A friend of mine in a liberal arts college very similar to Rhodes shared with me his experience with stereotypes at his college. Let’s call him “Steve” just to maintain his anonymity. Before narrating his story, Steve coined a term to describe his experience: “Reflex Racial Stereotyping.” What? That's exactly what I thought when I first heard the term. Although this term sounded surprising, I still found it interesting since I had never seen or heard these three words used together. His definition of Reflex Racial Stereotyping, however, was insightful: “A reflex or automatic reaction towards an individual of a particular race based on the societal stereotypes associated with that race.” Now, let’s take a look at his story:
One night, at about 1am, Steve was heading back to his room from the library when he noticed a young white lady, a fellow resident of his dorm hall, walking ahead of him. Steve did not know this lady personally; however, he had seen her a few times around the dorm area. When the young lady noticed that someone was walking behind her she looked back to see who it was and then looked straight ahead. After every few steps, the young lady would look back again, with a somewhat panicky look on her face, as though something bad might happen to her. She repeated this several times, until she approached an area that was brightly-lighted and closer to the dorm. Steve found this a little disturbing and thought out loud to himself: “Why does she keep looking back? Does she think I’m a beast or a stalker?
According to Steve, this was not the only instance where such an incident had occurred. There were several occasions when the same sort of behavior was exhibited by different white ladies toward him and other black guys. So he then decided to observe, from a distance, how these young white ladies reacted when a white guy was walking right behind them around that same hour. And guess what? The reaction was different. In most instances, the ladies turned only once to see who was behind them. Upon noticing that it was a white guy, they proceeded to walk straight ahead without looking back again.
Based on Steve’s observations, he concluded that the ladies acted like they did probably because he was black, and because of certain stereotypes associated with blacks, such as violence, rape, etc as portrayed in the media. Although, one cannot tell why exactly these ladies looked back repeatedly when the black guys walked behind them, Steve considered it to be some kind of reflex response that occurs, subconsciously, as a cautionary signal when around black males, in this context.
There are two questions I would like to pose to everyone:
(1) Are Steve’s observations a reflection of how race stereotypes, specifically black stereotypes, as showcased in the media, can impact our society. (2) Could there be another explanation for the reactions of the young ladies towards Steve and the other black males?
Emmanuel, what a great post. I believe I can contribute something to the discussion of why "Reflex Racial Stereotyping" occurs. We now know more about the events that have ushered in racism and the sequestering of blacks into an ever-evolving, yet to this day negative, social status. Along with that status came the difficulties for blacks in getting started financially, and I believe it can be reasoned that many of the actions that we have learned about this semester have helped cause the current situation for blacks in America.
ReplyDeleteNow, that situation is obviously a complex and rich subject, but a facet of it includes the fact that the poverty rate for blacks is nearly triple that of whites. Because more blacks are living in a high pressure environment, and because more cop cars are stationed in those neighborhoods, among other reasons, more blacks are caught and put in jail (blacks are 14% of pop. in U.S., and 39% of inmates in our country) and subsequently shown as criminals in various forms of media like newspapers and cop television shows. This would seem to have at least something to do with the current state of stereotyping blacks as dangerous in the US.
This is a seriously powerful post and I feel that you captured a very common racially stereotyped concept in concise and analytical terms. I do feel that black stereotypes are presented in multiple ways through the media and otherwise and I do feel that they spread untruths about black males and violent, animalistic behavior that I white female might be threatened by. However, I feel like America should share the burden for the projection and reception of these stereotypes. Sure, racially tinted media can spout off threatening statistics that may provoke an irrational fear of black males in the mind of a college girl, however I feel that misogynistic and violent rap music lyrics, among plenty of other things, could be similarly responsible. Obviously racially biased white media and rap music aren't the only places these negative race thoughts are coming from, I just thought it was interesting that they share a similar stereotype favoring message.
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