Racial stereotypes are also automatic and exaggerated mental pictures that we hold about all members of a particular racial group. When we stereotype
people based on race, we do not take into account individual differences. Because our racial stereotypes are so rigid, we tend to ignore or discard any information
that is not consistent with the stereotype that we have developed about the racial group. Overcoming Racial Stereotypes, Sept 10, 2016.
C. Review of the History of African American in 1960s
The story of African Americans is a touching story. In beginning, African Americans first landed in Jamestown, Virginia in the 16th centuty, during the
colonial times. They were imported as slaves and treated as property to be bought and sold. Americans needed people who could work all the time with low pay.
During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, slavery became a national institution rather than regional institution Encyclopaedia Americana, 1978: 28
The Africans who came to the land of America and became slaves experienced a really tough life, lost their freedom in every aspect of life, such as
losing freedom in citizenship, freedom in expressing emotions, and freedom in the right to be humans. Americans generally assumed that blackness meant poverty,
ignorance and lack of middle-class, and mainstream. Black people were regarded as the poorest group of people and the most powerless part in the working class.
They were defined as a racial group that had been made as subject to discriminatory treatment because of race. Ethnic Relations in America, 1982: 50
According to Adalberto Aguirre, Jr. And Jonathan H. Turner, they state that
slavery became a “positive good”, protecting Africans from their “savage
impulses”, and responding to their “childlike dependency”. Yet, even in the abolitionist North, stereotypes portrayed Africans as ignorant, lazy, and
i mmoral. During this period the “black Sambo” stereotype evolved, which
portrayed black people as childlike, helpless, shuffling, and fumbling but with potentially aggressive tendencies. Aguirre, 2011: 110
From the statement above, it is clear that there were many negative stereotypes generalizing the African in the era of slavery. The White
people’s superiority tends to see the Blacks as inferior, in the lowest level of human beings. As the
time went by they, started to rise and develop the Black movement to fight for their rights and freedom as human beings and citizens of the United States
America. In the 1960s, the public sentiment for government assistance for African
Americans had turned much harsher than it was at the peak of the civil rights movement. There was Martin Luther King Jr., who led the campaign of
nonviolent resistance in the late 1950s. The Civil Rights movement has begun to gain more serious momentum in the United States by 1960. In the same year, John
F. Kennedy made a passage of new civil rights legislation part of his presidential campaign platform.
In 1964, Golden wrote a book which tells about African American life after the signing
of the Civil Rights Act. He states that African Americans’ fight for the right to enter public school was not a fight for education. They fought for
life and death as well, because entering public school was the first step to obtaining
adequate hospital care. “Public schools are the first step, adequate hospital care the second” Golden, 1964: 32.
