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The other problem is that sterotypes are based on historic generalizations.
I agree with writersjourney that it is a lazy form of analysis
posted by
beachbelle
on January 24, 2005 at 2:27 PM
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The Problem With Stereotypes
The problem with stereotypes is that they prevent us from thinking. It fosters intellectual laziness and it almost always limits the options of the groups that are being typed. It’s interesting that the group that isn’t typed, the dominant group, is the one group that is allowed simply to be “humans” with a diverse range of personalities and skills. This should tell us something about the nature of typing, and how it is applied.
It is fine to say I know a 6’3 black man who doesn’t fit the type, but I’ll bet he can’t go anywhere without people insisting that must be good at basketball. Worse still, I’ll bet it is harder for him to break through potential employers’ expectations that he can’t possibly be good at computers. Tests of this practice have been replicated over and over again for the past forty years, and they keep confirming this outcome. This is the problem with typing – it is the nature of this kind of thinking (non-thinking, as it were) that it limits the targeted groups options in life, even unintentionally.
And typing is not the result of years of experience. It doesn’t group up as organically as that. It is socially constructed. A plethora of cultural studies shows the deliberateness and intensity of typing with the rise of popular culture in the 1920s. Typing is used to justify social positions of dominance and subordination, and to sell laundry detergent, rice, pancakes, and other products. It’s not an “objective” process by any means. One talks of typing of “dumb blonds,” for example – isn’t it interesting that when we think of “dumb blonds,” we only think of blond women – never men. This would seem to suggest that they typing of “dumb blond” has been used for gender subordination rather than as something to target blonds in general.
And of course typing is the lazy person’s way to avoid encountering and exploring other cultures. Rather than trying to understand native American “Indian” cultures and religions in relation to the land, and the fact that it cannot be owned, the settlers typed native Americans as “savages,” because they wouldn’t put up fences, and then savagely proceeded to wipe them out.
I don’t think it is a good idea to put a soft face on the practice of typing. Especially since those with greater power and numbers use it to type those with lesser power and numbers, and to limit their options, dismiss their complexity and culture, and justify existing social outcomes and hierarchy.
posted by
writersjourney
on January 24, 2005 at 2:21 PM
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