A guy in a pickup truck drove up to Christopher and a couple friends at their high school in the 80s. This is what he said:
Y’all got any blacks on your football team?
Everyone shook their head.
Then how can your team be any good?
Everyone was stunned by the stereotype, and the guy drove off.
The image in this week’s title image? Found a couple weeks ago by Christopher in an antique shop.
Whether it’s a drunken Irishman, a pasta-slinging Italian, or a cartoonish Native American mascot, stereotypes continue to live on. And that’s what we’re talking about this week.
We kick off the episode with the first stereotypes we ever remember hearing. From there, we jump to the most damaging stereotypes we’ve ever heard, before talking about if we’ve ever heard a stereotype that was proven right.
Next, we talk about where stereotypes come from, and why many have a need or compulsion to stereotype certain people. We also spend a couple minutes discussing if we’ve ever found stereotypes to be useful, and then pick a few groups we could be safely classified into and talk about how well we conform to the stereotypes of those groups.
Find out what the oddest stereotypes we’ve ever heard are — and if there was any merit to them.
In the final stretch of this week’s episode, we talk about how damaging stereotypes are…and why they continue to endure. Then we finish by talking about if we consider ourselves stereotypical in any way.
We’d love to hear your tales of stereotypes: the strangest stereotypes you’ve heard, whether you’ve found certain stereotypes to be true…anything you want to discuss down below in the comments.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download