Stereotype within Differences

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Have you ever heard that Eastern people are friendly? What do you think about Javanese? What do you think about female or male math teacher? What do you think about Jakarta teenagers? Those questions could be answered based on our understanding and perspective on people’s behavior, race, gender, age and other information that relates to them. Generalize characteristics or judgment of particular group or community is called as stereotype. Stereotype could be positive or negative. It might be influenced by media such as television, news paper, radio etc. Sociocultural factors such as media might influence people’s perspective about particular community.

Indonesia as a multicultural country will have many stereotypes. People might characterize particular community because of differences of race, ethnicity and religion. For example, Ucok is Bataknese. He must be rude and speak loudly. He is different with Slamet who is Javanese. He must be polite. Actually, it might not be so. I conclude that those stereotypes, again, is based on behavior of the member of the community.

As cultured person of Sunda, many people also do stereotype on me. One of stereotype on Sundanese is they are likely not able to pronounce sound F. My friends in college often annoy me with that. I sometime feel that they do not respect my culture. Sundanese do not have letter F in our alphabet. Then there is no wonder if they find difficulty in pronounce it. Another stereotype is that Sundanese tend not to leave their hometown. It could be influenced by their willingness to be always together with their family and closest friend.

I go to college where many people come from many different regions. It means that there will be many different cultures either. It could be difficult to face the differences. As I experienced, it needed long time for me to accept and be familiar with the difference. Even I meet Sundanese from outside of Bandung. It surprised me that the culture of Sundanese language use has a little difference. Then I have to adjust and understand the differences.

There are also other cultures I face. It makes me consider many things if I want to do something. I have been living together with my classmate who is Javanese. Sometimes she tells me that what I do is inappropriate in her region. Then I should adjust not to do that to respect her culture. Furthermore we share about our culture

Human are typically social creatures. There will always be interaction among them. We should realize that we are living in a place where there are many different cultures exist. Moreover, we should know personal expectation, how others perceive particular situation and how it means for them in order to deal with cultural differences itself. No matter what people say about me, I am proud to be a Sundanese, because that is my identity. The most important thing is how we can respect each other.