Racial and Ethnic Distinctions - Essay Example

 Racial and Ethnic Distinctions Nowadays it is impossible to read a newspaper or a magazine or to watch news on TV and not to run against some information concerning issues of ethnocentrism, racial or national stereotypes, discrimination, etc. These issues occur overall: from the sphere of international commercial activity up to wars caused by racial and ethnic distinctions. The given questions are going to become even more topical in the future when technological progress will unite various cultures of the world more and more tight. Considering cultural distinctions of people in thinking, opinions, and behaviour, it is easy to be open to cognitive and emotional reactions, to start to generalize, to create negative stereotypes concerning other people, and even to give judgment to these distinctions and people in advance. Such processes and reactions are widely spread in the contemporary world, and for their description are often used notions of ‘racism’, ‘stereotype’, ‘prejudice’, ‘discrimination’. Unfortunately, these terms are frequently used, without precise understanding of their meaning that only aggravates the issues they should clarify. The discussion of any concepts is impossible without their preliminary careful definition. Most of differences in opinions regarding any matter of dispute usually arise not because of disagreements in understanding of values or importance of these notions in our daily life, but because of some distinctions in their definitions. It should be stated that some categories are variable and mostly depend on the meanings inserted by contemporaries. The term ‘stereotype’ was for the first time used in the book ‘Public Opinion’ written by the classic of American journalism, Walter Lippmann (1922). Using this term he was trying to describe the method, by means of which community tries to categorize people. As a rule, public opinion just put stamps basing upon some characteristics. Lippmann marked out four aspects inherent all stereotypes. First of all, stereotypes are always much simpler then reality. They manage to paste the most multiple characteristics in two-three sentences. Secondly, people get stereotypes (from friends, relatives, co-workers, mass media, etc.) rather then formulate them grounding on their own experience. As an example we may take the image of a perfect woman. There is a stereotype that she must be blond, tall, skinny, with blue eyes, and long legs. But it is not a secret that a lot of men on becoming older and getting own experience realize that they like women with dark hair or plump women. The third aspect is that all stereotypes are more or less false. They usually arrogate some specific characteristics to a concrete person, just because of his/her belonging to a certain group. The fourth aspect is that stereotypes are extremely tenacious of life. The point is that in case people realize that some stereotype is at odds with true reality, they are ready to insist that the exception proves the rule, rather then to refuse from this stereotype. For example, meeting a tall Chinese just assure the ‘victim’ of stereotype in the fact that all the other Chinese are petite. Stereotypes are happening to mutate or to transfer from one group of people to another. Continuous process of cognition of world is a part of ability to live of a person. As a result of this cognition each person forms a certain own system of knowledge of the world. According to MacGarty, Yzerbyt, & Spears (2002: 3), “although most social psychologists pay lip service to the idea that stereotypes involve sense-making or knowledge creation in practical terms this emphasis is often reduced to a very simple idea. In an environment that contains too much information the most adaptive response by the perceiver is to attempt to reduce this information overload by filtering out or ignoring much of it (see Medin, 1988; Oakes & Turner, 1990, for critical discussions from different perspectives)”. Sense-making approaches to social stereotyping are extremely numerous (for a review see McGarty, 1999). They include self-categorization theory (Oakes, Haslam & Turner, 1994; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987), social judgeability theory (Leyens, Yzerbyt & Schadron, 1992, 1994) the exemplar model of social judgement (Smith & Zárate, 1992)a variety of approaches based on processes of assimilation and contrast (eg, Biernat, Vescio & Manis, 1998). Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause (1992), authors of the work ‘Popular Culture: An Introductory Text', state that stereotypes are the constituent of mass culture. They can be formed on the basis of age (young people listen to rock-and-roll), gender (all men want the only thing from women), race (Japanese look the same), religion (Islam is a religion of terrorists), profession (all lawyers are cheats) and nationality (all Jews are greedy). There are also geographic stereotypes (for example, living in small towns is much more safe then in megalopolises), goods stereotypes (for example, all German cars are of high quality) and so on. Stereotypes may be neutral, but on transferring from some concrete person to some group of people (social, ethnical, religious, racial, etc.) they often get negative meaning. Stereotypes lay in the ground of racism. Saera R. Khan, the professor of University of San Francisco, has published the article in Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, in which she claims that it is rather dangerous to have trust in stereotypes. The reason is that a stereotype has cognitive and motivational functions. From the cognitive point of view any stereotype is a double-edge weapon because it presents information in simple and easy form. However such information often is hugely far from true reality and is able to disorientate a person. From the point of view of motivation stereotypes are even more dangerous. A person, who makes own decisions built upon mass public opinion rather then upon facts, skates on thin ice. Fred E. Jandt (2003), the author of book ‘An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a Global Community’, notes, that generally stereotypes are used with evil intent. They often are the weapon of racism, propaganda and xenophobia. For instance, there was an anti-Semitic propaganda based on stereotypes in Germany in 1920-1930. As a result German people treated holocaust of 6 million Jews rather indifferently or even approvingly. For a long period of time in US in mass-media prevailed negative stereotypes with respect to black people (there are also a variety examples in literature, cinema etc.), that is why the struggle of African-Americans for their civil rights has been mostly followed by the struggle against habitual stereotypes. Display of stereotypes has become apparent on a wide spectrum of the social and psychological phenomena, in the first instance in various intergroup and interpersonal conflicts, stigmatisation, and aggressions against the certain groups. The question of self-identification of a person with some group takes special place in international relations, as this choice becomes for a person a ground for making decisions, comprehension of values, and acceptability of the certain style of behaviour, readiness to support the selected public or political movement. One of the first steps of improving of our understanding of intergroup relations may become more accurate studying and understanding of cultural and historical processes, and especially their influences on basic psychological processes. However perfection of our understanding of culture, history, and their influences is only one step. It is necessary to analyse critically own culture and behaviour in order to find out the reasons why stereotypes continue to exist. It is necessary to accept the existence of significant individual variability inside of groups and cultures, and also vices of own cultural ethnocentrism and negative stereotypes. On accepting group and individual distinctions instead of to ignoring them, we get an opportunity to communicate with people, instead of judging in advance their actions, behaviour and reasons by means of the stereotypes based on ignorance and intolerance. There is no doubt, that studying of our cultural environment, upbringing and heritage, and also their influence on our behaviour has a huge value and benefit for all society. The recognition of the contribution of culture of different groups in actions, behaviour and its reasons, helps us to understand, to respect and to estimate these distinctions when we observe them in real life. References: Jandt, FE 2003, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication: Identities in a Global Community, London: Sage Publications, Inc. Khan, SR 2002, ‘Stereotyping from the perspective of perceivers and targets’, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Unit 15, Chapter 3.2002. Lippmann, W 1922, Public Opinion, New York: Macmillan. MacGarty, C, Yzerbyt, V. Y. & Spears, R. 2002, Stereotypes as Explanations: The Formation of Meaningful Beliefs about Social Groups, Cambridge University Press. Nachbar, J & Lause, K 1992, Popular Culture: an Introductory Text. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Turner, JC, Oakes, PJ, Haslam, SA and mcgarty, C 1994, Self and collective: cognition and social context, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 454-63. Turner, MA Hogg, PJ Oakes, SD Reicher and MS Wetherell,1987, Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory (pp. 68—88). Oxford: Blackwell. Read More