In 1995, Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson conducted a study of African-American students. In this study, they found that when the students were primed to be aware of their membership in a group with a negative stereotype, they performed worse on a standardized test. Conversely, when they took the test without this priming, they performed much better. This study introduced the concept of the Stereotype Threat and it's part of a much larger discussion of how to negate the effects of negative stereotypes.
The reason why people perform below their baseline in these circumstances is because they are afraid of confirming that negative stereotype. Which makes sense. We see it in sports all the time; an athlete or a team is leading late in the game and they fall apart because they start thinking about not losing instead of thinking about winning the game and continuing to execute.
There are such things as positive stereotypes and they can provide the opposite effect. But perhaps we should stay away from stereotyping as a form of motivation. Why don't we, instead, focus on positive traits of each individual?
Furthermore, why do we feel like we need to group people together? As it pertains to our workplace, there is no reason why we developers can't offer our thoughts on design. Stereotypically, we only care that our code is executing the programs we've written, with very little concern for design or usability.
However, there are many developers out there who care deeply about the user experience. We should be encouraging these developers to be more involved in the design process instead of assuming they'd have nothing useful to add.
There is also the issue of creating a comfortable workplace. In my opinion, I think many of the issues we face right now can be solved by emphasizing empathy and openness. We need to recognize that we all come from different backgrounds and cultures and have our own issues outside of work. Work should be a place where people feel respected, heard and valued and should never feel like they're putting themselves at risk if they call someone out on an offensive remark.
There are certainly tactful ways of doing this, but our utlimate responsibility is to make sure we're all operating at the same level. I hope that if I ever say something that makes someone uncomfortable that they will pull me aside and tell me. I'll feel bad that I did it, but grateful that it will never happen again. Fighting the stereotype threat starts with the individual. No excuses.