Many people deliberate over whether stereotypes are good or bad for society.
Stereotypes can induce negative feelings from people towards a certain group, but the true intention for stereotyping is to generalize about (abstract) any group.
On page eighty-six, Hayakawa claims that abstracting is "an indispensable convenience." This is absolutely correct, and is the reason why people have stereotyped different groups of people, animals, etc. By stereotyping, people are simplifying in order to make life a little less complicated.
For instance, the association of Africa with HIV/AIDS stereotype has formed because over sixty percent of the sub-Saharan African population alone is infected with HIV. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_pandemic#Sub-Saharan_Africa) People disagree with this stereotype because not every single African is infected with HIV. Though not every African has HIV, a majority of the African population is indeed infected with it, and that is the reason the stereotype was developed.
Stereotypes aren't always meant to be insulting to a group; they serve to generalize. People must understand that there are always exceptions when dealing with stereotypes.
-Chloe Martianou
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When one person says a negative stereotype about someone/something/etc., the other person might take it negatively, maybe even get offended. The first person oftentimes will defend, "But it's true!" And there's the problem. Some people think that stereotypes are like statistics -- always to be taken as true. I think the question of stereotypes is not whether they are good or bad. Stereotypes just are. They're inevitable, they're unstoppable. But they're useful and that's why we go up the ladder of abstraction. It brings back that old saying, "Labels are for cans, not people." Some people, e.g. nonconformists, make the special effort not to be "labeled" or stereotyped. High school especially offers a wide range of labels that we've all heard, used, or even been labeled ourselves.
ReplyDelete-- tori lee
They can be both good and bad. On the positive side, they're useful in that they make thinking about a group of people so much easier. On the other hand, stereotypes can often be insulting to people. I agree with Tori that they "just are" and that they're inevitable in our society
ReplyDelete-Bryce Cody
p.s. I think that statistic is wrong. 60% seems ridiculously too high.
Like Tori said, stereotypes are inevitable. Some may be positive, and some may be negative, but, whatever they are, they are necessary. When we need to name a group, we need to use stereotypes. In a way, steps 4-8 on the abstraction ladder are stereotypes (using Hayakawa's example, the words "cow", "livestock", "farm assets", etc.)
ReplyDeleteIn typical human nature, we fail to see the usefulness of stereotypes and only see the negative parts, such as your example of HIV in Africa, and thus, the word "stereotype" has developed a negative connotation. This tendency to only see the negative part of something is first illustrated when Hayakawa talks about a certain level of conformity being necessary. Nonconformists THINK that all conformity is bad, when it really isn't, just as people THINK all stereotypes are bad, when they really aren't.
-Audrey Kindsfather
By the way, Chloe and Bryce, what that website says about the statistic is that 60% of the world's population infected with HIV lives in sub-Saharan Africa. Just a minor mistake there!
ReplyDelete-Audrey
By the very meaning of the word, I think its impossible. If to be unconscious means to be unaware, then to refrain from making these hidden connections is simply not a possiblilty. Maybe some Buddhist monk in a state of Nirvana could refrain (that's got to be a stereotype), but for the vast majority of humanity, these assocations happen instantaneously without any action by our conscious self.
ReplyDelete-Chase Fowler