Our Racist, Sexist Selves

This article talks about how ingrained some racist/sexist attitudes are in us. He claims that we can be more sexist than racist (categorize somebody's gender before race and athletes-remembering jersey/team association and gender more so than race). He talks a lot about how if we meet somebody who does not fit a stereotype to their demographic, we just file them as 'the exception.' If we meet and are exposed to a lot of a minority in "higher" positions (professors, doctors, etc) we think of them as an anomaly. People exposed to a higher number of female professors tend to have less gender stereotypes. I would imagine the same would go for being exposed to more African Americans. I think if you don't know many you are more apt to listen to stereotypes and buy into media representations. If you are friends with or know many, you will see that not everybody fits the stereotypes; you are more likely to see people as individual people. This relates to our discussion on oppression; you know that you are not the one being oppressed if you do not have to always speak for your entire minority.