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To me, this is an essential distinction we must make if we are to continue to have a robust, thriving civil society.
To oversimplify in order to set a baseline:
"Prejudice" is a nonrational bias against all members of a particular race, ethnic group, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc. It may very well stem from a preconscious survival instinct, i.e., "my pack = good, other = bad."
"Stereotype" is an anecdotal / empirical "more likely than not" tool of evaluation (not necessarily an "all or none") in which race / ethniciity / etc. is merely one of several identifying characteristics.
Example: you are a black youth walking in Chicago's Marquette Park on the southwest side in the 1960s or 1970s. You see four young white men with shaved heads carrying baseball bats. You immediately turn and run as fast as you can. that is stereotyping. we have no idea from this situation whether the youth is prejudiced against all whites or not; and in this situation it doesn't matter since his life is probably at stake.
I am sitting on my front porch and I see three black youths on one bicycle riding west (one on the handlebar, one pedaling while standing, one on the seat). Several minutes later, I see the same three people, now on separate bicycles, riding east. I assume they have just stolen two bicycles. that is stereotyping. we have no idea whether I am prejudiced against all blacks or not; in this situation it doesn't matter, since chances are high that some of my neighbors have just been robbed (which did turn out to be the case in this instance).
I once had a service job in which I would travel into middle-class black neighborhoods to meet with physicians, attorneys, executives, and the like. They engaged in stereotyping of blacks themselves, they knew how to recognize potential troublemakers and distinguish them from regular neighborhood teens who belonged there. You'd never say blacks were prejudiced against blacks, yet blacks do stereotype other blacks (remember Jesse Jackson's famous admission?).
Similarly, whites do stereotype other whites, e.g. redneck, hillbilly, tea-bagger, WASP, etc.
So under this formulation, there is a huge difference between "profiling" in which ethnicity / religious affiliation is merely one of several characteristics combined in a constellation which warrants further scrutiny, and "racial profiling" in which only one factor matters. One is based on observation and reason and says "many"; the other is based on more primitive impulses and says "all" and is not accessible to reason
This formulation also helps us understand how to manage the two different situations (i.e., you cannot reason away a person's prejudices; only that person can overcome their own prejudice from within, typically based on experiences that create enough cognitive dissonance between prejudice and result so that it only can be resolved by overcoming the prejudice).
To oversimplify in order to set a baseline:
"Prejudice" is a nonrational bias against all members of a particular race, ethnic group, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, etc. It may very well stem from a preconscious survival instinct, i.e., "my pack = good, other = bad."
"Stereotype" is an anecdotal / empirical "more likely than not" tool of evaluation (not necessarily an "all or none") in which race / ethniciity / etc. is merely one of several identifying characteristics.
Example: you are a black youth walking in Chicago's Marquette Park on the southwest side in the 1960s or 1970s. You see four young white men with shaved heads carrying baseball bats. You immediately turn and run as fast as you can. that is stereotyping. we have no idea from this situation whether the youth is prejudiced against all whites or not; and in this situation it doesn't matter since his life is probably at stake.
I am sitting on my front porch and I see three black youths on one bicycle riding west (one on the handlebar, one pedaling while standing, one on the seat). Several minutes later, I see the same three people, now on separate bicycles, riding east. I assume they have just stolen two bicycles. that is stereotyping. we have no idea whether I am prejudiced against all blacks or not; in this situation it doesn't matter, since chances are high that some of my neighbors have just been robbed (which did turn out to be the case in this instance).
I once had a service job in which I would travel into middle-class black neighborhoods to meet with physicians, attorneys, executives, and the like. They engaged in stereotyping of blacks themselves, they knew how to recognize potential troublemakers and distinguish them from regular neighborhood teens who belonged there. You'd never say blacks were prejudiced against blacks, yet blacks do stereotype other blacks (remember Jesse Jackson's famous admission?).
Similarly, whites do stereotype other whites, e.g. redneck, hillbilly, tea-bagger, WASP, etc.
So under this formulation, there is a huge difference between "profiling" in which ethnicity / religious affiliation is merely one of several characteristics combined in a constellation which warrants further scrutiny, and "racial profiling" in which only one factor matters. One is based on observation and reason and says "many"; the other is based on more primitive impulses and says "all" and is not accessible to reason
This formulation also helps us understand how to manage the two different situations (i.e., you cannot reason away a person's prejudices; only that person can overcome their own prejudice from within, typically based on experiences that create enough cognitive dissonance between prejudice and result so that it only can be resolved by overcoming the prejudice).
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