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Albinism And Social Identity

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Goffman (1997) expresses a stigmatized person as someone who possesses undesirable physical characteristics that are not within the normal characteristics in the group to which he or she belongs. Furthermore he states that this person is consequently reduced in the minds of society from a whole and normal person to a tainted, reduced one. Goffman (1997) argues that normality is a counterpart to stigma. Burke (2007) on the other hand states that society establishes categories, where certain characteristics are considered normal within a category, he refers to this as social identity, which draws a picture of social identity which is based on first appearances, and occurs through mixed contacts, that is, social situations where those stigmatized …show more content…

There are different 'types' of albinism, the most common one is ‘opculocutaneous albinism (Blakenberg, 200). Albino according to the dictionary definition refers to a person or animal having a congenital absence of pigment in the skin and hair (which are white) and the eyes (which are usually pink). Society is defined as the collective of people living together in a more or less ordered …show more content…

(Goffman 1997, p. 204). Isolation refers to the segregation of people or things from other things and culture, Culture consists of language, values, traditions, norms and an attitude is a person’s general feeling of favourableness and unfavourableness towards something. Beliefs about that object provide the basis for the formation of the attitude toward the object (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Search engines and study selections The search criteria for the abstracts used the key words search strategy combining shorted and unbridged words to identify the difficulties of living with albinism. The following databases were used to search for articles Google Scholar, JSTOR, PsychINFO, EBSCO, and psych Articles. Making use of keywords such as albinism, albino, society, identity, stigmatization, isolation, culture, and traditional beliefs. Ensuring that appropriate terms were used in combination with these key words so to ascertain how demographics are closely associated with people’s attitudes towards aspects of albinism. Inclusion and Exclusion of

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The American Albino horse is not considered a true albino. The American albino horse can be any breed as long as their coat is white, and their skin is pink. Their eyes must be black, brown or blue. If a horse is white with pink skin and their eyes are pink they are an albino.

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These stigmas are placed on people based on things they were born into, and that were completely out of a person’s control, like race and gender. Goffman also gave

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In many ways we stereotype people based on their characteristics and tend to judge them in a positive and negative manner depending on, the different types of the out-groups we place them in. Such as envied out-group, pitied out-group and despised out-group. When we restrict interactions with out-groups. Dominant groups limit social interaction with out-groups which maintains group boundaries and limit access to out-group members. These limitations are useful, when the law is put out or unbreakable by spatial boundaries and physical segregation.

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Isolation is the process or fact of being alone. Isolation can be needed at times but is not good all the time. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Victor began to go crazy with too much isolation, but when around family he wanted to be isolated due to the high stress. An example of this is when Victor felt that he was responsible for two murders and went to wonder in the valley. Isolation is needed because it gives a person time to reflect and gather themselves.

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For those people who have a biracial heritage might have issues adapting to the numerous threats of their racial identity that can be activated by the absence or presence of whites and/or minorities in their environmental and social surroundings. In an experiment, methodologists reported that “minority/white individuals stated that the racial composition of their environment, social identity threat for their component racial identities, overall feelings of belonging, and racial identification over a 1 week period” (Wilton). Biracial population also uncover how racial classes are shaped in view of physical qualifications to keep up status differences between races. Specifically, the white population started to pinpoint how such racial qualifications have been established to sustain domination and entitlement in among high status. With the socially ineffective historical 'one drop lead' any individual with an African American descent was promptly categorized as black to guarantee that biracial individuals would be named a lower class status to safeguard the social and financial power.

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As German theologian once said, “We are all so much together but we are all dying of loneliness.” This is quite apparent for multiple characters in the novel, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. George and Lennie are two men that travel around together in efforts of finding work during the Great Depression, which they must do often due to Lennie’s mental illness that causes him to do “bad” things and ruin things for them on multiple jobs. However, they find work as ranch hands south of Soledad, which causes them and multiple other characters, such as the stable buck Crooks, to come face to face with their constant loneliness. Soledad, which ironically translates to loneliness, is relevant to the novel.

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They put people into social groups divided into in-group or out-group i.e. us versus them through a process of social categorization. Social identity theory states that group members of an in-group will discriminate and hold prejudiced views against others in the out-group in order to enhance their self-esteem. Social identification is relational and comparative because people define themselves relative to individuals considered to belong to other categories (Tajfel et al

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Social categorization theory developed by Turner (1978) describes the categorization of people based on salient attributes like gender, ethnicity or age, resulting in stereotyping on the basis of these differences. Social categorization theory posits that similarities and dissimilarities of demographics can lead formation of different group with resulting effects on member of in-group favorably themselves to the detriment of members of out-groups social (Turner, Brown & Tajfel, 1979). Self-categorization theory explains when individuals categorize themselves by assigning to themselves the manners, actions and other characteristics they link with association within a specific group (Schmitt, Branscombe, Silvia, Garcia, & Spears. 2016). By means of self-categorization and membership of a group, people cultivate a social identity that functions as a social-cognitive scheme (customs, standards and attitudes) for their group associated action. The tendency is for the perceiver to consider these attributes as vital to his or her own personality and thus use these attributes to label others (Hoffman Harburg, & Maier, 2014).

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Those stigmatised experience stereotypical discriminative behaviour on a daily basis, they

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Stigmatization means rewriting the negative characteristics of individual or group and creation of social distance and neglect. These can include multiple groups of people: - people with mental retardation and mental illness - people with deformities

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Each individual has their own different social identity. One’s social identity is constructed based on the different influences around them. The development of social identity is influenced by various factors such as the historical, cultural and religious beliefs of the society, community or family where one is brought up. It is influenced by the behaviours and attitudes of authority figures such as parents, teachers and community leaders around them, it is also influenced by external factors such as the media, one’s peers and the overall exposure one has (Carrim, 2006, p56).

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Introduction It was difficult to make the decision to be public about having a severe psychiatric illness, but privacy and reticence can kill. The problem with mental illness is that so many who have it especially those in a position to change public attitudes, such as doctors, lawyers, politicians, and military officers are reluctant to risk talking about mental illness, or seeking help for it. They are understandably frightened about professional and personal reprisals. Stigma is of Greek word of the same spelling meaning "mark, puncture," came into English through Latin Stigma is it is commonly used today to describe the negative feelings and stereotypical thoughts, and attitudes about people based on the traits of a person, which can

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Biological classification is the scientific procedure of arrangement of living organism into groups. It is done on the basis of their similarities and dissimilarities and placing the groups in a hierarchy of categories. The first pioneer work on biological classification was done by Linnaeus. He classified living organisms into the two kingdoms, i.e Plantae and Animalia.

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