eople. I have hadlimited contact with members of this group due to the way America looks at itselderly. My generalizations of this group include a lot of generalizations that mayother Americans hold. I look at elderly as being old and not capable of performingin a constructive manner. I generalize them all to be living off the Social Securitythat I have paid in. I also think that they all just ramble about insignificantthoughts.Many elderly are very capable of performing in many aspects of life. Thereare many elderly that work, travel, and engage in serious talk. Many elderly alsohave valuable knowledge that they have acquired throughout their life. The mediaagain plays a part in the generalizations that I hold about elderly. Generalizations are often times based upon ignorance about a certain groupof people based on limited exposure, heresy, media, and various other sources. Ithink that as long as there are people of different backgrounds, there will bestereotypes and generalizations. By evaluating the reasons an individual holdsthese beliefs about others, researchers can find ways to teach people about variousgroups.I think that if I were to work in a field such as social work, I would have themost trouble working with individuals with the AIDS virus. I do not feel that Iharbor any negative generalizations towards AIDS patients as a whole; however,the terminality of a life with AIDS does scare me. Researching the topic of AIDShas prompted me to believe that AIDS will touch the professional lives of almostall social workers before they retire. (Shernoff, 1990)The number of cumulative AIDS cases in the United States alone by the endof 1989 was estimated to exceed 100,000, and, by the end of 1991, between300,000 to 400,000. It is estimated that there are more than 1.5 million people inthe United States infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (Heyward &Curran, 1989), and this number is still growing. Whole families of intravenous...
