Stereotypes of white Americans


Stereotypes of white people in the United States are generalizations about the character and behavior of white Americans.

Stereotype

Social stereotypes

Stereotypes of white people include the idea that they are "extremely self-involved, uneducated about people other than themselves, and are unable to understand the complicated ways in which people who are not white survive."
Stereotypes of white people in general either reflect those of upper class WASPs or "backward," "barely-educated" redneck sub-population. Stereotypes of rednecks include incest and inbreeding, abusing hard drugs like methamphetamine, watching NASCAR, and are known to become serial killers, rapist, and child molesters.

Negative portrayals of specific groups of white people

As the social definition of "white people" has changed over the years, studies have shown that different races, ethnicities, and nationalities have different stereotypes of white people. Before the 1980s, ethnic groups such as the Irish, Italians, and Polish people were portrayed in popular media and culture in a negative fashion. White Hispanic and Latino Americans are often overlooked in the U.S. mass media and in general American social perceptions, where being "Hispanic or Latino" is often incorrectly given a racial value, usually mixed-race, such as Mestizo, while, in turn, are overrepresented and admired in the U.S. Hispanic mass media and social perceptions.