Dreaming of No Judgment: Mi Pleito Against Stereotypes

Mestizo Arts and Activism ProgramJoanna Alfaro

Norma Nuñez

Jonatan Ramirez

Juan Gomez

Hector Maldonado Flores

2008

Research Focus

Our research focused on how stereotypes about immigrants affect high school students and their community.

Research Question

What are the emotional and economic affects/impacts of stereotypes on immigrants?

Why is this important?

• This research is important because many people are not aware of how stereotypes affect the community.

• We don’t realize how things that may seem so small and insignificant --like name calling-- can have such a huge impact on the community.

• Young people of color have a voice and can talk back to the ways they are stereotyped.

Research Methods

We conducted two focus groups with high school students (6-8 students) on the emotional and economical impacts of stereotypes on immigrants.

Some of the questions we asked during our focus group

• What comes to mind when you think of “immigrant”?

• How do you define stereotype?• Please identify stereotypes of immigrants. • Have you ever seen someone stereotyped in

front of you or have you been stereotyped? Please share your story..

• How do stereotypes make you feel? • How do stereotypes affect your community?

Stereotypes of immigrants

Some of the examples of stereotypes of immigrants that identified in our research include:

beaner, border hopper, wetback, lazy, steal jobs/ identity, criminals, drug dealers, drop out, don’t care about school, irresponsible, girls get pregnant young etc…

What we found out…

The students shared stories about stereotypes and immigration that offer different perspectives on this complex issue.

our findings continued… Our findings speak to the painful and

contradictory position of students of color:

On the one hand…

The young people we spoke with felt oppressed by the stereotypes and sometimes expressed losing hope and wanting to give up.

On the other hand…

The young people we spoke with wanted to challenge the stereotypes that were laid on them and this gave them the strength to go on. In this case, the students wanted to prove the stereotypes wrong.

What did we learn

In this project we were able to inform people what is going on in our community and also it helped us learn more about the affects of stereotyping on our community.

What did we learn

In this project we were able to inform people what is going on in our community and also it helped us learn more about the affects of stereotyping on our community.

our findings

The students stories also demonstrated the economic impacts of stereotypes on their community: including police, housing, and job discrimination

What did we learn

In this project we were able to inform people what is going on in our community and also it helped us learn more about the affects of stereotyping on our community.