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Introduction
What are racial stereotypes?
According to the OXFORD Advanced Learners Dictionary, "race is any of the groups into which humans can be divided according to their physical characteristics, for example colour of skin, colour and type of hair, shape of eyes and nose" (Hornby, 1995, p.956).
According to Lhamon, the term stereotype was developed in 1798. At the time, "two European printers invented a new method to reproduce images that would fix them permanently. The image-setting process was called stereotyping" (Lhamon, 2002). Now, from the OXFORD Advanced Learner's Dictionary, "stereotype is a fixed idea or image that many people have of a particular type of person or thing, but which is often not true in reality" (Hornby, 1995, p. 1169).
In brief, racial stereotypes are automatic and simplified mental pictures of all members for a particular racial group. According to the University of Notre Dame Counselling Centre, when people hold stereotypes based on race, people usually ignore individual differences. (University Counselling Centre, 2000) "Racial steretypes are often negative". The result of a nationwide survey showed that Blacks, Asians and Hispanics were considered poorer, lazier, more violence prone, less intelligent, less patriotic and less willing to be self supporting than whites (Tan, Fujioka, and Lucht, 1997, p.265).
What caused racial stereotypes?
It is human nature to classify people into different groups, which is one way of making a complex world simpler. During the growing process, one's classification basis is progressively influenced by his or her family, peers, and the media. As they grow older, people gradually tend to label different racial groups by his or her classification basis (University Counselling Centre, 2000).
Today, the media plays a significant role in forming people's racial stereotypes. According to social cognitive learning principles, because most people do not have too many opportunities to contact with other races in understand settings, "it is easier to observe minority groups in a wide range of situations in television portrayals" (Tan, Fujioka, and Lucht, 1997, p.269). Common Racial Stereotypes
Afican American
A survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Centre, asked 1,200 Americans such questions as:
"Do people in these groups tend to be unintelligent or tend to be intelligent?"
"Do people in these groups tend to be hard-working or tend to...