Stereotypes, The Black and White Truth

This week in class we read "Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men?" by Matthias R. Mehl. This article was published to display the results of the experiment that Mehl and his team conducted to see if the stereotype of women being more talkative than men was true or not. Turns out, it isn't true, yet a lot of people assume it's true without second thought.

Stereotypes are just oversimplified labels given to people that society believes to be accurate representations of the people in question. Think about it, how many times have you applied stereotypes to people without realizing it? Have you ever been able to tell how smart someone is just by looking at them? Ever labelled someone as a jock or nerd based on their physique or the number of books they read? Ever seen someone read comics and think they don't care about school? Felt like all guys play video games or that girls never do? Even age groups have stereotypes, but do all teens rebel?

Labeling of any kind, whether it's truthful or not, never helps anyone. It teaches someone that they have certain expectations that they have to live up to because of their race, gender, hobbies, age, or other characteristics that they don't necessarily have any control over. If they can't reach those expectations, they are excluded by society and the people in it. Often, they feel constraints and boundaries that they are not allowed to cross. Sometimes it gets really tough for teens, even adults to cope with. Yet we still continue thinking in stereotypes and raising children to fit them. I mean, how twisted does one have to be to tell a kid to be smart just because they were born into a certain race, or to tell a child that they're a nerd because they read, or dumb because they don't, or that they should or shouldn't play video games because of their gender.

The Black and White Truth of the "Hunch Posture"

Brent Staples, the author of "Just Walk On By," defines the "hunch posture" from his essay as one where women "set their faces on neutral and, with their purse straps strung across their chests bandolier style, they forge ahead as though bracing themselves against being tackled." Staples admits that "women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of violence," therefore their "hunch posture" is justified to some extent. 

But perhaps, the cities and states in which Staples experiences this discrimination are more determinant of the perception of Staples than his race and gender. The first city Staples gives an example of is Chicago, a city that was close to a "surrounding ghetto" from which "muggers... occasionally seeped." Maybe this is what led Staples' first victim into a panic frenzy. Another location that labels Staples as a "suspect" is Soho, Manhattan. Manhattan being an undoubtedly crowded place, night walkers should seem to be a daily occurence that are in no way unnatural. However, Soho is a region that consists mainly of high-end stores and art galleries, making it very unnatural to be wandering through its streets in the middle of the night. Central Manhattan on the other hand is occupied by a "near-constant crowd," "[minimizing] the tense one-on-one street encounters," making it very normal to be out on the streets even in the middle of the night. 

In Troy, night walkers are not much of a frequent occurrence, at least as far as I know. Consequently, if Staples were to take a walk in the middle of the night here, the discrimination he might face may be more attributed to his trait of being a night walker than to being a "young black male." 

At the same time, this is not to say that racism is not a major factor in the labeling of a "suspect," but that the level of racism that Staples faces is an effect referable to the views of night walkers of the society in question and how that society "teaches" its residents to view specifically "young black men" on night walks as "suspects."