How Cultural Stereotypes Influence Performance- Analyzing Personal and Group Dynamics
Color for Change is a social group that focuses on strengthening the political voice of African Americans through social action. According to Tyler (2020), social action is when people unite to solve problems and improve their lives. I actively participate in the group’s different tasks to ensure that African Americans participate in policymaking and are treated equally politically. One task the group considers good at is advocating for criminal justice for African Americans.
Over the years, there has been a rise in the number of convicted African Americans due to drug trafficking and robbery crimes. In most cases, innocent African Americans end up in prison because they cannot afford a good lawyer to defend them in court. The Color for Change social group has made efforts to ensure that African Americans get justice by ensuring that they get the best lawyers. For instance, the group initiated a campaign to raise legal fees for Jena Six through online donations. The campaign raised $212,000 that was used in the case’s legal defense. The six were accused of beating a white student, but there was no record of what the white student had done to provoke them to the extent of making them beat him. The press exaggerated the issue to appear as if African Americans were in the wrong. Initially, the students always played games that involved the hanging of nooses, but once a white student was injured during the game, the principal considered the game a demonstration of hate crime and called the police. The school, however, had a history of racism whereby African Americans were not allowed to sit under a particular tree where white students were sitting until the African American students complained and were allowed to sit under the tree until the noose-hanging incident occurred.
The most prevalent cultural stereotype is that African Americans have a hatred towards whites, particularly in neighborhoods dominated by African Americans who have to constantly deal with whites calling the police for issues such as noise disturbance from African Americans who prefer spending time together. Cultural stereotypes about the Color for Change group influenced its performance in advocating for criminal justice during the Black Lives Matter campaign. The group has managed to influence justice for African Americans, who are often accused of discriminating against white people. For instance, in the Jena Six case, African Americans were accused of harassing a white student who often made racist comments against the black students. According to Dzhanova (2020), the social group also influenced Facebook to enact regulations to prevent hate speech and threatened to influence people to boycott Facebook after the social media platform left up a post from President Donald Trump spreading hate speech about George Floyd. The president’s remarks portrayed African Americans as an inferior race that is only good at committing crimes and blaming police once they are caught, thus spreading the stereotype that African Americans are experienced in committing crimes and getting away with it as long as authorities are not keen in their investigations.
The remarks also suggested that African Americans always blame authorities for actions taken against them whenever they commit a crime without considering whether they are innocent or not. The comments further depicted the cultural stereotypes depicting African Americans as violent people who result in violence to settle their differences with those who cross them instead of having a reasonable conversation to resolve any issues they may have with their white counterparts.
References
Dzhanova, Y. (2020). How nonprofit Color of Change applies pressure to fight racial inequality. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/19/how-color-of-change-applies-pressure-to-fight-racial-inequality.html
Tyler, S. (2020). Human behavior and the social environment I.
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Question 
Think of a task that one of the social groups you belong to is considered particularly good (or poor) at.
How Cultural Stereotypes Influence Performance- Analyzing Personal and Group Dynamics
Do you think the cultural stereotypes about your group have ever influenced your performance on a task?