A School Experiment on Hispanic Stereotypes

Operational definition for six attributes
– Tatoo(s)- if the person has a tattoo in visible sight of a passer by
– Baggy pants- if the pants look like they are too big for the person and would be completely falling off if it weren’t for their belt or the fact they were holding the pants up themselves
– Shaved heads- if the person has a shaved head whether it be with a razor or just a buzz cut
– Siesta- asleep in the middle of a public place
– Manual labor- doing labor that would be considered manual or blue collar
– religious- if the person is wearing something/has something tattooed on them that would be recognized as religious (cross, Jesus, Virgin Mary, etc.)

Findings

All of my observations were made in two of the high traffic areas at UTSA, the Sombrilla and the University Center. Of the twenty people I observed only five of them met any of the attributes that are included in the stereotypical Hispanic. There was one man who had a shaved head, another man who had a cross on his necklace. I observed three women with any of these attributes and they were all wearing a necklace that had some sort of religious symbol on it. The one thing I did notice was that all of them we’re dressed white collar and a number of them seemed to be very trendy with the way they dressed. The one man with the shaved head was actually dressed nice (slacks and a dress shirt) and was carrying a brown leather briefcase.

What went wrong?

On the two days of observation I took down the attributes of 20 people and I feel that we could’ve gotten an even better idea of what was going on if we had some more time or the chance to observe more people. It’s also hard to tell sometimes if a person is in fact a Hispanic/Latino by just glancing at them.

Improvements

We can broaden some of the attributes that we listed as a group. I felt that some of them were put out there just so we could disprove the fact that stereotypes are not valid.