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Racial Stereotype

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Submitted By saakshi
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Racial Stereotype in Society ‘A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing’. This is the definition of stereotype in a dictionary. To begin with my article I thought it’s important for me to give the exact definition of what a stereotype means. Coming back to my definition, stereotype in simple words refers to classifying objects and people based on certain attributes and characteristics such as race, nationality, gender to name a few. When we look at it this way, stereotype doesn’t have a negative connotation attached to it since it is only helping such classify things and people simply. We can always argue that a structured society with distinctly classified people and objects is much better than looking at this world as a ball of chaos. This is how the word ‘stereotype’ initially developed and the aim was only to give certain attributes and characteristics to people who were similar to each other. However, in the modern day, the notion of stereotype has changed dramatically. The reason why stereotype stemmed originally has been given a different dimension altogether. We call this the ‘negative stereotype’. Negative stereotype essentially means when you attach certain ‘personality traits’ to someone which is exaggerated or farfetched from reality. It is when you tend to attach personal attributes of a person to the overall characteristic of a particular ethnic society or a nationality. It is then stereotype becomes a problem. There is a very fine line between grouping a section of people based on their overall visible attributes and discriminating them based on their personality traits on an individual level. It is when this line is ignored that stereotype emerges in a negative light. I am going to focus on one type of stereotype- Racial stereotype. Racial stereotype is often misleading representation of

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