Gergory Freeman: Holding Stereotypes Is Not Only Ignorant, It's Also Dangerous. P-D 6/11/1998

Headline: HOLDING STEREOTYPES IS NOT ONLY IGNORANT, IT'S ALSO DANGEROUS
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Thu., Jun. 11, 1998
Section: METRO, Page: B1, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Why are people racist?
What is it that provokes people to become racists?
Why do so many people get impressions of others based solely on skin color?
Maybe I'm dense, but I don't get it.

Sure, social scientists often tell us that it has to do with how we are raised. If our parents were racists, we're more likely to become racists. If our folks say that certain groups of people are bad, or dangerous, or stupid, we're more likely to carry that belief around with us the rest of our lives.
People aren't born racist. No doctor's ever said, "Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you've just given birth to a 6-pound, 5-ounce racist."
No, racist behavior is learned. And no race or economic class has a monopoly on it.

Still, what causes a person to do something like what took place in Jasper, Texas, last week, where authorities say three white men chained a black hitchhiker to the back of a pickup and dragged him to his death?
The men didn't know the hitchhiker. But he was black, and that was good enough for the men to torture him. His head, neck and right arm were found about a mile from his mangled torso.

What is it that triggers such hatred in someone?
Clearly, racism isn't the result of clear thinking. Clear thinking would call for someone to dislike an individual because of something that individual said or did.
But to dislike a person based on a belief that a group is a certain way is anything but clear thinking.

It's foolish to believe that members of an entire group think alike, act alike, talk alike or anything else.
   Justice Clarence Thomas and rapper Sister Souljah probably have very little in common.
   Academic Cornel West and columnist Thomas Sowell surely don't agree with one another.
   Gen. Colin Powell and activist Angela Davis aren't in the same corner.
All are black; all have different opinions.

Of course, racism sometimes grows out of bad incidents.
About three years ago, a white woman wrote me a letter saying she would never feel safe around blacks again because a black man had killed her brother. She knew that her hatred of blacks was irrational, she wrote, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't look at black men without thinking about her brother.
While I was sorry about her brother, I wondered how she would have felt had her brother been John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. Would she have said that she couldn't look at white men anymore because one had killed her brother? I don't think so.

I initially felt a sense of guilt when I got her letter.
   Why did black people have to be involved in her brother's death? But I realized that I had nothing to do with it. There was nothing I could have done.
   Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam wrote a few years ago about how she had to come to terms with herself over this issue. An African-American, she often felt a collective guilt when a black person committed a crime. Finally, when Mayor Marion Barry got caught doing crack cocaine in a hotel with a woman who wasn't his wife, Gilliam was forced to come to terms with it. After all, there was no reason for her to feel responsible for Barry's actions.
   Despite that attitude, though, it doesn't stop some others from looking negatively upon Gilliam, or at me, or at some other African-American when some black person does something stupid.

Often, people harbor stereotypes and pull them out when they're convenient.
So, while every white person isn't doing his best to keep black people from getting ahead, while every Asian-American isn't proficient with computers, while every black person isn't drinking malt liquor and eating chicken wings, our stereotypes are confirmed whenever we see something like that happening.
And it's through stereotypes that racism develops.

If we can break down the stereotypes - through dialogue, frank exchanges with one another, getting to know one another as more than one-dimensional beings - perhaps we can begin to eliminate the kinds of racism that cause people of all races to do boneheaded and hurtful things to one another.

That's a goal worth pursuing.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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