The Asian woman is submissive. The black woman is angry. The Muslim woman is oppressed. The Latina woman is sassy. These two-part assertions are so implicit in media, so embedded in every interaction that women of color have with the world that people actually argue that stereotypes just exist because they’re true.
Stereotypes do multiple kinds of work — more kinds than a single newsletter can do justice. People of different races face different stereotypes to different results, though all women must bear the additional burden of gendered expectations. But broadly speaking, stereotypes erase the basic humanity of minority groups. They flatten someone’s three dimensions into two, establishing strict parameters for what someone can and cannot be, say, or feel. So why do they exist?
Every stereotype is rooted in the history of oppression, of colonialism, of silencing. The commonly held perception of Asian women as obedient and hypersexual is hopelessly tangled up with the American army’s sanctioned “use” of comfort women in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, a footprint of sexual abuse that stamped across a whole continent. The presumption, often bolstered by racism disguised as science, that black men and women are angry or have lower IQ scores has served as the spine of their oppression in America — and it still literally kills them. The stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman cannot be separated from the patriarchal justifications for invading the Middle East and the ongoing surveillance of the Muslim American community. The “sassy Latina” trope was constructed by the American government to manipulate public sentiment about the Mexican-American War and, in the years to come, Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy.
Stereotypes exist because they’ve been a historically effective way of enabling white violence on non-white bodies, and male violence on female bodies. They exist as a tool of the dominant demographic.
I can hear a white man saying somewhere in the distance, “I don’t actually believe the bad stereotypes! And there are some that are good stereotypes! And some are just funny jokes!” But at their very core, whether it’s that Asian people are good at math, or black people are good at dancing, or Latina women are good cooks, all stereotypes are saying the same thing: I am permitted to tell you what you are, and you are not granted equal opportunity to be what you want.
All stereotypes are bound to each other, all one part of the net that a dominant group casts onto those it may not fully understand but seeks to define. We all are participants in that system, and I do believe that the bulk of our unconscious stereotyping is a result of environmental conditioning. But they’re still dangerous, and they’re used to turn us against each other, relegate us to token narratives in media, even inform unjust policy. We have to be able to confront our internalized biases before we can dispel them. This week, we’re looking to women of color helping us do that.
— Natalie, an Asian woman who has never been particularly good at math
KAT CHOW
Kat Chow is one of the founding members of Code Switch, an NPR section that covers race, ethnicity, and culture. She’s a thoughtful writer and thorough reporter, and her genuine curiosity about how stereotypes and tropes come to be has resulted in amazing pieces about the word “Oriental,” politically incorrect earworms, and much, much more. Last year, she wrote a piece about the damage that the model minority stereotype has done to racial solidarity. It’s worth reading.
DR. PUNITA RICE
Dr. Punita Rice is a researcher, writer, educator, and the founder and director of Improve South Asian American Students’ Experiences (ISAASE). ISAASE was founded, in part, to shed light on how the model minority myth erases the experience of many South Asian students and people. She also recently penned a response to the discussion of the stereotyped Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, which you should read here.
FRANCHESCA RAMSEY
Franchesca Ramsey is a comedian, writer, and activist who hosts MTV’s web series Decoded, in which she unpacks a different topic related to race and pop culture every week. She regularly gets to the bottom of why society maintains different stereotypes, like tropes about black women, and she’s also explained why our brains might want to believe stereotypes. Watch her series here.
Token is a project by Ari Curtis and Natalie Chang that celebrates the work and worth of women of color. Subscribe here to get the latest issues in your inbox.
