Stereotyping

Can’t We All Just Get Along

Prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination are the misperceptions of people, their actions, and their beliefs. Even though they all fall into the same category there is a fine line between the differences of each. Watching the movie American Made, taught me about how serious the issues of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping are. While watching, I thought to myself about why these are problems, how we can stop them, what would our lives be without them, where we see them the most. Most importantly, I realized how important it is for children in this generation to try to stop the problem. Therefore, I believe that incoming eighth graders should watch this movie for years to come.

The movie American Made is about an Indian family who is visiting the Grand Canyon. While driving, their car dies. They stand on the side of the road asking people who are driving by for help. The family is Sikh, a religion of the followers of Sikhism. Part of the religion requires the father to wear a turban. People keep driving past the family but wont stop for them. The son tells his father that he thinks everybody assumes the father is a terrorist, or that he is from Afghanistan plotting something bad against the United States. The father was confused by what his son told him, and wasn’t sure how to react. He wanted his children to know that they don’t have to be scared to be who they truly are, and that it’s alright to be different. They end up finding a nice man that offers to drive them to town to get help. This man was black, so maybe he understood how the family felt because he could have been in the same situation.

I think it is essential that American Made should be shown to next year’s eighth graders, and the years following, for many reasons. For starters, prejudice is a huge problem in the United States, and all throughout the rest of the world. Although discrimination may never truly end, people from our generation can watch...