Stereotyping?

Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and Mary Lou Williams were men?

Nope.
I now plenty of people from each group who are the opposites of the stereotypical image.
If anyone truly wants to find a common denominator they can, with just about anything, but it's rarely the truth.

Much of it fear or perhaps wishful thinking?

Heh,heh, McTag. I should have said all great instrumentalists, i.e. saxophonists, are men.(don't include piano players in there, either, 'cause Marion McPartland was fabulous)

Hey, Ceili, what you say is evident, of course, but I was wondering if there had ever been a study done to determine where the labeling first originated.

Hey, edgar. As I said, where did it all start?

I think it started in the very beginning, when one tribe met a scoundrel from another tribe and assumed that the whole tribe was scoundrel.

Folks, I know that when I was in grad school, there was a survey done showing that there indeed was some basis in fact for stereotyping, but I couldn't find that actual study, so I'll have to make do with the following link:

http://www.bluecorncomics.com/stharm.htm

Perhaps I should make a distinction between nature/nurture.

Actually, I knew what you meant and I chose to ignore it just to be silly.

I think there probably is a lot of actual common characteristics in popular stereotypes (women are bad drivers, but some women are very good)
and there was a programme on out TVs this week to say that how a child turned out was due to parenting, nurture, and not inherent nature. I think that must be wrong because some children turn out different, from the same family.
Broader racial groups obviously have common characteristics in general.
I've got a feeling I did not express that very well.

What EdgarBlythe said, plus inadequate knowledge, a lack of security, the failure to investigate the statement any further, are all causes of stereotypes. Since a stereotype, can't be reset once its cast in metal, neither can unvarying and unchangeable views of groups of people and these views were frequently repeated in movies, comics, TV, etc.

Cheez, this is a really deep subject, Letty. You want to know where the first stereotype originated. We might have to go back to the cavemen for that answer. We should be able to find out the first time the word stereotype was coined though.

But whenever I hear stereotype or prejudice this song always comes to mind:

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

(The musical South Pacific almost didn't come to be because Oscar Hammerstein was ordered by frightened producers to delete that song. Oscar said if they removed that song, they could forget the whole show.)

If you truly look at a stereotype, you can usually divine it's origin. The more something is repeated the more we tend to believe it.

I usually view stereotypes as negative and, in the end, they are, but my post about scoundrels was a little general, I'm afraid, and I apologize. Someone mentioned fear earlier and I think that's a very big part of stereotyping. That and the incessant need to label.
I think the media and the introduction of movies and then television of the last century played the largest role in worldwide stereotyping. Germans, for instance, having very little contact with Blacks or Hispanics in this country, come to this country with a built-in image, based on what they've seen on television or in the movies. And the same holds true for Africans, the French, whoever. The media alone has perpetuated so many stereotypes, mostly negative, perhaps many that did not even exist before.

McTag, I sorta knew that you knew. Henry Lewis Mencken classified Americans in the old immigration period as second rate Brits, and I read you perfectly. Of course, there are children who simply have innate problems. No one can deny that. I have often thought that geniuses are born, not made, but it's the nurturing of that genius on the part of the parents that brings it to fruition. One exception that I can think of is Henry Ford.

Raggedy, you and I have more in common than crossword puzzles...

Good for Oscar!

eoe and Ceili, I'll have to recall what I can of the survey and most of the population that was interviewed was a random selection. Well over 50% of the subjects fit the prediction. That ain't chapter and verse, now.

I love a good Stereotype. They have tunnel vision, an incliation towards being a Luddite & are easy targets for those wishing "to pee on their boots".
The only know cure for them is to live in a large multi cultural city & get tuned into the real world.
London, NYC or Paris are very medicinal.

As is Cambridge, Ma.

How true is this statment because I live in a very diverse city and I have yet to find it wrong. Most African Americans hate the water and do not know how to swim. They also hate the cold and that is why there isn't any on Hockey Teams--that I know of. But the reason I say most is because of Cool Runnings and they were Jamacian but were a bob sled team.

I watch Survivor and ever single African American that is on that show hates the water and does not know how to swim or doesn't know how to swim good.

I am not having tunnel vision. I am making an observation and wondering if it has any bearing in other's realities.

Hey, oakman. NYC is where it all began. Right there on Ellis Island.

Why can't they be like us!

and remember the Yellow Peril? and don't forget the Alamo.

Seriously, I realize that political correctness has been an attempt to eradicate the negative cognitive features so ingrained by fear and the desire to be a majority of one. I am just searching for the basis of the entire origin of the species.

Of course, bluemonkey, it has bearing, and that's why I created the thread. Call it an A2K survey, if you will.

LittleK, and then there is London, Kentucky! heh! heh! All people who live in Kentucky love fried chicken.

Folks, I'm not talking syllogisms here. We all are aware that beginning with a false premise is a No! No! Just a general attempt to ascertain cross cultural possibilities and sound analogies.

psssst, LittleK, I started this thread as a result of finding out that Drom was a woman. I assumed that if Drom played saxophone, she must be a man.

Canadians have forever ruled the game of hockey. And the ratio of black players was sadly lacking because our black population was few in number.
Although, Edmonton has had a long affair with black hockey players. Grant Fuhr was, I think, the second black player in the league. More on Black Hockey Players
coincidentally, Warren Moon played his first 5 years here, when no american team would touch him.


I remember while in NYC and being disappointed with the restaurants my cousin brought me too. The food was wonderful, great ambience ect, but I wanted to try something new and saw very little I hadn't seen before.
I must clarify....
NYC was a fascinating place, very foreign and yet very familiar. I loved the city and would go back in a heartbeat. So much to discover and learn....
K,, got that out of the way.
Canadian cities are very multicultural. No real ghettoization - if that's a word. Very progressive cities where stereotypes are very hard to see.
I'm only surmising here, I'll use the irish cause I happen to belong to that particular stereotype. If 50% percent of Irish people drink, over course they are prone to alcoholism. That doesn't mean they will become alcoholics. If it did the whole economy of Ireland would collapse.
Blacks can dance, I'll add my own cultural bias, over half the whites guy I know refuse to dance, so I have no idea how many of them can or can't dance.
Brits are snobs sure, except for the really friendly ones everybody talks about after they come home from a trip abroad.
Italians and French are great lovers maybe, but who says canadian men aren't better, or americans, or ozzies.....
Americans only care about money, well that might be true, but how about all the people who haven't saved for retirement, who put their savings into hobbies, vacations, or charities or earn very little or volunteer, or maybe it's not that they care about money so much. It's that they are expected to make it or suffer the consequences.
All good Jazz musicians are men or women, or chet baker or pat metheny or a canadian senator who rules. It's subjective.

Thanks, ceili. that was well stated, but any thesis tends to be somewhat subjective. The purpose, of course, is to arrive at some objective conclusion. Not one of us here is truly biased, I don't think.

A colleague of mine, a science teacher, once told me that because I was tall and slender, I required warm climates. He justified this through Sheldon's body types: endomorphs; ectomorphs, and mesomorphs. As to the facts that blacks, as a whole, can't swim, I would attribute that to the fact that getting sunburned can be quite dangerous because of the melanin factor.