Stereotypes

Stereotypes

A World without Racism

Racism has a long and dark history of repetitive prejudices. To put these ridiculous prejudices into perspective, the origins of recorded racism actually begin from misinterpretations of the bible. The story goes that Ham, the son of Noah, was cursed with black skin after dishonoring his father in which Noah cursed Ham’s descendants stating they would be “servants of servants”. This was used as an excuse by some religious people, and sometimes even included middle easterners. Muslim scholars were then documented writing on the state of African living as “less than human” and Muslims felt that Africans were best suited for slavery. Fast forward hundreds of years, and we still have many of the same prejudices of black people as we did then such as; blacks are unintelligent, angry at white people, and violent. Fantastical stereotypes today include Asians are smart and can’t drive, Blacks are ghetto and lazy, Latinos are illegals and work the worst jobs, and Whites are privileged and closed minded of other cultures. For some reason we feel the need as a society to throw people into categories simply because of the color of their skin and some general facial features. If you yourself can throw out generalizations, then prejudices won’t exist, ending racism one person at a time. A social construct or a community without stereotypes is a society without racism.
Through repetitive media, racial stereotypes have continued to create prejudices. More often than not we see the same racial character roles played over and over again on the big screen. If you lived in a bomb shelter your whole life, with only movies and TV to know of the outside world, how would you view each race when you came out of the hole? You would assume that every Latin, Black, Asian, and White person was just like their respective race stereotypes constantly portrayed in media. For every brown woman you would assume she was a house maid or an overtly sexual diva. Every male...

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