Because humans are so unique, it is impossible to appeal or consider each person individually. Instead, marketers, businesses, and other individuals must divide populations into groups with common factors. Those factors may be socio-economic, cultural, behavioral, dialectical, regional, or racial. Thus to appeal to the majority of individuals in these groups, people must consider the “stereotypical” human in each group. They tailor to the needs or desires of that “type” of person.
I’ve noticed the role of stereotypes in many contexts often serving different purposes. In the PBS Sorting People (http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm) activity, I noticed their subtle use of stereotypes. The purpose of the activity was to exhibit that race cannot be deduced purely from physical traits. After completing the activity, I only guessed five out of the 20 correct. Looking at the correct answers, many of them did not look like their respective classification: “American Indian,” “Asian,” “Black,” “Hispanic/Latino” “White.” In order to prove their point, it seemed as if PBS specifically chose individuals that did not fit the stereotype of their race. This acknowledged the usual stereotypes that surround specific racial groups.
Sometimes stereotypes serve a specific purpose to help address a general group of individuals. However, stereotypes turn negative when individuals are expected to follow a stereotype or stereotypes are expressly imposed on specific individuals. An interesting video I saw recently, was of a black woman discussing the idea of “talking white” among the black community. This address the stereotype of blacks as uneducated. http://youtu.be/2v7wfAKPor0
An addition exploration into race and stereotypes is found at National Geographic with the following article. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/changing-faces/funderburg-text?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_us_se_w