Resume

Dear Dr. Heba
This paper needs little more time to work on. My quotes and main ideas are not what I like to be yet and I have the feeling that my paragraphs are similar to each other and telling them same point. I’ll fix them and post the latest draft soon. Thanks
Sam

Name: Sam Ramezanli
Course: EAD II
Professor: Dr. Heba Elkhateeb
Paper: Draft 3-3

Many people today are not aware that racism beliefs are still alive and many people’s lives are impacted by it. They think that prejudice only exist in history and stories. However, many are suffering from it specially people with colored skins who had to immigrate to countries to have better life qualities. Ortiz Cofer was one of these people and in her essay “The story of my body”, she portrays a young female born in Puerto Rico that later moved to the United States. Cofer shows the reader how differently she was treated by those of the same race as her versus those that were not by guiding the reader through stories of experiences she had. On the other hand, Vincent Parrillo who wrote “Causes of Prejudice” goes through different motivations, which produce prejudice beliefs, feelings and actions and he analyzes and explain them why reasons such as social norms and relative deprivation may result into prejudice beliefs. Positive or negative attitude against individuals may have many reasons. However the image a person have of oneself should not be filtered through the lens of society, instead should be reinforced in a way that will make the person confident and strong about herself.

Many of individuals don’t often think about how they are perceived differently from other and how much these perceptions really impact individual’s lives. Living in an atmosphere where people respect and admire a person would be more appreciated than living somewhere where people make fun of you and question your attitudes and whether we like or not, it can affect our lives. Some of these perceptions are rooted from cultural attitudes and some other comes from close people who we are communicating with in daily life and one common example of negative perception is prejudice. Every culture in this world has different prejudice feelings among some of the immigrants and a person may happily live in one culture but not feeling appreciated in some other. So, many people who don’t get to travel around different countries and locations don’t get to see how they are perceived differently in each part of the world. Following this Vincent Parrillo states: “ In many societies, members of the majority group may believe that a particular low-status minority group is dirty, immoral, violent, or law breaking” (Parrillo, 386). On the other hand, Ortiz Cofer went through same situation when she moved to America from Puerto Rico. She was a normal person living in a typical Puerto Rican family in her home and she is considered as pretty white tall girl there. However, when she moved to America, American Residents saw her as low-status skinny brown immigrant. As she says: “I was born a white girl in Puerto Rico and my relatives called me tall; but became a brown girl when I came to live in the United States and some of my classmates called me skinny ” (Cofer, 537). It can be seen here how much perceptions and cognitive beliefs in a society can have effect on some groups’ lives and how Judith Cofer felt it after she moved to America and saw the new negative approach towards her

Each culture ideals and perfections may cause different approaches to its residents, which cause members to not fight against prejudice. Different cultures have different definition of integrity; for instance, in some society having light color skin or being tall may be an advantage while in some other members of the society doesn’t care about these features. Following that, these approaches can be a good cause of prejudice in one society since members may prejudge some other member based on their superficial qualities. Because of these cultural values, many people don’t fight against prejudice; they learn prejudice approaches in the society and live with them without understanding that this is prejudicial attitude. Vincent Parrillo calls this process Social Norms and he says: “By learning and automatically accepting the prevailing prejudices, an individual is simply conforming those norms”(Parrillo, 396). Similarly, Ortiz Cofer was also living in an atmosphere in America where the norm was that Puerto Ricans were considered in lower class than normal white citizens; i.e. when she was in her childhood, a supermarket guy called him dirty and when she was in school she considered as brown skinny bone and shrimp because of her dark small body structure. We see this when she says “ I was born a white girl in Puerto Rico but became a brown girl when I came to live in the United States and my relatives called me tall and at the American school, some of my rougher classmates called me Skinny bones ” (Cofer, 537). Also, the importance of Social Norms can be seen in Cofer’s life when she talks about wonder woman and she draw an ideal picture of a girl that all men are after in that society at that age. Many American people and children who Cofer talks about them are not necessarily bad people; they learned their prejudice beliefs from their parents, society and culture. They have been heard awful things about Puerto Rican their whole lives and obviously when they see one, they may have negative approach towards him/her.

Conclusion:
In my opinion, each individual makes the people around him think and feel about him, the way he thinks about himself; because our own perception of ourselves cause us to treat in that way other people will accept us eventually in that same way although in some cases it might take some extra time for it to happen.