Defending the Undefendable II: Freedom in All Realms

21.

STEREOTYPER

Stereotypes get bad press in our modern politically correct era. Those who engage in creating and disseminating them are seen as promoting discrimination, profiling, hard feelings, ignorance, and worse.

Yet, stereotypes are no more than broad empirical generalizations; they are based on the valid scientific method of induction. People notice, over and over again, certain broad patterns. Often, these concern characteristics of races, genders, species, animals, minerals, vegetables, etc.; their casual empiricism is so overwhelming that the counter examples are widely seen as the exceptions that prove the rule.

Since stereotypes about human beings come so encumbered with all sorts of negative connotations, let us begin our examination of this phenomenon in calmer terrain. Consider dogs, for example.

Correct stereotypes:

• Alaskan huskies are good at pulling sleds. They are the dog of choice when it comes to the Iditarod. They have thick coats and are impervious to the cold.
• The Bichon Frise is a lap dog and is cuddly and affectionate.
• The Doberman Pinscher is a guard dog that is, loyal, fierce, brave, unafraid, aggressive, and energetic.
• The German Shepherd is, as its name implies, bred to guard sheep.
• The greyhound is very speedy, capable of speeds over 40 miles per hour. It has little body fat and is subject to cold.
• The Chihuahua is very small, can be trained to use a litter box and is temperamental.
• The Saint Bernard is the gentle giant of the dog kingdom.
• The dachshund is the frankfurter dog that tends to dig, and is subject to spinal cord problems.

The above listing and descriptions are all stereotypes. In general, the descriptions are true, but there are exceptions. There is, after all, such a rare thing as a vicious bichon frise and a gentle Doberman. But, by and large, dogs do tend to fall into the described categories.

The “proof” that there is indeed a lot of accuracy in these descriptions is seen when we invert them. Accordingly, the following list of descriptions is generated by applying these descriptions to entirely erroneous subjects.

• The Alaskan husky is the frankfurter dog, tends to dig and is subject to spinal cord problems.
• The bichon frise is a guard dog that is loyal, fierce, brave, unafraid, aggressive, and energetic.
• The Doberman pinscher is a lap dog and is cuddly and affectionate.
• The German shepherd is very speedy, capable of speeds over 40 miles per hour, has little body fat and is subject to cold.
• The greyhound is, as its name implies, bred to guard sheep.
• The Chihuahua is the gentle giant of the dog kingdom.
• The Saint Bernard is very small, can be trained to use a litter box and is temperamental.
• The dachshund is good at pulling sleds and they are the dog of choice when it comes to the Iditarod. They have thick coats and are impervious to the cold.

The above, inverted list is just plain silly. If read while under the influence of your drug of choice, it can even be funny, offering proof to the claim that there was more than just a modicum of truth in the original listing. (By the way, there is now a concerted effort to ban Pit Bulls, since a few of them have hurt and even killed some people. But, this is equivalent to “dog profiling.”)

Having established this principle with regard to dogs, let us try it out on human beings, based on race, nationality, gender.

Correct stereotypes:

• Jews are very smart and studious. They have made marks in business, science, law, and medicine. They have a deserved reputation for driving hard bargains. They suffer more than most from Tay-Sachs disease.
• Italians love opera and spaghetti. Emotionally expressive, they are noted for contributions to the arts, leather goods, and wine making.
• Irish believe in leprechauns. Their drug of choice is liquor. They are feisty and argumentative.
• Swedes are morose and taciturn. Fair-skinned with blond hair and blue eyes, they have high rates of suicide.
• The French are the greatest cooks in the world. They are expert wine connoisseurs.
• Blacks are great athletes, particularly in basketball, track, and football. They are also well-noted as musicians, particularly in jazz, hip hop, and rap. They are statistically over proportionally represented among criminal classes. They suffer from sickle cell anemia.
• Hispanics are noted for their wonderful ability as dancers.
• Women are nurturing and forge strong bonds with their children. They are given to bouts of hysteria, especially when it is their time of the month.
• Men are aggressive and do not live as long as women. Brave, courageous, risk takers, they are territorial and possessive. They are also more accident-prone than women.

To say that the stereotyper has had a bad press of late is the understatement of the year. He is utterly reviled on all fronts. Stereotyping is politically incorrect. It is dismissed as the vilest of prejudices. Surely, no one, apart from a few red-neck southerners or members of the Ku Klux Klan with Nazi affiliations would engage in so despicable an act. The latter are stereotypes too, of course, but they are acceptable in polite company since it is politically correct to pillory such groups, just not hippies, union members or Communists.

Not so fast. Let us take a deep breath and reflect upon what, precisely, it is of which the stereotyper is guilty. What is stereotyping? It is no more and no less than generalizing on the basis of past evidence. It amounts to prejudging this one particular instance on the basis of previous observations that resemble this one. (Prejudice, the act of prejudging, has also come in for its fair share and more of opprobrium. We defend this practice, too, in the present chapter.)

Let’s look at that old saying, “I’m firm, you’re stubborn and he’s a pig-headed fool.” Emotively, these are very different characterizations; the first is a strong positive, the second a moderate negative, and the third a downright slur. And, yet, substantively, they indicate a person who sticks to his principles, who the speaker supports, or slightly or heavily condemns, respectively. In a similar manner, we could say with regard to stereotyping that I am scientific and rely on induction, you, a mere pragmatist, are swayed by public opinion; he, on the other hand, is a prejudiced stereotyper. Again, the first of these is a compliment, the second somewhat of a criticism (at least in non-pragmatic circles), and the third one of the worst appellations anyone can hurl at anyone else. And yet, the thesis of the present chapter is that when it comes to substance, there is as little difference between the latter set of three descriptions (concerning stereotyping) as there is in the former case (regarding firmness of belief).

What, then, is induction? It is, along with deduction, one of the two pillars of the scientific method. Induction is the drawing of conclusions from past experience, from observations or experiments. For example, here is knowledge attained from induction: one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen combine to create water; black athletes make superlative basketball players; whites are good swimmers; the sun will rise tomorrow. We learn these truths merely by inspection of the real world. In deduction, in contrast, we reach conclusions not from experience, but based on pure logic. For example, we know that if all men are mortal, and if Socrates is a man, then he is mortal. This follows merely, and entirely, from pure reason; we do not, and, indeed, cannot, experience any of this. In contrast, there is no necessity that H2O yield water, that blacks be good at dunking the basketball, that whites win swimming medals, that the next day will dawn. Things could have been different. In an alternative universe, whatever that may mean, these facts might well be otherwise. At least we can imagine a world where these statements are not true. In sharp contrast, there are no exceptions in matters of logic. In all cases where A>B>C, it follows that A>C; there is simply no getting around the fact that if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. This is true in any universe. With empirical generalizations, however, there are often exceptions. These “prove” the rule. Certainly, not all blacks are good hoopsters, let alone excellent ones. Some Orientals are good hoopsters; look at Yao Ming.

Let us consider the following stereotypes:

• British are good managers
• Swedes are taciturn
• French are good cooks
• Irish are happy-go-lucky
• Blacks are excellent athletes
• Jews are smart
• Asians are math whizzes
• Italians are great lovers
• Men are taller than women

These are all empirical generalizations. They are judgments made on the basis of vast experience of millions of people over many years. Are these claims without exception? Of course not. Some Swedes are ebullient; some Orientals cannot add 2+2 and arrive at 4. (I have never met any such mathematically challenged Asians above the age of 18 months, but I’m sure there are some.) Certainly, not all men are taller than all women. But, are these correct generalizations? Are they broadly based empirical realities? Of course they are. They would hardly rise to the level of stereotypes were they not.

One way to demonstrate this is to invert them. That is, instead of correctly attributing characteristics to ethnic and racial groups, we purposefully do the very opposite. Consider then, the following false stereotypes.

• Italians are good managers
• Eskimos are world class soccer players
• British are happy-go-lucky
• Jews are drunken brawlers
• Blacks are math whizzes
• Irish are the best basketball players
• French are taciturn
• Orientals dominate the NFL
• Italians always win the Iditarod
• Women are taller than men

These are not only false, some of them are ludicrous. Thus, we can see that by inverting stereotypes and reaching obviously silly conclusions, we must all the more support the original list of generalizations gained from hard-won experience.

A friend and onetime co-author of mine tells the following story: He will offer some opponent of stereotypes one hundred dollars to go to an unfamiliar college campus and choose two students, one of whom can dunk a basketball, the other who can solve a quadratic equation. Should you choose a tall, black young man (heck, even a short one) for the first task and a small Asian student with eyeglasses as thick as the bottom of a Coca Cola bottle for the second, or should you reverse this? Recourse to the relevant stereotypes is obviously the most likely way to earn this one hundred dollars. There are no guarantees, of course. This choice will not necessarily bring home the bacon. But it is more likely, far more likely, to do so.

Why is this the case? In a word, prejudice. Or more accurately, or etymologically correct, pre-judice. You are pre-judging the two students and their capacities if you make the decision likely to win you that one hundred dollars. On what basis are you selecting these two students? Why, it is due to a plethora of previous experience. You know, also, that the Asian student is far more likely to know how to do a karate kata and bow away on the violin, whereas the young black man is more likely to shoot hoops and play the saxophone.

Suppose you open the door to your living room and see a tiger sitting on your couch. Would you, you prejudiced stereotyper, immediately close the door, lock it and call the police, or, would you spurn such politically incorrect prejudiced stereotypical behavior, and, check things out with an open mind? If the latter, you would enter the living room, maybe allow the tiger to sniff your fist, maybe try to pat it to show you are friendly and then find out if this particular tiger will eat you for breakfast. You know that, as a general rule, tigers are inclined to munch first and ask questions later, but you don’t want to be a prejudiced stereotyper (I can’t help it, I love that phrase; it is the essence of political incorrectness; it packs into a mere two words so much that left liberals find despicable), so you are willing to ignore such findings from past experience. But, if you had even the barest modicum of good sense, you would be pre-judging this particular tiger, about which you have absolutely no knowledge, based on the behavior you (and many others) have seen other tigers exhibit in the past. You would tend to live longer, too, if you embraced your inner stereotyper.

But isn’t this unfair? Surely, this tiger should not be painted with the brush depicting other vicious animals of this species. This tiger, we may suppose, arguendo, has never so much as hurt a fly. All I can say about this is, tough cookies about your hurt feelings, tiger; prejudice and stereotyping über alles.

Given that pre-judging, stereotyping and inferring from past to future experience is so eminently reasonable, so scientific, in that it utilizes induction, why the calumny heaped upon those who engage in such behavior?

This can only be speculative, but one of the reasons might well be the political correctness that has swept campus, pulpit and newsroom of late. This has made it an act of courage to even utter words like Miss, Mrs., black, prejudice, stereotyping, Oriental, Negroid, white, African American, and a whole host of others.

And why, pray tell, would the forces of political correctness fasten on prejudice and stereotyping with particular venom? They are part and parcel of sometimes invidious comparisons made by social scientists and the man in the street (to employ yet another verboten phrase). The forces of political correctness no doubt think it unfair if lowered expectations, due to stereotyping, lead to lesser performance than would otherwise be the case. For example, if it is noted that blacks are not good swimmers, this will decrease their times in the 100 meter butterfly; if white men are told they cannot jump well, this will reduce their self-esteem, and their hang times will be reduced even more. But it has by no means been proven that expertise and success is a function of expectations, of oneself or of others. In any case, possibly, half of stereotypes are positive. Was Usain Bolt’s smashing of the world’s records in the 100- and 200-yard dash really due to positive stereotypes about black runners? If so, why don’t all members of this race continually emulate him in these Herculean records? If Keynesian “animal spirits” are the best explanation of economic success, and they can be engendered by stereotypes, they ought to balance each other out on this basis.

Another reason for the common rejection of stereotypes is that intellectual elites are too “cosmopolitan” to appreciate them. These leaders have a strong inclination toward egalitarianism. But stereotypes make what they see as invidious comparisons between groups. Now, no one class of people can outperform any other in every capacity. Thus, no one race or ethnic group can be “better” than any other. But some peoples lose out in competition with others in terms of particular characteristics deemed important. This, the modern fetish of egalitarianism cannot tolerate. Hence, their bitter rejection of all things smacking of stereotyping.

Let us close by asking, why is it that stereotypes are invariably true? Why don’t the false stereotypes mentioned above (whether for dogs or humans) ever arise and gain currency? This is because of mankind’s basic common sense. If a person continually promoted false pre-judices (Eskimos are excellent camel racers; Arabs are masters of the snow environment) he would be laughed at by all and sundry. Actually believing in such utter nonsense, moreover, could not have strong survival values.

According to encyclopedia.com, stereotyping amounts to:

“Making assumptions about individuals or groups based on information (which may or may not be valid) obtained before the individual or group has been encountered. Once encountered, opinions formed may be based on dress, speech, gender, ethnic origin, nationality, and gestures. Unfortunately, human beings are liable to have selective prejudices towards their fellows, seeing only what they want to see and ignoring factors that do not fit in with their preconceived beliefs. They also tend to assume that all the individuals of a group have the same, or similar, characteristics. Thus: all graduates are clever; all unemployed people are lazy; are two of the stereotypes that have to be resisted in carrying out job selection interviews.”

But this is obviously a biased and erroneous understanding of the concept. Of course it is not true that all graduates are clever, or that all unemployed people are lazy. But, what of the more moderate and reasonable interpretation of these stereotypes: that graduates are, on average, more clever than non-graduates, or that the unemployed are lazier, in the main, than the employed. These latter claims may or may not be true at all times and at all places, but they are at least not straw men. Indeed, if all you knew about a person was that he was a graduate (non-graduate), or employed (unemployed), you would be entitled to draw some conclusions from this information. The critics of stereotyping would deny this. Let us resort to our above-mentioned technique for dealing with these issues; stereotypical inversion.

Thus, we ask, not which set of statements is necessarily true, but which is more likely to be the case.

A: all graduates are clever; all unemployed people are lazy

B: all non-graduates are clever; all employed people are lazy

Placing matters in this manner indicates the utter foolishness of the dictionary author’s claim. A is presumptively true; B is just plain silly. How can it be that all employed people are lazy? They are working, are they not? As such, they have at least one very important advantage over the unemployed in the non-laziness sweepstakes: they are employed, for goodness sakes, and, other things equal, people who are working are presumably less lazy than those who are not. Similar remarks apply to the issue of cleverness. If the graduates are so stupid, how in bloody blue blazes did they graduate? I know, I know, given the forces of political correctness nowadays rampant everywhere, but particularly on our nation’s campuses, merely passing all courses in a four-year program means very little. But, it still means something. At the very least, a student has to master (if I can still use that word?) subjects such as mathematics, chemistry, etc., that the feminist and multicultural forces have not yet been able to pervert. And, too, one must exhibit, at least, a certain low cunning to not violate the often confusing strictures of political correctness.