AmaryllisTV

It turns out that students that first saw stereotypical images of Chief Illiniwek were more willing to endorse stereotypical statements about Asian Americans. The same was true of students who read a fictional biography of Chief Illiniwek (taken from the University of Illinois website), compared to students who read a generic description of an Arts Center taken from the same website.

We usually think about racism as something that’s motivated by racial hatred of a targeted ethnic group. Instead, this study tells us that even exposure to racial stereotypes appears to encourage an overall more black-and-white (pardon the pun) outlook on the world — even against unrelated groups. Thus, right-wing pundits and fear-mongerers who perpetuate the racist notion that all Muslims are terrorists (for example) doesn’t just affect the Muslim community. It’s likely to encourage anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-Native American and anti-Asian resentment and stereotyping as well.

It might seem like a discouraging finding. But I actually see this study’s significance as positive. What more evidence do we need that in combating racism, coalition-building between minority communities is not only beneficial, but necessary? Further, it’s not hard to imagine, given Dr. Kim-Prieto’s data, that stereotyping effect extends beyond racism. In other words, I wouldn’t be surprised if internalizing race-based stereotypes also encouraged gender-based, sexuality-based, and class-based stereotyping, as well. We need to build bridges there, too.