Demonization and Polarization - the pitfalls of stereotyping

[Kathryn]

Reading through some recent threads, as well as sorting through various media sources over the past few months, it seems that there's an awful lot of use of stereotyping and playing on the fears and prejudices of various groups. This polarizes people and encourages division rather than unity.

Now granted - plenty of people don't WANT unity, and for them categorizing others through stereotypes is pretty handy - it saves them the time and trouble of actually trying to learn about other people, and it accomplishes their personal and societal goals.

But what alarms me is that people who routinely claim to be all for breaking down false barriers, building unity and cameraderie on the tenets of respect and understanding, and passionate about human rights so often slip right into that same pointless, murky quagmire of demonization and stereotyping.

Now - I'm not saying that this tendency is WORSE now than it ever has been - what I'm saying is that it does not appear to be LESSENED - even in this age of enlightenment and secular humanism.

All that being said, the sad thing about stereotypes is that they all have elements of truth to them. The thing is, though, that these truths are usually taken from the fringes, the extremes of any group, and aplied to the whole.

I don't have answers for this - I just wanted to open this topic up for discussion.


"Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful."
Margaret Mead

"All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true."
David Cronenburg

"Propaganda proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - the two great routhes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflec and the myth."
Jacques Ellul

YOUR THOUGHTS?

[Skwim]

When things like this come to mind I usually remind myself that half the population has an IQ below normal, which pretty much puts it into perspective, after which I carry on with whatever I was doing.

[Kathryn]

Truth or deception? Destructive - or edifying?

[Revoltingest]

Originally Posted by Kathryn

Reading through some recent threads, as well as sorting through various media sources over the past few months, it seems that there's an awful lot of use of stereotyping and playing on the fears and prejudices of various groups. This polarizes people and encourages division rather than unity.

Now granted - plenty of people don't WANT unity, and for them categorizing others through stereotypes is pretty handy - it saves them the time and trouble of actually trying to learn about other people, and it accomplishes their personal and societal goals.

But what alarms me is that people who routinely claim to be all for breaking down false barriers, building unity and cameraderie on the tenets of respect and understanding, and passionate about human rights so often slip right into that same pointless, murky quagmire of demonization and stereotyping.

Now - I'm not saying that this tendency is WORSE now than it ever has been - what I'm saying is that it does not appear to be LESSENED - even in this age of enlightenment and secular humanism.

All that being said, the sad thing about stereotypes is that they all have elements of truth to them. The thing is, though, that these truths are usually taken from the fringes, the extremes of any group, and aplied to the whole.

I don't have answers for this - I just wanted to open this topic up for discussion.


"Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful."
Margaret Mead

"All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true."
David Cronenburg

"Propaganda proceeds by psychological manipulations, character modifications, by creation of stereotypes useful when the time comes - the two great routhes that this sub-propaganda takes are the conditioned reflec and the myth."
Jacques Ellul

YOUR THOUGHTS?

You Texans.....so typical, always using words to say things & mean stuff.

[Kathryn]

An example of demonization and polarization tactics:

Left Admits: Racism Charges Against Tea Parties a Tactic, Not a Truth

Washington, D.C. – Members of the Project 21 black leadership group are condemning the left's false use of the accusation "racist" as a political tactic, saying they recognize the strategy from the teaching of left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky.

Former U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairman Mary Frances Berry, a long-time prominent liberal activist, has admitted in an interview with Politico that the left is trying to smear the tea party movement as "racist" for strategic reasons, not out of genuine concern that the movement is itself racist.
Berry called the tactic an "effective strategy" and chose not to denounce it.

"As an active participant in the tea party movement, I know the movement's motivation is about Obama's policies and not his race," said Deneen Borelli, a Project 21 full-time fellow who has spoken at many tea party rallies and is scheduled to speak at the "Uni-Tea" rally in Philadelphia on July 31. "Race card politics is the last-ditch effort to shift the debate away from President Obama's harmful policies such as the government's takeover of health care and his failure to create jobs -- both of which are having an impact on his popularity. This diversion may also help Obama to try to jam through cap-and-trade legislation through Congress. It's a grand distraction from policies and may unfortunately increase racial tensions."

Berry, now the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and History at the University of Pennsylvania, was asked,
"will branding the tea party 'racist' work?"
Berry replied:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

"This is exactly the kind of thing that has irked me all of my adult life, to put it mildly," said Project 21 member R. Dozier Gray. "This willful and purposeful use of the race card for nothing more than political gain is toxic to race relations, and Mary Frances Berry must know that. But she evidently does not care. Based on her comment, political posturing takes primacy over whatever real issues regarding race that she might pretend are her calling cards.
I have seen this all before. I find it shameful."

Project 21 member Bob Parks added: "What's most disturbing about this very public quote? Not only is Mary Frances Berry making this comment without fear of admonishment, and that progressives have apparently embraced and are employing these very shameful, race-baiting tactics -- but Berry is likely teaching this 'social thought' hate to children."

Left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky, whose tactics have been studied and followed by Barack Obama and his followers, taught his activists to "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." The Tea Party movement has unnerved the left and energized supporters of smaller government, causing the left to target it, as per Alinsky's method, with bogus racism charges.

The Politico interview with Berry is available at The Arena: - Mary Frances Berry Bio.
Project 21, a leading voice of black conservatives since 1992, is sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research (http://www.nationalcenter.org).

[wmjbyatt]

The thing is, though, that stereotypes provide for us an archetypal model that we can use to perform zero-information judgments. It is often taught that we should not judge, but the fact is that, as processing machines, we MUST make observation judgments at all times. Stereotype data allows us to make best-guess observation judgments based on a very small amount of information, and these judgments give us an operational basis.

The issue with stereotypes comes when we start using these observational data to make VALUE judgments. That is, when we go from "The average person of set S demonstrates quality R," to "The average person of set S demonstrates quality R and is therefore beneath me." Stereotypes are also damaging when we don't exercise fluidity with our judgment operations. When we judge a particular entity and then hold onto that judgment despite new data, then we've entered into a damaging place.

However, both of these issues with stereotypes are not stereotype-specific. They are, indeed, issues with human judgment processes that arise when initial data is taken from ANY source, not just generalized blanket statements about a particular category of person.

[Kathryn]

Great points!

[Sunstone]

It's all too easy to demonize people.

[Smoke]

Originally Posted by Kathryn

Truth or deception? Destructive - or edifying?

I keep coming back and pondering these photos, because I'm not sure just what you're getting at.

Originally Posted by Kathryn

You don't have to know that this is from a controversial Chrysler ad to know that it's staged.

Originally Posted by Kathryn

Islamic Rage Boy is a real person who fits the stereotype of Muslims that many people like to promote. Using him to depict a "typical" Muslim is pretty lame, like the words added here.

On the other hand:

Originally Posted by Kathryn

This is just a photo of a jolly old homophobe. The signs are of the well-known kind used by Westboro Baptist Church, and immediately cue the viewer that this guy is not a "typical" Christian -- especially since most American Christians have formed a negative opinion of WBC since they started picketing military funerals in addition to gay funerals.

Originally Posted by Kathryn

This is the one that really puzzles me, because Josh Jones became semi-famous not for being a stereotype, but for breaking one. Most people think that Obama sticker seems incongruous among all the Confederate stuff. Jones said that lots of people were offended by one or the other.

[wmjbyatt]

Smoke, I think that the point of the photos was to demonstrate the ubiquity of stereotypes. I don't think OP's point was to say "this is the truth" or any such thing, but rather to say, "look how we play on stereotypes to build essentially destructive images and ideas."

The first image relies on a classic stereotype of yuppies to generate an archetypal image and call to mind a certain kind of person: born wealthy, still wealthy, Ivy League-type.

The second image is a fantastic example of people contorting the truth into the building of a stereotype. Islamic Rage Boy is NOT the truth about all Muslims--I believe that to be OP's point. Islamic Rage Boy IS, however, something that the populous as a whole understands as Muslim stereotype.

The same holds for the WBC homophobe. While only a minor degree of analysis and independent thought confirms that this is not the "norm" of Christianity in America, this image is rapidly coming to represent the stereotype of Fundamentalists in the eyes of Progressives and Liberals across America.

The fourth one seems bizarre to us because a man flying a Confederate flag also sports an Obama sticker. This is a result of stereotyping. We often think (via stereotyping) that someone who flies a Confederate flag must be a racist. We are struck by the oddness of a Confederate boy supporting Obama because we have the stereotype of racist Confederates. Were it not for the stereotype, it would not be worth noting this combination of flag and political support.

I'm no psychic, so I can't be positive what OP's original intent was, but when I saw these photos, that's how I understood it, and I think this understanding can be drawn from these photos regardless of OP's intent. These are images which either rely upon a cultural stereotype or portray--with an implied negative value judgment--images which are rapidly becoming part of the cultural underpinnings as stereotypes.