Jun-Dai Bates
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Aug 16, 1999
- Messages
- 148
I am still waiting for one concrete example of one of these commonly held racial biases that everyone apparently has.You are looking for simplicity in something that is too complicated. But here are some commonly held racial prejudices:
Many people in this state (California) believe that latinos that don't speak English should learn to speak English, and that public education should provided to them only in English. But they do not believe that English-speakers should be required to learn Spanish.
Many people believe that middle-class African-Americans don't do as well in school and on their SAT scores because there is some genetic basis for a lower average intelligence in African-Americans.
Many people refuse to believe that the SAT has a racial bias towards people raised in the dominant culture, or they believe that if it does, it is the responsibility of people in minority subcultures to raise their children with an understanding of these things in the dominant culture rather than a responsibility of the people constructing the test to make the test multicultural.
Many people believe (like Berlusconi) that people in the middle east are inherently violent and savage because Islamic culture is less developed or less enlightend than Western culture.
These are just a few examples of commonly held beliefs in this country that indicate a strong racial prejudice. Less strong biases/prejudices are more difficult to point out.
Everybody has biases, and some of them are racial. This is not just human nature, but it is the logical order of things. If I meet someone that is Indonesian, in my interaction, there exists a dilemma: if I treat him the same as most of the people I interact with (i.e. as if he were not Indonesian--this is the colorblind approach to race relations), then I'm acting on a bias for the dominant culture and ignoring something that is probably very important to him; if, on the other hand, I treat him somehow differently (i.e. aware of the fact that he is Indonesian, and that he has a different cultural background), then the situation becomes more complicated because of my ignorance of Indonesian culture. Obviously this is only part of my interaction with him, but the mode that I choose in interacting with him will have an effect on the whole interaction.
Let's drill into this a little further. It is difficult/impossible to delineate what parts of a person's identity are cultural and what parts are strictly personal. In other words, people resist some cultural influences, or they have some aspects of themselves that are simply as a result of the family they grew up in that are not really part of the culture as a whole. This means that when I encounter a family of Irish people, I can't be certain what of their personality comes from Irish, and what parts are just them. As my exposure increases, my understanding of Irish culture in some ways will be increasingly accurate. Regardless, things that I attribute to Irish culture will never be true for all Irish people (though there will be a few things that will approach this).
Part of my "exposure" consists of meeting Irish people, but part of my "exposure" will also come from popular culture, and this includes stereotypes of Irish people, music by Irish people, books about Irish people, seeing Irish clothing, etc. Given the way brains work, I will make connections through all of these things, and a perception of what Irish culture is will develop. This perception is my own, and while it will have things in common with other people's perception, in detail it remains uniquely my own (and it will change over time).
As much as I will try to see stereotypes for what they are, and understand that people's perspectives on Irish culture are simply perspectives, encountering these things will have an effect on my understanding of Irish culture (though not necessarily in predictable ways). Also, internally, I will create my own stereotypes. Not stereotypes in the sense of caricature, necessarily, but I will generalize, and if in a novel someone is described as being Irish, this will affect my perception of that character. Similarly, if I am told before being introduced to someone that they are Irish, I will generate a certain amount of supposition about that person before meeting them. If I find out that someone is Irish and they do something a certain way, I might expect that they will do something else a certain way. Can Irish people hold their liquor? Do they like to get drunk more often than other people? Well, that is the stereotype, and while I have no figures to back it up, I would not be surprised if it was true. Does this mean that my friend James can hold his liquor and likes to get drunk? Not necessarily, but if he does, I'm likely to attribute some of that to his being Irish. This is all natural and human, and much too complicated to prove anything about scientifically, but it is also something that is studied scientifically by many people.