Critical & Creative Thinking Resources: Stereotypes & Race

• Age
• Caste
• Disability
• Language
• Name
• Nationality
• Race or ethnicity
• Region
• Religious beliefs
• Sex, sex characteristics, gender, and gender identity
• Sexual orientation
• Reverse discrimination

The less you know about something, the more your mind has to guess.

Guesses are often based on prior experience, or other people's stories.

Prior experience may be so limited that it is not an accurate indicator of future interactions.

Stories are often distorted for entertainment.

Theoretically, stereotypes should be replaced with actual knowledge.  Realistically, stereotypes are seldom challenged unless something happens to create a reason to change the initial assumption.  Challenging stereotypes is hard work.

Bias, simply put, is a preference or tendency to respond one way versus another.

Bias consists of

• prejudice (i.e., biased emotional reactions, such as a gut feeling or general like or dislike),
• stereotypes (i.e., biased beliefs about group characteristics), and discrimination (i.e., biased behavior) toward a person or group based merely on their group membership.

Bias can arise from any social category, including gender, race, ethnicity, age, ability status, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, weight, attractiveness, socioeconomic status, education, hometown, and any other dimension on which we categorize people.

These categories intersect to create unique experiences of bias that are often compounded for individuals who belong to multiple minoritized groups.

Overall, bias can distort our perceptions of people and inadvertently lead us to make poor decisions, treat people unfairly, and miss opportunities to build positive relationships and collaborations with others.