A few months ago, I remember talking to one of my classmates who was an African American girl. She said that the she wasn't a part of the "black crowd" because she does not act like one. Of course, she said this in a light-hearted manner, but nevertheless she said it, which made me wonder why these crowds or 'cliques' are created. An American philosopher named Walter Lippmann answered this question by claiming that the we live in a very complex society and "are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it" (Lippmann). I do agree with Lippmann's claim, but I feel that we finished reconstructing a "simpler model" a longtime ago and we just stopped there, altogether stopping the whole proliferation of acceptance of these multiple identities, hence how stereotyping started.
In the end, all I can say is that if we absolutely just NEED to stereotype then instead of falsely stereotyping people, why not just listen to stick-man #2 and stereotype about how stereotypes are not always right.
Shweta,
ReplyDeleteWhile I do somewhat agree with Walter's statement, I feel like it may be misguided in some ways. Not to try to defend America or anything, but we are called the Melting Pot for a reason. To some extent, we do try to allow different cultures and traditions into our society. I feel like America is just saturated with cultures to the point to where we have no other choice than to stereotype. I'm not saying this is correct, but when we look at other cultures we see that most of them are formed from a uniform culture (all of India is brown, all of Europe is white).
Good idea tying the comic's message to the theme of Staples's piece - stereotypes aren't always correct.
ReplyDelete