Stereotypes And Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis

Author:

Blum Lawrence

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Subject

Philosophy

Reference45 articles.

1. Stereotypes do not exhaust objectionable cultural imagery of groups. Some images of groups are simply demeaning without attributing specific characteristics to the groups. For example, American popular culture has, especially in the past, utilized images of Asians with buck teeth, speaking a kind of pidgin English [the Chinese character played by Mickey Rooney in the filmBreakfast at Tiffany'sis an example], or Blacks with huge lips and bugeyes, which makes them the butt of humor. The images depict the group in a demeaning and insulting manner (and generally, though not always, intend to do so), but they are distinct from stereotypes. They do not particularly attempt to associate the group in question with a general trait meant to apply to the members of the group. They are more like the visual, or representational, equivalent of an ethnic slur, an insulting name for a group (like kike, spic, nigger, Polack, fag). Sometimes the word ‘stereotype’ is used broadly to refer to any objectionable image of a group; but stereotypes in the sense I am referring to in this paper operate by a particular logic of attribution of characteristics to group members that does not apply to visual slurs.

2. I am taking groups as the target of stereotypes. In ordinary parlance, the targets are a broader range of entities. Individual entities, for example, can be said to be stereotyped, meaning that in the public mind certain general characteristics are generally attributed to the entity in question (A recentNew York Timesarticle is entitled, ‘Boston Rises Above Unflattering Stereotypes’ July 25, 2004, by Pam Belluck.), in a manner analogous to such attributions of groups. Moral issues about stereotyping do not apply in exactly the same way to groups, especially salient social groups, as to individuals; for example, the way stereotypes about groups bear on views and treatment of individuals within the group have no precise analogy in the case of individuals.

3. A sophisticated, recent account of the individual pathology approach is Elizabeth Young-Bruehl,The Anatomy of Prejudice(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

4. To elaborate just a bit: I think the individual pathology approach is much more plausible with regard to prejudice than stereotyping. The two are closely linked in popular thinking, and the psychological study of stereotypes is meant to, and does, contribute to an understanding of prejudice (and vice versa). The link is evident. People who are prejudiced against a group generally hold negative stereotypes of that group. Nevertheless, stereotyping is not the same as prejudice, and neither requires the other. Prejudice involves a negative affect toward a group and a disposition to disvalue it and its members. Stereotyping does not always involve prejudice in this sense. For example, Jones might stereotype Asians as good at math; such a view does not characteristically support a negative feeling toward Asians (although it may—for example, resentment at their success). More generally, even holding a negative stereotype of group X does not always prompt negative affect toward group X. Someone might regard Poles as stupid (cf. Helmreich,The Things They Say Behind Your Back, 166–171), or Asians as bad drivers, yet not feel negatively toward those groups. Moreover, even if a stereotype is negatively evaluatively charged, for a particular carrier of that stereotype, this charge need not always trigger the corresponding negative affect. Stereotyping is, I believe, much more common than prejudice, and the latter seems to me more amenable to an explanation in terms of individual pathology than the former, although of course there are widely shared and culturally transmitted prejudices, just as there are cultural stereotypes; so individual psychology can never constitute the full explanation of why people in a given society hold the prejudices they do. Even less can it explain stereotypes.

5. Stangor and Schaller refer to a tradition in the psychological study of stereotypes in which it is assumed that ‘stereotypes are learned, and potentially changed, primarily through the information that individuals acquire through direct contact with members of other social groups.’ Charles Stangor and Mark Schaller, ‘Stereotypes as Individual and Collective Representations,’ in Stangor (ed.),Stereotypes and PrejudicePhiladelphia, Penn.: Psychology Press, 2000), 66. See also David Theo Goldberg,Racist Culture(Oxford: Blackwell's, 1993), 126.

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