The Paradox of Stereotypes
In her recent study Amy DeWitt – chair of sociology at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va. – points out that gender and roles stereotypes still exist in children’s picture books and they possibly hurt a kid’s aspirations.
This can be a good starting point to reconsider the presence of stereotypes in communications today and surprisingly find out a clear paradox at the end.
We are all more and more aware that stereotypes are superficial, reductive and dangerous, too. Mostly false and after all misleading. Nevertheless we keep using them. Why? Because we all still need them.
To begin with, most popular new media tools of communications normally limit the length of a message and are supposed to receive an immediate reply. This forces us to be as concise and quick as possible and also simple to be understood at once. Therefore eMails, text messages, posts etc. are commonly typed with shortenings and other linguistic tricks, shortcuts, and, broadly speaking, stereotypes, too.
By the way, some say we have never written so much ever since. We write less but more frequently and promptly. An uncountable number of brief messages travels their way to the addressee daily in just a few seconds, worldwide. Try and compare your father and mother love letter exchange to your sons’ and daughters’ everyday texts flow to his or her boy or girlfriend. Think about this in terms of poetic effort made to conceive a single page and of time spent for writing it down, sending, then receiving and answering.
On the other hand stereotypes are extremely useful to get by in the complexity of our contemporary life. This is the paradox mentioned in the title: borders have fallen (thanks to politics and technology) but no set of tools has arisen and been shared yet to help us face the diversity, put together the fragmentation, and decode and solve everyday small and big conflicts.
We all perfectly know that not all Italians always eat only pizza, that not all Germans are nazis, not all Indians own a convenient store, not all Scots are stingy, not all Jamaican smoke weed, not all Polish wear socks with sandals, not all Arabs dream of becoming a suicide terrorists, and not all black men have rhythm in their blood. Often because most of us have Italian, German, Indian (…) neighbours, colleagues, friends, sometimes even relatives, and have therefore personally experienced the meaningful notion of individuality.
And in the end we don’t need to go back to Amy DeWitt’s study to admit that male and female roles in a family are changing. Even sexes have become an issue now that GLBTs are more and more coming out to legitimately have their rights recognized.
Mankind is not that simple to be reduced to a handful of stereotypes. Nevertheless they still usually fill our oral and written communications. So we need to learn and cope with them, point them out and cut them off to reduce their negative aspects and effects.
Families first have this responsibility with kids. “We need a more discerning consumerism, DeWitt says. Take a peek at a picture book first, look at the message and decide if you agree with it before reading it with your child. Challenge the roles in each book to get kids thinking for themselves.” Then the School comes and foreign fellow students, but we adults can’t do anything but keep up with the times that are relentlessly moving this way – like it or not –, and actively support the change.