Stereotypes And Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis

Philosophical PapersVol. 33, No.3 (November 2004): 251-289Stereotypes And Stereotyping: A Moral AnalysisLawrence BlumAbstract: Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups held in amanner that renders them largely, though not entirely, immune to counterevidence. Indoing so, stereotypes powerfully shape the stereotyper's perception of stereotyped groups,seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, failing to see the contraryof· those characteristics when they are,. and generally homogenizing the group. Astereotyper associates a certain characteristic with the stereotyped. group--forexampleBlacks with being athletic-but may do so with a form of cognitive investment in tha(as·sociation that does not rise to the level of a belief in the generalization that Blacks areathletic. The cognitive distortions involved in stereotyping lead to various forms of moraldistortion, to which moral philosophers have paid inadequate attention. Some moraldistortions are common to all stereotypes-moral distancing, failing to see members of thestereotyped group as individuals, and failing to see diversity within that. group. Othermoral distortions vary with the stereotype. Some stereotypes attribute a desirablecharacteristic to a group (being good students, for example) and, ceteris paribus, are lessobjectionable than ones. that attribute undesirable characteristics. Yet the larger historicaland social context may attach undesirable characteristics to the desirable ones-beingboring and overfocused on academic pursuits, for example. The popular film The Passion ofthe Christ purveys negative stereotypes of Jews that have been historically powerful anddamaging along with negative portrayals of Romans that have not.Although the idea of stere.otype was introduced into English only in the20 th century, it is now widely used in ordinary parlance. In gene al, tocall something a 'stereotype', or to say that someone is engaging in'stereotyping', is to condemn what is so characterized. Stereotype. generally has. a negative valence. What is .the character of the valuejudgments accounting for this valence? Are these judgments warranted?Moral philosophers have given scant attention to these questions. ,Twofields have dominated the study of stereotypes. Cultural and mediastudies has examined the content of ailturally salient stereotypes ofparticular groups, the processes by which these are historically andsocially constructed and disseminated throughout society, and the socialfunctions seIVed by stereotypes. Social psychology has looked at the

252Lawrence Blumindividual psychic processes involved in constructing, holding, andoperating with stereotypes. Both these literatures have implications 'forthe question of what exactly is wrong with stereotypes and stereotyping,but this normative question requires the tools of moral philosophy togive it appropriate focus. This is what I aim to do here.Stereotypes as cultural entities, and stereotyping as individual psychicprocessThe two disciplinary approaches suggest an important distinctionregarding stereotypes. What we normally ,think of as stereotypes involvenot just any generalization about or image of a group, but widely-held'and widely-recognized images of socially salient groups"""';] ews as greedy,wealthy, scholarly; Blacks as violent, musical, lazy, athletic, unintelligent;women as emotional, nurturant, irrational; Asian-Americans and Asiansas good at math and science, hard working, a 'model minority'; IrIsh asdrinking too much; English as snooty, Poles as stupid; and so forth.When we say that group X is stereotyped in a certain way, or that 'thereis a. stereotype of group X,' we generally refer to the recognizablepresence in a certain sociocultural context of salient images of thatgroup-more precisely, of associations between a group label and a. setof characteristics. In this sense, stereotypes are cultural entities, widelyheld by persons in. the. culture or society in question, and widelyrecognized by pers ms who may not themselves hold the stereotype. Iwill refer to stereotypes in this sense as 'cultural stereotypes' ,1I Stereotypes do not exhaust objectionable cultural imagery of groups. Some images ofgroups are simply demeaning without attributing specific characteristics to the groups. Forexample, American popular culture has, especially in .the past, utilized. images of Asianswithbuck teeth, speaking a kind of pidgin English [the Chinese character played by MickeyRooney in the mm Breakfast at Tiffany's is an example], or Blacks with huge lips and bugeyes, which makes them the butt of humor. The images depict the group in a demeaningand insulting manner (and generally, though not always, intend to do so), but they aredistinct from stereotypes. They do not particularly attempt to assodate the group in·question with a general.trait meant to apply to the members of the group. They are morelike the visual, or representational, equivalent of an ethnic slur, an insulting name for agroup (like kike, spic, nigger, Polack, fag). Sometimes the word 'stereotype' is used broadly

Stereotypes And Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis253Social psychology studies the psychic processes involved illindividuals' constructing and using stereotypes. But the stereotypes inquestion operating at this individual level do not have to be culturalstereotypes. An individual can ,construct a purely personal, idiosyncraticstereotype of a group.· For example, Jim might form a stereotype ofFinnish-Americans as dishonest, perhaps based on some experience hehas had with a few Finnish-Americans. Jim's image of Finnish-Americansas dishon.est functions as a stereotype for him. He assumes that FinnishAmericans will be dishonest, and he applies this assumption to FinnishAmericans whom he meets or hears about. When he· encounters aFinnish American who appears to be honest, he either does not acceptthis appearance, or allows exceptions to his image. of Finnish-Americanswithout changing his basic personal image of Finnish-Americans asdishonest. He expects Finnish-Americans to be dishonest. And so on. Itis natural to say that Jim stereotypes Finnish-Americans, and he wouldnaturally develop the deleterious attitudes we often associate withstereotyping-hostility, prejudice, aversion, and so on. Yet there is (asfar as I am aware) no cultural stereotype of Finnish-Americans asdishonest.We must distinguish, then, between stereotypes as culturally saliententities, and stereotyping .as a psychic process that individuals engage in .with respect to groups.2 At this point, we must distinguish two aspects ofthat psychic process. The first is how stereotypes originate in individualto refer to any objectionable image of a group; but stereotypes in the sense I am iefelTingto in this paper operate by a particular logic of attribution of characteristics to· groupmembers that does not apply to visual slurs.2 I am taking groups as the target of stereotypes. In ordinary parlance, the targets are abroader range of entities. Individual entities, for example, can be said to be stereotyped,meaning that in the public mind certain general characteristics are generally attributed tothe entity in question (A recent New York Times article. is entitled, 'Boston Rises AboveUnflattering Stereotypes' July 25, 2004, by Pam Belluck.), in a manner analogous to suchattributions of groups. Moral issues about stereotyping do not apply in: exactly the sameway· to groups, especially salient social groups, as to individuals; for example, the waystereotypes about groups bear on views and treatment of individuals within the group haveno precise analogy in the case of individuq.ls.

254Lawrence Blumminds. The .second is how stereotypes, once they have taken holdpsychically, operate to shape the way the stereotyped group is viewed bythe individual in question . On the first issue, some research locates thesource of stereotype and prejudice in individual pathologyscapegoating, displacement, resentment, defensive rigidity, and the like. sWithout attempting to engage with this approach, I .believe that thecultural dimension is more fundamental than the individual. Moststereotypical images of groups originate in a· social or cultural process.Normal, unpathological individua:Is absorb stereotypes from the worldaround them just because they live in that world, not because of theirspecific personality traits.4A different proffered explanation for individuals· acqumngstereotypes is that they arise from individuals generating images ofgroups out of their own experience-for example, that they encounteror hear about several Jews who are stingy, or Blacks who are violent, and3 A sophisticated, recent account of the individual pathology approach is Elizabeth YoungBruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).4 To elaborate just a bit: I think the individual pathology ·apprQach is much more plausiblewith regard to prejudice than stereotyping. The two are closely linked in popular thinking,and the psychological study of stereotypes is meant to, and does, contribute to anunderstanding of prejudice (and vice versa). The link is evident. People who are prejudicedagainst a group generally hold negative stereotypes of that group. Nevertheless,stereotyping is not· the same as prejudice, and neither requires the other. Prejudiceinvolves a negative affect toward a group and· a disposition to disvaJue it and its members.Stereotyping does not always involve prejudice in this sense. For example, Jones mightstereotype Asians as good at math; such a view does not characteristically .support anegative feeling toward Asians (although it may-for example, resentment at their success).More generally, even holding·a negative stereotype of group X does not always promptnegative affect toward group X. Someone might regard Poles as stupid (cf. Helmreich, TheThings They Say Behind Your Back, 166-171), or Asians as bad drivers, yet not feel negativelytoward those groups. Moreover, even if a stereotype is negatively evaluatively charged, fora . particular carrier of that stereotype, this charge need not always trigger thecorresponding negative affect. Stereotyping is, I believe, much more common thanprejudice, and the latter seems· to me more amenable to an explanation in terms ofindividual pathology than the former, although of course there are widely shared andculturally transmitted prejudices, just as there are cultural stereotypes;. so individualpsychology can never constitute the full explanation of why people in a given society holdthe prejudices they do. Even less can it explain stereotypes.