Human Rights at Home and Abroad: Past, Present, and Future

then having to take a written test. At the same socioeconomic level African Americans have higher
aspirations to achieve a college degree than Euro-Americans do (Carr-Ruffino, 2009).
The third stereotype that African Americans are accused of is being lazy and irresponsible. It is
said that African Americans don‘t like to get jobs. How is this true when about the same proportion of
African Americans as Euro-Americans hold jobs? This must mean that Euro Americans are lazy too.
Even though they work at some of the same jobs as Euro-Americans, African American men receive only
70 percent of the pay. African American women receive 62 percent of the pay as Euro-Americans. They
are historically stuck doing much of the hard labor that helped establish the U.S. economy. This has not
changed, because they are still stuck doing the industrial work, and working at down sized corporations.
African Americans must work twice as hard and must stay in a position longer than normal workers just
to prove they are not lazy and incompetent, and that they can handle the next assignment. Euro-
Americans believe that African Americans are too incompetent to handle higher-level responsibilities;
this is why they have to stay at their lower level positions longer (Carr-Ruffino, 2009).
The last stereotype that African Americans are accused of is being resentful troublemakers. This
stereotype is related to the violent and blaming stereotypes. Most African American communities believe
in speaking up assertively. Expressing your feelings that you are feeling, and directly confronting issues
are highly valued beliefs in the African American community. That is why people outside their
community may believe they are being rude towards them. It is actually not meant to be the way that they
interpreted their feelings. Euro-Americans and African Americans act in different definitions of ethnic
prejudice. African Americans might get up in your face to argue their case. Euro-Americans might take
that the wrong way and get defensive. They might start yelling at the African American, which in turn
starts an argument between the two. The argument could either be verbal or violent. Either way this could
look badly for the African American, and get the troublemaker stereotype. Even though it‘s not always
their fault when trouble is caused, they get the wrong image because of the stereotype (Carr-Ruffino,
2009).
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