Causes of RacismPersonal racism results from our inherent attitudes and beliefs, which in racism relations, involves an evaluation/judgement that a person makes which reflects their likes/dislikes about a particular group of people. The attitude upheld is learned from experience and differs among individuals and socio-cultural backgrounds.
The formation of the attitude may be due to the replaced association of two different stimuli, reinforcement from important associates, observational learning whereby another person’s actions and their consequences guide the individuals future thoughts, feelings or behaviour and/or repeated exposure i.e. being exposed to a group repeatedly. Individuals who are racist generally have not been exposed to a certain ethnicity repeatedly, which in turn contributes to the possible formation of racial attitudes and prejudice. |
Alternatively, if an individual possess a friendship with a group who is racist, then the individual may succumb to peer pressure, which is the social influence by peers, real or imagined, to think, feel or behave according to standards determined by peers, and in turn perform the racial discriminatory acts.
However, the main cause of racism is implicated through the stereotypes portrayed in the media. Stereotypes that do not reflect a positive outlook about a particular race will cause viewers to start developing prejudice attitudes and hence inflict racism. |