Stereotyping

Stereotyping, Labelling and prejudice

M1

Stereotyping is when someone believes that certain people can be tarred with the same brush such as ‘all black people can dance’. This can lead to people making totally the wrong assumptions about others and can be very damaging. It can also very easily become discrimination and therefore harmful and illegal. This can occur in workplaces if you are meeting different individuals per day, these individuals could have different views about other people and can notice the difference in people which also could sometimes be discrimination.

Stereotyping can have a impact on individuals in a work place because stereotyping is a result of identifying people simply based of their membership in a certain social category. In other words people base their judgment of a person based on gender, age, hair color etc… For example, we have all heard that the joke “dumb as blond.” However we all know very well that this statement is far from the truth. Stereotyping

Labelling is when a label is used to describe an individual, for example fat, lazy, uneducated and naughty. The danger is that people respond to the label, the person behind the label is lost and may be treated less well. When groups of people are labelled as though they are all the same, they lose their identity and assumptions are made about them. Individuals can be very judgemental. Some individuals may even decide to behave as expected, feeling that they are not valued. Labelling can have a impact on work place because individuals will label of what they see about you for example if your manager has spoken to you and has said I feel that you are lazy and you need to do more work, he is labelling a individual as a lazy person who does nothing.

Prejudice is showing a negative attitude towards a group of people. Usually an attitude based on judging others without knowing anything about them. Judgements may be based on labels, hearsay, media coverage, historical incidents or...