, where many individuals assume that just because an individual’s skin colour is black, they are dangerous. This has lead to immense levels of abuse and violence towards the black people in America, such as black kids getting bullied in school, or even getting shot and killed by other Americans. Hence stereotyping people is one of the biggest barriers that human have to peace. If we stop making assumptions about people, and if we stop marginalising them and stereotyping them, then the levels of conflict in the world will significantly decrease, and the world will definitely be a more peaceful place.
During this session, we also watched a documentary of a teacher doing a simulation on her third-grade student in order to make them experience what it feels like to be marginalised and judges based on features that you are born with, like skin colour. The teacher separated the class into blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children and gave more attention and privilege to the blue-eyed children. In the end, violence broke out between the kids from the different groups, and it brings up the question of whether or not this violence was inevitable. This experiment suggests that conflict will always arise between people, even if it is because of something as simple as eye colour because humans have a superiority complex. However, violence can be avoided in every situation because it really depends on one’s ability to control themselves.