This semester I will be working at the Chapel Hill Human Rights Center to fulfill my APPLES requirement. I have been in class with Professor Blau and was unable to make it to the Center before so I am looking forward to volunteering there. Unfortunately, society has the tendency to pigeon hole groups of people into a stereotype and judge them accordingly. These negative stereotypes are unfortunately in place with the people at the Human Rights Center and I hope to help break any stereotypes I may hold while working with the immigrants and low income families at the Center.
Generally, society as a whole classifies immigrants, particularly Hispanics, as either illegal or part of an expendable labor force. When people hold this viewpoint, they often overlook minorities and lower income families when trying to volunteer. While the disaster in Haiti is devastating, there are families inside our borders that have similar problems in their everyday lives and need help. Because people hold these stereotypes as true, they believe people are in the position that they deserve due to laziness or another characteristic. After working with Lutheran Family Services last semester helping to move immigrants into housing in Raleigh and other experiences this is not the case. Often times people are where they are in society because of instilled restraints that hold them back. People at the Center came to America with the dreams of making a better life for themselves and have to fight through our culture’s stereotypes to break free.
Luckily, the Human Rights Center is in place in Chapel Hill to help correct some of these stereotypes. By looking at people as individuals instead of generalizing them into simplistic or homogeneous groups, I hope to see how untrue a lot of unfair stereotypes are and spread that throughout Chapel Hill.
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