Do Stereotypes contain truth? Why? How are they formed?

I agree, the stereotypes are definitely based on some measure of truth. Otherwise how are people able to relate the stereotype to the “stereotyped”. According to me stereotypes are like the early descriptions or the very first perceptions of a group. It might have been completely true at some point of time. But it changed as we got more culturally diverse. For example, taking my own nationality Indian; one of the most stereotyped group. We are most mocked for our accent and the truth is majority of Indian do sound like that! How about the fact that people call us cheap? Believe it or not, when I say we ACTUALLY are cheap, I speak on behalf of myself and all the Non Resident Indians I have met till date. In my defense, I can only say that we Indians are not cheap by nature but because of the situations our government puts us in with the awful wages when we are not on our country soil. I guess this is what created the stereotype. At least one quality of the stereotype can be applied each person of the stereotyped group. I don’t think I can say the same for the other stereotyped groups. Sometimes stereotypes can get off hand for example, most Indian-Americans are taxi drivers, gays can’t be manly, Jews are greedy and the most crude is that all Muslims are terrorists. Stereotypes exist in the society for the sole purpose of insulting the group and entertainment. Unfortunately, a stereotype does contain some measure of truth.

Truthfully, a stereotype is of no use and should not even exist. If the person uses it to hurt someone’s feelings then, the person is very narrow minded. But if it is used for entertainment like comedian Russell Peters and Jeff Dunham use it, then I say- go ahead make us laugh. There must be various ways to form stereotypes. A stereotype is sometimes born out of one person’s hatred for a certain group. If that particular person is able to pass his ideas around and uninformed people are not able to differentiate between the truth and the made-up information then the stereotype gets officially instituted. For example, in ‘Mein Kamp’ Hitler said that Jews were greedy and used inaccurate information to brain wash people. In this case the stereotype did not contain any truth. Stereotypes born out of hatred can be harmful. Television can be credited for popularizing stereotypes about African Americans and Homosexuals.