It was certainly awesome, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw it.
You know what I really hate about stereotypes? I’m deaf in one ear, so I only get about half of them.
Sorry, Gilbert; I know there is a lot of research on the subject, but I am not so familiar with it to act as any kind of guide. I picked a random example I happened to remember from a book; trying to track it down I think I was thinking of a study by <a href=http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/18/3/413.short">Sharps, Price, and Williams, which I don’t currently have access to check, though if so I may have misquoted it because it seems there the men were the ones whose scores were more affected.
At any rate, a search for “stereotype priming” or “stereotype threat” will find lots of research showing how and when they change the performance of different genders and races on different tasks.
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Interesting, thank you.
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Do I need to add anything here? I didn’t think so. Oh, Mr. 44 covered it anyway. Going home, good night all!
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I honestly haven’t been able to tell if @hpsaudio is proudly asserting his overt racism and sexism or attempting to use bad over-the-top jokes to downplay his overt racism and sexism. At this point I guess it doesn’t matter.
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So I just read all of hpsaudio’s posts in this thread. I can’t decide if he’s an idiot, or a troll. Either way he’s wasted a lot of our time.
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You could start with a more complete definition, Wikipedia puts it better:
“A stereotype is a thought that may be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things,[1] but that belief may or may not accurately reflect reality.”
When discussing a group of individuals, characterised and identified by their ideology, then assume they actually meet the criteria for that ideology, that is not stereotyping; not in any meaningful sense of the word, and not in a way that has any relevance in this discussion.
As Mr. 44 already pointed out, the things you are talking about are not even close to an inviolate part of the ideology of the group you’ve identified. Not historically, and not at this time, and most likely not in the future. For example, my elderly Republican, Christian father and all his elderly Republican, Christian friends don’t fit your stereotype.
So now you’ve been invited to realize there’s something wrong with your state of knowledge, and revise it. But “man is a typing animal” as Dr. Jackson observed. You’ve got your types sorted, so you might find it painful to restructure your taxonomy. You might even find it more palatable to argue that my empirical data is invalid.
OK, I really really am going home now. Damn selinux.
I think we’re mostly getting bogged down in semantics, which is often the case. I think I also made an error with my example - as that probably is moving far closer to stereotype than ‘necessity for chosen label’.
I think you’re the only one using semantics with your “informed assumption”.
This is one of my favourites on the subject: Thin Ice: Stereotype Threat and Black College Students.
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Well at least I don’t think that judging someone for the default beliefs of their chosen belief system is the same as a racial or gender stereotype.
Head, meet wall.
If you can’t understand the difference please stop replying. We have nothing more to discuss, I tried a ‘let’s agree to disagree’, but apparently even that’s too much to grasp.
Well for any particular plank in the Republican party platform I’m pretty sure we can find at least one Republican who disagrees. Does this mean that any discussion of Republican party policies whatsoever is unfairly stereotyping Republicans?
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Generalizing people based on political affiliation is totally different than stereotyping based on race or gender. By definition, a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or a Socialist or a member of the Mickey Mouse Fan Club is a person who made a conscious decision to align themselves with an organization that espouses certain ideals, goals and beliefs.
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Yes, I agree. I was seeking clarification from either @Medievalist or @Mister44 since they seem to think it’s unfair to generalize about people on the basis of political or religious affiliation. Apologies if I’m reading anyone incorrectly.
Well, I wouldn’t want to draw in the extra “unfairly” label. I didn’t think Nathan’s stereotype was particularly unfair, as stereotypes go. You see a lot worse in these forums all the time.
And, short answer, no it does not mean that. Long answer, any fair discussion of any group’s beliefs or actions will include recognition of absolutes and variables. Stereotypes help misrepresent variables as absolutes, usually for ill.
Example 1: You cannot be a member of the Christian church if you do not believe in the reality of Jesus Christ. You can say you are, but you’re not. It’s an absolute laid down by Jesus himself (and denied by clergy who believe in the theological legitimacy of excommunication) that only God gets to determine who is a Christian, and he says “whosever believeth in me” etc. Saying Christians believe in Jesus is not stereotyping, it’s accurate.
Example 2: The Republican Party is not anti-gay. You can say it is, but it isn’t. Opposition to homosexuality from within the party is a variable that is constantly changing over time and differs from person to person. Ronald Reagan and Bob Dole worked in concert with the Log Cabin Republicans (which is an equality group within the party, mostly composed of openly gay Republicans). However, many Republican candidates (probably most) are anti-gay, and are constantly loudly spouting off about it, and claiming all Republicans in favor of gay rights are RINOs - so the stereotypical Republican is anti-gay.
Stereotypes act to misrepresent variables as absolutes. If you don’t want to mislead the uninformed (such as your children, or clueless Britishers) you need to avoid them and/or acknowledge them. Nathan’s children may very well make bad decisions and be unfair to people simply because they’ve believed their father’s false categorization. That would be sad for everyone involved, and unnecessary, and it’s why people don’t like stereotyping.
But I work with logic professionally, and have worked with types (it’s one of my hobbies) in the natural science sense, so in this debate I will almost certainly be excessively precise and technical. You know the Aristotelian square of opposition in syllogistic logic? Some of, all of, none of, etc? If all fish live in the sea and all herring are fish then all herring live in the sea? Fair warning, I’m more likely to be technically correct than great fun at parties.
Well, you’ve stated an absolute - so it only takes one counter-example to disprove it.
But until you define “align themselves” I can’t do it, because that word’s too slippery.
And if you mean what I think you mean, I agree with your point and don’t want to disprove it anyway 
Clearly, I do not know when to shut up.
In the case of a political party “align themselves” means to either A) register as a member of or B) self-identify as a member of that party. Clear enough?
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Their policies are, though. So you take a given Republican who is not personally anti-gay but nonetheless votes for someone who votes for DOMA. The actions of this person are anti-gay – perhaps indirectly but nonetheless the person took a deliberate action (voting) in full knowledge of the consequences (support for DOMA).
This is the problem with rigid Aristotelian syllogistic logic. The words we actually use in real-life examples and the ways in which we use them only rarely hew very closely to categories that are strictly Aristotelian. While you can certainly argue that the existence of a pro-gay Republican somewhere invalidates any and all arguments to the effect that the Republican party is anti-gay because “a single counterexample disproves blah blah” we come back to the real world where ostensibly non-anti-gay Republicans support candidates who are indeed anti-gay – or at least act the part because so much of their constituency is anti-gay.
And if I want to use the term “anti-gay” to refer to people who support organizations that take actions that can reasonably be construed as “anti-gay” you can disagree. At that point it’s a purely semantic distinction with no real moral dimension except, perhaps, that it makes you feel bad when someone says Republicans are anti-gay by a pretty reasonable definition of “anti-gay”.
As far as your first example goes, you do realize there is more than one Christian church and some disagreement between them as far as what is required for salvation. You might also realize that plenty of people consider themselves “cultural Christians” without actually believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Once again, trying to use Aristotelian logic to describe the universe leaves your models with holes. (Not even getting into how much it drives me up the wall when people make absolutist statements about the interpretation of the gospels.)
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Perfect! In that case I do in fact totally agree with your point, which is that I chose to be a Republican (because I want to make a positive difference in the world, and that choice optimizes my opportunities) whereas I did not choose to be tall and ugly (the height I get from both parents, but the ugly is all Dad’s).
So in a sense, when the mob arrives to burn all Republicans at the stake, it’ll be at least party my fault, because I chose to take a stand. You’re right. If they burn me for being tall, I can’t be blamed.
