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Stereotyping

Thesis Statement

Psychological effects of stereotyping

Introduction

Caryl Phillips was born to parents of Caribbean descent on March 13th 1958 in St. Kitts. At the age of four months, Phillips moved to England with his family. Caryl Phillips spent his childhood in Leeds, after which he joined the prestigious Queens College at Oxford University. At Queens College, he enrolled in English. In his early days, Phillips began writing scripts for dramas. This became the source of motivation to become a novelist for Caryl Phillips. Phillips' work in novels focusing mainly on discrimination and stereotyping that humans subject each other of. His work includes themes such as African slaves and their trade. The Martin Luther King Memorial Prize shows the appreciation if his work in the United States. New York's Guggenheim Museum awarded Phillips a fellowship. The James Tait Memorial for his novel “Crossing the River” was awarded in 1993. Phillips also won the award for the best book award for Commonwealth writers in 2004. He serves as a visiting faculty at Yale and Barnard College at the University in Columbia in the United States.

His novel “The Nature of Blood” is one of his bestselling books. The novel discusses the issues of stereotyping and discrimination Jews had to face in the 15th century. The novel contains multiple stories of characters, which shows the author's fascination of the plague of racism deep-rooted in modern day societies. Phillips discusses the issue through a story of fiction that shows multiple characters encountering discrimination. The novel goes on to discuss the atrocities and hardships had to go through due to the Holocaust and subsequent events.

How minorities suffer in societies

It is a well-known fact that minorities face discrimination in one way or the other. This trend continues in modern-day societies. Societies routinely indulge in stereotyping. People form perceptions and opinions about minorities and often accuse them of destroying society through their traditions. Stereotyping is a mental shortcut that humans revert to, to form a perception regarding another person. Stereotyping individuals means we ignore other characteristics of a person and form an opinion on the basis of either first impression or previous knowledge. The novel “The Nature of Blood” reflects on how Jews were the center of stereotypical discrimination during the middle ages and more so during the era of Nazi Germany. Jews in the middle ages had to endure prejudice and discrimination for belonging to a certain religion.

Before the formation of Israel, Jews had to find refuge in other countries. In Europe, followers of Judaism were a minority in most of the countries they took refuge. Adolf Hitler's regime was blunt regarding its prejudice against Jews. Hitler's aggression was clear for all to witness at the concentration camps that conducted experiments on captured Jews (Williams, p.1). In Nazi Germany, Jews had to wear a bright yellow “Star of David” to stand out in public. This was a clear indication of what the governmental and societal perception of Jews was. Such stereotypical and ...