Every society that classifies mankind and separates the autochthonous groups from the "foreign" groups includes a system of beliefs, being it religious or of another kind. Their representations obey a norm that gives their actions an ethical sense. Those actions are not committed by criminals or crazy people, but by the ones who know what it is allowed or forbidden, or what the difference between good and evil is. The starting point of the presented reflections is that stereotypes categories which discriminate groups in whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, Frenchmen and Germans, indigenous and Spaniards, gypsies and Rumanians etc. constitute, in short, a way of knowledge with the function of opposing the favorite "fellow creatures" to the despicable "different ones", to distinguish those who are not like us.
prejudice; gypsies; social representations; social psychology