It is important to caution that human behavior, where stereotypes are involved, is not conditioned entirely by the stereotypes—other factors will also come into play. For example, in the case of racist stereotypes and racism, it would be a mistake to suggest that racist stereotypes alone leads to racism; for, in reality, the reverse is also probably true. Therefore, in the context of racism, the function of racist stereotypes is that they are simply one more item in the arsenal of dehumanization. That is, they help to reinforce, not necessarily create, racism. Moreover, in the creation and dissemination of insidious stereotypes of negativity by the mass media (includes the entertainment industry), nothing compares to the power of images, regardless of whether they are still images or moving images, in
socializing the masses to the acceptance of prejudice and hate of the “
Other” to the point of naturalness—meaning it becomes "natural" to assume, for example here in the United States, that black people are intellectually inferior or that Jews are a cunning money-grubbing people or that the Irish love their drink (meaning they are brawling drunkards) or that Italians are lazy, pasta-loving members of the Mafia. However, a common ploy among racists, sexists, etc. in popularizing stereotype images is to claim that such images constitute "art" and therefore should not be opposed or erased from the media, and what is more, it is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Three points emerge here: First what is “
art”? Who decides when an "object" is art? Is the First Amendment about protecting the right to popularize material that contributes to oppression, terrorism, and so on? Or was the First Amendment originally conceived to protect the citizenry from the tyranny of the State (but today has been hijacked for ulterior purposes)? One would be remiss not to mention here a very thorough and for the most part (though not entirely) convincing demonstration by Barker (1989) that, in his words, “the concept of a ‘stereotype’ is useless as a tool for investigation of media texts.” Moreover, he continues, “it is dangerous on both epistemological and political grounds.” (p. 210) While this characterization of the concept may be valid from the perspective of the uses made of it in different contexts, the position adopted here is that the concept, when properly defined, is not entirely valueless in some circumstances. What does one mean by 'properly defined?' That the concept should not be freighted with unnecessary baggage (value assumptions, political agendas, etc.) such as those that he identifies. Therefore, it is possible to use the term (as it is used here) in a neutral sense to simply signify the process of extrapolation of, for example, the personal characteristics of an individual to all members of the group that the individual belongs to.