First of all, stereotypes affect the sense of belonging of groups.
The most intuitive influence of stereotype on the group is the lack of sense of belonging. As a group, each of us feels more or less like a "minority". For example, when I was a child, my classmates got 90 points in an exam, but we didn't do well ourselves. All the students bought an interesting toy, but our parents didn't want to buy it. At this time, we will feel marginalized. We want to integrate into the collective, but we can't. We want to leave, but we have nowhere to go. We don't know where we belong. This sense of belonging will deeply torment every "minority".
The author Steele has also encountered such a problem. His original intention of studying stereotypes is because people always think that the IQ of black people is lower than that of ordinary people. Students of the same level, black students are often more likely to "fall behind." With the deterioration of grades, many black students began to lose interest in learning and became more and more perfunctory until they gave up their studies.
How did all this happen? One of the important reasons is the sense of belonging of the group: black students do not "fit in" and cannot integrate into campus life. After investigation, Steele found that students' social circles are basically divided by race: white students' circle of friends, black students' circle, Asian students' circle, and there is little contact between different groups. Most of each student's six closest friends are of the same race, and the average number of other races is less than 1. If someone wants to get out of this "social circle", it will even attract resentment from two groups.
Under such circumstances, whether black or Asian, these ethnic minorities will become absolute "minorities" on campus. Campus culture is dominated by white people. White students define what is "self", what is "cool" and what kind of behavior conforms to mainstream values. They lead fashion, aesthetic standards, music trends and even religious beliefs. Minority students can only be in a state of "passive acceptance". They should not only give up their personal preferences, but also accept the so-called "mainstream culture" and worry that they will not be accepted by other students and teachers.
Moreover, such stereotypes not only exist on campus, but also spread from campus to society. For example, in the United States, 85% of people get employment opportunities through the recommendation of acquaintances. This means that only those who are accepted by the mainstream social circle enjoy full employment recommendation opportunities. If a minority is not well integrated, many job opportunities will be deprived. It is precisely for this reason that in the management of many companies and institutions, ethnic minorities or women are rarely seen, which shows that ethnic minorities are excluded to varying degrees in some social circles.
We often mention a name in psychology, called "herd mentality", which means that we often follow the public to make decisions, so that we lose the ability to think independently. But if we look at it from the perspective of avoiding stereotypes, we will find that "conformity" is the need of a sense of social belonging. If a person pursues maverick blindly, he may soon be excluded from study, work and social interaction. In order to avoid being "different", people will conform to the crowd to some extent.
Many students have a feeling that they recognize the level of the school and accept the attitude of other teachers and students, but they still hope to have a relatively independent space, so they don't have to care about being a minority and don't have to worry about being marginalized.
This also shows that the influence of stereotypes on groups often has profound historical and social and cultural factors, and it is difficult for one or two people to make a difference. We can regard these as the epitome of "minorities" in society. As long as it is a "minority", it will inevitably be regarded as heterogeneous and exclusive by the "mainstream", and it is doomed to bear more pressure in life and make more efforts than the average person.
Second, stereotypes cause racism and group conflicts.
It is for this reason that stereotypes may cause barriers between different groups, and in the long run, contradictions and conflicts may even break out.
Long-term group differences have caused a "vicious circle", with little interaction between different ethnic groups and deeper contradictions and prejudices. So, how did this process happen? We can look at the black groups in America.
Historically, there were no blacks in America. The blacks we see today are all1at the beginning of the 5th century. In order to produce in the United States, European colonists transported African blacks to the United States as slaves by buying, selling and plundering. The slave trade lasted for more than 400 years. During this period, Africa lost hundreds of millions of people, which led to the decline of African traditional civilization and economic and social retrogression. Nearly 10 million blacks were transported to the United States and engaged in the lowest level of labor production as slaves, without basic human rights, with extremely low social status and very miserable life.
It was not until19th century that slavery was abolished after the American Civil War, and apartheid was abolished in the 20th century, and racial discrimination was explicitly opposed, that the African-American group really gained equal civil rights in legal name. But this has not really changed the situation of black people. All kinds of hidden discrimination still exist, which is a long-term stereotype formed by historical, cultural and institutional factors.
Although blacks enjoy equal rights in the legal sense, in fact, most blacks are still in the middle and lower classes of society and engaged in simple and low-income manual labor. The proportion of blacks engaged in high-end industries such as law, writers and sports is still very low. The poverty rate and crime rate of blacks are higher than other ethnic groups, but their education level is lower than other ethnic groups. Some lighter-skinned blacks even want to modify their racial identity and "delete" their black ancestry. Because doing so will give them more opportunities in employment and social interaction.
These practices are understandable, but they also show that even after the large-scale affirmative movement, the rights of blacks as "ethnic minorities" have developed greatly, but there are still many prejudices and barriers. To illustrate this problem, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, the famous leader of the American black civil rights movement, an American elementary school teacher named Eliot conducted a "discrimination experiment".
She divided the students in the class into "blue eyes group" and "brown eyes group" according to the color of pupils. Then she began to claim that "blue eyes" were smarter, more hygienic and performed better than "brown eyes"; Then she asked "brown eyes" to wear fur collars as a distinction, and asked blue eyes to keep a distance from brown eyes. As a result, the brown-eyed students' faces were full of depression. They began to become silent, afraid to move freely on the playground, and their classroom performance became poor, and they looked depressed all day. And those blue eyes, calm and carefree, one by one.
But the next day, Mr. Elliot's attitude changed 180 degrees. She put a fur collar on her blue eyes and gave her brown eyes all kinds of special treatment. The magical situation happened again. This time, it's blue eyes' turn to become silent, unresponsive and full of mistakes in answering questions. The child with brown eyes, who was depressed the day before, immediately became confident and excellent.
We can imagine that if this experiment continues. The so-called blue eyes and brown eyes will form two opposing groups. Although there is no real gap between the two, artificial division is enough to cause discrimination and prejudice. Of course, Miss Elliot meant no harm. She just wants to tell her students through concrete actions that stereotypes can easily lead to differences, even opposition and division between the two groups.
Because of this, we must face up to the long-term and universality of stereotypes. It is almost inevitable that a certain type of people and a certain occupation will be labeled, but we can be more tolerant and understanding while being aware of these stereotypes, instead of inadvertently expanding differences and causing controversy.