What Are Stereotypes?

Before we talk about racism we have to know about stereotypes and what is a stereotype in the definitive sense. According to the Webster dictionary it describes a stereotype as follows “to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same.” We learned very young that most people go into general categories whether it's by gender or color of our skin. The list is pretty endless when it comes to generalizing about people, but If I know it started really young. Who is to blame? According to the article “Helping Students Understand Stereotypes” it comes down to roughly three factors. Not knowing about somebody else's culture, media that feeds into the stereotype about others and whether or not you're open to other people's cultures. After reading this article it seemed pretty clear that what you've been exposed to dictates what you process about other people. The media plays an awfully big role about telling us what's appropriate and what's inappropriate by society's standards. Also if we never meet an Alaskan native before we might assume they live in igloos. It just all depends on what our surroundings are and what we have been exposed to in our lives. It’s dangerous to have racism for everybody. Racism in the United States has and still plays a major role, but where did the word racism come from? What are our …show more content…
Therefore, when reading the article “Has Racism Declined in America?” They picked white males and gave them a questionnaire about traditional values. When the facilitator was white they scored an average level on traditional values, but when the facilitator was black they scored much lower because they did not want to be perceived as racist (McConahay 565). It’s interesting just a change of person could change your answer on the test. What they don't mention in the study is each person’s temperament before the study