I admit that my brain houses a list of stereotypes in its filing cabinet. Fortunately, I don’t open that drawer very often, and when I do, I might not access the folder with the list. But I have opened it on occasion, only to find I must strike another stereotype from the list.
Take a drive from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to the Blue Ridge Parkway. You’ll begin at sea level, drive across the Coastal Plain, the Upper Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and then climb the mountains. Along the way, stop and chat with anyone, say, someone you meet at a local diner. You will, at the end of your trip, look back with a sense that North Carolinians aren’t cut from the same cloth. They appear to differ from lowland to highland. But you will discover that their differences aren’t as sharply defined as you predetermined from your filing cabinet list of stereotypes.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some stereotypes that, in the main, hold true. I probably embody some; you, too. They are largely inevitable because stereotypes derive from our inability to see all the details of anything or anyone simultaneously. Stereotypes are shortcuts for busy minds, and they add psychological security to any personality. When the world outside the individual is easy to understand, the world inside has less turmoil to face. Call it pigeonholing.
An example from a tale I told elsewhere but want to repeat here: During a field trip to study the geology of North Carolina with college students and a colleague, I stood on the precipitous overlook at Linville Falls with students when a group of children ran to where we stood. It was a chaotic group, with some crawling on the low wall that separated visitors from plunging to their deaths on the rocks below. My colleague, a geologist who had fallen from a cliff once and who feared for the children’s safety, yelled, “Who’s in charge here?”
Now the stereotypes: The chaperones, some teachers and parents, trailed the students on the path to the precipice. Should I say, “waddled behind”? Apparently unaware of the potential danger the kids were in, they immediately took a defensive position when my colleague confronted them about letting the kids run toward a cliff, jostling one another as they ran. And then, they took an offensive position, asking, “Where are you from?”
I said, “Pennsylvania.”
They looked at one another and said, “Yankees.”
At the time of that field trip the Civil War had ended 125 years earlier. But our stereotypes remained—and probably still remain. We were Yankees, and by their response, they were… Not sure, here: Hillbillies? Rednecks? Mountain people (or foot-of-the-mountain people)? Backwoods folk?
Was I some carpetbagger? How could this be? I immediately perceived myself to be “more cosmopolitan” than they, but then, that was my perception, a perception no doubt influenced by my own need to defend my psyche, a response from my innermost brain.
So, the Civil War, as I discovered that day, isn’t over. Those stereotypes from nineteenth century America are children compared to the old adults of stereotypes that have persisted in the Middle East for millennia. Is there an observation to be made here?
Individually, we probably stereotype because the process saves us from accounting for the overwhelming number of details associated with any human or group. Each of us generates our own set of stereotypes to file in our brains. But each of us also inherits through cultural inculcation sets of stereotypes. These latter stereotypes are relatively easy to dismiss through personal experience with individuals from stereotyped groups. The former, however, those stereotypes that we personally manufacture through our experiences limited by time and space, are more difficult to erase. Those are the stereotypes we have buried deep in our brains. To overturn them requires a form of self-denial born of self-realization.
We discover usually by chance that inherited stereotypes are false or inadequate perceptions of reality. Sometimes, we make a concerted effort to see through stereotypes by studying what they are and how we acquired them. Those stereotypes we manufactured, however, don’t easily yield to either chance or purposeful discovery 1) because we aren’t generally open to prove ourselves wrong and 2) because we aren’t generally motivated to see the world from a different perspective.
It is difficult to go beyond the stereotypical. But it can be done.
Take a drive from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to the Blue Ridge Parkway. You’ll begin at sea level, drive across the Coastal Plain, the Upper Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and then climb the mountains. Along the way, stop and chat with anyone, say, someone you meet at a local diner. You will, at the end of your trip, look back with a sense that North Carolinians aren’t cut from the same cloth. They appear to differ from lowland to highland. But you will discover that their differences aren’t as sharply defined as you predetermined from your filing cabinet list of stereotypes.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some stereotypes that, in the main, hold true. I probably embody some; you, too. They are largely inevitable because stereotypes derive from our inability to see all the details of anything or anyone simultaneously. Stereotypes are shortcuts for busy minds, and they add psychological security to any personality. When the world outside the individual is easy to understand, the world inside has less turmoil to face. Call it pigeonholing.
An example from a tale I told elsewhere but want to repeat here: During a field trip to study the geology of North Carolina with college students and a colleague, I stood on the precipitous overlook at Linville Falls with students when a group of children ran to where we stood. It was a chaotic group, with some crawling on the low wall that separated visitors from plunging to their deaths on the rocks below. My colleague, a geologist who had fallen from a cliff once and who feared for the children’s safety, yelled, “Who’s in charge here?”
Now the stereotypes: The chaperones, some teachers and parents, trailed the students on the path to the precipice. Should I say, “waddled behind”? Apparently unaware of the potential danger the kids were in, they immediately took a defensive position when my colleague confronted them about letting the kids run toward a cliff, jostling one another as they ran. And then, they took an offensive position, asking, “Where are you from?”
I said, “Pennsylvania.”
They looked at one another and said, “Yankees.”
At the time of that field trip the Civil War had ended 125 years earlier. But our stereotypes remained—and probably still remain. We were Yankees, and by their response, they were… Not sure, here: Hillbillies? Rednecks? Mountain people (or foot-of-the-mountain people)? Backwoods folk?
Was I some carpetbagger? How could this be? I immediately perceived myself to be “more cosmopolitan” than they, but then, that was my perception, a perception no doubt influenced by my own need to defend my psyche, a response from my innermost brain.
So, the Civil War, as I discovered that day, isn’t over. Those stereotypes from nineteenth century America are children compared to the old adults of stereotypes that have persisted in the Middle East for millennia. Is there an observation to be made here?
Individually, we probably stereotype because the process saves us from accounting for the overwhelming number of details associated with any human or group. Each of us generates our own set of stereotypes to file in our brains. But each of us also inherits through cultural inculcation sets of stereotypes. These latter stereotypes are relatively easy to dismiss through personal experience with individuals from stereotyped groups. The former, however, those stereotypes that we personally manufacture through our experiences limited by time and space, are more difficult to erase. Those are the stereotypes we have buried deep in our brains. To overturn them requires a form of self-denial born of self-realization.
We discover usually by chance that inherited stereotypes are false or inadequate perceptions of reality. Sometimes, we make a concerted effort to see through stereotypes by studying what they are and how we acquired them. Those stereotypes we manufactured, however, don’t easily yield to either chance or purposeful discovery 1) because we aren’t generally open to prove ourselves wrong and 2) because we aren’t generally motivated to see the world from a different perspective.
It is difficult to go beyond the stereotypical. But it can be done.
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