Mother Tongue

Welcome back,

This post’s focus will be one of the issues that is presented in the text “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan and that is how schools may sometimes direct students towards certain subjects depending on their ethnicity. In the text, the issue is presented from the point of view of the author who describes her own experience as a student. Being Asian, the author explains how she was usually directed toward Math or subjects that involved using Math by teachers that also disregarded the possibility of her doing good in subjects like English. This was due to her achievements in those subjects but also because of the stereotypes that link the Asians with exceptional math skills and “broken” or “limited” English as the author describes it. Before going more into detail about stereotypes related to the school performance and abilities of specific ethnic groups, let’s define the word stereotype. What are we thinking about when we say stereotype? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a stereotype is “a set idea that people have about what someone or something is like, especially an idea that is wrong”. In order to start the post, I had made some research on ethnical stereotypes and how they might influence the expectations that someone may have from a student with that specific ethnicity. Apart from the above described stereotype related to Asians and math skills I was able to find stereotypes linking Austrians with music skills and African Americans with impressive sport performances. However, these stereotypes shouldn’t lead us to the conclusion that people with these ethnicities can’t do different things. Personally, I think it is crucial to understand that even if sometimes the abilities of people with those ethnicities happen to match with the stereotype, it doesn’t mean that those skills and personal aspirations apply to every single member of the ethnic group. Everyone should have the right to choose what he/she likes and  the situation presented in the text is a big problem in society and not only in the school that is described by the author. By directing a student toward a subject and disregarding what he/she wants to do in reality, his/her possibilities of doing something in life are limited dramatically and the range of activities that the person will be able to choose to do is decreasing at the same rate. I am totally against people being forced into doing something that they don’t like only because of what someone else may think they are or should be good at based on stereotypical facts. Another part of my research has been directed towards whether or not stereotyping is considered a form of racism. Some people say that stereotyping is a type of racism because it is implying a person being judged by others based on specific aspects of his ethnicity and I agree with this idea. Some examples that were mentioned were the person's habits, traditional food and even daily activities.  However, others say that stereotyping is not racism based simply on the fact that stereotyping doesn’t imply that an ethnic group is better than others. Another reason would be that some "stereotypes are positive" as for example the stereotypes presented above: Asians and their math skills, African Americans and sport performances or Austrians and musical skills. All these statements are at some degree true, but I tend to disagree and the reason would be that these are only superficial views on stereotyping. As it was described in this post, stereotyping can have more profound effects and one would be limiting one’s possibilities in life. However, I think we can all agree that no matter if stereotyping is a form of racism or not, it is something wrong and should be avoided, especially in an international community in order to maintain the harmony between its members.

Sources used for research:

-Is stereotyping racist?

http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-stereotyping-racist


-Stereotype definition: 
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/stereotype