Racial Stereotypes: A Case Study

An experience I have picked for this assignment is something that happened to me when I was in high school. I was minding my own business standing around when an African American student who I knew and was in the same grade as me approached me. He asked me, "What kind of Asian are you?" I replied saying that I was Vietnamese. He then told me that he thought I was Chinese, and then asked, "Aren't you all the same? What's the difference?" I then explained to him the cultural differences and practices between each type of Asian. He then said, "Still all the same to me." At this point, I was annoyed, and slightly angry. I said to him then, "Aren't you blacks all the same to since all of you commit crimes?" I obviously didn't mean what I said, but …show more content…
Was his question genuine, or was he simply trying to insult me? Why did I react the way I did when I got annoyed and l responded with a negative racial stereotype? This is a common problem with race relations in American, as say for example, African Americans like to make stereotypical jokes towards Caucasians and everyone laughs, but when Caucasians make stereotypical jokes towards African Americans, everyone berates the Caucasians. Why do we make these jokes, why are some acceptable, and some are not, why is does this double standard exist? How do people feel labeling stereotypes towards others, and how do others feel having stereotypes labeled on …show more content…
I put positive with quotation marks, as I view positive racial stereotypes as an oxymoron, and are actually negative stereotypes in of itself. For example, there is the stereotype that African Americans are athletic, or Asians are intelligent. These may sound like positive associations, however, if someone does not fit this "positive" stereotype, they are questioned by their peers of their ethnic identity. "Are you really Asian?", "Are you sure you are black?", is what you would hear if you were an Asian who did not perform academically well, or an African American who did not excel athletically. These expectations exert a social pressure on minorities and do more harm than good. Granted, racial stereotypes are wrong, but we cannot ignore the fact that some are worse than others. For negative stereotypes, some are more worse than others depending on the situation, as what determines how negative a stereotype is, is how much it intends to disvalue a person/group. The negative stereotype of Latinos being lazy, or Asians being asocial sound nowhere near as derogative as "all blacks commit crimes". This discrepancy of some stereotypes in certain minority groups being much more derisive than others lies in the fact that certain minority groups in history have been more oppressed than others. These negative historical associations with these groups have been culturally imbued into American society, and