A question I pondered today as I brushed up on some Foucault. When is it appropriate to use stereotypes, especially ones racial or gendered in nature? Are there ever conditions in which case it is appropriate to classify someone based on their participation within a certain group, regardless of whether or not the elect to be in it or not?
Before you answer, consider the rationale that if every individual in a group is of a certain quality then the group merely possess that qualityl; if one person in a group of any number does not possess that quality but still remains part of the group is that quality superimposed on the whole group a stereotype? When is the line drawn? Are there certain limits to what the quality can be? Are there certain groups immune to this distinction?
Or has Derrida pooched the whole question with deconstruction?
How on earth do we define the group? By color, religion, diet, hair, or nose or ear type? All humans eat, no? Do we stereotype all humans by the fact they eat? Sure. All humans eat therefore…
Where in the hell am I going with this??? Time for kip.
Hi Blue - I dunno about rational, thought out stereotyping - probably not.
However it seems that the nature of human intelegence is based on “fuzzy logic” (neurons voting or some such!). Eg I see trunk I assume elephant!
Its not the “brute force” of a computer sensor which only moves after eliminating almost all possibilities of error.
So seeing a new person immediately draws together a whole load of assumptions and stereo types. Its the sort of thing that might be right 90% of the time but badly, badly wrong the other 10!
I always find a fun experiment when you see people is to play your assumptions through your head honestly and then imagine the very opposite to be true on all points
eg this fella who looks like a bum on the bus is actually the head of the havard law school - moonlighting it or having an emotional crisis or the man coming out of the limo shouldn’t be there but is a gifted con artist etc etc - its good fun.
Stereotyping has its place it has to be used otherwise how would you ever catch a criminal or tell someone what someone looks like? Sterotyping has its place but, if it is used to demean or degrade then it has no place.
Rofl
A person robbed the bank today, This person wore blue jeans and a T shirt.
So what does your fiance look like? Well she looks like a person. …Ummm, I don’t know about you all, but, that answer would be sarcastic in my groups.
yes, there are groups of people that all have similar characteristics. so thinking in stereotypes is justified if thniking in stereotypes means having mental categories for types of people. however, every individual, even if he conforms to a stereotype, or happens to fall into one, has his unique qualities. if you merely think of the person as an instance of a stereotype then you’re missing the full story. of course, that’s what we naturally do with objects, but people demand more attention. and it’s understandable that someone would resent being stereotyped if the stereotype is false or if he has some qualities that don’t meet the stereotype (or doesn’t have some qualities that do), because then he’s misunderstood, unrecognized, possibly underestimated and dismissed. perhaps stereotypes, to a certain degree, are justified, since we can never know something fully, so we use simplifications, and we also make provisional assumptions based on first impressions because you want to know the thing but you haven’t had enough time yet, so you take a short cut. i guess it’s bad if you your understanding of the person never evolves beyond the initial stereotype. i’d say generally that if someone resents the stereotype you’ve put him in, you’re doing him an injustice.