Stereotypes

Spike Davis, a native of Louisville, grew up in heart of the mid south during a very tumultuous time in our nation’s history. Forced busing or “desegregation” was sweeping through this southern town in the late 70’s while he was attending elementary school. Schools in Louisville were segregated up to that point until a court order forced schools to be integrated.

There was hostile resistance, violence, injuries and arrest each and every day during the early years of desegregation. The bus that Spike rode to school on had to be escorted by armed National Guard Troops as rocks and bottles from angry parents pelted the windows each morning and afternoon. Children, like Spike at the time, that had never known or hung around people from other races were now seated next to them daily. Parents were up in arms over this, but why? What made the parents of these students so upset and uneasy?

The word stereotyping is the main culprit. It’s nothing more than preconceived notions about another group of people without facts to back up that opinion. In other words stereotyping had taken over the minds of probably normally rational thinking people so much so that they began to lash out. Although most parents hated the idea of busing kids across town, the result helped bring about change in race relations in that small town.

To this day we all have made life-long friends based on the experience of being exposed to people of other racial backgrounds. We have at the very least learned to work with and or tolerate people from other backgrounds just because we were forced to experience each other first hand. We were able to form our own opinions based on first-hand knowledge and not from what someone else had fed to us.

Stereotypes, prejudice, and racism are all cousins (very ugly cousins) and Spike has found a way to poke fun at all of them in his outrageously funny lecture series call Stereotypes “dispelling the myths through laughter”.