A term related to race is racism. It appears because of the differentiations among the races in society.
Newman states that racism is “any attitude, belief, behavior, or institutional arrangement that tends to favor over one race or ethnic
group over another ” Newman and E.N.Layfield, 1995: 9. He also states four
types of racism, first is attitudinal racism – is general dislike of a certain race or
group without reason. Second is ideological racism – believing some races
superior to others for example: Adolf Hitler. Third is individual or group racism for example: Klu Klux Klan. The last is institutional racism creating patterns of
injustice and inequality because of skin color for example: US voting in 1960 and high prices of some colleges.
Through the explanation about racism above, it can be concluded that racism is the way that a people or an individual treats another people or individual
based on his or her race. R acism establishes people’s mind-set to tend to see other
people differently.
c. Stereotypes
Racial stereotype is one of the most important issues in this thesis. But first, the writer has to explain stereotypes
. The writer found a definition of
stereotypes from Joe Feagin. He defines the stereotypes as “an overgeneralization
associated with racial or ethnic group that goes beyond existing evidence” Feagin, 1978: 12.
From the statement above, this means that the basic feature of stereotyping is overgeneralization, meaning that people only take some facts about some races
and overgeneralize them to represent the whole race. Adding with the statement
from Nelson about st ereotypes, he states “stereotypes represent the traits that we
view as characteristic of social groups, and particularly those that differentiate groups from each other. . . Stereotypes are problematic because they are negative,
innacurate, and unfair – they would simply be part of the study of person
perception more broadly if they weren’t.” Nelson, 2009: 2 That is why stereotypes usually only consist of thought and perspective,
not scientifically proven facts as it tends to use overgeneralization and goes beyond evidence. Yet stereotype also has negative traits within generalization
toward groups or individuals.
d. Racial Stereotypes
A short explanation about racial stereotyping comes from a journal article by Laura Green that she wrote on the online zine from Virginia Commonwealth
University .
In her article titled “Stereotypes: Negative Racial Stereotypes and
Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans ”, she quoted a statement of
racial stereotype from S. K. Jewel ’s that
Racial stereotypes are constructed beliefs that all members of the same race share given characteristics. These attributed characteristics are usually
negative. Green, 1998-99
From the explanation above, racial stereotype is a belief constructed by the members of a race. The belief that usually goes into a negative perspective by
looking at the characteristics of a race, in this case is African American. Racial stereotypes indicate, lower standards for a group indicate lower expectations,
which lead to anchoring of within-group subjective rating scales at lower levels of a stereotyped dimension Nelson, 2009: 143.
