Space Race Bodies

Stereotypes often reflect widely shared, taken-for-granted, ideas and meanings that are embodied in institutions, social structures, and everyday artifacts. As such, stereotypes are a natural feature of people’s everyday lives; they reflect and create reality by affording certain perceptions and limiting others. For example, despite calls to change or eliminate certain stereotypes (e.g., debates on history curricula, the use of American Indian mascots, and the use of the Confederate flag), the status quo is often dynamically reproduced to perpetuate positive stereotypes for some groups (e.g., European Americans, middle class) and not for others (e.g., North American Indigenous People, African Americans, working class). Consequently, stereotypes are seen and understood through the eyes of the groups to which people belong and, as such, they carry with them certain privileges and constraints for the self. For instance, Indigenous People are likely to be represented in negative or limiting ways or they are simply not represented at all—they are invisible. In this talk, I will present six studies that examine the impact of both stereotypic representations, such as American Indian mascots, and invisibility for the psychological well being of Indigenous and White students.