My thesis here is simple. The
difference between a stereotype and a prejudice is the difference
between acknowledging an average and denying the range of a
distribution.
Call it the Yao proposition. Based on averages, the Chinese are shorter than Americans and Japanese are too. That statement is a stereotype based on averages and it is accurate.
The prejudice I heard all my life has
been that we would never see Chinese basketball champions and never
see Japanese baseball players compete effectively on American
baseball teams. These were prejudices because they deny the
existence of a higher end of the distributions involved.
There are positive and negative
prejudices. Each denies the distributions involved.
Blacks have done poorly in American schools for the forty years since Brown v Board of Education. That is a stereotype based on averages of educational measurement. The stereotype hasn't kept individual blacks from rising to the top positions in business and government because the range of educational achievement among blacks is large. Jim Crow, that kept blacks from rising to the top in America was prejudice.
Jews have higher average educational attainment and higher average incomes than the rest of the (mostly Western) societies we live in. That is an accurate stereotype. The prejudice associated with this stereotype is that Jews control the societies they live in. Except for Israel, Jews have never, anywhere had a higher proportion of participants in positions of power than their averages would generate. Jews have no greater power than would be expected from a normal distribution of the population with the high averages in education and business that Jews begin with (when they are allowed to get and education.)
Of course, prejudice has meant Jews would be killed in Europe or banished as we are in most Muslim societies today.