Garabedian 1

Aram Garabedian
English 115
Professor Lawson
02 December 2015
Rhetorical Analysis
Word Count: 880
Based Off Stereotypes
Identity beyond Stereotypes, a short story by Kiflin Turner, identifies the common
problems people face because of their differences. In the story, Turner talks about AfricanAmerican kids struggling in a college environment. I decided to focus on only one part of the
essay. The part I chose talked about a man named Patrick Parks, who attended college at Notre
Dame. The story revolves around the stereotypical comments and observations he encounters
every day because of his skin color. Patrick is frequently mistaken for a football player because
he is an African-American that goes to a good college. People disregard his physical attributes,
mainly that hes too short to really play any sports, and only focus on the racial stereotype that
hes an athlete because hes black. However, Patrick was accepted to college based on his
academic abilities, not his sports skills. People didnt consider that someone like him could get
accepted into a college like that due to his knowledge and figured the only way he got in was due
to his athletic talent because he is intellectually inferior to the rest. In my opinion, Turner was
definitely on point with the racial profiling happening to people, especially minorities, and fully

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agree with the problems that result from stereotyping people, and I believe we need to bring an
end to it.
Growing up in a neighborhood with a large Armenian population, I was blessed to be
around my culture since birth. Many people dont get to have opportunities like that. Spending
my whole life in a community where the majority of the people were Armenian, I wasnt exposed
to a lot of stereotypical behavior or comments. However, I wasnt blind to the outside world
either. I knew some of the stereotypes my ethnicity faced, such as doing fraud and trying to show
off a lot by wearing designer clothes or driving very expensive cars. Nevertheless, I didnt think
too much of it as I had never experienced any racial or stereotypical profiling before. As the
years went by, I was exposed to more and more stereotypical comments directed at me and my
friends. For example, when I invited some new friends over to my house for the first time, their
initial question was, How do you have a house like this. Just because my family is well off and
I have a nice house, some people automatically assume we got this way by doing the
stereotypical Armenian thing, fraud. People looked past the fact that my dad had shed a lot of
blood and sweat working as hard as he could every day since moving to the United States to
provide a good life for his family, and automatically assumed he acquired his nice house and nice
cars the stereotypical way. This example relates closely to the same situation Patrick Parks faced
in Turners essay. My dorm mate just assumed that because I was black, I played football,
Parks said, adding that his size should have been a consideration, but was overshadowed by his
skin color (Turner 139). This quote explained how the students at Notre Dame looked past
Patricks physical abilities and quickly made racially biased decisions due to his skin color. This
relates to my example because like Patricks classmates, a couple of my classmates made
stereotypical judgements about my family due to what we have and what they have heard a very

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small amount of people do to get there. This really made me mad and disrespected. The thought
that a few peoples actions create a stereotype for a big group of people made me realize that
what you always hear is usually not true. One persons action shouldnt represent a whole
community or a group of people. I empathize with Patrick and his situation because I can relate
to how he could have felt when students underestimated his academic abilities and quickly
labeled his as an athlete, because they assumed that was the only way someone like him can get
to a college like Notre Dame. I also understand why Turner wrote this essay in the first place,
and how the exposure of problems created by creating stereotypical labels for people can result
in people understanding the situation and hesitating to create quick assumptions based on
someones race, skin color, gender, or anything.
Based on the examples of how stereotyping a whole group of people by the actions of a
few can hurt them, I can conclude that change is necessary. Without knowing, most people hurt
others in one way or another when they come to conclusions about them. In the essay, Turner
explained, Racial profiling of minority students is a disturbing everyday occurrence where
minority students are categorized as being athletes or intellectually inferior (Turner 139). This
proves my claim that profiling someone causes pre-made judgements to overlook the personality
and characteristic of a unique individual, thus disrespecting them. I hope that we, as a society,
can overlook and forget about stereotypes and judge people for who they are, not what people
claim they are.

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Works Cited
Turner, Kiflin. Identity Beyond Stereotypes. Pop Perspectives: Readings to Critique
Contemporary Culture. Ed. Laura Gray-Rosendale. San Francisco: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
139-143. Print.