My stereotype
When I look at my life and think about all of the effects that stereotype threat had in my life I tend to elicit the fact that I am a white male from a rich community. When it comes to the fact of stereotype threats, and or identity threats, a specific author named Claude M. Steele has the insight of how pervasive stereotypes can actually influence behavior and performance. He addresses stereotype threat and identity threat predominantly throughout the whole book. A stereotype threat would affect your performance while on the other hand identity threat can affect your behavior. In my case, I have experienced stereotype threat through my career choices and my working experiences. My environment becomes a key factor in finding…show more content… Yet in the workplace that is not the case. The critical mass of San Mateo is mostly latino. When working in San Mateo I feel that the critical mass being “the number of other people in a setting with the same identity” (140) is very low. There are only two white males out of all of the seventeen employees that work in the same facility. And I feel that working at a kids party place called Safari Run I am under the pressure that I am perceived as snobby because they know my parents own the business. Parents who drop off their children are often able to judge me based off my appearance and how I converse with my coworkers given my social identity. And I find the most satisfying part of working at this facility is that I earn the chance to prove myself for being a kind and caring person to others. For instance, as a relation to me, Steels parents told…show more content… For instance, Steele explains, “these downwardly constituting pressures might have the power to interfere directly and indirectly with intellectual performance” (28). This ultimately can affect how my personality is built and structured because of the influences around me. By the tone of my voice, people are able to recognize how I would react to others opinions and to the reactions of the children that I supervise at Safari Run. When relating to the idea of social identity Steele reinstates “that the contingencies that go with them in specific places at specific times,while often subtle enough to be beneath our awareness, can nonetheless significantly affect things as important as our intellectual functioning” (61). So this has brought up the thought that I am being affected by my work environment without my awareness. Without knowing of this effect on my performance I am able to acknowledge the fact that the people around me are a different race than me, I am able to consciously think about my actions so that I don't conform to the stereotype. This method is called self- affirmation in which I took a couple steps back to evaluate my life. Yet this also brings up the thought that I would be over efforting in my performance. Steele acknowledges that “when they weren't under stereotype threat, they didn't try any harder than anyone else. But when there
