Racist Vs Stop Stereotypes Essay

“I am not racist” and “Stop stereotyping people” are two examples of statements we are used to hearing these days in both our daily life and in the media. Racism, in general stereotypes, is a widespread phenomenon that exists within every group and subgroup. We tend to say that stereotypes are bad as they aren’t based on facts so they can cause discrimination. However, in everyday life stereotypes make it easier to understand and react to a new situation. What are stereotypes? Does it have advantages as well as disadvantages? How should we use it?

Stereotypes are the belief that certain attitudes are characteristics of members of a particular group (Aronson, 2017) as the belief that the royal family is formal and reserved. On the other hand, racism is a belief that certain attitudes are directed to a certain racial group so it is one type of stereotype. Generally, racism, sexism and any type of stereotype contain both positive and negative feature so “all white people are racist” and “white people are hard workers” are racist (stereotyped) statements. The issue with stereotyping is that it is not based on fact so there's a high chance that it doesn’t reflect the reality.
Stereotypes are useful when we are exposed to a new situation and we don’t have time to get a real impression so we need to make fast decisions and snap judgments.
For instance, if you have never met a member of the royal family before and you have to act appropriately without knowing them well, you might stereotype them as being formal and reserved. As a result of that stereotype, you will respond respectfully and formally (Slinger, 2012). In that example, you had to make a snap judgment before knowing that person and their attitudes. In my opinion, if you have a positive stereotype towards a group and you need a snap judgment in a specific situation, using stereotypes will be
useful.

On the other side of the argument, stereotypes can be devastating as we don’t usually have positive stereotypes towards each group. Therefore, judging someone based on your stereotypes and acting accordingly might misguide because their attitude can totally different from your prejudgment. That can result in you offending them or belittling them. For instance, your Asian friend offered to drop you to your destination and you stereotype Asians as bad drivers. You would reject that offer which offends him as he can be a good driver but the stereotypes don’t care about individual differences.

All in all, stereotypes are a worldwide phenomenon and is part of our daily life as it exists among all cultures and subcultures. Because of what we hear in the media, we can easily claim that stereotypes are bad although they have relative merits and harms.In my opinion, the snap judgment that people make towards others is helpful for us at the time it can be destructive to the stereotyped group. I believe researchers should focus more on studying how we should use stereotypes to get their benefits and avoid their harm.