Racial Stereotypes Against African Americans

The world is full of many evils, including hate, war, discrimination, poverty etc, and though it is nowhere near as bad as it once was years ago it is still an issue for society today. The idea that an entire group of individuals who share similar characteristics are all the same is known as a stereotype (Kassin, Fein, Markus, Burke, 2013). There are several different stereotypes ranging from gender to race, age, social class, ethnicity, etc. Unfortunately far too often members of different social groups experience discrimination by people who are prejudice towards them because of their social group. The majority if not all people will experience some type of discrimination due to stereotyping throughout their lifetime. This also means

Every human being belongs to a specific type of race or possibly multiple races depending on his/her background. As a population, society views their fellow citizens according to their certain race. For some, culture and traditions of their own race means everything to them and these people are proud of who they are and where they come from. However, for some races their background and pride carries burdens. Although every race is known for distinct stereotypes, a few are worse than others and usually these stereotypes are not true. African Americans have suffered through discrimination for an extremely long time and even though it is not as severe as fifty years ago, stereotypes and racism still exists today. It becomes a fact that others

The thing is about races is that there’s so much stereotypes about them.

All Asians are good at math, all blondes are dumb, all Muslims are terrorists - these are all common stereotypes. Without even realizing it, stereotypes have undeniably played an enormous role in individual lives. Minds seem to already set a certain image in them based on the people they encounter. People judge others by their skin tone, ethnicity, and physical appearance unconsciously, and this have been proven by many social experiments. Of course, though these stereotypes might be accurate at times, there are situations where they are completely defied.

In today’s society, individuals and groups are labeled with either positive or negative stereotypes. People encounter stereotypes everyday and everywhere. It is the picture people paint in their minds when approaching a group or individual when in fact it may be different in reality. Stereotypes affect a person’s way of living and thinking either in a negative or positive way. Stereotypes are based on truth but in an exaggerated way, while misconceptions are formed from having stereotypes.

In 2009, my family moved from the city to the suburbs. A lot of the things changed for the better; safer neighborhoods, better schools . . . it had seemed as if we 'd made it.

Historically police officers and the excessive use of force has been a key tool used to disrupt the black community and promote fear amongst anyone who dear to speak out for equality. The same police force that were sworn to protect and uphold the law were the same officers who savagely beat African American citizens with billy clubs and tormented the community with attack dogs just because of the difference in skin color. According to Almalcar Scott “It was the police , for example, who held the fire hoes that mowed down civil rights protestors in the 1960”. In recent times the fire hoes has been replaced with fire arms and the force used to torment the community are officer related shootings. With the advancement of smart phones society

He wrote this piece to express his important opinion about the effect of racism and how he’s viewed as a man of color. He talks about his first encounter of racism when he was young man in college and was assumed to be a mugger or killer just because of skin. “It was in echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into the ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” I feel that the author is trying to connect to his vast audience of people who don’t understand what it is like to a black man in society. Later he contemplated that he rejected or shunned by the white race collectively as a dangerous man.

Stereotypes. They have attached themselves to you since birth, determined on how you look, how you act, your nationality, or the most common factor, the color of your skin. However, it’s not entirely the general populus’ fault. We put labels based on what we see. Things like television shows and movies contribute to this; whether it be a hispanic man portrayed as being illegal, or an asian man portrayed as an owner of a laundromat. Therefore, it is our view the negative stereotypes of African Americans in movies and TV shows has a impact on how they view themselves and can adversely affect their holistic development.

Stereotyping is a way of categorizing certain groups of people or types of individuals with regards to gender, race, culture, religion etc. Stereotyping arises from prior assumptions due to influences by the media, history and personal experience. The statement: “To gain an understanding of the world we need to make use of stereotypes,” appears that stereotyping is required in order to really understand the world, and knowledge issues can be drawn from this statement: Does stereotyping prevent us from knowing someone truly and how are stereotypes created in the first place? One way to examine and discuss the knowledge issues is to look at different areas of knowledge, which in our case will be History and Human Science.

There is a group that is frequently misrepresented and discriminated within American society. That group is the black community. African Americans, though having more rights than ever before, are still greatly stereotyped through media, in a negative and an undesirable manner. When I say the words African American most people think of crime, violence, drugs and watermelon, to name a few. “Straight Outta Compton” by the N.W.A. enforces the negative stereotype of African Americans through promoting narcotics, guns, and murder. Though within recent times, some media has begun to counter these negative portrayals of African Americans such as the hit T.V show “Empire” that effectively captures the success of the people within the black community.

Everyone that has ever existed has faced some kind of subjugation. Whether it be over gender, sexuality, religion, financial status, ethnicity, or color everyone is stereotyped. Some have more negative stereotypes than others, some just have ones that are neatraul. To dive down deeper into the understanding of different stereotypes, I asked a close friend some questions and compared them to the ones I face as a young woman. The answers were incredibly different, but so weren’t the effects which I expected to be the same. The friend that I interviewed was answering from the standpoint of being African-American, while I interviewed myself from the standpoint of being female and compared them. The outcome? Peculiar.

So this is something I am really going to talk about. The word Stereotype, don’t you just love the word? If you don’t know what stereotyping is, I will tell you (THIS IS MY OWN DEFINITION). When you stereotype, you are exaggerating an idea about a certain group. This is horrible because this is saying that everyone is a certain way; and they can’t be anything else. That is putting everyone in a certain category, making people feel isolated, especially if they are young.

National Security within the United States has been a concern since the 1930s and is only heightened during times of war. Naturally, due to the conflicts with particular countries, World War II and the Cold War created racial stereotypes. Unfortunately, those stereotypes lead to racially bias legal doctrines being created within the United States . The court was not alone in shaping these doctrines, as there was immense pressure from both public and military interests. Particular cases, during WWII and the Cold War, can give examples of how people shouldn’t be treated and how, at the time, every man and women wasn’t truly created equal within the United States, that the 14th amendment was a written law but not properly

When most races hear the words African American, negative thoughts rush to their brains. But why? Africans Americans have been perceived as negative characters to other races for decades. Individuals often forget large amount of blacks have been successful in life and still are accomplishing many things. Today, we live in a world where the bad outweighs the good. Because of this, many individuals of different races lack the knowledge that many blacks are actually achievers instead of failures. This is where stereotyping comes in. Many races focuses on the flaws of the African American culture without realizing we’re all not the same.