Peer pressure and civil rights, continued

Commenter “Greg” wrote: You young ladies are doing such an incredible job of relating the broad theme of history to your own lives, whether it’s with stereotyping, peer pressure or bullying. Do you think the way we talk about these things today is a product of the Civil Rights Movement? Luiza responds: 

I think that the way we talk about stereotyping is very much a product of the civil rights movement. During the time of the civil rights movement, and long before, people set stereotypes for people who were different from them. That probably got so ingrained into people’s minds that we still carry some of that with us today. I don’t know if peer pressure was a huge product of the civil rights movement, but when civil rights activists were protesting, especially at sit-ins, students would generally do what their friends were doing. In one sit-in at Woolworth’s many high school students from the area were beating up the people doing the sit-in and their friends would join in. Bullying could almost be a branch off the stereotypes because people bully other people mostly because of a stereotype they have of them. In general I think that all of those things and the way they are talked about are products of the civil rights movement in their own ways.