Stereotyped beliefs will modify a person's behavior only; Amherst College

Hi I'm new to the forum and thought I'd make my first post today. Currently i'm in the process of applying to Amherst as a transfer student, and this is one of the quotes I had to write about:

"Stereotyped beliefs have the power to become self-fulfilling prophesies for behavior."- Elizabeth Aries, professor of Psychology,Amherst College

It is not necessary to research,read,or refer to the texts from which these quotations are taken; we are looking for original,personal responses to these short excerpts rather than book reviews or book reports. Remember that your essay should be personal in nature and not simply argumentative essays

Stereotyped beliefs will modify a person's behavior only if the person being stereotyped allows it to happen. Each individual has their own personality traits different from which culture or background they come from. Sadly, today it has come down to race which gives people in society the motive to predict someone's immanent actions. For instance, most African American people have been labeled unproductive, uneducated, drug dealers, thugs, thieves, and murderers. If these beliefs were entirely accurate, I should not be trying so hard to acquire an education. Instead I am expected to be committing crimes in society to live up to the statistic.

Yes African-Americans do make up most of the prison population but, in my opinion, they only acted in response to what people thought they were going to do in the first place. Some companies operated by skeptical people believe that if they hire an African American person, he or she would eventually steal from the workplace so ultimately they pass on those applicants. In result of not obtaining a job, eventually that person is going to go steal stuff because they have no money which in the end brings some validity to that company's belief.

Fortunately, I solely have the pleasure of discrediting the race assumption as a whole because personally I have no desire to carry out any destructive activity that will tarnish my personal character. Even though I try to be a positive beacon in the dark discrimination of my culture; some people still treat me just like the rest. Hopefully, in the future those views will change because African Americans will become stronger in will to not prove those stereotypes right anymore.

Ok please tell me what you think, honesty is the best policy

The word "solely" does some odd things in here, and few if any of the possible interpretations seem likely to be ones you actually mean.

Beyond that, your essay is solid, though it would be nice to see you go into more depth and to explore the issue with a bit more nuance. For instance, this seems overly simplistic:


Not getting any given job isn't going to have this effect. Pervasive, widespread racial discrimination in corporate hiring policy might. But, really, you could look at more subtle ways in which this might work. So, for instance, if a teacher thinks Asian students are all good at math, might the teacher encourage Asian students more than others to pursue math and science courses, hence tending to fulfill the stereotype? If a teacher thinks African-American students aren't very good at academics, might the teacher offer less support and help to such a student who struggles in school than s/he might otherwise do. Also, you might look at how stereotyped people themselves decide to fulfill the stereotypes. So, if African-American kids see a lot of African-Americans portrayed as criminals on television, or in the news, might they not start acting as criminals, simply because, for better or for worse, most people try to fulfill others' expectations of them?

Thanks for the advice! I see what your saying and I do need to clarify more what i'm trying to say