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I’d argue that MOST of us are much more capable of complex forms of thinking than we actually practice.
I never said we weren’t. What stereotypes do is provide a flawed and usually bigoted mental shortcut to think about people, and that gives permission to those who want it to not engage in complex thought about different groups of people, and to give those people no more thought than they would a toaster.
this shit predates Trump. You can find lots of that in the culture of the Cold War, for example.
Yes. I first learned about stereotypes in 4th grade, well before the Trump administration. Stereotypes are as old as recorded history, and probably older than that. We are also fighting modern stereotypes as well, and unfortunately new stereotypes are being introduced all the time. Tiger moms, math-wiz asians, blacks only excelling at athletics, entertainment, or law enforcement, cat girls, vampire goths, anime nerds, dumb jocks, Christians as fundamentalist extremists – all relatively new stereotypes. All equally bad.
So, I reject the notion that most humans are dumb and unable to think beyond themselves,
Again, I never said this, nor did I imply this.
We have a culture that actively discourages it, which is the main problem here.
Precisely. Stereotypes are a social construct, and can be wide or narrow. The social groups that we individually find ourselves in have their own broad or narrow stereotypes. For example, the stereotype that all “southerners” are racists. I agree with your posts in other topics that this is a harmful stereotype that dismisses the large number of people working for racial justice in southern states.
Pointing out that even stereotypes about positive qualities are harmful because they dehumanize and allow the “user” to give no further thought to the stereotyped than they would a toaster isn’t saying that people are universally stupid and don’t think for themselves. It just highlights the harm stereotypes cause, and how pernicious, and quite frankly seductive, they are.
Edit: Clarity
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Just a sidenote, speaking of this stereotype:
That should say,
the stereotype that all white southerners are racists.
Enough with the common implication that a “southerner” is a white person.
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Thank you; I actually specifically wrote it this way, as so many times this is exactly what the stereotype implies (i.e. only white people live in the south, or that POC in the south don’t really have agency and therefore need to be “saved”).
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Okay. Quotation marks around southerner would have worked too.
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That’s an interesting blind spot I’d not noticed. Thanks for pointing it out.
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It’s like they’re generating characters in some f’ed-up points system.
“I’ll take the Asian and Female disadvantages, and then put them into another three points of kick-buttery.”
sigh
Right, but the exact same people can come up with all sorts of reasons for their own behavior (or those that look like them).
I’m talking about the modern era in this specific historical context.
It’s not your intent, but I think such thinking DOES let them off the hook a bit, because it’s considered “human nature”…
Which of course is itself a stereotype, designed in part to let the rest of teh country off teh hook for perpetrating the exact same kind of bigotry that’s found among some southern whites.
Look, this is text based communication, so you need to be clear in your meaning. We can’t infer sarcasm, irony, or the like from words necessarily. So if you write such a phrase, and aren’t clear in your meaning, it’s likely that people are going to misunderstand your meaning. More clarity is better than less in text.
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Also important to remember every time someone says something to the effect of “we should have let those yokels secede.”
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Or that we should let them have the south…
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Yes, that was the attempted secession I was referring to.
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Weird. With our Moms we always just called it “Asian Mom syndrome”…
But at least Math is probably my weakest area of science…
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Good point. Change made. Thanks!
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And those people are inherently part of the problem.
No group is monolithic, it is a sign of sheer mental laziness to feed into such two-dimensional stereotypes.
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Coincidentally, this came out last week
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