Stereotypes of white people

Stereotypes of white people are essentialist oversimplifications about the character and behaviour of white people.

Part of a series on
Discrimination
General forms
General Ageism Caste Classism Colorism Genism Heightism Linguicism Lookism Mentalism Racism Rankism Religionism Sexism Sexualism Sizeism Speciesism Weightism
Specific forms
Social AIDS stigma Ableism Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-homelessness Anti-intellectualism Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Antigentilism Antisemitism Audism Biphobia Cronyism Elitism (academic) Ephebiphobia Fatism Gerontophobia Heteronormativity Heterophobia Heterosexism Homonegativity Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Reverse discrimination Sectarianism Surdophobia Transphobia Xenophobia
Manifestations Blood libel Compulsory sterilization Disability hate crime Economic Eliminationism Employment Ethnic cleansing Ethnic joke Ethnocide Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genocide (examples) Group libel Hate crime Hate speech Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling LGBT hate crime Lynching Mortgage Murder Music Occupational segregation Pogrom Racist music Race war Religious persecution Scapegoating Slavery Trans-bashing Victimization Wife selling Witch-hunt
Policies Segregation age racial religious sex Age of candidacy Blood quantum Cleanliness of blood Apartheid Ethnocracy Gender roles Gerontocracy Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Jim Crow laws MSM blood donor controversy Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) Nuremberg Laws Racial quota Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Sodomy law Ugly law
Other forms Black supremacy Genetic Linguistic Pregnancy Supremacism White supremacy
Related topics Anti-cultural sentiment Bigotry Diversity Eugenics Multiculturalism Neurodiversity Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Prejudice Religious intolerance Religious persecution Stereotypes
Countermeasures
Countermeasures Affirmative action Cultural assimilation Racial integration Social integration
Discrimination portal

United States

Stereotypes of White people in the USA

Positive stereotypes

Though most ethnic stereotypes are negative, different ethnic groups also hold some positive stereotypes of white people. A 1972 study found that, in general, white people were stereotyped with positive traits and minority groups with negative traits. In a 1983 U.S. study on the associative strength between two words, and regardless of prejudice score, subjects responded reliably faster when positive attributes (e.g., 'smart') were paired with white people than when they were paired with black people. Positively, white people are stereotyped as intelligent, socially diverse, and generally non-dangerous and unlikely to commit crime. However, they are sometimes considered racist, prejudiced, or biased and scared or uneasy around minorities. Asian-Americans tended to hold more positive stereotypes of White people than other ethnic groups, finding praise in similar traits that the two groups share such as low rates of crime and high aspirations for higher education, career, and cohesive family life.

Social stereotypes

In the United States, white people make up the majority of the nation's politicians, military leaders and corporate executives, while most minority groups have a smaller presence, and are less well-off. Other stereotypes of white people include the idea that they are all "extremely self-involved, uneducated about people other than themselves, and are unable to understand the complicated ways in which people who are not white survive."

Influence on black people

Literature in the field of clinical psychology has said that this type of Eurocentric favoritism is indicative of the "pre-encounter" phase in the development of black identity. Some studies indicate that black people have been unduly influenced by stereotypes of white people.

Negative portrayals of other white people

As the social definition of "white people" has changed over the years, studies have shown that different racial, ethnic and nationalities have different stereotypes of white people. Ethnic groups such as the English, Irish, and Italians have been portrayed in popular media and culture in a negative fashion. White Hispanic and Latino Americans are often overlooked in the U.S. mass media and in general American social perceptions, where being "Hispanic or Latino" is often incorrectly given a racial value, usually mixed-race, such as Mestizo, while, in turn, are overrepresented and admired in the U.S. Hispanic mass media and social perceptions.

Intra-white stereotypes

The dumb blonde is a popular-culture derogatory stereotype applied to blonde-haired women. The archetypical "dumb blonde," while viewed as attractive and popular, has been portrayed as very promiscuous, as well as lacking in both common street-sense and academic intelligence, often to a comedic level. The dumb blonde stereotype is used in 'blonde jokes.'

South Africa

In contemporary South Africa, conservative Afrikaners have been portrayed by media as backward, overweight and bombastic.

See also

• Acting white
• Angry white male
• Ethnic stereotype
• List of terms for white people in non-Western cultures
• Redneck
• Stereotype
• Stereotypes of black people
• Stereotypes of South Asians
• Stuff White People Like
• White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
• White trash