Final Essay for the Outsiders

Stereotyping Epidemic
Authors Note: This piece is a reflection on the stereotyping in the book "The Outsiders" and how bad the effect is.   


“The Outsiders” is a book that depicts two sides of life you are a Greaser or a soc, and if you fall into a category you are immediately assumed to have the bad traits and all the good ones. In other words that’s just stereotyping. Maybe a greaser has money and can sustain they just choose to hang out and act different. Maybe a soc is poor and made friend with other socs and lives on the south side.


Where you live, how much money your parents have, and what you like shouldn’t play a roll whatsoever on how you are ranked socially in the community and how much respect you get. Those are things you can’t control and because of those people assume you have other traits that are bad that you can control when you are nothing like that.


This kind of stuff happens all over the place in schools, sports, and even adult work environments. When a football coach goes to pick a position he might look for someone tall and slim, but firmly built which are two thing genes control, but he stereotypes and thinks that he will be better than everyone else. Maybe the short weird looking kid has better skills, but you never gave him a chance because you stereotyped and it could cost you a bunch of games.


The girl who wrote the book had to have some experience of this happening to her or around her. The deep thought in the book about how the greasers can’t control. They get a bad rep about being thugs and criminals that just don’t care what happens to them. When really they care deeply about how people use the greasers like a doormat and stomp all over them because they are better at things no one can control.


Next time you think about judging someone from a different walk of life because they are short or their nose is weird, or whatever reason, you are hurting that persons feelings because of things they can’t control .That is ridicules, how would you feel if someone said you can’t because of things you can’t control/ fix you will never be able to do what you want because of height, or appearance if stereotyping continues.