The Needs to Change the Cycle of Racism

It is apparent that even though the various forms of oppression, hate, profiling, and so on based on a person's racial or ethnic background is now deemed illegal and sometimes even frowned upon in the United States, racism, stereotypes, and prejudice are still major issues in the country we live in. The basis of prejudice, stereotypes and racism can lead to the belief that racism is just a slow ending (or maybe even never-ending) circle or prejudice and stereotypes. There is no definitive place to start when trying to cut racism down at its roots because no one really knows where the roots of racism start; if stereotypes do not form from personal experience but instead on outside influence and the outside influence is an already racist institution, it is not surprising that despite laws against racism, stereotypes and prejudice are still a reality in everyday life.

Racism was not started in America after the pilgrims had already landed; the pilgrims came to America with a mindset that was already tainted with prejudice, stereotypes, and racism. The pilgrims of early America came to America with a superior mentality and unfortunately passed that on through societal influence all the way until today, after all, stereotypes do not usually come from personal experience, rather, they stem from other sources, "Walter Lippman described stereotypes as 'pictures in our heads' that we do not acquire through personal experience" (Lowy). Although it is arguable that the pilgrims did have personal experience to back up their stereotypes considering that they may have had reasons to identify themselves as "superior" to the native Americans considering that native Americans at the time were centuries behind what the pilgrims would considered as developed, the pilgrims still had many prejudices and stereotypes brought over from England. The superior mindset of the prejudiced pilgrims leads them to pass on such stereotypes to future generations, leading to a never-ending cycle of racism.

One of the reasons why racism is so difficult to fix is that many people are exposed to stereotypes while they are young, a time when thinking about an issue before coming to a conclusion may not be a very big factor of life. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that kids growing up around racism, prejudice and stereotypes are prejudiced themselves since they are less likely to really analyze why they think this way, "Prejudice is an irrational suspicion that is immune to information" (Lowy). Growing up with a stereotype makes it almost impossible to filter it out of your thoughts, no matter how hard you try; there will always be the stereotype in the back of your head.

Although stereotypes and prejudice will always be in the back of a person's mind, that is not the reason why racism is still an issue in the world, "...But racism as I conceive it is not merely an attitude of set beliefs" (Frederickson). While a person might have prejudice in the back of their head, just a small notion of prejudice will not lead to racism and hate, rather prejudice and racism must be acted upon to be considered as racism, "Racism results from the transformation of race prejudice and/or ethnocentrism through the exercise of power against a racial group defined as inferior, by individuals and institutions with the intentional or unintentional support of the entire culture" (Bowser and Hunt). If everyone kept their prejudices and stereotypes to themselves, the stereotypes would not even pass on to any other people, and since stereotypes come not from personal experience but outside influence, racism should be gone in a relatively short time. Unfortunately, that is not the case because of institutional racism.

When the prejudices and stereotypes within a person's mind causes him to act racistly is when racism becomes a reality. Racism is especially apparent when the victims are members of a society where they have less power than the oppressors in the society, "Racism involves the subordination of people of color by white people... but racism requires something more than anger, hatred, or prejudiced; at very least, it requires prejudice plus power" (Rothenberg). With the power of society, racism becomes possible through action, and thus institutions arise around a racist society, making the institutions themselves prejudiced.

Just legal actions against racist oppression and acts are not enough to rid an institution of stereotypes and prejudice. When prejudice and stereotypes have been around for such a long time, they become institutionalized and not even thought about, just as something that feels like it should be right,

"Stereotyping imparts a sense of fixedness to the homogenized images it disseminates. It attempts to establish an attributed characteristic as natural and given in ways inseparable from the relations of power and domination through which it operates. If a social group of category is stereotyped as inherently lazy, stupid, childish or dishonest, the ascripti acts not only as a marker of eviancy, making it marginal to moral order, but also as revalidation of that which it is measured against and found wanting" (Pickering).

Such institutional racism leads people to believe that whenever something happens in favor of a stereotype, the stereotype is confirmed. However, when an event happens against what its respective stereotype would have it happen, the viewer is instead confused as to why the stereotype did not play true. This institutionalism leads to a simpler way of looking at various groups and even explanations for various situations that would not normally be easily explained if not for stereotypes.

Under this institutional racism, reinforcements of prejudice and racism are common aspects of life and therefore, racism is just an everyday thing. Sometimes, racism is even a convenience, "They comfort rulers and charm the ruled... whereas rulers receive solace by believing they are not involved in the terrible ordeal of creating and maintaining inequality, the ruled are charmed by the almost magical qualities of a hegemonic ideology" (Bonilla-Silva).

The oppressors do not actually think they are promoting racism, when in fact they are by passing on stereotypes and prejudice through institutional racism; just because a stereotype helps to explain something does not make it true. The oppressed on the other hand, can uses the roles that they have already been placed in to explain things themselves. The end result is everything is just simpler.

Stereotypes and prejudice do not usually form from personal experience, but instead from outside influences. The outside influences will usually be society and institutional racism, which will just keep being passed down. To top it off, institutional racism is not only a possible comfort for both sides of the oppression, but it is also reinforced whether an event plays out to stereotypes or not. Racism is a slow-ending, possibly even never ending, fact of life that just goes in circle, when stereotypes that come from institutional racism is passed down to fresh young minds that fail to think about what prejudice and stereotyping really is, and how it falls into the circle of racism.

Works Cited

Lowy, Richard. Introduction to Ethnic Studies. USA: Kendall/Hunt Company, 2006.

Spickard, Paul. Almost All Aliens. Milton Park: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 2007.