Negative stereotyping and its impact on African Americans

Minority Groups and Stereotypes

Stereotyping of racial groups is common throughout the world. Positive stereotyping helps even the non-deserving members of the racial groups. Negative stereotyping has even a worse effect. The negative stereotype image holds back the progress of the community and creates disillusionment and despair among the racial group. This 'guilty until proven innocent' attitude has negatively affected the American blacks' progress, their job opportunity and their integration as an equal member of the American Society. American blacks have to work harder to break the taboo of the negative stereotype.

Awareness of the unconscious stereotyping may help in reduction of the affects on black Americans, but in the end only hard work and progress of American blacks in the non-stereotype areas will finally kill the negative stereotyping.

INTRODUCTION

If you happen to be a young bearded Pakistani carrying a backpack in the underground 'tube' station' in London, your chances of being stopped and searched as a potential bomber are close to cent-percent. No doubt that young British born Pakistanis would be extremely annoyed at this stereotyping.

When IRA was waging a war against the British, it was convenient to keep an eye on the Catholics from Northern Ireland instead of watching both Catholics and Protestants as potential bombers. The truth is that Protestants were not setting up bombs in English pubs and from purely a logistics point it did make sense to isolate a smaller group for specific watch. Passengers profiling of Muslims and Arabs coming into U.S. is an indignity suffered by passengers with Muslim names. Very soon it would be like stereotyping when very ethnic Arab would be Osama. The war on terrorism is creating new stereotypes all over the world.

If you need to find a stupid-character for a joke a dumb blond would do. In India you can use a Sikh; Irish are the replacement for the character in England. It is a fact that we have created stereotypical images of different ethnic groups. A Chinese friend of my father gleefully described how he scared away six large Frenchmen in a sleazy French clubs area by adopting a Karate posture, all Chinese 'knew' Karate then.

Stereotyping has been practiced all around the world and some of the stereotyping is so pleasant that it does not harm the ethnic group. 'Asians are good at Mathematics stereotyping will probably be appreciated by most Asian students apart from the ones who are poor in the subject and are told that 'but Asians are so good at Math's.

My ethnic group is 'black'. American-Blacks have been in United States for almost as long as the Caucasians but unfortunately most of the initial blacks came into United States, not in search of the Promised Land, but as forced labor bound in chains to work as slaves on plantations and laborers in other areas. Not all American-blacks, of course came into United States as slaves, many came after the abolition of slavery, but the black identification is from the days of slavery. The stereotypical image of the black population still has the remnants of their 300 years history in United States. This long period of history means that American blacks are now recognized as Americans and no one talks about sending them 'back home' like racist parties in Europe demanding to send back the Turkish-German, Algerian-French and British-Indians back to their Parents or grand parent's countries.

Black Americans are well distributed throughout United States. Most live in urban areas. Throughout the history of United States American blacks have been the subject of discrimination against them. The result is that even now when the laws forbid any kind of discrimination American blacks racial group is at the bottom rung of prosperity.

Majority of American Blacks are poor, living in urban slum, a significant proportion of American blacks used to leave school without any diploma due to social problems of poverty. The end of discrimination laws has helped in a positive change in the state of American Blacks. American blacks are now working as lawyers, university professionals, doctors, engineers and in all major professions. The present and last Secretaries of State belong to American-black racial group. The negative stereotypical image of American-Blacks has however not recognized the progress made during the last 40-50 years and overall negative stereotyping continues to this day.

On the positive stereotype side American blacks are considered good sportsmen/women and excellent in music and performing arts. This positive image has helped American- blacks thrive in these professional areas. It therefore follows that the negative image in other field is hindering progress of Black Americans and keeping them trapped into the cycle of poverty, crime and drugs.

ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

It is clear that black community in United States has considerable stereotyping problem. It is a credit to black community that despite all the hurdles placed in their development, Americans blacks have been able to progress to the extent they have. The present day anti-race discrimination regulations have required considerable struggle on the part of blacks and other members of human community. Repealing of segregation laws, laws for equality of races have opened new opportunities for development for American blacks. The dream of Dr. King that one should be judged on the content of one's character and not the color of one's skin will remain a dream until the stereotyping mentality changes to let people be given an opportunity to develop without the stigma of the stereotypes attached to their race.

Three hundred years of black history has left them on the bottom rung of prosperity. The poor people every where in the world, without any regard to color of their skin, are busy in the battle of survival. Petty crime, finding refuge in drugs and other baggage of poverty is common among all poor sections of the society throughout the world. The problem is that in United States, the poverty has been associated with the black race and the stereotypes of poverty are holding the blacks American from coming out of the shackles of poverty.

Recent floods in New Orleans showed the effect of a natural disaster on the poor sections of New Orleans community. Unable to pay for the hotels away from the disaster zone, the poor chose to stay in the last resort refuge of the dome and other places declared as refuges. The mismanagement of disaster relief compounded the misery of these refugees to the extent that water and food shortages created panic among the refugees. The criminal elements among the poor deemed it correct to break into the shops and get food and water among other things from the supermarkets. The scene is what one would expect from any disaster affected poor community. The problem is that vast majority of the New Orleans poor were blacks (like in all other regions of United States), they could not escape the troubled area and were made to suffer for their poverty. While overwhelming majority just pleaded for 'Help' in front of the TV cameras, the tiny minority of looters reinforced the stereotypical image of black Americans. The media openly accused the government of mismanagement and one reason cited for the negligent behavior was that vast majority of the affected were blacks.

United States is a rich country, richest in the whole world. We go in all corners of the world to help the poor, impose our version of democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries and spend billions and trillions on these noble endeavors. The plight of poor, the blacks, the Hispanics however goes unnoticed. The truth is that America has failed to develop a social support system for the unemployed, the sick and the poor, while this type of system work across the border in Canada and also in Western Europe. The reason of this negligent behavior might lie in the racial origin of the poor.

There is an urgent need to pay attention to the plight of the poor, better housing, and investment in upgrading the urban slums, better health care and creation of job opportunities will help break the cycle of poverty. Poverty alone can be blamed for many of the social evils such as broken families, high divorce rates, uncared and unloved children, drugs and violence. If America does not invest in improving the lot of the poor it will just be compounding the social problems resulting from the vast differences among the rich and poor.

The capitalist economy likes to maintain an 'acceptable' level of unemployment to oil the wheels of its economy, to keep the wages at a low level. Unfortunately the blacks and Hispanics are the ones who have to pay for this desire of capitalist economy. The problems of poverty confinement to a few racial groups not only results in stereotyping of racial groups but also sours the inter-race relations.

The current problems in France, where minority racial groups are playing hide and seek with the police and setting up property on fire is just a manifestation of years of neglect of the poor [ABC News, 13 November 2005]. The French government appears to have recognized that the unemployment in racial ghettos is largely responsible for this expression of anger. The EEC is willing to release 1 billion Euros to improve employment of the poor; the French government is planning similar measures. United States will have to put its own house in order and heavily invest in improving the life of its poor.

Awareness is an important element in making people conscious of the normal human instinct of typecasting. Anti-discrimination laws have done a great deal to improve the situation for minorities, women and handicapped persons. Improving awareness to remove the subconscious racial profiling and stereotyping will help remove the effects of unconscious stereotyping.

As regards the American blacks, they must appreciate that the race discrimination, the stereotype imaging, the drawbacks of being a part of the racial group will not go away by our wishing to do so. The end of discrimination laws came as a result of political struggle. The end of negative stereotype will come from hard work, education and improving our lot.

The conditions now exist where the blacks can come out of the shackles of poverty. As black Americans gradually move into the higher income strata, become educated and a larger proportion of them are seen to be a departure from the stereotype image the stereotyping would eventually collapse. Our both Black Secretaries of State are from privileged black families, they definitely did not face the difficulties of being poor blacks, but they acknowledge the struggle they had to make to prove themselves worthy of the position they occupied. They probably did work harder then members of other races. These role models are helping breakdown the stereotype image that exists in people's mind. Women also had to work hard to prove themselves equal to men in all walks of life. Sex discrimination act has provided the basis to demand their rightful place. The stereotyping applicable to women still creates jokes regarding their ability to handle tasks due to their feminine aspects.

Stereotyping, especially negative stereotyping is responsible considerable harm to the black community. This cycle can only be broken by creating awareness to only a small extent, hard work and visibility of American blacks in professional positions that defy the stereotype image will eventually destroy the stereotype image.