Week 6: Stereotypes/Prejudice

Article Title: Common Racial Stereotypes
Article URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=639338311&Fmt=3&clientId=8991&RQT=309&VName=PQD

The article I chose to read for this week’s discussion was about racial stereotyping. The author chooses the Oxford Dictionary definition to define a stereotype and then explains how people do that to entire ethnic groups. People will associate certain features or characteristics of one or a few people to an entire ethnic group. They will portray that image onto others of the same ethnicity without counting each person’s individuality. The sad thing is racial stereotypes are often negative. The author points out well known stereotypes about certain ethnicities and the negativity of the general public toward minorities and ethnic groups especially. A few examples he uses are ones we already heard, like “Native Americans are Alcoholics…Asian kids are nerds…Arabs are terrorists…African Americans are criminals”. All of these things sound completely absurd but a large part of the population tends to fall for these stereotypes and that’s why they’re well known to all of us. I really liked this article and believed it was very effective and perfect for this week’s topic. The author’s organization moves from the definition of stereotypes, into how they are applied to cultural groups, to what causes them, and then to what kinds of stereotypes we are familiar with. So what does cause racial stereotypes? It is said to be a communication barrier that two people from different cultures have between each other often causing misunderstanding and frustration. The differences in customs makes people believe that all of the people from the opposite group are the same, denying each person’s uniqueness. The most effective part of this article I thought was the steps the author advises people to take to avoid stereotyping. In these steps, all the problems where stereotypes come from can be addressed. They are, in order, Awareness, Saying, Education, Overseeing, and Conclusion. We need to be aware of the problems with the stereotypes we hear, we need to correct someone when we hear them saying something to stereotype, we need to educate ourselves of different cultures and add that into the public school curriculum, we need to oversee the misrepresentations in the media, and we need to conclude that although its human nature to want to judge other races, we need to check ourselves by using the previous steps. (377)