hey look! it's the first day of winter (or summer)!
Weeks ago, a girl next to me on the bus was reading what appeared to be a very important article (probably because she needed to finish it before she got off the bus), so I decided to read it with her. I only got to read a few paragraphs, because I was being so discreet (possibly making up for the intrusion of her privacy), and had such limited time, but I made sure to get the keywords so as to find the article again on JSTOR. (JSTOR is marvelous.) I've always been addicted to the written word, but I was definitely hooked on the article as soon as I saw that it was about stereotyping based on skin color.
I wish people wouldn't call these "race" issues. As there is no such thing as "race" in the old sense that divided people by appearance, use of the word perpetuates an illegitimate concept, reinforcing and adding validity to an idea I believe should be obselete in everyone's mental repertory. People choose to divide themselves into groups based on perceived differences in appearance all over the world, and cultures are even shaped around these constructs. But all the differences are made by people; in no way do they result from innate differences. Really, it's all just part of a conspiracy in which some amorphous meta-organism twists the concepts and abstract ideas from which you draw your world by defining and limiting the words you are able to use, thereby controlling your thoughts. What a scary sentence.
Now that my point of view on using appearance to stereotype individuals has been fully heard, a background for understanding my reaction to the article is in place. Also, now that our quota for passive sentences has been reached, we will continue. Thomas Ford did a very specific study on the general topic of Television Stereotypes and Person Perception that dealt only with how people with darker skin (grouped arbitrarily and labelled as black) are stereotyped by people with lighter skin (grouped arbitrarily and labelled as white). Even if I think that these groupings are illegitimate, the fact that a society regularly uses them renders them important, and, of course, worthy of scrutiny. One thing that follows my understanding of this issue is a distaste for limiting the problem of judging others by their appearances to just the United States of America, and actually just between a few of these ill-defined groups. (For me, it's not a black-white issue, just a people issue. For those not aware of a larger world outside the US, these same problems do come up in other places, with different 'colors'.) Despite the fact that Thomas Ford did just that, I found his research to be thought-provoking and probably helpful in understanding the implications to all groups (going far beyond skin color). Everyone with access should read his article ("Effects of Stereotypical Television Portrayals of African-Americans on Person Perception") for the experimental method, data, and explanation, but one semi-summarizing sentence states that "present research demonstrates the possible power of seemingly harmless comical television portrayals of social out-groups in stereotypical roles on the way we think about and respond to individual members of those groups" (p. 271). Basically, making fun of and through stereotypes will put them in people's consciousness and make it more likely they will refer to and make decisions based on them.
After mulling over the article and observing television (aka mentally checking out on the couch), I tend to agree with Thomas Ford. Not only that, I decided to give up Dave Chappelle. I do respect Chappelle's career decisions, resulting from what I conjecture to be a realization that his sketches had that very effect, but just to be safe, I still won't be watching his comedy shows again. Obviously one show is not the cause of the common stereotyping we encounter, and more observation led me to think that most of the portrayals of stereotypes I take in are not trying to promote them at all, but rather the opposite. Then I wondered if any references to the stereotypes might be counterproductive, in a way. If I had never seen or heard about the stereotypes, they would never have been able to influence the way I think. Not only is there a great deal in entertainment culture, but sometimes it seems there is a lot coming from the people who are actively trying to get rid of them. Perhaps there can be a negative priming effect of social activism.
What if everyone decided they wouldn't tell any children about any stereotypes (in addition to eradicating them in entertainment)? Would it be possible for society to leave these stereotypes behind? Could children grow up thinking that people who believe and act based on skin color stereotypes are similar to people who believe the world is flat? I don't think we should ever ignore history; I wish it seemed more historical, utterly confusing that anyone could ever have treated any other person differently because of stereotypes based on their appearance. A lot of US history and even the civil rights movements of my parents' lifetimes are like that to me, but I sometimes feel that the more I hear about them the more aware of skin color differences I become. It's hard enough for me to never mentally refer to stereotypes based on skin color in all my interpersonal interaction because of the fact that there are cultures built around them and references come up so frequently.
Even if the next generations grew up without knowing about certain stereotypes, it wouldn't solve the problem that people still tend to segregate themselves by appearance. Part of me thinks eradicating stereotypes is impossible. After all, people are constantly dividing themselves into groups, and it becomes part of making and projecting an identity. This article could be applied to any and all stereotypes, whether hurtful or just misleading, like those about math majors (Ford's example). Trying to fix all the world's stereotyping problems on this level is obviously pointless. But wouldn't it be helpful to at least get rid of the idea that people look different and therefore are different? To start out, I have just eliminated the use of the "r" word. Hopefully that's a step in the right direction...
I'd really like to hear what people think who disagree at any point, and I'd like to know why. I haven't had very much chance to bounce all my ideas off other's ideas, so I know I might be overlooking something vital.
I wish people wouldn't call these "race" issues. As there is no such thing as "race" in the old sense that divided people by appearance, use of the word perpetuates an illegitimate concept, reinforcing and adding validity to an idea I believe should be obselete in everyone's mental repertory. People choose to divide themselves into groups based on perceived differences in appearance all over the world, and cultures are even shaped around these constructs. But all the differences are made by people; in no way do they result from innate differences. Really, it's all just part of a conspiracy in which some amorphous meta-organism twists the concepts and abstract ideas from which you draw your world by defining and limiting the words you are able to use, thereby controlling your thoughts. What a scary sentence.
Now that my point of view on using appearance to stereotype individuals has been fully heard, a background for understanding my reaction to the article is in place. Also, now that our quota for passive sentences has been reached, we will continue. Thomas Ford did a very specific study on the general topic of Television Stereotypes and Person Perception that dealt only with how people with darker skin (grouped arbitrarily and labelled as black) are stereotyped by people with lighter skin (grouped arbitrarily and labelled as white). Even if I think that these groupings are illegitimate, the fact that a society regularly uses them renders them important, and, of course, worthy of scrutiny. One thing that follows my understanding of this issue is a distaste for limiting the problem of judging others by their appearances to just the United States of America, and actually just between a few of these ill-defined groups. (For me, it's not a black-white issue, just a people issue. For those not aware of a larger world outside the US, these same problems do come up in other places, with different 'colors'.) Despite the fact that Thomas Ford did just that, I found his research to be thought-provoking and probably helpful in understanding the implications to all groups (going far beyond skin color). Everyone with access should read his article ("Effects of Stereotypical Television Portrayals of African-Americans on Person Perception") for the experimental method, data, and explanation, but one semi-summarizing sentence states that "present research demonstrates the possible power of seemingly harmless comical television portrayals of social out-groups in stereotypical roles on the way we think about and respond to individual members of those groups" (p. 271). Basically, making fun of and through stereotypes will put them in people's consciousness and make it more likely they will refer to and make decisions based on them.
After mulling over the article and observing television (aka mentally checking out on the couch), I tend to agree with Thomas Ford. Not only that, I decided to give up Dave Chappelle. I do respect Chappelle's career decisions, resulting from what I conjecture to be a realization that his sketches had that very effect, but just to be safe, I still won't be watching his comedy shows again. Obviously one show is not the cause of the common stereotyping we encounter, and more observation led me to think that most of the portrayals of stereotypes I take in are not trying to promote them at all, but rather the opposite. Then I wondered if any references to the stereotypes might be counterproductive, in a way. If I had never seen or heard about the stereotypes, they would never have been able to influence the way I think. Not only is there a great deal in entertainment culture, but sometimes it seems there is a lot coming from the people who are actively trying to get rid of them. Perhaps there can be a negative priming effect of social activism.
What if everyone decided they wouldn't tell any children about any stereotypes (in addition to eradicating them in entertainment)? Would it be possible for society to leave these stereotypes behind? Could children grow up thinking that people who believe and act based on skin color stereotypes are similar to people who believe the world is flat? I don't think we should ever ignore history; I wish it seemed more historical, utterly confusing that anyone could ever have treated any other person differently because of stereotypes based on their appearance. A lot of US history and even the civil rights movements of my parents' lifetimes are like that to me, but I sometimes feel that the more I hear about them the more aware of skin color differences I become. It's hard enough for me to never mentally refer to stereotypes based on skin color in all my interpersonal interaction because of the fact that there are cultures built around them and references come up so frequently.
Even if the next generations grew up without knowing about certain stereotypes, it wouldn't solve the problem that people still tend to segregate themselves by appearance. Part of me thinks eradicating stereotypes is impossible. After all, people are constantly dividing themselves into groups, and it becomes part of making and projecting an identity. This article could be applied to any and all stereotypes, whether hurtful or just misleading, like those about math majors (Ford's example). Trying to fix all the world's stereotyping problems on this level is obviously pointless. But wouldn't it be helpful to at least get rid of the idea that people look different and therefore are different? To start out, I have just eliminated the use of the "r" word. Hopefully that's a step in the right direction...
I'd really like to hear what people think who disagree at any point, and I'd like to know why. I haven't had very much chance to bounce all my ideas off other's ideas, so I know I might be overlooking something vital.
posted by Keturah at 12:19 PM
6 Comments:
Love the blog, hope you keep updating it - Blogs I visit seem to dissapear often :(
^ must be frustrating... to have the touch of death. but i'm resilient.
the last few days i've observed some thought-provoking perpetuations through humor of stereotypes based on skin color, and decided that people perpetrating these perpetuations do not know or understand the harmful effects, and probably have not taken the time to analyze their assumptions. hmm.
Stereotypes can be perpetrated by the "availability heuristic". I have observed it happening in my own mind and have tried to fight against it.
Suppose the you get it in to your head that Mexicans are bad drivers. Whenever a car nearly collides with you, you check to see if the driver is a Mexican. If the driver does not appear to be Mexican, you don't think anything of it. But if the driver appears to be Mexican, then you think "There! Another Mexican who drives badly." So the incidents that you remember are all incidents of Mexicans driving badly, and not incidents of Mexicans driving well.
What can we do to combat this?
--David Grayson
Brain psychology, in particular the amygdala, has a role in racism!
"In exploring [relations among different groups], one often encounters a pessimism built around the notion that humans ... are hard-wired for xenophobia. Some brain-imaging studies have appeared to support this view in a particularly discouraging way. There is a structure deep inside the brain called the amygdala, which plays a key role in fear and aggression, and experiments have shown that when subjects are presented with a face of someone from a different race, the amygdala gets metabolically active--aroused, alert, ready for action. This happens even when the face is presented 'subliminally,' which is to say, so rapidly that the subject does not consciously see it.
"More recent studies, however, should mitigate this pessimism. Test a person who has a lot of experience with people of different races, and the amygdala does not activate; or, as in a wonderful experiment by Susan Fiske of Princeton University, subtly bias the subject beforehand to think of people as individuals rather than as members of a group, and the amygdala does not budge. ...
"The first half of the twentieth century was drenched in the blood spilled by German and Japanese aggression, yet only a few decades later it is hard to think of two countries more pacific. Sweden spent the seventeenth century rampaging through Europe, yet it is now an icon of nurturing tranquility."
Robert M. Sapolsky, "A Natural History of Peace," Foreign Affairs, January/February 2006, pp. 119-120. via Delanceyplace.com mailing
--David Grayson
That's very interesting. I'm sure those who have realized the harmful effects of stereotyping others based on appearance are all fighting their availability heuristics on occasion. It's nice that some people have reason to believe humans are not 'hardwired' for that. People do seem to be hardwired to mass into opposing group identities with violent results, verbally or physically.
I think you may have answered your question on the specific problem of appearance. It would improve if people had experience dealing with wide ranges of other people (with differing skin colors) as individuals. How? I don't know. That sometimes backfires... and what about the seemingly endless other areas for stereotyping?
What interesting places Facebook has taken me...
I still have yet to really figure out who you are, but I'm assuming you're a...cousin of my (oh man, we're 5 days in, and it's still not old...) fiance.
Cousin might be wrong, but no matter. I felt like commenting on this entry for reasons other the above.
Most stereotypes I have found myself using, especially in reference to 'black' and 'white' have been perpetrated by television (which I am currently without, thank goodness) in part. however, I have drawn the conclusion that many times the subject to which I apply a stereotype displays, by all appearances, the characteristics which define the stereotype.
I suppose the most telling illustration I can think of is captured in the words of a very respectable Ugandan pastor I know, who once, very seriously, said, "I really can't stand 'niggers'." By this, he was referring to those individuals who formed their worldview around BET.
Anyway, I think I might go ask Ruthie if I just put my foot in my mouth by calling you a cousin...don't hold it against me :)
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