[Ws:] What I am saying is that making quick judgments based on stereotypes is a substantial part of everyday thinking. We make such judgments about everything, including other people. As Kahneman says , this is 'what you see is all there is" (WYSIATI) thinking. There is probably an evolutionary advantage in this kind thinking, which is a substantial decrease of the probability of becoming someone else's dinner. Stereotypes and prejudices originate in this type of thinking - you make a judgment about a person or group of people based on a "prototypical" case rather than on some rational basis that requires time and effort. The prototypical case, in turn is formed by the soc-called availability heuristic, which means that something that is easily available and vivid becomes a "prototypical" case. A good example is a fear of flying following 9/11. This was probably the safest time to fly as the probability that a similar attack will occur shortly after 9/11 was practically zero. However, people had vivid images of planes flying into buildings and that formed their "typical" image of dangers of flying. The same thing is produced by the news of plane crashes. By this logic, when something is merely possible but vividly presented it is typically perceived as probable and imminent.
The same process is at work with ethnic stereotypes - both positive and negative. You see the news of an Asian excelling at math or a Black committing a crime, and these become your "typical" images by which you judge the entire group of people. This of course has little to do with the probability of these stereotypes existing in the actual population. In other words, most Asians do not excel at math and most Blacks do not commit crimes, but that hardly matters, because what Kahneman calls "quick thinking" (System 1 thinking) is very bad at evaluating probabilities. Evaluating probabilities requires "slow" rational thinking (System 2 in Kahneman's terminology) and that thinking is not activated unless a specific challenge exists.
So the fact that you do not remember using stereotypes is linked to the fact that to be able to recognize stereotypes you must have a well developed capacity of rational thinking which can call into question "quick thinking". Without that rational questioning, the quick thinking based on stereotypes is WYSIATI - you do not know these are stereotypes that do not always hold to reason, you treat them as "self evident truths." Now, the capacity for rational thinking in humans is not fully in place until 16 years of age or so. And even when it is fully in place, people typically need to gain enough knowledge and experience to be able to question their "self-evident" stereotypes. The fact that you were able to do at the the age of 20 is remarkable, because most people get much later or never. I would imagine that being bi-cultural was a significant factor that helped you to rationally identify and question cultural stereotypes. Untraveled folks have it much harder.
So the main problem is not the existence of stereotypes, including ethnic stereotypes, because they are inevitable products of human cognition. There is no way to avoid them. The problem is that these stereotypes are not rationally challenged. This can occur in several ways. First, and probably most common, is that most people do not have a stimulus to activate their rational thinking to question their stereotypes. These stereotypes are a part of their "stock knowledge" - a system of beliefs taken for granted. Again such complacency is common, especially in cultures that are tightly knit and having little exposure to other cultures. Far more problematic are active efforts to suspend rational judgments about ethnic stereotypes. There are two kinds of such efforts - demagogy and sanction by institutional authority.
What I see as most prevalent in the US is that identity politics and suburban segregation effectively reduce our rational capacity to question and challenge ethnic stereotypes. The Zimmerman case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin is a good example. I think his claim that he is not a racist is probably true in the sense that he does not hold an openly racist hatred or ideology. However, his ability to rationally challenge ethnic stereotypes (i.e. that of a "Black criminal") was greatly reduced by his suburban experience, since the chances are that this stereotype was probably shared by most of his neighbors. So when he saw a black guy in a hoodie he immediately thought "criminal" without rationally examining this conclusion. WYSIATI. Of course, this does not reduce his culpability - not thinking is not an excuse, for it it were most inmates would be innocent. But it explains how an ordinary person who is not motivated by racist hatred can nonetheless commit a racist crime. What failed here was not as much an individual - for all individuals are prone to stereotypes - but the community, its informal culture, the stand-your-ground legislation and their effect on reducing individual capacity to rationally challenge these stereotypes.
I think that the Zimmerman case is fairly typical of most Americans - they are not openly racist but they hold certain stereotypes that are natural products of "quick" (System 1 in Kahneman's terminology) thinking, and their capacity for critically challenging these stereotypes have been significantly dulled by their cultural identities and politics associated with them, segregated places or residence, and by both informal and formal culture (especially the media.)
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."