[extropy-chat] FWD [forteana] Typology of Prejudices & Stereotypes

[Terry W. Colvin]

             TYPOLOGY OF PREJUDICES & STEREOTYPES

 Friends, Colleagues, Listmates!

            Do prejudices and stereotypes fall into a very small number 
of basic general types--basically, into views of "Those Others" as 
either lazy, stupid, ignorant, undisciplined, and "child-like," or else 
as over-civilized, diabolically clever, greedy, unprincipled, coldly 
rational, skeptical, and manipulative "city slickers"?

            It does seem to me that a fairly simple depiction of the 
"Other" as either a dumb, lazy, dirty, sensual, over-emotional primitive 
or else a calculating, ambitious, soulless pseudo-intellectual may 
subsume most racial, national, ethnic, religious, class, and cultural 
prejudices and stereotypes the world over. Ethnically, the stereotype of 
the "Other" as impulsive, ignorant, dim-witted, lazy, dirty, 
"child-like," "animalistic," superstitious, over-sexed, violently 
criminal, and drunken (or drug-addicted) has dominated White views of 
Blacks and Latinos, WASP views of Irish, Italian, Polish, and Slavic 
immigrants, English views of the Irish, German views of Poles and other 
Slavs, Polish views of Ukrainians, and colonialist views of "Third 
World" peoples.

Conversely, the caricature of the "Other" as over-intellectual, 
irreligious, manipulative, diabolically clever, money-oriented, and 
unscrupulous in business has long been the classic anti-Semitic 
stereotype of the Jew. However, a very similar image of the "Other" as 
clever and hard-working but over-civilized, arrogant, cold, soulless, 
selfish, and skeptical, as a "city slicker" exploiting and despising 
honest, pious, wholesome peasants, has typified Russian and other Slavic 
views of Germans, 19th Russian "Slavophile" views of western Europeans 
in general (in contrast to the soil-rooted, communal, mystically 
spiritual "Slav soul" and "broad Russian nature"), German nationalist 
views of the "shallow," "materialistic" French and English (in contrast 
to Teutonic idealism, piety, spirituality, and profundity), Slovak views 
of Czechs, Black African imagery of Asians, Malay and Indonesian views 
of the Chinese, and ante-bellum Southern views of the "Yankees." Among 
East European Jews themselves, Polish and Ukrainian Jews used to view 
"Litvaks" (Lithuanian Jews) as intelligent and well-educated, but dry, 
cold, arrogant,  pedantic, skeptical, and over-intellectual in their 
approach to religion--the Ukrainian Jews seeing themselves as more 
earthy and soulful by contrast.

In classic Freudian psychoanalytic terms, we might say, the ethnic or 
racial "Other" is pictured by the prejudiced as incarnating the vices of 
either the "Id" (as in White stereotypes of Blacks) or of the "Ego" and 
"Super-Ego" (as in the classic anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jew). By 
contrast, one's own ethnic, national, or racial group is idealized for 
being either intelligent, disciplined, sober, thrifty, and 
hard-working--or else for being earthy, soulful, rooted, and natural in 
contrast to those cold, effete, over-rational, deracinated, skeptical 
"Others."

       The same dichotomy, I feel, also underlies stereotypes of 
uncongenial religious, literary, musical and artistic schools and 
movements within one's own culture and society. Exponents of religious, 
artistic, or literary tendencies one dislikes may be denounced as 
barbaric, untrained, uneducated, undisciplined., "childish," "formless," 
and over-emotional--or else as dry, cold, desiccated, over-intellectual, 
over-civilized, "up-tight," "formalistic," and emotionally stunted or 
repressed. In other words, just as in ethnic stereotyping, one's 
religious, artistic, or literary opponents may be denounced for either 
their "Id" or their "Ego/Super-Ego" vices, for what ethnic bigots might 
call either "nigger" or "Jewish" traits! Thus, religious fundamentalism, 
rock music, and "Beat" poetry may be dismissed as in effect "Negro," and 
religious liberalism, classical music, and the poetry of T.S. Eliot as 
in effect "Jewish," by critics of unimpeachably tolerant ethnic views 
who never once mention such ethnic designations in print!

I first thought of this polarity in cultural controversy a few years ago 
upon re-reading British philosopher Michael Polanyi's  _Personal 
Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy_ (University of Chicago 
Press/Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958; Harper & Row, 1958; Harper 
Torchbooks, 1964). Because "the humanities, the arts, the various 
religions" as well as the sciences in contemporary society vast, complex 
"extensive and highly differentiated aggregates" of which "no one can 
fully understand and judge more than a tiny fraction," we are all 
dependent on "second-hand appreciations" outside our own unavoidably 
very narrow domains of first-hand personal expertise, forced to rely on 
"intellectual leaders" and "cultural authorities whom we trust (Polanyi, 
_Personal Knowledge_, 1964 Harper Torchbooks edn., pp. 220-221). By 
"following their chosen intellectual leaders," the "non-experts" in 
contemporary societies "even participate up to a point in the works of 
these leaders and beyond this in the whole range of culture accredited 
by them"  (_Personal Knowledge _, p. 221). However, Polanyi added, 
because of the "clash between different philosophies, religious or 
artistic movements," adherents of one "persuasion" may "refuse to 
recognize any intellectual merit in those of a rival persuasion, calling 
them cranks, frauds, or fools" (_Personal Knowledge _, p. 221). People 
will "differ accordingly also in their use of such professional 
descriptions as 'com[poser,' 'poet,' 'painter,' 'priest' and in that of 
accreditive terms like 'expert,' 'reputable,' or '[distinguished,' 
applied to persons claiming to be composers, poets, etc." (_Personal 
Knowledge _, p. 221).

Re-reading the above a few years ago, it immediately occurred to me in a 
flash that we "refuse to recognize any intellectual merit" in cultural 
authorities or leaders "of a rival persuasion" basically for either one 
or the other of two opposite reasons. We may call them "cranks, frauds, 
or fools" and refuse to accept them as reputable, distinguished 
composers, poets, painters, priests, or theologians because we see them 
as untrained, uneducated, undisciplined wild-men uttering unmodulated 
barbaric yawps, painting pictures a two-year old child or even a 
chimpanzee could paint, etc. On the other hand, we may call them 
"cranks, frauds, or fools" and deny them the status of reputable poets, 
painters, composers, or theologians because we see them as desiccated, 
bloodless, over-intellectualized ivory-tower types shut off from all 
life-giving human, emotional, or spiritual experience, from any 
first-hand experience of suffering, joy, terror, human connection, 
mysticism, or Divine inspiration.

            And just recently, it occurred to me that this polarity 
closely resembles the polarity of opposed types of ethnic or racial 
prejudice! Religious liberal/modernist (and highbrow traditional 
Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, or Orthodox) and 
literary/artistic Classicist attacks on fundamentalism, Pentecostalism,  
and Romanticism sometimes oddly parallel white racist stereotypes of 
Blacks and other "colored" peoples. Fundamentalist and literary/artistic 
Romanticist (or "counter-cultural") attacks on religious liberalism and 
literary/artistic Classicism sometimes echo anti-Semitic attacks on Jews 
and Russian "Slavophile" attacks on western Europeans. As with ethnic 
and racial stereotypes, it comes down to criticizing one's adversaries 
for what one sees as either their "Id" or their "Ego/Super-Ego" vices! 
In literary criticism, the ethnic/racial analogy has been explicitly 
invoked in the widespread dichotomy of writers as either earthy, 
emotionally unbuttoned, instinctually liberated, culturally populist 
"Redskins" (Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, the "Beats") or polite, 
genteel, repressed, fastidious "Palefaces" (Jane Austen, Henry James, 
Edith Wharton, T.S. Eliot).

                        Peace,
                        T. Peter tpeterpark at erols.com 
<mailto:tpeterpark at erols.com>
                        Garden City South, L.I., N.Y.        


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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