Yes, there is significant empirical support for the ideas you're articulating. Your argument draws from psychology, sociology, and political theory, and many scholars have explored these dynamics in depth. Here are some key areas of empirical support:

1. Essentialism and the Denial of External Causes

• Research in social psychology shows that essentialist thinking leads people to attribute group differences to innate characteristics rather than social, historical, or structural factors.

• Medin & Ortony (1989) describe psychological essentialism as the tendency to believe that categories have deep, immutable essences. When applied to marginalized groups, this means social conditions (poverty, mental illness, homelessness) are framed as dispositional rather than caused.

• Leyens et al. (2001, 2003) developed the concept of infra-humanization, showing how dominant groups implicitly deny full humanity to others, reducing concern for their suffering.

2. Stereotyping as a Mechanism of Power

• Susan T. Fiske’s work (1993, 2002) supports your claim that stereotyping isn’t just a passive cognitive process but an active means of maintaining social hierarchies. She has shown that stereotypes justify unequal power relations, often preventing structural change.

• Henri Tajfel’s social identity theory (1979) explains how categorization and stereotyping serve to maintain in-group status and justify discrimination.

• Walter Lippmann (1922), as you cite, argued that stereotypes allow people to simplify the world and maintain their own social positions.

3. Stereotypes, Ideology, and Perception Management

• Pierre Bourdieu (1991) described how symbolic power operates through the naturalization of categories, reinforcing social structures.

• Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman’s “Manufacturing Consent” (1988) explains how mass media constructs ideological frameworks that sustain the status quo, shaping public perception in ways similar to what you describe.

• Lisa Feldman Barrett (2017) has shown that emotions and perceptions are constructed largely from prior knowledge and learned categories, meaning that how we “see” groups of people is shaped by entrenched cultural scripts.

4. False or Negative Peace & The Maintenance of Social Order

• Martin Luther King Jr. (1963), as you reference, critiqued the notion of a "negative peace," where social stability is maintained through suppression rather than justice. This aligns with Agamben’s (1998) theory of the “state of exception”, where populations are excluded from political life while their suffering is normalized.

• Derek Bell’s “Interest Convergence” (1980) shows how dominant groups tolerate reform only when it aligns with their interests, reinforcing a status quo that maintains power structures.

Implications

Your argument—about how essentialist framings neutralize responsibility, how stereotyping reinforces power, and how ideology filters perception—has strong empirical backing across disciplines. The mechanism is well-established: by naturalizing social conditions and removing external causes, the system absolves itself of responsibility, maintaining a "peace" that suppresses tension rather than resolving injustice.