Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

Bugs Bunny wears blackface.

Stereotyping is a topic many people cross-culturally would likely regard as a shameful act of prejudice, a blemish on the brilliant minds of humanity. For many it is reminder of human beings’ lowest natural instinct and of how intuition, as uncanny as it may be at times can lead not to clear, prudent judgment based on the characters’ of individuals, but instead, an all too quick take on the entireties of individuals readily equating what often are isolated traits such as skin color, IQ, job title and temperament with a collective of a diverse people. A person may for example know to two or more Asians who are smart and quiet-tempered and thereby make a correlation that all Asians are smart and quiet-tempered. Similarly, he or she may see the vast majority of crimes on the local newscast being committed by African Americans and in turn think that the vast majority of crimes in general are committed by Black people.

Scenarios such as these are very common — but why? Are people inherently prejudiced? Are such swift judgments a sign of mental illness? Rather, it may be that the human mind does not have the time to know each person it encounters on a daily basis. At times, stereotyping (as inaccurate as it may be), can act as the mind’s shortcut to get to know who a person is. In real time and in real life, cultures are complexly constructed ways of life that may take years of study to truly know in full. Many people logically have neither the time nor the resources to “get to know” someone in the truest sense. To better understand this any person need look no further than his of her circle of closest friends. To the reader reading this post right now: How many really close friends do you have who know you so well that they can correctly predict your thoughts and actions? How many people would you trust with a tightly guarded secret? Most of you would agree that the number would be quite small, likely under 10 and no greater than 20. There just is not enough time to have many more real, in depth relationships.

Yet, while the fact of stereotyping’s psychological and even sociological convenience may explain its existence that should not necessarily excuse its use. Very often, the urge to judgment can be overcome by taking into consideration a few key factors:

Stereotypes always derive from some bit of truth.

This fact is often overlooked by many human rights activists. Stereotypes are usually not arbitrarily assigned. Often, cultural traditions, family values, religion or ritual play a significant role. In the earlier example of the smart, quiet-tempered Asians, an individual has had multiple encounters with Smart, quiet Asians. The person thereby makes a quick, blanket judgment of all Asians. While the person is wrong to attribute these traits to all Asians on Earth, the stereotype itself stems from the truth of Asians’ priding themselves of being well educated. Further, most Eastern philosophies such as Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism (pronounced “Daoism”) encourage qualities such as quietness, humility and non-offense to a person or group. Such thinking can obviously produce a well-educated, quiet-tempered person.

People forget to look at the broader circumstances around a stereo type.

When people make a judgment of a whole people, they often do so only with what little information they have. Again, in the example above, a person sees constant local news of Black people committing crimes and thinks therefore that Black people commit crimes more often than other races. What they fail to see is the reality that the towns being covered are predominantly populated with African Americans, so just by that fact, the person is likely to see more Black people on the news.

Prejudice often is most prominent in isolated populations or socially insular groups.

This is a simple concept. People who have never interacted deeply with a particular individual or group will many times assume certain hearsay and rumors to be true. A person in a small Midwestern U.S. town may have never met a black person, while a Black person in a major northern city such as New York may have only limited contact with White people. When the two finally meet on another, they feel as if they just bumped into an alien from Planet Boonhiyteck. On the other hand, if the same two people are raised in a multiethnic neighborhood and are by this able to see many different cultures in action, the two would not at all feel the same awkwardness toward one another.

Finally it may be said that stereotyping is not so much a problem of ill morality as it is a symptom of human beings’ lack of knowledge about the world around them. Stereotypes are an attempt to make life easier, more basic and more straight forward (i.e., the sky is blue and Black people eat watermelon). But, like the sky, people are much more complex than their surface appearance can tell. They have stories. They have a past, present and future. Most of all, they have distinct identity all to themselves far beyond what meets the eyes, ears and assumptions of anyone they will encounter. To know this is to know what is to be human.

Keep waxin’!

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