Stereotypes of white Americans

Stereotypes of European Americans in the United States are generalizations about the character, behavior, or appearance of white Americans by other Americans in the United States. For stereotypes about Americans by people of other nationalities, see Stereotypes of Americans.

As the definition of white Americans has changed over time, so have stereotypes about white people. Different non-white American groups and different nationalities have different stereotypes about white Americans. Historically, stereotypes about white people were more likely to be based on specific ethnicities. Stereotypes of white people also generally tend to fall along class lines, with upper class white Americans being stereotyped as WASPs and lower class white Americans as "rednecks".

White Americans are stereotyped to be greedy, materialistic, racist, terrible dancers, and terrible at basketball.

In the media, White Americans are often stereotyped to be white-collar suburbanites who are middle class or wealthy. White men are often stereotyped as ambitious, arrogant, racist, and uncoordinated. White women are often stereotyped as unintelligent, overly focused on appearance, and sexually available, with the names Becky and Karen sometimes used as pejoratives based on stereotypes of white women.

White Americans are also stereotyped as being privileged, very self-involved, delusional about people other than themselves, and are incapable of comprehending the ways in which minorities and people of color survive. Positive stereotypes of White Americans include that they are intelligent, socially diverse, non-dangerous and unlikely to commit crimes. Negative stereotypes of whites are that they are racist and otherwise prejudiced, and often feel scared or uneasy when around minorities.

Social stereotypes
In general, stereotypes of white people portray upper class white Americans as WASPs and they portray lower class white Americans as "backward", "barely-educated" rednecks. Rednecks, conversely are seen as "racist, hot-headed, too physical, violent, uncouth, loud, mean, undereducated—and proud of it."

During the COVID-19 pandemic, entitled White women were often stereotypically dubbed as Karens while displaying unhinged behavior. The name of the slang comes from a common name for older white women, Karen.

Academic studies
An early study of stereotypes of white people found in works of fiction which where written by African-American authors was conducted by African-American sociologist Tilman C. Cothran in 1950. The top five stereotypical qualities of whites that Cothran noted in his research were: "# Feels superior
 * 1) Hates Black people
 * 2) Brutish, impulsive, mean
 * 3) Proud
 * 4) Doesn't like Jews."

Other stereotypical qualities he listed were "think they know the Negro," but do not, being "unfair, deceitful, tricky," "think[ing] it's a white man's world" and being "cowardly." In another study on stereotypes in 1951, Cothran observed that the black lower and upper classes at that time had the least favorable stereotypes about white people, and the black middle class the most favorable.

In a 1972 study, American whites were stereotyped as "materialistic and pleasure loving" when compared with Asian and African Americans. In a study among college students of different races in 1982, White Americans were described as materialistic, ambitious, intelligent, conventional, industrious, and conservative. The study's author noted that the white stereotype had decreased in favorability over the years while the black stereotype had increased.

White women in particular were described as attractive, blonde, ditsy, shallow, privileged, sexually available, and appearance-focused by non-white participants in a 2013 study. The author of the paper also found that the stereotypes were consistent with media images of white women and noted the relative scarcity of research on white American stereotypes compared to research on other racial stereotypes.

In a 2018 study of children of different races, six year olds chose photos of white men as being "really smart" over photos of white women or black and brown people.

Popular culture
Becky and Karen have been used as terms to refer to white women who act in a clueless, condescending or entitled way; the stereotype names come from common names for white women. Kyle, a similarly named stereotype, refers to an angry white teenage boy who consumes energy drinks, punches holes into drywall, and plays video games.

The blog Stuff White People Like, written by a white man and an Asian man, addressed early 21st century stereotypes of white hipster bohemians in a humorous way. Comedian Dave Chappelle also used humor to address the stereotype that white Americans cannot dance in a sketch in which groups of whites erupt into frenzied dancing every time they hear an electric guitar.

Negative portrayals of specific groups of white people
As the social definition of "white people" has changed over the years, studies have shown that members of different races, ethnicities, and nationalities have different stereotypes of white people. Before the 1980s, ethnic groups such as the Irish, Italians, Armenians, and Polish people were portrayed in popular media and culture in a negative fashion. Stereotypes of West Virginians and Alabamians include incest and inbreeding. Poor whites in the Appalachian region have often been stereotyped as hillbillies. White Hispanic and Latino Americans are often overlooked by the U.S. mass media and frequently, American social perceptions incorrectly give the terms "Hispanic or Latino" a racial value, usually mixed-race, such as Mestizo, while they, in turn, are overrepresented in the U.S. Hispanic mass media, are admired by it, and shape social perceptions of Hispanic and Latino Americans.