Racial Prejudice : What Causes It?

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

First of all, stereotypes are destructive and prevent or discourage individual growth because it can cause violence and harm. For example,

Prejudice and discrimination can generate social and emotional tension amongst children and by not educating and teaching children the differences between other cultures and beliefs in a positive manner from an early age may lead to resentment and hostility in later life towards other cultures.

Faith: faith gives people spiritual beliefs and in influences their cultural traditions and what they celebrate. Discrimination can happen when people assume that their beliefs and practices based on their faith are the rights ones and that everyone should believe in and so the same as them

By stereotyping we infer that a person has a whole range of characteristics and abilities that we assume all members of that group have. Stereotypes lead to social categorisation, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes.

Stereotypes can be defined as sweeping generalizations about members of a certain race, religion, gender, nationality, or other group. They are made everyday in almost every society. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations. By stereotyping, we assume that a person or group has certain characteristics. Quite often, we develop these ideas about people who are members of groups with which we have not had firsthand contact. Stereotyping usually leads to unfair results, such as discrimination, racial profiling, and unnecessary violence, all behaviors which need to be stopped.

Children learn all of their core values and beliefs through their parents, so if their parents frequently have discussions about how all black people are criminals and do drugs, then the child will form their own opinions of black people based on what their parents think and that is how stereotypes are reproduced. The stereotype was reproduced and transferred from the parent to the child, but children also learn stereotypes through their peers. Stereotypes affect how we see and interact with others; for example, if a white person was seated by a Muslim man on an airplane they might feel slightly uncomfortable because society has stereotyped all Muslim people as potential terrorists that hate Americans because of incidents like 9/11 and fear of ISIS. Our brain develops these “mental short-cuts” (Jacobs: 2014) almost subconsciously to detect possible threats, assuming that people are associated with their negative stereotype.

In today’s society it has become a norm to make assumptions of an individual and categorize them into groups that fit them. This would be known as stereotyping, and it occurs everyday and almost everywhere. It can affect someone’s everyday life along with their emotions. A stereotype is a widely held idea or image of a a group of people and is based off of some truth, while misconceptions are based off no evidence at all. Stereotypes can either be positive or negative. Stereotypes exist because that’s how the human brain functions, they see something that repeats within a group of people and that’s how stereotyping begins. An example of a positive stereotype would be that African-Americans are very athletic. However, there can be some negative

Stereotypes is a big problem in the world. Social class isn't fair because doesn't define who you are as a person. Bad stuff doesn't always happen to bad people it also happens to good people. Life isn't fair bad things happen to everyone. Bad stuff happens to everyone, good or bad.

Some researchers claim that “Racial stereotypes can be positive since they help us in guiding and shaping our attitudes and behaviors toward other people, basically providing us with conscious awareness of differences in race.” However, there are many other researchers who have concluded that racial stereotyping leads to systematic discrimination.

Devine (1989) argues that stereotypes are inevitable on the basis that stereotypes and prejudice coexist and that stereotyping occurs automatically. Devine attempts to prove this hypothesis in three experiments. Devine reasons that “as long as stereotypes exist, prejudice will follow.” This hypothesis is rooted in a correlation. Prejudice and stereotypes are related, however there is no clear evidence of causality; Knowledge of a stereotype does not mean an individual agrees with it.

Some physician's are African-American while most are caucasian but in today's society most are from India or other countries, especially the specialists. While most doesn't mind the different races some do and will not send you to those types of people. Maybe a patient only wants to see a certain type of race considering their age and how they were raised.

Stereotypes is one of the most common causes of racism. Through radio, through television, through the internet, through music, through books, and many alike, the real potential for stereo types to arise are an inevitable possibility. Parents, willingly or not, expose and teach their children, subconsciously, by saying statements and/or watching programs that involve racism. When there is a constant source of negativity towards a certain race, then it will eventually effect the overall opinions of the populous. (The 4)

Although prejudice and stereotype seem similar, they actually have two different meanings. While stereotyping involves the generalization of a group of people, prejudice involves negative feelings when “they” are in the presence of or even think about members of the group. “Prejudice comes from direct intergroup conflict, social learning, social categorization and other cognitive sources” (Ferguson). Not all stereotypes are negative; there are also positive and neutral stereotypes. Some stereotypes do not slander a race, culture, gender, or religion, but nonetheless generalize a group of people that may or may not be true. For example, some people say that all Asians are smart or good at math. Though people of Asian descent may often be more studious, not all Asians do equally well in school (Floyd, 62). Another common example of a positive stereotype is that all black people are good athletes, dancers, and singers. Though these are positive stereotypes, when people believe them, they don’t take into account that every person is an individual and different. A neutral stereotype

The presences of stereotypes are overwhelming and are developed by both the environment a subject is raised in and their family. Stereotypes, which are pervasive throughout different societies, become intertwined in the collective values of the society as justification for all forms of social, economic, and political inequality among groups (Devine and Elliot 2000;Kaplan 2004; Operario and Fiske 2004). As people become more exposed to stereotypes they start to become a permanent part of a person’s life, they begin to stereotype themselves almost always involuntarily.