Racial Stereotypes

Hi:) I wrote an essay on racial stereotypes in my English class and I wanted to share it.

Us people understand and acknowledge stereotypes, but many people do not know they are using stereotypes and how harmful stereotypes can be. A stereotype is an overgeneralized belief about a particular category of people, and yes, some stereotypes can be less harmful than others but most stereotypes that are used today are very such as racial stereotyping. Stereotyping is very biased and is based on one's opinion, there is a range of different type of stereotyping, there can be less harmful stereotypes such as the ones used in movies like jocks, cheerleaders, mean girls, and nerds, but the one I want to focus on today is racial stereotyping.

Racial stereotyping is where you base one person’s action from a cultural or ethnic group upon all from the same cultural or ethnic group, some examples of racial stereotypes that are still used today are Asian stereotypes - all Asians speak one language, can't see, all are very smart, only eat rice, only use chopsticks, etc African - American stereotypes - Live in poverty, involved in gang activity, have been or deserve to go to prison, no fathers, are not smart, good at sports, like watermelon, etc African stereotypes - Live in poverty, have no water, have no food, hunt every food they eat, have a lot of children, don't know how to speak English, etc. I cannot name all of them, but you should understand where I am going with racial stereotypes. Many of these racial stereotypes have manipulated some cultural and ethnic groups to believe the stereotypes are true, which has affected their way of thinking as it has set a mentality of they are what others say they are. A YouTube video by CNA insider (called Threat of Stereotypes) shows an experiment where they went under to experiment stereotypes upon African Americans, and the results have shown that the ones that indicated their race before the test performed poorly as their mind triggered the stereotypes to make them feel they will not succeed throughout the test, but for the ones that had indicated their race after the test performed successfully as there were no triggers of stereotypes. That can tell you how harmful racial stereotypes can be as they trigger people's minds into thinking they are what the stereotypes say instead of being who their out to be.

How is racial stereotyping harmful?

Racial stereotyping can be harmful in many ways as racial stereotyping is racist and holds discrimination. This type of stereotyping can be used on purpose by people in a psychological way to compel them into thinking the stereotypes are true, this can then harm them in the future as they may think they're not capable of doing things because of those stereotypes (as said in the paragraph before). Another way of why racial stereotyping is harmful is because people base one’s actions upon a whole range of people. After all, they are from the same ethnic group, cultural group, or even because they have the same skin colour, but their actions only affect them and not people that look the same as them. But because of this issue, many people that racial stereotype has made fun of others races and culture appropriate (an element of one culture or identity used by members of another culture or identity) and appropriating someone else’s culture just in lights the stereotypes that are placed upon many cultural and ethnic groups.

All in all, racial stereotyping should not be used by anyone and shouldn't be a thing where some people strongly believe that they are true. We can change this by understanding more of each other and accept the fact that we are all different and the world will always be diverse, and nothing can change that.

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