Research in Essay form.

Topic – Racial Stereotypes.

Hypothesis – Racial stereotypes are affecting the society.

As much as we try to deny it, racial stereotypes still prevails in our society as a major flaw. From

our everyday life to rare events, we experience racial stereotypes at an uncontrollable pace.

Racism is not only restricted to but it is also found in other countries on different basis. In

Pakistan, we observe the practice of racism based on religious belief that may include Shia Sunni

conflicts, Ahmedi community issues, minority issues and sectarianism. In the United States of

America, racism is practiced on the base of race. For example, the murder of George Floyd (a

black man) by a white cop. In France, racism is practiced on the basis of religion. For example,

the assassination of women in Hijab and in India, racism prevails on the basis on ideology as the

class system prevails in India. If we talk about Pakistan, the stereotypes are based mostly on

either the province the person is from or the language that they speak for example a person

coming from a Sindhi background enters Punjab, people will call them out with terms such as

Muhajir, Bhaiyay, etc to mock them. Similarly, if a person living in the Capital goes to

Baluchistan or the Northern areas, people would start calling them, Cakes, Burgers, Mama’s boy,

etc. People speaking Punjabi make fun of Pushto, people speaking Balochi or Saraiki would

mock people speaking Sindhi and vice versa. This creates chaos in the society that is sometimes

very difficult to control and it sometimes even gets violent such as when religious sects start riots

against each other and people who have no conflict with them whatsoever get killed or beaten

because they belong to a specific sect. (Khan, 2020).

This research paper focuses on finding the root cause and reason of the existence of racial

stereotypes in Pakistan and which measures can be taken to avoid the prevailing racial

stereotypes. We will emphasize on the existence of racial stereotypes in different forms and on

different basis. (PTI, 2020).

The author – Jawad explains his experience as an Ahmedi in the Pakistani society in this article

and throws light on an incident which took place in his life and still serves as a nightmare for

him. Jawad’s father is known as Sheikh in the society and his father served as a judge in the past

too. Unfortunately, Sheikh lost his life during an attack on the Ahmedi community leaving

behind a grieving family. But, it does not end here as Sheikh was continually receiving threats

from unknown people who threatened Sheikh that they would kill the Ahmedi’s on his son’s

wedding and as a result, they had to employ high security on the wedding to avoid any

disturbance. Not only that, but every member of the Ahmadi community has to face some kind of

discrimination in the society as Jawad explains how the shopkeepers refused to sell his wife a

tooth brush. This practice is quite common in our society as people refuse to sell or buy stuff

from the people belonging to the Ahmedi community. It would be safe to say that the blasphemy

law plays a major role in molding the mindset of people as the law is being misused to a great

extent in the society. Majority of the people are against the Ahmadi community and are raising

their children in a manner that encourages the children to hate the entire community too. Such

attitude cam restrict the diversity in country and lead to major setbacks like mass attacks and

terrorism. The Ahmedi community is an oppressed community of our society and they are

threatened to a level where they tend to hide their identity now in order to avoid any unwanted

and unfortunate events as their life in Pakistan is always at a risk. (OPIndia, 2020).
The author – Khokhar depicts the dark side of our society with us as he tells us about how the

minorities are treated in our society. Khokhar tells us about the incident which took place in

2017 when a 17 year old Christian boy – Sheron Masih got admission in a public school where

the majority of the students were Muslims and while trying to fit in, Sheron was drinking water

from the cooler when the other boys started beating him brutally with the sticks and kept on

beating him until the last breath left his fragile body. (Khokhar, 2018)

The author emphasizes on the fact that such behaviors from minors just give us an idea about the

tip of the ice berg as such attitudes arise from a proper pattern of behavior. When the parents do

not teach their children the ethics that advise them to treat minorities with respect, such incidents

occur and this hate will prevail in the society. Until proper awareness is raised about such issues,

the society would not learn.

Zaigham Khan in 2016 in his article Insult the Baloch stated that Balochi people are

stereotyped to the great extent and it is said that they are uncivilized people who only know

fighting and killing and it is considered that they don’t have a proper way of living and they live

in deserts. The writer has criticized the textbook which is named Sociology of Pakistan and said

that this textbook teaches us many aspects of stereotypes and has made the Baloch community

angry to the larger extent and that this is garbage that is being put in the mind of young people. It

has been used in the colleges for over two decades but no controversy has come forward to date

regarding this.

The atrocities on the minorities do not end here as another minor Christian girl Arzoo was

recently raped and later on her custody was given to her rapist who claimed that they were in

love. After an awareness campaign on social media, she has finally been shifted to a shelter

where she is kept safe and secure away from her rapist. This incident tells us about how powerful
the social media platforms can be when it comes to making justice prevail in the society. (Khan,

2016).

Sectarianism is a major problem in countries like Pakistan as people refuse to tolerate people

belonging to different sects. Baloch explains in his article how the Shias, being a minority suffer

at the hands of the society in Pakistan. Shias are usually targeted by the other sects and Shias are

more likely to get attacked by the racial stereotypes as they have various associations attached to

them and majority of the people assume the Shia’s to be non-Muslims and as a result, they are

brutally targeted in the society.

If we look at the culture of northern sides in Pakistan, the people are friendly but they are

extremely intolerant towards the Shia community as the author explains how she witnessed the

Pashtuns getting killed by the locals solely for being a Shia. People from all around the world

refuse to eat and hang around with the Shia community and have attached absurd storied to their

identity. An example of such association is that where people assume that Shia’s use the saliva of

horse in their food which is fake and moreover, many people make Shias a target of blasphemy

by making various false claims. (Alvi, 2019).

Sectarianism is however, reducing to some extent now as awareness is being raised in institutes

about the issue but there is still a vast chunk of society who refuse to accept diversity in

population and are intolerant towards the belief of other people based on social stigmas.

The staff of OpIndia focuses on the increasing intensity of racial stereotypes based on

sectarianism during Covid. As the cases of coronavirus started increasing in Pakistan, a number

of Shia’s landed in Pakistan from Iran and as a result, the majority started blaming Shia’s for the

spread of the virus since the Shias came back from Iran and instead of targeting the main cause
and finding out a solution, the whole sect of Shias was looked at as the culprit disregarding the

fact that those people had to return to their country despite the pandemic. People started bashing

the Shia community by changing the whole scenario into a blame game. Such issues arise when

people are taught to blame the community that they look down on and instead of unitedly

tackling the problem, we just make it worse by converting it into a blame game.

Tehreem Azeez talks about the rise in the misuse of blasphemy law in Pakistan as people have

started using the law for their own benefit. We still remember the young Mashal Khan who lost

his life in his university because someone made a fake account using his name and posted

blasphemous content and as a result, he was killed by an angry mob in his university. The misuse

of blasphemy law is on a rise in Pakistan since every minor mistake or questions of individuals is

assumed to be blasphemy in Pakistan as recently a man was killed for alleged blasphemy and the

murderer was appreciated, encouraged and the brutal act was celebrated by the people

considering the murderer to be a lion. After observing such incidents, we ponder on the fact that

where is this society headed towards? That young boy is so appreciated for killing a person, what

would he do when he grows up into a man? Such racial stereotyping has always prevailed in the

society and will continue to prevail unless proper action is taken against the culprits. (OpIdnia,

2020).

Racial stereotypes not only prevail in Pakistan but it is a global issue. Racial stereotyping on the

basis of race is common in United States of America (USA) as Jordan tells us about the incident

of the death of George Floyd on 25th May, 2020. The incident is just one of the many incidents

that take place in America on daily basis. Black people are targeted in USA every now and then

and this racism on the base of skin color has prevailed since ages in the American society and

people usually practice the white privilege in the United States of America.
The social media is not full of campaigns in the favor of black people after the death of George

Floyd and as a result, people are now supporting black businesses and any discriminative action

with the black people is taken seriously as the recent protests in America changed the racial

perspective of people to some extent.

Hussein talks about the racial stereotypes on the basis of politics and religion in France and the

French government is widely known for their discriminative and racial stereotypes against the

Muslims in their country. Not long ago, France banned Hijab for women which made various

Muslim women hesitate while visiting France as they were unable to practice their religion

openly and freely. That fell in the boundaries of their political policies and hence, no one could

do anything but after that, France recently made cartoons on Holy Prophet (PBUH) which

outraged the Muslims all around the world and upon confronting the French President, it was

revealed that he was indeed in the favor of the cartoons and refused to take them down. As a

reaction, Muslims all around the world started boycotting the French products in order to express

their condemnation of the French attitude as Muslims are being oppressed and killed in France

because of their religion and no one is doing anything about it. However, the French President

pledged the Muslim nations not to boycott the French products but unless or until the cartoons

are removed and a public apology is made for the absurd behavior, Muslim Nations are not

willing to stop the boycott of French products.

India is a country where racial stereotypes of all types but mainly on the basis of ideology are

prevalent in the society and PTI states in their article that racial stereotyping should be dealt with

strictly in order to avoid and reduce the chaos in the society. Recently, a large number of people

were brutally killed in Delhi and Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the ongoing brutality in

his speech.
 The questionnaires helped our group in gathering qualitative data. They helped us in

exploring the issue through statistics.

We got responses online on Google forms. The majority of our respondents were young adults

or people in their late teens. Questions integrated to make up our questionnaire. The

questionnaire has lots of questions related to the types of difficulties people being judged with

racial stereotypes face. The questionnaire also includes questions related to dealing with the

anxiety and depression caused by these racial stereotypes and how they affect the people

collectively. Easy and comprehensible options were provided in the answer bar, to make

processing and analyzing data uncomplicated.

For the qualitative analysis of the given topic, a superfluous number of articles were

pored over. Furthermore, case studies were analyzed. The majority of these articles explained the

negative impact on the emotional and mental health of people being abused using racial

stereotypes.

The sample size was set as 30. However, we received higher number of responses. The

responses were received from different cities of Pakistan.

From our questionnaire survey, we received the following results.

We asked the respondents whether they were aware of the term racial stereotypes or not and all

the respondents were aware of the racial stereotypes and understood the concept.

We asked the people about racial stereotyping in Pakistan and 41.7% people think that it is

highly practiced in Pakistan, 30.6% people believe that it is moderately high while 27.3% people

decided to remain neutral about racial stereotyping in Pakistan.

We asked the respondents whether or not they were willing to buy from a shopkeeper who

happens to belong from the Ahmedi community and majority (52.8%) of the people were willing

to buy stuff from the Ahmedis while 16.7% refused to make the purchases from Ahmedis and

27.8% of the respondents were not sure.

We tried to judge whether the social institutions were playing their part properly or not by asking

respondents who were selected randomly that of they even knew any organization which was

working in order to reduce the racial stereotypes in the society. This shows how inactive the

social institutions are that the people do not even know about them in the first place. After that

we asked the respondents about the reason behind racial stereotypes and we got the following

results mainly;

 Illiteracy.

 Lack of awareness.

 Toxic mindsets.

We asked the people whether they have witnessed racial stereotypes in their life or not and

83.3% of the people have experienced racial stereotypes in their life while 16.7% have not. And

while taking the stats, we realized that 44.4% of the respondents believe that racial stereotypes

are mostly practiced in USA, 27.8% voted for India, 16.7% for France and 11.1% for Pakistan.

This shows that when it comes to racial stereotypes, USA and India have the worst reputation.

Then the respondents were asked about how common do they think racial stereotypes are and

majority rated it a 4 on a scale of 1-5, 19.4% rated it a 3 while 16.7% of the people rated it a

strong 5.
We also asked the people about how we can get rid of racial stereotypes in their opinion and

majority stated that the people must be educated in order to get rid of racial stereotypes in

Pakistan.

After analyzing the whole research, we can make the following recommendations.

Social institutions must be formed and speculated to ensure that racial stereotyping is not being

practiced anywhere. Minority rights should be controlled. Individuals should be educated and

made aware about such issues from a young age. Students should be educated about how they

must condemn the racial stereotypes from a young age.

In a nut shell, racial stereotyping is a global issue which is affecting the society to a great extent.

From children to adults, everyone is targeted by racial stereotypes in one way or another and the

society still has a long way to go in order to get rid of racial stereotypes as they exist on the bases

of religion in Pakistan, race in USA, politics in France and ideology in India.

References.

PTI, 2020. Delhi Violence: When Racist Ideology Based On Hatred Takes Over, It Leads To

Bloodshed, Says Pakistan PM Imran Khan. [online] Deccan Herald. Available at:

<https://www.deccanherald.com/international/delhi-violence-when-racist-ideology-based-on-

hatred-takes-over-it-leads-to-bloodshed-says-pakistan-pm-imran-khan-808338.html> [Accessed

6 November 2020].

Hussain, M. and Hussain, M., 2019. French Muslims Grapple With A Republic That Codified

Their Marginalization. [online] The Intercept. Available at:

<https://theintercept.com/2019/02/23/france-islamophobia-islam-french-muslims-terrorism/>

[Accessed 6 November 2020].

Jordan, 2020. How George Floyd Was Killed In Police Custody. [online] Nytimes.com.

Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/george-floyd-investigation.html>

[Accessed 6 November 2020].

Azeem, T., 2018. Misuse Of Blasphemy Law Again On The Rise In Pakistan. [online]

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again-on-the-rise-in-pakistan/> [Accessed 7 November 2020].

OpIndia, 2020. Pakistanis Blame Shias For Spread Of Coronavirus, Call It 'Shia Virus'. [online]

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virus-pilgrims-return-from-iran-taftan-border/amp/> [Accessed 7 November 2020].

OpIndia, 2020. Pakistanis Blame Shias For Spread Of Coronavirus, Call It 'Shia Virus'. [online]

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Khokhar, S., 2017. Punjab, Christian Student Killed, Victim Of Religious Racism. [online]

Asianews.it. Available at: <http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Punjab,-Christian-student-killed,-

victim-of-religious-racism-41756.html> [Accessed 7 November 2020].

Wire, H., 2018. Facing Persecution, The Ahmedi Community In Pakistan Is Going Missing.

[online] Business-standard.com. Available at: <https://www.business-

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