Anyone who has ever turned on the television, whether to watch regular popular programming or the evening news, has been witness to the stereotypes used throughout all forms of media. Stereotypes have, undoubtedly, existed since the beginning of human history and their presence can be observed in every domain where people interact with one another, including family, work, school, religion, and politics. Stereotypes have their origins, I believe, in natural human instinct. In primitive times, humans needed to assess their physical surroundings and quickly make decisions about potentially dangerous situations. In similar fashion, humans today assess their social environment and stereotypical assumptions provide the mechanism to quickly orient themselves to the social order of a particular situation and to establish how they fit into that hierarchy. Going along with this phenomenon is a human tendency to feel most comfortable with what is familiar, leading to the condition that......
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