For our latest reading response, we were given an informational video to watch about women in computer science and software engineering field. While watching the video I could not help but recall this topic we learned in psychology, but at the time could not remember the name of the topic. While listening to these female engineers explain how computer science began to be steered toward males while subtly discouraging women, I started racking my brain even harder hoping for the name to pop in my mind. I also called Alaina (who took the same class with me over the summer) to see she remember the topic name (she did not). We laugh as we remember the example, that our Professor at the time given us to help retain the topic. She explained to us how when marginalize groups hear certain stereotypes about them, they proceed to act in the way the stereotypes make them out to be. She then continues to say, “some examples are like how women are bad at math or African American are bad at school.” After the statement was said, you could hear slight chuckles scatter around the room, from all the black students as we shook our heads. Why? I believe the response occurred because most if not all of us have heard a statement similar to that in our personal lives; but yet we were all there sitting in a psychology class during the summer at NC State, how bad at school could we be?
Despite remembering those details, I could not put my finger on the correct name for the topic. I only knew the definition of how stereotypes hurt and threaten these groups’ growth and progress. Burning with the need to know, I stop the video to find my old notebook to locate the page with the definition on it and saw the topic centered above it, Stereotype Threats. Satisfied with my find, I started the video again only to find that two minutes later, Ms. Ruthie Byers software engineer at PIVOTAL, mentions the same two words I just had spent twenty minutes looking for. This same concept is the reason why I was holding my breath for the first ten minutes of the documentary until the first professional WOC (women of color) software engineer was shown on screen. Even explains why I felt elation when I saw the Black Girl Code hackathon and the black female mentors who emphasized how important it was for the girls. Stereotype Threats are difficult for every group; it becomes another challenge when intersectionality discrimination occurs. As my summer professor gladly gave us those two examples, imagine having both of those threats oppose on you. It says to me; I’m not only bad at school, but also I definitely can’t understand math. I can chuckle at these threats because I have proven to myself and seen others that show me how false these stereotypes are. However, there are some girls or some African American students who don’t get that chance but received the same messages from the media.
Nevertheless, stereotype threats cause harmful and adverse effects on the groups that their messages are supposed to affect. It creates a web of imposter syndrome, where highly qualified people began to doubt themselves despite their accomplishments. Also, it creates an unfair burden to those affected; it makes them feels as though they carry their respective groups on their back as they navigate through a harsh world. It already hard enough to do a job interview, but imaging sitting there worrying how your behavior and personality will affect the next person who looks like you or a group you represent (race, gender, or sexuality). I want to end this blog with an expert from Dr. Claude M. Steele (who was shown in the video), Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us:
“The problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes what you are about in a situation. It gives you an additional task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking in a schooling situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace like the women in the high-tech firms, you are also trying to slay a ghost in the room, the negative stereotype and its allegation about you and your group. … This is not an argument against trying hard, or against choosing the stressful path. There is no development without effort; and there is seldom great achievement, or boundary breaking, without stress. And to the benefit of us all, many people have stood up to these pressures. … The focus here, instead, is on what has to be gotten out of he way to make these playing fields mere level. People experiencing stereotype threat are already trying hard. They’re identified with their performance. They have motivation. It’s the extra ghost slaying that is in their way.”
-Danielle Dantzler