“How Stereotypes Explain Everything And Nothing At All”
“People tend to think that stereotypes are honest reflections of what they see in the world. But instead, they often shape how we see the world, how we metabolize the data in front of us. It’s confirmation bias: if people see a lot of Jews playing and dominating basketball, and the common stereotype is that Jews are crafty schemers, in the popular imagination, the sport becomes about crafty scheming. And if someone were writing back then about why so few blacks were among the game’s biggest names, they’d probably fall back on hoary stereotypes about black players lacking the necessary intelligence or craftiness or work ethic.”
From my perspective, this is absurdly basic — this is the prerequisite to Understanding the World 101 — but that’s probably because I realized at a very early age that stereotypes were inconsistent with my knowledge of myself. I realized that stereotypes could explain all of my failures but only some of my successes, and typically only those I cared the least about. Mostly, on an innate level I rejected stereotypes because they made me seem like someone else, someone I didn’t know or like, and so it was obvious that stereotypes were a flawed mechanism for understanding the world.
(credit to JD)
Related: “Study: Stereotypes Drive Perceptions Of Race”; “10 Photos To Remind You That Jews Don’t Fit Into A Stereotype (And Never Have)”
