What's Not Wrong?
Uploaded by natalie227 on Nov 18, 2008
We Are All Wrong
“Never judge a book by it’s cover!” is an oxymoron that many of us have heard before when dealing with criticism. It is an oxymoron that should be instilled in all human beings as we all tend to pre-judge others, especially in our North American, media inflicted society. Stereotypes – an image or classification of a group of people – are examples of pre-judgement that our society oppresses on groups of people. The only way to stop these judgements is to prove them wrong. People feel the need to prove assumptions made about them wrong to feel intrinsically satisfied, and to prove stereotypes wrong, so not only the individual can feel satisfaction, but others like them. The essays “An Invisible Woman,” by Bharati Mukherjee, “Mother Tongue,” by Amy Tan, and “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. all show examples of how proving assumptions wrong left some type of satisfaction.
When one proves false accusations to be wrong, it always gives satisfaction to the victim. It is always one of the greatest feelings to prove somebody wrong because it is similar to achieving something that you were never supposed to be able to do. In “An Invisible Woman,” Mukherjee describes a time when she was growing up and was subjected to many stereotypical judgments made against her. For example, Mukherjee being a beautiful woman where she was raised, was not supposed to work, and therefore was thought of as not intelligent and she could not accomplish much of her own. She wanted to prove everyone wrong for her own satisfaction, so she decided to complete her Master’s degree in English (Mukherjee, p.322).
Likewise, in Amy Tan’s essay, she describes of how her former boss said that she was a horrible writer and she should go into streams of work that include math like account management. Amy talks about how she loves proving assumptions wrong so she worked hard and started to write her own fictional novels, and from this, attained satisfaction in proving her boss wrong about her writing abilities (Tan, p. 344).
Moreover, knowing that you have proven somebody wrong is a great feeling, but proving stereotypes wrong; assumptions usually made by the general population; show positive accomplishments, not only for the individual but for the group of people as well. Living in a new country is always hard and there are always judgments...