A glib but true statement is that in a racist culture, everybody is racist. Spiegelman Contrary to today s stereotypes, racists do not always chew tobacco and drive pickup trucks with gun racks. They also wear silk shirts, treat women as possessions, and talk about human rights at cocktail parties far from communities of people of color. The men in pickup trucks are just as likely to be as warm and caring as the high minded liberals are to be racists. Stereotypes are sets of beliefs about characteristics attributed to members of a certain group.
Stereotypes are overgeneralizations and oversimplifications.
For instance, a stereotype of U.S. Americans might be that they are individualistic, self-oriented, materialistic, capitalistic, and ethnocentric. If a Korean executive held that set of beliefs about U.S. Americans, then routinely and probably unconsciously, the Korean would assume that all the characteristics were applicable to all U.S. Americans.