So you got some good stereotypes and then, the bad ones. We mostly hear the bad ones because of social media today and it's crazy how we can label a race or religion for what a certain group of people do. From African Americans to Hispanics to Muslims, the list goes on! We have labeled these races as horrible or evil and just think every African American or Muslim is like their stereotype! Why do we do this? We develop stereotypes when we are unable to get all of the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or the situations. Without getting the total picture, stereotypes in many cases allow us to just make ourselves feel better and just say this is how “they” are. Our society often innocently creates these stereotypes, which often lead to unfair discrimination and persecution when the stereotype is unfavorable. Just look at African Americans.

Stereotypes about African Americans and their culture have changed within American society dating back to the colonial years. They portrayed blacks as joyous, naive, superstitious, ignorant, and love music, which is the way slaveholders in earlier years believed them to be. Today, African Americans are often portrayed as violent, loud, lazy, not smart, gangsters and criminals and bad people. This is what shapes the idea of African Americans today and why they get a bad rep which is sad! All because certain people want to act horrible. Not everyone is like this though, so why label them so? Same with Muslims.

Everyone knows that the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, ISIS, the Paris attacks in November, and many more have one thing in common. Terrorism. Who do we label terrorism on? Muslims. This is one of biggest stereotypes placed on Muslims out there! We think that all Muslims hate America and want to basically destroy us but not all are terrorists or killers. Newspaper headlines regularly print the words “Islam” and “Muslim” next to words like “fanatic,” “fundamentalist,” “militant,” “terrorist” and “violence.” Not all Muslims are like this. I have friends that are Muslims and are nothing like this. They are caring and loving people who want to fight these horrible stereotypes. It's just really sad to see this happen to good people because again, inhumane people ruin it for them.

I could go on more on terrible stereotypes of races and yet, they all say the same thing, this certain race is a race full of horrible people when really it's just a handful of that race who just puts a bad name on their race. These good, innocent people have go through life because of people who are ignorant.  It's time we don't base people off of race & stereotypes but of who they really are as a human being. It's not fair to the people that don't act like animals, that don't act like their racial stereotypes.