Dreaming of No Judgment: Mi Pleito Against Stereotypes
(2008-9)

Our research focuses on how stereotypes about immigrants affect high school students and their community. We investigated the question: What are the emotional and economic impacts of stereotypes on immigrant communities? We think this research is important because many people are not aware of how stereotypes affect the community.

We conducted focus groups with high school students who shared stories about stereotypes and immigration that offer different perspectives on this complex issue.
Our findings speak to the painful and contradictory position of students of color:
On the one hand, the young people we spoke with felt oppressed by the stereotypes and sometimes expressed losing hope and wanting to give up.
On the other hand, the young people we spoke with wanted to challenge the stereotypes that were laid on them and this gave them the strength to go on. In this case, the students
wanted to prove the stereotypes wrong. The students’ stories also demonstrated the economic impacts of stereotypes on their community: including police, housing, and job discrimination.

One of the goals of our project is to reaffirm that young people of color have a voice and can talk back to the ways they are stereotyped.

Watch: Dreaming Of No Judgement