Stereotyping and Prejudice

After reading Devine and Wicks I came to the realization that racism will never go away and we do not live in a post race society. The reason why we have stereotypes is because of cultural racism because we think if a certain group of people act negatively it is part of the culture and we account that for all people who are part of that race. When asked in the Devine article many people thought that African Americans were hostile and aggressive. We think that way from stories that we hear in the media and what they want to tell us. A lot of the stereotypes we hear about people allows us to make mental schemas where people organize information and place people in categories. This then becomes part of event schema where we file it away in our brain and when we get reminded of that same situation in the news it justifies our way of thinking that African Americans are hostile and like violence. Stereotypes of other races also justifies whiteness and white privilege. Whenever we hear stereotypes they are mostly about other races they are often about them being inferior to whites. Whenever we hear about white stereotypes they are often implement that whites have privilege to do what they please without any consequences. This often justifies our person schema when we hear these racial stereotypes because we are able to file away these behaviors and whenever we see a person acting out that stereotype it helps reinforcing our schemata that we made about that group of people. Whenever we see people who do not follow a certain stereotype we find them as the exception to the rule and we will not change the way we see a certain group of people. 

Having stereotypes and schemas enforces racial inequality among people and that when we see a person of a certain race that fits into our schemas in our brain that we label others like them. It is often hard to break these schemas and with the constant reinforcement of stereotypes we will always have the schemas that people of different races will always be inferior to the white race. This is because we do not have many stereotypes bashing white people enforcing white privilege.