Stereotypes - Anything Good About Them?

We are just recovering from the anti Muslim Danish cartoons, anti Semitic Arab cartoons and other sundry stereotypes which had recently pitched world communities against each other. Today I came across a report that Egyptians, feeling frustrated and powerless against what they see as an anti-Arab/Muslim bias in American foreign policy, have taken to making movies and TV shows which portray Americans as thuggish heavies. It is quite funny except that it is also quite dangerous.

*CAIRO - When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited this city last month, Egyptians had an unusual choice: watch her on TV as she expounded on issues of war and peace in the Middle East, or go to a neighborhood movie theater and see her portrayed by a look-alike actress belly-dancing and placed in "adult" situations.

The film in question is The Night Baghdad Fell, which depicts Egyptian obsessions with war, sex and the United States. Wildly anti-American, it has done a brisk business for two months, a long screen life for Egyptian-made films. In Night, Egyptians fret about an American invasion of Egypt and the potential destruction of their capital. Americans are bullies, rapists and mindless killers.

By the way, The Night Baghdad Fell is a comedy.......*

So far, I have described negative stereotyping. Are there any "positive" stereotypes and if so, are they harmless? I am copying a comment (with some minor editing) for the readers of Accidental Blogger, that I had posted on another blog (*Dissemination*), more than a year ago.  There I was responding to a post by another blogger who reported a news story about prosecutors reluctant to have Jews on the jury in capital cases because Jewish people are generally perceived to be opposed to the death penalty. The author interpreted this as positive stereotyping, highlighting a *good quality* of a particular group - not an offensive thing. Something along the lines of *good with money* - another harmless stereotype in his opinion. I (and some others) disagreed. I am made uncomfortable by *all* stereotypes based on race, gender, ethnicity or religion - even the so called good ones. Here is my comment.

"Having seen racial/ethnic stereotyping from many angles and on three continents, I will include only my personal experiences in this post.

In India, my friends and I grew up among the moderately privileged - the right caste/community, schools, socio-economic bracket, expected to succeed. I am ashamed to say that except for the blatant discrimination against minorities, we did not always register the subtler forms of stereotyping and oppression pervasive in the Indian mindset and popular culture.

My husband and I came to Germany with two small children - our daughter was four and my son, just one year old. My daughter made herself fluent in German within a very short time and upon entering elementary school, was very much ahead of her German classmates. During parent-teacher conferences, I found the teachers praising her achievements very grudgingly .. "yes, she is smart, reads, adds, subtracts way beyond her age level. But she talks too much, interrupts etc." as if she were an anomaly and the teacher did not know what to make of her. I found the attitude a bit churlish and mentioned it to an American friend. She then told me about her experience. Her son, Mark (a good student in the US) was in the same school but in a higher grade and was facing problems due to his lack of fluency in German. When Mark's mother went to school to find out how she could help, the teacher calmly said [excuse my long forgotten, faulty German] .."von Ausländer, erwarten Wir nichts mehr" (we expect nothing more from foreigners).

Moving to the US two years later, I had the opposite experience in American schools - my children, being Asians, could not fail. While the teachers' praise was fulsome, I sometimes detected a hint of genetic and cultural undertone in all the positive comments . I wanted to point out (but could not) that if there was a chromosomal factor involved, it was a very narrow one and was definitely not replicated in one billion plus Indians and that my children did not spend their spare time solving complex mathematical problems and mastering a stringed instrument under strict parental supervision. But I did gradually start pointing out that my daughter had no burning desire to be a doctor or engineer and that my son was an excellent athlete who counted among his friends some not very bright jocks. I also came to realize that the image of my children as members of a *smart* ethnic group, bothered me as much as the Teutonic put down of foreigners in Germany.

I mentioned my discomfort to an Indian friend, a mother of two bright children herself. She laughed and said, "Where is the problem? If the shoe fits, wear it." More and more, I found out in Indian gatherings that the "good" stereotyping was being bought hook, line and sinker by the Asian community in the US. They were gloating over *our kids* versus *theirs* meaning whites, African Americans and Hispanics but mainly the latter two, while many proud parallels to the US Jewish community are pointed out. This, to me was a classic case of new arrivals in a country buying into a myth created by the *master* race for the political expediency of playing one minority community against another, namely, Asians against African Americans and Latinos - thereby harming them all.

Politics can sometimes turn stereotyping on its head. Many Indians (like some American Jews) consider themselves liberal when it comes to US politics and are quite vociferous about minority rights not being plowed under by the juggernaut of majority whim or callousness. But when it comes to minority (read Muslim/Arab) rights in India (or Israel), some of the same liberals make an 180 degrees turn to the right. Some Indian and Jewish people I know (life-long Democrats), who did not vote for Bush in 2000, did so in 2004 because it was "good" for India and Israel. If the suspect in a capital case is believed to be a Muslim terrorist, will the prosecutors still exclude Jews from the jury?

One more example of the insidiousnes of so called good stereotypes gone bad. In 2001, Houston was awash with the news of the collapse of Enron. The newspapers and the local radios carried hardly any other news for days. Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Andy Fastow were the three leading players in this sordid saga which had bankrupted numerous Houstonians. The newspaper stories about the three were factual and no particular mention was made of Lay or Skilling's religious affiliations.  But Fastow's Jewish background came up in passing because his wife Lea's family is prominent in Houston's Jewish community. However, on local radio call-in shows, irate victims of Enron were not so restrained. While choice epithets were hurled at all three, in Fastow's case, many callers would add rougher versions of *good with money* in describing the Jewish CFO. I found that quite chilling.

The entire point of my lengthy diatribe is that stereotyping based on racial, ethnic or religious criteria is always pernicious. We should not fall into the seductive trap of making distinctions between bad and good stereotypes - the first one generates contempt and the second envy - and both in turbulent times, can lead to lethal ends."

Update: Here is a fine essay on the corrosive nature of stereotypes and anti-Semitism by Bernard Weiner, co-editor of The Crisis Papers.

Comments

[Sudip Bose]

The Egyptian characterization of Americans as lustful, bullying thugs might indeed be "quite dangerous," but no more so than any number of American films that stereotype all Muslims as terrorists.

I would even argue that to condemn Egyptian filmmakers for stereotyping in this way is to uphold a common double standard: we can build our own nuclear weapons but condemn other countries for doing so; our factories and automobiles continue to pollute the environment, but we wag our fingers when developing nations attempt to industrialize; and so on.

I am certainly no fan of stereotyping, but in this case, I'm inclined to say, if we can do it, why can't they?

[Ruchira Paul]

I guess blowing off steam with movies and cartoons of stereotypes remains a less dangerous pastime than blowing up towers or attacking another nation using flimsy (non-existent)excuses based on demonization and stereotyping of an enemy.

I agree that the US has little ground to complain when it comes to stereotyping others.

[Joe]

Sudip: I think the point should be that we should not do it, and neither should they. Not that we do it, so therefore it's cool for them to do it too.

Ruchira: I'd be tempted to argue that the Jewish jury thing isn't a stereotype per se, but rather an assessment of Judaism. That is, if Judaism is anything like Catholicism in that respect, the faith itself openly tells its adherents that capital punishment is wrong (the Pope, for example, openly denounces the death penalty). The Jews being good with money stereotype, on the other hand, is in no way a "good stereotype," which does seem to prove your point that there is no such thing as a good stereotype.

And my understanding is that it's a statistical truth that African Americans tend to have weaker-than-normal academic records, and Asian Americans tend to have greater-than-normal academic success. This of course is not a product of genetic factors but rather socioeconomic factors (and in particular on the high end, I would speculate that a big factor is the emphasis placed on what I'd call a "culture of achievement"). That itself isn't a stereotype, but it can be applied in harmful stereotypical fashion.

[Rene']

I had to laugh when I read about the school situations because they are so true to form. It's sometimes so hard to get educators and parents to see the children as individuals and not as racial stereotypes. Children will live up to or down to the expectations of those around them. My 9 year old has a pretty even playing field given that his heritage is Caucasian/American Indian/African American/Romany and we're Jewish. He just tells folks he's a rainbow. :)