top of page
Angie Ostio

Stigma in Your Ethnic & Racial Community- How Does It Form?

Reasons why stigma may form in ethnic and racial communities include assumptions of any individual’s behavior that is formed from their cultural background. Culture is conceived of beliefs, norms, values, and attitudes. Stigma often occurs when individuals fail to understand or misinterpret an inaccurate or misleading piece of media. Implicit bias can also be a posing factor. Implicit bias is a form of bias that occurs automatically and unintentionally. This affects someone's decisions, behaviors, and judgment. Everyone has implicit bias, which may cause you to discriminate, despite your best intentions.


A few root causes would be internalized/generational racism, power dynamics, systemic oppression, and classism. A few symptoms would be racial stereotyping, education being scarce or segregated, criminal justice favoring a white person more than a person of color, people of color having more difficulty buying a house, and banking being way more difficult. Although there isn’t always concrete evidence searching through government statistics for racial discrimination because the effects of racial stigma are way more subtle, they are deeply embedded in symbolic or expressive ways.


An example would be America. It is often said to be a nation of immigrants and a land of opportunity. But one of the first things new immigrants to America discover is that their adopted country stigmatizes minority groups. A huge problem we face is the tendency for people to see racial disparities as a communal (group) problem rather than a societal problem which encourages the reproduction of inequality through time. After the destruction of slavery, which has been almost a century and half a century past the dawn of the civil rights movement, social life in the United States continues to be distinguished by racial archeology. Wages, unemployment rates, income and wealth levels, ability test scores, prison enrollment, crime victimization rates, and health, all indicate and reveal racial disparities. The reasons for the development and continuation of racial stigma in the United States are largely historical.


In the United States, slavery was a thorough racial institution it was in the American political culture and was closely connected with the status of enslavement. Eliminating discrimination in the markets in the United States cannot be expected to lead to a solution for the problem of racial economic inequality. Mostly, because it can never ensure equality of opportunities. The gap in skills between blacks and whites is the result of social exclusion that deserves to be eliminated. In other words, for people of color to have higher chances for economic success, everyone needs to have the same access to the same opportunities. This would be where everyone is in the same position where you can excel without the “help” of your skin color. Having wealth also provides families with the means to invest in their children’s education. From starting a business or relocating for new and better opportunities. Wealth is not only a question of financial savings, but it also provides access to political influences. Households with wealth who have a measure of economic security can donate time and money to political influences and policies that are important to their communities. The persistent black-white wealth gap is not an accident but rather the result of centuries of federal and state policies that have systematically deprived people of color of the inability to maintain, and pass on wealth, especially Black Americans.


CITATIONS


"Eliminating The Black-White Wealth Gap Is A Generational Challenge". Center For

American Progress, 2021,

gap-generational-challenge/. Accessed 14 Nov 2022.


University, Stanford. "Seven Factors Contributing To American Racism | Stanford

News". Stanford News, 2020, https://news.stanford.edu/2020/06/09/seven-

factorscontributing-american-racism/. Accessed 14 Nov 2022. Magazine,

Contexts.


"How To End Institutional Racism - Contexts". Contexts.Org, 2022,

https://contexts.org/blog/how-to-end-institutional-racism/. Accessed 14 Nov

2022.




2 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page