Ethnic stereotype
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An ethnic stereotype is a generalized representation of an ethnic group, composed of what are thought to be typical characteristics of the ethnic group. Most often, ethnic stereotypes are demeaning. However, they can also be positive, regardless of their accuracy. False ethnic stereotypes can gain acceptance as fact through frequent repetition. The use of stereotypes often leads to misunderstanding and hurt feelings, because they may be either untrue generalizations, truthful but unflattering generalizations, or truthful generalizations about a group which are untrue of any given member of a group.
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Common Ethnic Stereotypes
African Americans: A common stereotype of blacks in America is that they are lazy, violent, and uneducated. This stereotype is often confirmed by the low employment, high crime, and low high school graduation rates of African Americans, which can be caused by racism and poor economic standing, two problems that currently face African Americans.
White Americans: A common stereotype of white people in America is that of the WASP. In addition, minorities in America, particulary blacks, often accuse all white Americans of being racist or of having ancestor who owned slaves.
Some stereotypes, based on unbiased observations of actual behavior, can be accurate and useful:
- Japanese often bow when meeting others.
- Some cultures have a different conception of "personal space" than others. For instance, Latin Americans, Spaniards and Arabs tend to speak at a closer distance than Caucasian-Americans, British and Japanese; the latter group may consider this behavior offensive.
- Germans, Austrians and Swiss are punctilious, particularly about time. It is considered an insult to be even a few minutes late for an appointment.
Ethnic stereotypes are often described as either positive or negative. Negative stereotypes present negative generalizations of a group, which may or may not be accurate, and thus are usually viewed as offensive — in many cases, negative stereotypes are expressed in the form of jokes: Perhaps the best example in the United States of this phenomenon are the "Polish jokes" that have gained a certain level of proverbiality in American popular culture, virtually all of which characterize Poles or Polish-Americans as either being invariably deficient intellectually, possessed of poor hygenic habits, or both.
There are many other examples, lists of which can be found at the following articles:
Positive stereotypes describe positive generalizations of a group, which may or may not be accurate. They may also be viewed as offensive as they may be viewed as putting an unfair burden or expectation on the members of the group in question, especially those who do not fit the stereotype.
Examples of positive stereotypes:
- All Asian people (U.S. usage of Asian) are intelligent (Model minority).
These 'positive' stereotypes can also reinforce negative stereotypes of the same group. As for the Asians, their positive intellectual stereotype is often associated with the socially awkward nerd image, a negative stereotype in Western society.