Racism and Stereotypes: Useful or Bad? Blacks, Jews, Gay, Women, and Other Cats

Do stereotypes usefully represent real knowledge or merely reflect counter-productive prejudice? We know that a disproportionate number of criminals in the USA are black and that the vast majority of anti-Western terrorists are Muslim. In light of these facts, racial profiling (a sub-species of stereotyping) appears to be a rational and ethically justified act of self-defense. But is this a “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy? In other words: does racial profiling cause the very ills it is intended to counter? Hardly likely.

Stereotypes invariably refer in a generalized manner to - often arbitrary - groups of people, usually minorities. Stereotypes need not necessarily be derogatory or cautionary, though most of them are. The "noble savage" and the "wild savage" are both stereotypes.

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