Question

how does religion create stereotypes ​

Answer 1

Answer:

People often meet in image long before they meet in person. The newsman Walter Lippman spoke of stereotypes as the “pictures in our heads,” the sketchy and distorted images created by one group to describe, label, and caricature another. People “known” through stereotypes do not have the opportunity to define themselves, but are defined by others—often negatively. Prejudice is this prejudgment of people and groups on the basis of these images.

The roots of prejudice in both ignorance and fear have long been explored by social scientists and psychologists, some of whom study its extreme expressions—the slurs and epithets called “hate speech” and the violence called “hate crimes.” Both prejudice and stereotyping have a long history in America. But just as long is the effort to overcome them.

European settlers held destructive racial stereotypes of Native peoples and Africans brought as slaves, and, unfortunately, some of these stereotypes have persisted. Additionally, immigrants of various European backgrounds held negative images and demeaning racial, religious, and cultural stereotypes of one another as well—whether Anglo-Saxons, Irish, Italians, Poles, or Swedes. And prejudice often shaped the attitudes of all peoples of European descent toward newcomers from Asia—the Chinese and Japanese “yellow peril” and the turbaned Sikh “ragheads.”

Religion has often been a factor in stereotype and prejudice as the key marker of “difference.” In Billings, Montana, for instance, the menorahs in the windows of Jewish homes during Hanukkah made them the targets of anti-Semitic attacks in 1993. A decade earlier in New Jersey, the dot (bindi) worn on the forehead by many Hindu women stood for the strangeness of the whole Indian immigrant community in the eyes of a racist group who called themselves the “Dot Busters.” All South Asian immigrants were the target of attacks during the 1980s, not just Hindus in particular. This was clear in the shouts of those who screamed “Hindu, Hindu” as they beat Navroze Mody to death in Jersey City in 1987, conflating race, religion, and culture in one cry of hatred.