Intercultural Barriers in America

• Which intercultural communication barrier is most prevalent in America today?

The intercultural communication barrier that I believe is most prevalent in America today would be stereotyping and prejudice. When people stereotype others they assume that a person has certain characteristics and abilities that they believe all members of that group have. Many people use stereotypes to simplify their world and reduce the amount of processing and thinking they have to do when they meet a new person. Stereotyping makes people ignore the differences between others, as well. Then they end up thinking things about people that might not be true and make generalizations. Stereotypes also lead to social categorization, which is one of the reasons for prejudice attitudes. This is because most stereotypes tend to convey a negative impression (Beebe, Beebe & Redmond, 2008).

Stereotyping and prejudice happens every day in the United States. One example of stereotyping comes from a story I read about in my Cultural Diversity class. Although African Americans accounted for only 17 percent of the motorists on the New Jersey turnpike during a certain time period, they were 80 percent of the motorists pulled over. These occurrences gave rise to the charge that a new traffic offense was added to the books: DWB, or “driving while Black” (Schaefer, 2012, p. 42). Another example of stereotyping is racial profiling. A federal study made public in 2005 found that African Americans were twice as likely and Latinos were five times more likely to have their vehicles searched than whites. The likelihood of force being used against drivers was three times more likely with Latinos and Blacks than with White drivers. And after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States misgivings about Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. became extremely widespread. Foreign students from Arab countries were called upon for special questioning, and legal immigrants identified as Arab or Muslim were inspected for any illegal activity and were prosecuted for routine immigration violations (Schaefer, 2012, p. 43).

• Can it be eliminated? If so, how? If not, why?

While we have made many strides in the fight against stereotyping and prejudice over the years, I do not think it will ever be eliminated in the United States. One reason I say this is because prejudice is learned. The awareness that there are differences between people that society judges to be important begins at a young age. If a child’s friends and relatives say and do prejudiced things and they grow up around it, they will most likely turn out the same way. Newspapers, books, movies, television, and the Internet are also all capable of teaching prejudice.

There are many different reasons why people stereotype and are prejudiced against others, and these reasons will never go away. One reason is that there will always be people out there who blame other groups of people for their own problems. (This is also known as scapegoating.) Rather than accepting guilt for a failure, some people transfer the responsibility for that failure to a vulnerable group. Today in the United States, both legal and illegal immigrants often are blamed by “real” Americans for their failure to secure jobs or sought after housing, and it doesn’t seem like these feelings will ever completely go away (Schaefer, 2012, p. 38).

I think another reason stereotyping and prejudice will never be eliminated is because there will always be people who dislike what they don’t understand. The United States has citizens from many cultures, and each one has different languages, beliefs, customs, clothes, etc. they bring with them. Some people are very ignorant of other cultures and instead of taking the time and learning about them, they just write them off. As much as I would love to live in a country without prejudice, I unfortunately never see that actually happening.

References

Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. (2008). Interpersonal communication: Relating to others (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Schaefer, R. T. (2012). Racial and Ethnic Groups (13th ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.