Aidan Hamilton

Betsy Natter
Design & Society

The half-truths in Stereotypes

One definition of a stereotype is that it's a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or
idea of a particular type of person or thing -- Google. From this definition it seems that stereotypes
would be easy to spot and to avoid using. It appears that a person could only use a stereotype
intentionally, someone couldn't possibly unknowingly believe in oversimplified images or ideas. When
you hear talk of stereotyping you likely think to yourself, "Well, I don't stereotype." But you do.
Everyone in the world stereotypes, even I, much to my chagrin. Its an unfortunate bug in the way the
human brain works. We group things into categories. It's what makes us intelligent, but we aren't
intelligent enough to realize that some things like people are too complex to fit into any simple
category. So you hear things said about groups of people from your parents, your friends, the media,
about groups of people you have never met and using this limited information delude yourself into
thinking you know them. This is not a judgement, this is a fact. Every person on the planet, myself
included, is guilty of doing this unconsciously.
What separates the wise man from the ignorant is what you consciously do with these poorly
conceived categories your mind creates. A wise man recognizes as these stereotypes bubble into his
conscious mind that they are ideas based on limited information, and it is better to admit to know
nothing than to make inferences based on poor data. Unfortunately it's not that simple for a multitude
of reasons. The stereotypical ideas appear to come from ones self and people are not in the habit of
questioning their own thoughts. Most people are not presented with direct contradictions to their
stereotypes ie. they aren't likely to meet all of the subjects of their stereotypes in their lifetime. But
perhaps the most difficult challenge in becoming wise, a challenge that causes people to not examine
their stereotypes in detail is that often the stereotypes are true.

A more appropriate way to describe them is that they are true in a very general sense, they have
small rings of truth to them. The stereotypes might describe something that is true for the average
person in a group of people. Like for instance, the commonly held belief in America that Africans are
poor. It's a fact that the GDP for the African countries are far below the GDP's for the developed
countries. However, it's not an attribute you could automatically place on anybody from Africa. If you
assume somebody from Africa has to be poor then it becomes a stereotype. Even though it is true that
the average African is more likely to be poor than the average American, you cannot make the
extrapolation that every African is poor.
For example in the book "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" by William Kamkwamba and
Bryan Mealer, the protagonist William Kamkwamba himself is in poverty. Now William happens to be
an inhabitant of Malawi, a country in Africa. As this narrative is factual and William is a "true
Malawian" people can easily forget that this is only from one point of view, and not necessarily
representative of the whole of Malawi. They could easily forget that hearing only one story of Malawi
is not sufficient data to form any real opinion of what Malawi is like as a place. And so someone like
you could then make the mistake, whether consciously or not, that this reinforces the stereotype that
Africans are poor. Stereotypes like this are so dangerous because they appear at the outset to be backed
by facts, and so people feel justified in believing in them. Even if somebody doesn't wish to perpetuate
stereotypes they might still believe in ones like this, because they don't believe them to be stereotypes
but facts.
An easy way to catch stereotypes like this (and really stereotypes in general) is to immediately
question anything you think or say that includes the word all, and is applied to people. In mathematics
all has a very special meaning that I believe is appropriate to use when discussing stereotypes. In
mathematics saying all followed by a statement is equivalent to saying that their does not exist
something so that statement is not true. An example would be the stereotype that muslims are terrorists.
This stereotype has the meaning that all muslims are terrorists, which is the same as saying that there

does not exist a muslim that is not a terrorist. This is of course ridiculous, so the stereotype is false. If
you say something about a group of people that includes the word all or some synonym, you are saying
that there isn't a single person in the group you are talking about that doesn't have the attribute you are
ascribing to them. Most of the time the word all is uttered, followed by some statement about a group
of people the statement will be false, or a half-truth like the brand of stereotype described in the above
paragraph. Unless you are saying something like all black people have a hippocampus, you
unknowingly or not will be perpetuating a stereotype.
That's how to catch a number of these half-truths, but how can you describe ideas and views on
groups of people without perpetuating stereotypes then? The way to do that in general terms is to
recognize that people are far to complicated to fit into neat categories and speak in such a way that you
reflect that belief. A simple way to accomplish an approximation of this is to make heavy use of the
words some, most, and similar words. Whenever you would say the word all in regard to groups of
people instead use a word like some or most. In that way you can reflect that you understand that this
attribute is not universal within the group of people you're describing.
In the end though all it really takes to stop perpetuating stereotypes is a desire to learn about
other cultures and to stop viewing yourself as superior. It's easier written than done, but I believe it's
necessary in this increasingly global world to recognize the stereotypes you believe in for what they
are. Then work to change those beliefs.