Racial Stereotypes

As long as one group stereotypes another, that group is usually stereotyped itself.  The two most prominent groups mentioned in many discussions about ethnicity in America are blacks and whites, both of which face their own miscellaneous prejudices and opportunities because of the color of their skin.  It is rare to hear the common person describe whites as recipients of racism, but, while the stereotypes assigned to whites may not always be as slanderous or damaging as those assigned to blacks, there are certainly those who make moral assumptions about whites based on their ethnicity.

One of the first steps to disarming racial tensions is admitting that everyone can be victimized by stereotypes, even if different individuals suffer because of them to different extents.  Another vital step is admitting that a person's moral character, worldview, and psychological traits are not tied to the color of their skin in any way.  Even if a certain ethnicity genuinely was associated with a certain behavior, skin color would not be the reason for this correlation.  Rather, individual and social factors would be, as a simple logical analysis confirms.

Black people are not prone to drug abuse, violence, and general crime; white people are not prone to racism towards other ethnicities, arrogance, or general "craziness."  The same is true of whatever other stereotypes are applied to blacks, whites, and any other ethnicity.  The only way to sincerely believe or suggest such a thing is to commit a series of non sequitur fallacies: one would have to either make a blatant assumption based on a person's skin color or make an assumption about someone based on the actions of another member of their ethnicity.

To think that there is even a slight connection between merely being black or white and having certain beliefs, personality traits, talents, or behavioral tendencies is as racist as believing in gender stereotypes is sexist.  No beliefs or actions come about simply because someone is of a certain ethnicity, skin color, or national background.  Every individual acts as they do because they are expressing themselves in some way, because they have succumbed to social conditioning, or because of a mixture of both.

Ironically, racial stereotypes are at least usually viewed by many Westerners as more offensive than gender stereotypes (despite the latter representing a more fundamental and widespread set of errors), yet they still endure.  Common attitudes towards and ideas about race are generally far better than those described from the vast majority of the 1900s, and this is a great victory from the standpoint of Biblical ethics.  Still, there are plenty of examples of obvious biases for or against blacks and whites (other ethnic groups as well, but some of the most commonly referenced are blacks and whites), and the power of racism has not been abolished until there are none.