DISCLAIMER: I am not encouraging the assumptions I confer in this post, I am simply identifying the fact that we (including myself) make them.
Identity creation for a society is as much to do with identifying what we are
not as identifying what we
are. The part of my identity that classifies me as a Christian also classifies me as not a Muslim. This identifying the “other” - those things that we are not and are therefore different – is a very important part of community identity. We identify the “other” by establishing stereotypes to help us understand what we expect form the “other” person. This is not new; society has always been a diverse collection of people with connections with people from “outside” the society. But this is much more prevalent now.
If you were living 300 years ago in Mother England you wouldn’t come into contact with the kind of people traditionally thought of as “other”, now England is one of the most diverse (culturally, ethnically and religiously) places on earth.
I think a result of this has been the fact that stereotypes and labels dominate our relationships. As soon as we meet someone we have made judgments and attached “labels” to them. By looking at someone’s physical appearance we can and do make judgments about their gender, ethnicity, age, religion, sexual orientation and member ship of a sub-cultural group.
If we see a girl with a long black dress, died black hair, black nail polish, black lipstick and a Pentagon medallion we make certain assumptions about her behavior, her religion and her worldview.
When the person opens their mouth this deepens the contact and we can establish competency with the English language and therefore education, accent and therefore ethnic, regional or class background.
This label creating carries itself over to cocktail conversation or small talk.
The normal questions go something like this:
1)
“What is your name?” This can tell us ethnicity, religion and class background. We have names that we associate with a particular group ie Jamal is normally associated with African Americans, Mohammad with Muslims, and Rupert Theodore III with Upper class Europeans.
2)
“What do you do?” What is your job? Are you studying? Etc.
This question helps us to establish class background, economic status and in some case we make assumptions about behavior and personality.
3)
“So what are you studying?” As students (or former students) we have assumptions we make about behavior and personality based on the major you choose.
4) As Christians our cocktail conversation extends even further and we make further assumptions through the question
“Ah you’re a Christian where do you go to Church?” We then can establish labels and stereotypes based on the answer to this all-important question “Oh, you’re an Anglican, say no more.”
5)
“What you haven’t seen Napoleon Dynamite?” oh sorry this is not really an important question, but we can make assumptions based on the answer. :)
Stereotypes are an inevitable by product of diversity; ever since Adam noticed that Eve was different he started to form assumptions (as did she) in his mind regarding the implications of this observed difference.
Stereotypes are inevitable but that does not mean they are always positive as is plainly obvious from
Brotown. The lack of brown faces on T.V led to a show which reinforced the stereotypes people already had and meant that sure there was brown face on T.V but are they positive role models? Even if they are real funny ouh.
The Simpsons, would never have got past its first season if it wasn’t for the stereotypes it reinforces ie the capitalist, the mindless lackey, the brat, the fat slob, the fundy Christian, the ethnic diary owner etc.
Stereotypes can cause laughter (sometimes as in the case of
Crash uncomfortable laughter) but they are also negative. A real life example one of my friends at school had parents who were from Singapore so she was “Asian” despite the fact she had lived in New Zealand all her life and didn’t speak any Asian languages (that is right plural there is more than Asian language). During the 1990’s in ethnically accepting New Zealand (sic) people often talked to her slowly the first time they meet her assuming she was unable to speak English. In the 1990’s in New Zealand (and still true today in some parts of Southland) Asian = Japanese.
In the movie
Crash the line that best demonstrates this is “My mother was from Costa Rica, my father from Puerto Rico, neither one of which is Mexico.” Based on the assumption that Spanish speaking = Mexican.
If stereotypes weren’t true the following labeling of myself as a (in no particular order) twenty-something, white, Anglo-Saxon, male, single, heterosexual, middleclass, politically conservative, evangelical, pentecostal, Christian, New Zealander would be completely meaningless however you can (and do) make many right and wrong assumption about my behavior and personality based on these assumptions.
