You say “That’s RACIST!” But is it really?

Stereotypes are everywhere. Everyone judges people, even you; don’t try to deny it. but for some reason I find people mistaking stereotypes for racism all the time. Stereotypes, as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a specific belief about a specific group of individuals”. They are usually based off of personal experiences that may or may not be true. Racism is defined as “prejudice or discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief”.

Though stereotypes and racism share the concept of biased, improvable thoughts, racism has an extremely negative connotation based on race.

Racists think that certain people are better than others because of their skin color. Their line of thinking would be something like “White people are better than black people.”

In contrast, a stereotype would be “Asian peoples are smarter than white or black people.” Neither is necessarily true but stereotypes have a little inkling of truth in them. Medical News has been conducting a decades old study on the “Smartest Race in the World”. The poll shows that East Asians generally have a higher IQ than whites and blacks in the U.S. and Asia. (http://www.news-medical.net/news/2005/04/26/9530.aspx).

As you can see, the stereotype definitely has some kind of basis in truth. Racism has no real logic behind it. But these days we are too quick in accusing people of being racist. Everyone has general stereotypes of other people. It’s what we do. But does saying that “Asian people are bad drivers” mean that you are racist against Asians? Or does it mean that you, like everyone, stereotype people based off of what you have seen? There is a big difference between the two and it seems these days, we are blurring the lines.