There are two ways that stereotyping has been demonstrably reduced: Allport’s contact hypothesis and Galinsky’s perspective-taking. Since perspective taking isn’t really something that naturally happens during key formative years, the key would seem to be contact with stereotyped groups during formative years. Obviously this doesn’t always stop stereotyping – there are still vilified groups at school but if you have contact with the group in question it reduces the negative effects and two-dimensional nature of the stereotyping. I think it’s far more likely that children of racist homophobes become racist homophobes because they were raised in an environment that lacks a socially acceptable group of other ethnicities or sexualities, the same kind of environment as their parents. Judith Rich Harris argues a strong case in her 1995 paper that peers are a far stronger force in socialisation than the parents (Group Socialization Theory).

Back to the Contact/Perspective Taking literature, the negative stereotype can only be changed through positive contact with a person who is a salient member of the group, and who is a typical member of that group. Meeting an Orthodox Jew who turns out to pay no attention to the Torah won’t do anything for your general opinion of Orthodox Jews. Poor example I know, but I assume you get the picture. Presumably negative reinforcement makes it harder to change opinions of groups, hence making things harder for African-Americans during the times of slavery. A quick modern example of what I see as a similar effect – Muslims and terrorism, say. It’s harder for such prejudice to be alleviated when there is a prevailing stereotype that gets consistently negatively reinforced by terrorist attacks on the news and suspicions of the general public.

Mainstream society today tends to lack a lot of the instituted prejudices of history, and IMO this is what has lead to the emancipation of so many groups in the past century or two. Without the negative reinforcement, negative stereotypes are becoming fewer and fewer. However, I doubt that “nerd” or “goth” will ever become words that are not uttered in public. If they do become so, new words (or existing ones, for that matter) will come up in their place to express more or less the same concept, and another futile chorus of the PC two-step is completed. Another side of reclamation of language worth considering – by making certain words taboo, it only increases their power. Nigger doesn’t really elicit much reaction in Australia, but in the US it’s quite powerful from what I’ve heard. “Queer” has progressed from an epithet to a word commonly used by the group it was intended to vilify, and “gay” is making similar progress. If you want to make progress with reclamation of language, this seems to be a better path to take IMHO.

I realize it’s still very popular to make a fuss over how silly political correctness is, but I haven’t really seen much political correctness. Where is it? Sure, African-American was silly. Like Wanda Sykes says, “No, I’m not black, I’m African-American, you can give me that loan now.”

Words are very powerful. You seem to be ignoring the fact that racist parents generally have racist kids. The slow elimination of vernacular that distinguishes people when there’s no reason to do so will gradually eliminate their ability to convey discriminatory ideas. If I can’t say aloud, “Look at that black man eating that fried chicken!” or, “That nerd walks funny!” because it’s taboo, there’s a smaller chance my son or other children will pick up on the stereotype and perpetuate it.

The future will be non-racist not because the word nigger is gone from the english language, but rather because the word nigger is so ordinary that nobody knew what it’s origins are.

It’s like–maybe whites aren’t quite as overtly racist towards blacks as they used to be. But now, we are far more biased against Arabs and specifically, Muslims. And…when you look at white-on-black racism, have things really gotten all that better?

Here I live in Cleveland, and it’s like–on average, the blacks are still a lot poorer. And a lot of people don’t seem to see it as a really big problem, or if they do, they don’t really seem to want to do anything about it, or they don’t think they can.

As an example of something that I think of as racism but most whites do not, I recently went to a swing dance in Cleveland. The dance was held in a big hall in a neighborhood that is over 80% black. There were two black people at the dance, out of at least 50 people.

The most popular form of dancing at these dances is the Lindy Hop, a dance that was invented by (but not named by) blacks. It was named by a white person, after Lindberg’s (lindy) flight (hop) across the Atlantic. The dancing is done to a type of music, swing, which evolved out of Jazz, which was basically invented by blacks. The dance itself was held in a predominantly black neighborhood. Yet, very few blacks were at the dance. And none of the people at the dance really seemed to think about this, or have any problem with it. THIS, I believe, is an indication that our society still has deep-seated racism.