Seminar on stereotyping held at the library

Maarten Metzelaar, Staff Editor

A recent seminar has been held in the Elgin Community College’s library and was planned and executed by Tonisha Via, Rachel Moore, Anitra King and Tiera Egelson.  The goal of the seminar:  To dispel and “debunk” African American Stereotypes, and just stereotypes in general.

The room, empty when I arrived, was full in moments with students from multiple classes,  those primarily coming from a number of Education Classes.

The seminar began with a quick exercise that stated the names of prominent African American figures,  with descriptions to their works, for example, the number of inventors mentioned.

This exercise was followed shortly by a video from the YouTube channel  “I, too, am Harvard.”, the video being titled “Microaggressions”.  The content was a performance held by 10 African American students currently attending Harvard College.

These students went on stage and quoted Black Undergraduate students, also attending Harvard College, who were interviewed by a certain Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence.

With quotes such as “What do you mean you don’t play Basketball?” and “Aren’t you from the hood?” the video aimed to shed light on the often low-key but destructive ways our society portrays our minorities.

The main piece of the seminar, was a Ted Talk by writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Born and raised as a middle class Nigerian girl in a loving family, she felt the power of stereotypes as a student in the United States.

Coming to this country, her room mate had nothing but questions about Africa,  about the “tribal” music Adiche surely listened to, and how she managed to speak such fluent English.

But in reality, Adiche grew up in Nigeria,  only one country out of the entire continent of Africa.  Her “tribal” music happened to be Mariah Carey.  Unbeknownst to her roommate and really most Americans,  the official language of Nigeria is English.

She went on to speak on the damage that a “single story” can have. As she continued to live in America,  she realized most Americans only really had one single story about Africa.  That it is a barren land, fought over by countless warlords and child soldiers; or a place where AIDS and Malaria are unavoidable. A place where every child is far away from clean water and living off of what we’d amount to table scraps.

Following both videos was a discussion among the room about stereotypes, how the media can better handle these stereotypes and the effects stereotyping has played in numerous student’s lives; How to handle racism,  whether we should talk more about it or less about it.

Ashlee, a student at ECC, mentioned the experiences she had as a young child when her grandmother, a Chinese immigrant, moved into her household, much to her father’s dismay.  She remembered hearing many things about the Chinese, none of which were too positive.  Until she began learning what her grandma was like, Ashlee was not sure what to make of her Chinese heritage.

The seminar may have been a short hour, but the work our strong society has to make to end prejudice is ongoing.