What Is Racial Stereotyping?

People have been put into categorizes all their lives by individuals and society based on features or aspects. As people are grouped into different categories, ideals of their character and personality based on just those categories. This is called stereotyping, Stereotypes has affected people of different races, and ethnicities. The overall issue with racial stereotyping is over generalization and discrimination which comes from implicit biases and stereotype threat. This can be seen throughout history such as slavery to today in media and academics. The overall issue with stereotypes is overgeneralization which leads to the lack of individualism. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, stereotypes are defined as “an often unfair and untrue

Implicit biases are “the automatic association of stereotypes or attitudes with particular social groups” (Godsil, Rachel D.). These thoughts are on the unconscious plane, not the conscious one. Everyone has implicit biases. Implicit biases are made up from all the interactions in every day to day life.The IAT (Implicit Association Test) can show how different racial groups are associated good or bad. The IAT is a test where the participant is given a photo of something pleasant or not pleasant or a person of different racial groups then they have to put that picture to the corresponding categories (Staats, Cheryl). The first round follows the stereotype of the race (ex. African American - Bad and European American - Good) then the second round follows the counter-stereotype (ex. African American - Good and European American - Bad); the reaction time to put them the right categories is measured (Staats, Cheryl). According to the Washington Post, most of America scored prefered moderately white. This illustrates the racial implicit bias is still Caucasians dominates the racial preference and African American still has negative stereotypes associated with them which causes discrimination. Negative stereotypes can appear in people’s live by the stereotype

Slavery was the initial cause for the stereotypes for African American. Because African Americans were the targeted group, they were perceived to be primal and dangerous which caused the start of stereotypes of African Americans. An example of this is early movies like “Birth of the Nation”, portrays African Americans savage, ape-like people (Green, Laura). Additionally, with pop culture influencing people, it became a stereotype as it became the coming knowledge back then. Immigrants had the same thing happen to them. Immigrants went through the same stereotypes as the White race was considered above the other races. While stereotypes have calmed down since then, they are still being portrayed in media and pop