'Blacks should not be satisfied with food stamps': The danger of stereotypes
What should you do if one of your executives uses a negative stereotype, especially in a public forum? How can you make sure your workplace doesn’t tolerate these types of damaging misconceptions, which impact morale and productivity? Learn a lesson from recent verbal missteps by presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and see what Dr. Claude Steele advises you to do.
Gingrich announced that “If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied cultural competencewith food stamps.”
NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous called the statement “inaccurate and divisive.”
Santorum said at a campaign stop in Iowa: “I don’t want to make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” After getting national criticism for the remark, he said he was “pretty confident that I didn’t say ‘Black,’” but the video shows that he did indeed say that. Watch the video.
