Stereotypes; they're everywhere, everyday. Chinese pepple are smart and yellow. USA consists of fat and dumb people. If you're black, you come from Africa, and if you're a jew you've gotta have a big nose and be greedy. Of course not all stereotypical attributes are real, but still they're there for a reason.
The world is much different today from, for example, the 19th century. That includes stereotypes. We no longer think that every black and every african are monkeys playing the bongo drum, but we still give black people stereotypical attributes; if we see a black, young, man in the street, we assume that he atleast plays basketball and says "nigga" a lot.
Humans are afraid of new things, things they've never experienced or seen before, and although we've always been moving around and traveling, it's taken us a really long time for us to mix up with eachother. So when the white people discovered the black people, our defense was to call them apes and then lock them up. Soon the whole world had learnt that black people was far below the white people and we started using them as our slaves, because we were "better" than them.
Today, on the other hand, white and black people see eachother everyday; either in real life or through media. We've got used to eachother and put the worst racism behind us. We're not as afraid of eachother anymore, we can be friends and family, but we still have stereotypes. We still need to categorize, to make it easy for ourselves in everyday-life. If we hadn't been categorizing in the beginning, the human race wouldn't have been alive today. If we saw a big cat; we knew it could be dangerous, because sometime before we saw someone or something being attacked by a lion. And we assumed that Lion=Big Cat=Possible danger. We still need to use that ability; we still need perception and cognition. But what happens then is that racism and stereotypes are created.
If we take a closer look, we see that using stereotypical attributes not only makes us racist and makes us expect different things from different people; it also gives ourselves a stereotypical identity. Simply put: Russians will continue to drink Vodka as long as they feel they have to drink Vodka to be russian.
After coming this far in our research, we know that we not only have to change our stereotypical images of different groups of people, but simultaneously we need to break free from the typical attributes we've been giving ourselves, AND to be completely free from racism, we would have to live without categorizing people this way at all.... But would it even be possible to destroy stereotypes completely, or would we just create new stereotypical images and categorize people after those instead? After all, it's in our genes, and it is a mechanism made to survive. What do you think? Do you think we could change or remove stereotypes?
The most interesting part is that stereotypes today often get confirmed while stereotypes a few hundred years ago were nowhere near reality. I guess that depends on television a lot, that we now have a more realistic picture of who people really are, not just told by a few people in your surroindings, but by the poeple themselves. Another funny thing is that people often use the confirmation of stereotypes as some sort of proof to racism. "I'm ot racist, see, they are like that!"....
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on some things, though not about everything.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I don't believe that Russians drink Voodka because "They have to drink Vodka to be Russian", atleast... Not because of an identity given to them by stereotypes. They do it because it is, and it's been part of their culture for years... The same with Finnish people and saunas.
As for other stereotypes, the way to deal with them, in my opinion is simple - Break the walls, mix, meet new people. The only way to deal with stereotypes is to get to know people from other groups. If you have black friends who can't throw a ball, you won't assume that all black men play baskatball, or atleast, not very well.
Yours,
A Big Nosed, Greedy Jewish Guy.
Very true. :) And ofcourse I don't mean that's the ONLY reason they drink. ^^
ReplyDelete