Stereotypes harm us all.
Good afternoon, i was recently sitting down with some people in a “focus group” and before be began to discuss the issue at hand we were all explaining a lttle about ourselves.
One lady was from South Africa, her heritage was a coloured one to use the afrikaans term, i would say an asian background.
Two men were the prerequisite white english fellow with their roots right here in the cold european soil.
One lady was from the phillipeans, she was a student nurse and very pleasant too!
there were two pakistani’s one male and one female.
Last but not least there was me, young gifted and black to coin the cliche, from my west indian background, or to the overly sensitive “english speaking caribbean”.
we had half and hour to go before we began our formal tasks, so we began to share and talk. we talked about this recession, moneym finances and any sign of improvement in the economy. By all accounts we were doing quite well until one of the persons above made a crushing faux pas…..
” well i’ve been out of work for 6 months now, and it would be alright back where you are from, nothing but sunshine, beaches, drinking and lazing around but i’m going to starve if i dont find work soon”
My blood pressure shot right up. i got an instant headache, i fought the immediate urge to thump this person. How could they feel comfortable enough to say that in front of people they had only just met.
This incident is not the point of this post but it got me to thinking about the state of our world and how stereotypes can negatively impact on people even when they seem positive. The person’s idea of “where you come from” seemed a virtual utopia if it existed i would go, but the point of the comment was the belittle, and diminish the livelyhoods and the work ethic of a whole nation/ ethnicity.
My favourite stereotype is the hypersexual black male. It applies to all black men, regardless of indivuality. It endows black men with a penis so large and powerful that it coined a phrase ” once you go black you won’t go back”. It bestows strength and a hyper-masculinity, agility and with it the “ideal” body lean, tall, muscular and hard. In short according to this stereotype black men are hot to the touch red hot sexual adonis’ with the sexual power to make women ( and some men) to lose all self control. Here’s the problem…. this stereotype does not allow for individuality, there is no mention of any intellect, the black man is rendered a sexual beast, with all the bodily trappings of humanity but ultimately no human faculties. I had a teacher when i was 17, she was plain teacher from the midlands, her husband was 6ft and probably about 20 stones he was obese. she was once saying to me that in a fight Any black man could and would knock out any white or asian man without ever breaking a sweat. I had to challenge her on that, my father was a slight 5ft 9 and only about 12 stones and i said “my father could never take your husband on in a fight he would be laid out he just wouldn’t have the power behind him” but my teacher was absolutely resolutely sure in the supremacy of the strong black male body.
My second favourite stereotype is the Shy muslim Pakistani woman. Of late the world has started to fetishise women of Asia but lately i have noticed that the religious element has crept into it all. This stereotype renders all pakistani muslim women , silent, shy , bashful, oppressed, humble and shamefaced. The stereotype is loaded with inuendo and imaginings of women whose bodies are fetishised by the fact that they are almost entirely covered. Well let me burst this bubble because it almost makes me weep with anger. whoever thinks that being either pakistani or muslim makes a woman silent or opressed is a moron. because whenever i hear those things come up, it is almost always men who say it and they say it in a way that makes me feel that women who are silent or being silenced are something to be coveted. As a woman who has many female friends who are pakistani’s and muslims, can i just say… they are as shy, as bashful, shamefaced,opressed and as humble as the rest as all womanhood. There is an increasing amount of men who see women from the desi community walking by in their nijab with only their eyes showing and try and read the eyes of the women for passion and imagine the breeze passing between hidden bare legs….. these men are perverts. the reason why some men claim desire for these women is to belittle women who they feel are in opposition to these; little more than mysogyny they construct a womanhood they feel is pure , silent, free from all the nagging other women do. the shyness is is opposite to the forthrite manner that most women have. they imagine it is a womanhood that stands in the shadows and is a drudge for her man. To finish i would just like to add pakistani women/ muslim women are women alike us all and to part them from humanity is beyond fetish, it’s evil, i do not want to brush away any oppression issues that the pakistani community may have vis-a vis honour killings but all communities have problems and the pakistani community are changing from within.
The stereotype i love best are those about black women, of course they are closest to my heart. they all contradict each other, so how they have survived so long i do not know but here lets talk about them. Sapphire, the black woman consummed by rage and anger, she is always shouting, she corals the world with her tongue.she drives all sane loving men away she is loud and vocal, she is physically strong, in short she is like a gorgon, an amazonian siren who cannibalises men with her incredible spirit. Then comes the mammy , fat mentally slow, reliants on others overly motherly and desexualised, this stereotype is a nuturer like the name the american mammy which i presume is the version of mummy the english word equivilent to mommy. then there is the jezebel the youthful, vigourous , wetly pouting jezebel. the stereotype is all sex and trades on the curviness that black women are famed for , the typical african hips that give black women their shapely behinds, the full hard bosoms the waists that appear unusually small in juxtaposition with large hips. this stereotype cannot get enough sex and would often “devour” men until the man was spent of all sexual energy this stereotype is the female partner to the hypersexualised black male. well these stereotypes are laughable because they all contradict each other, sapphires are gorgons spewing bile and hatred , while mammy’s are loving warm and fat, while jezebels are curvy sexual and desirable. these stereotypes were made up to demonise black women and make other races of womanhood look good. the ideal when most of these stereotypes were created was white womanhood, white womanhood was presumed to be silent, quiet and faithful, slim and loving to her husband. so casting black women as the opposite was not only giving white womanhood an opposite but making it seem better.
while writing and debunking the stereotypes, i could not help but notice how womanhood’s stereotypes expose the misogyny in our society, if a stereotype is “positive” the women are silent, or quiet or shamefaced. However if the stereotype is bad the woman is considered loud, or vocal, or confronatinal. so in essence this world has to tarvel a lot further than a few nice paper laws that say woman are equal in status to men when obviously we have many entrenced social norms.
