Yesterday, I finally realized that I have become conscious of stereotypes and assumptions that people make based on looks. I was sitting with a girl from my Biology class, I’ll call her Girl 1, and someone in our Biology lecture, I’ll call her Girl 2, came to sit with us. We started talk about families, age, marriage (you know like women do) and all of the sudden Girl 2 says to Girl 1, “Oh you must speak Yiddish and have like five kids right?” I was so appalled by the statement it took me a second to understand what just happened. Girl 1 responds, “Well what makes you think that?” Girl 2 answers, “Well you wear a Sheitel (that’s Yiddish for a wig that a Jewish woman wears after she gets married). Right in front of me, something that I didn’t think existed in adults, STEREOTYPING.

Then thoughts began to run through my head, if people do this based on peoples’ clothes, wigs, and religious wear, what happens when it’s the permanent color of someone’s skin which is something you can’t ignore? I know it’s not politically correct to say the stereotypes out loud, but I think it’s just as bad when we think those thoughts and let them resonant. I think a statistical error that Devah Pager and Bruce Western made in “Realities of Race in the NYC Market” are invalid because a percentage of a minority with obviously be smaller compared to a percentage of a larger population. Side note: I really like this reading because it was broken down scientifically and easy to understand. I think in todays day and age, we can also no longer do studies of just white, black and Latino, because NYC is filled with so many more races. I expected the results I saw in Figure 1, that the positive response rate was the highest for white people. The scariest result for me was that white criminals were considered for jobs similarly to innocent blacks and Latinos. NO!!! Criminals are criminals. Although I can understand that people often make assumptions based on what they see often because by human nature we are creatures of habit, I don’t think those norms should give us the excuse to limit others. I do believe that if employers hired people based on their experience and schooling, more people would have opportunity.

I feel like I connected more to Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russie Hochschild’s “Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy.” Maybe I felt more sensitive to the topic because I’m a female or because I grew up in a household with a single mother with three kids who needed help. The statement, In the absence of help from male partners, many women have succeeded in tough “male world” careers only by turning over the care of their children, elderly parents, and homes to women from the Third World” is so true. I remember right when my parents got divorced, I barely saw my mother. She was always at work, and looking for new opportunities so that she should support the family. I remember one specific day that she came home at 10 P.M. and I just went to sleep in the bed with her. Although we both were asleep, it was a nice feeling just to have her around. “By one recent estimate, women were the sole, primary, or coequal earners in more than half of American families.” Even when my parents were married, my mother was making more money than my father but once an extra income was taken away and there were three mouths to feed, three bodies to house, and three children to take care of, it took a lot of time and effort. “So the question arises: Who will take care of the children, the sick, the elderly? Who will make dinner and clean house?” I remember my grandparents used to come by to help shower my little brothers, or feed us dinner just to give my mom a break, but they were at work all day too. The answer was, a nanny. My mother had to hire a second person to play mom when she couldn’t because she was working. Today, I see my aunt and uncle go through the same thing, they are at work all day and pay a nanny so that they could make enough money to support their family. It’s upsetting that in today’s world in order to make a comfortable life for your kids, you pay someone else to help you raise them and if you don’t want to work that hard, well then you can’t afford your kids. I think that saddest part of the paper is when it’s described that women are pushed into prostitution, and how men would drink and gamble away all the money the mothers made. I remember I had one nanny who would tell me that the only reason she came to America was that so she could make money for her son, daughter and her grandchild. Every three weeks she would send a box of clothing, or wire money to help her kids. I couldn’t help but think how sad it was that she was isolating herself from the ones she loved to help her.

Side note on this article: it’s a little outdated because the US does offer public child care and paid leave and help.