Racism and Stereotypes 1

I haven't blogged for a long time. I wrote this for my Psychology of Minority Groups class. I thought , why not put it up on my blog.

In class this week I learned that there were many stereotypes that could be applied to people of different color. There were many more stereotypes that the class did not even think of. When we were making a list of stereotypes for people of different color, I realized that many of the stereotypes under one column could also be applied to another column. For example, under the column for black, it said “Have lots of flow and can dance very well”. I thought about it and realized that this could also be applied to the brown, yellow, and even the red column. There were many stereotypes like this, which made me question why this stereotype was only applied to the black column. I think most of these stereotypes were developed when one ethnic group saw that another ethnic group was doing something different or looked different. This may be because of ethnocentrism. Many people might have thought their ethnic group was at the center of all others. If many ethnic groups from different parts of the world thought their ethnic group was the best, it would result in prejudices, conflict, and ultimately, stereotypes.
          I also noticed that some of the stereotypes the class came up with were very specific and only applied to one column. I noticed that it said, "Own Casinos" under the red column. Some of the stereotypes that were very specific were probably true. Not all red people have Casinos, but a small group of them do. I don't know a lot about other countries and if they have casinos or not, but I know that in the U.S. Native Americans are the only people allowed to have casinos. Another reason why some stereotypes were specific might be because they applied to a large percentage of the population. For example, "White people can't dance" was under the white column. There are many white people that can dance very well, but a large percentage of white people probably cannot dance. This might have caused people to make assumptions and judge people based on their color. After a period of time, this stereotype developed and people started to use it directly toward white people. This stereotype did not appear in any other of the columns not because all black, brown, yellow, and red people can dance, but because a large percentage of those people could dance, and a low percentage of them could not. I am Chinese, and I cannot dance, but there are not any stereotypes targeted against me because there are many more yellow people that can dance. This shows that many stereotypes are specific to one ethnic group because they are, in part, true.
            Some of the stereotypes the class came up with didn't make much sense to me. One of them was, “Black people like Kool-Aid and watermelon.” This one stood out to me because it seemed like it applied mostly to black people in America. There are a lot more black people in Africa, than there are in America. The people in Africa probably don't even know what Kool-Aid is. Africa is the second most populous nation in the world with almost a billion people living there. Many of those people have never tasted watermelon. I think this stereotype of black people liking Kool-Aid and watermelon is not very accurate. This is similar to a scientist looking at how tall ten people are to get an average. This would be a very small sample size to look at. This is what people are doing when they start making up stereotypes. They only look at what is in front of them, they do not dig deeper and find out more about something that is foreign to them. Another stereotype that did not make much sense to me was, “Asian people can’t drive”. This did not make much sense to me because, Asia is the biggest continent on Earth and to say that Asian people can’t drive seems a bit strange. In addition, most of the cars in the U.S. were developed in Asian countries like Japan and Korea. So basically, millions of people in the U.S. are driving cars made by people who cannot drive. It sounds like a contradiction to me and does not make sense. Although there were many stereotypes that might have had some truth in them, there were also many that did not many any sense at all.

So far, I think this class is great. I love the different conversations we have, and how it can be funny and

interesting and still relate to the subject of the class. This class is by far, the best college class (out of three) that I’ve taken so far.