Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele
In Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us, social psychologist Claude Steele helps us find answers to questions about stereotypes based on findings from social psychology experiments. His book sets forth an argument for understanding how contextual factors as well as individual characteristics or personal beliefs motivated by prejudice and malice in education and ongoing societal racial and ethnic segregation. Steele explains how identity contingencies—the conditions that a given social identity forces us to face and overcome in a particular setting—affect our everyday behavior and our society as a whole. Expanding on the topic he focuses on a specific type of identity contingency: stereotype threat, or the fear of what people could think about us solely because of our race, gender, age, etc. An example of this type of identity contingency is how African American males are perceived as violent and uneducated. To deflect this stereotype, Steele recounts a time that Brent Staples whistled Vivaldi while walking the streets of Hyde Park at night to signal to white people that he was educated and nonviolent. Claude M. Steele is an American social psychologist and…show more content… Providing his readers with personal encounters and also opening their eyes to the threats that different ethnic groups face every single day. Whistling Vivaldi provides how different groups, though they are from different cultures and backgrounds, can have different experiences but in the same situation. Steele’s book also speaks of a plan to eliminate the negative effects of those stereotype threats. The book’s audience is worldwide and everyone can come together and relate because it’s something that most, if not all, face judgement and stereotypes every single
