Ethnic images become stereotypes when they ignore the full humanity of a people by depicting them as having certain traits and not others. When a group always is portrayed as comical, stupid, ugly, inept, or violent or when it always is portrayed as successful, intelligent, attractive, skillful, or heroic, it is being stereotyped. Both negative and positive stereotypes distort our perceptions of each other and so limit our ability to communicate with and understand each other. Negative stereotypes are particularly damaging, because they can foster hatred and aggression against certain groups. Positive stereotypes likewise become dangerous when they encourage a group to feel entitled by its perceived superiority to subjugate others.
The standardization and superficiality that characterize mass culture make it especially prone to stereotyping. From the very start, in product design, marketing, and advertising, American mass culture has promoted negative stereotypes of many ethnic groups, particularly Chinese, Irish and African Americans. With masses of immigrants flocking to cities and African Americans emerging from slavery, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Anglo-Americans sensed that their cultural domination of the United States was threatened. As consumers they were thus reassured by and responsive to images depicting themselves as superior and immigrants and Blacks as inferior. Those images, in turn, pervaded the mass market, giving legitimacy to Anglo-American domination of other groups and prompting the others to adopt Anglo-American ways.
World War I and the passage of extremely restrictive immigration laws brought large-scale immigration to an end. As the foreign-born generation aged and the American-born began to assimilate, many of the most derogatory ethnic stereotypes disappeared from mass culture. Later in the century, the civil rights and ethnic pride movements made ethnic differences increasingly acceptable and negative stereotyping socially unacceptable. Mass manufacturers were motivated to improve ethnic images in their products and advertisements both to avoid giving offense and to appeal to a growing market of ethnic consumers.
Although ethnic stereotyping is less common today than it was early in the century, it persists. The images are not so obviously offensive, so many people, including manufacturers, do not recognize them as stereotypes. The Mario Brothers video games, for example, portray plump, mustachioed Italians, and manufacturers still turn sacred Native American cultural materials such as drums and headdresses into playthings. Among the enduring blatantly negative stereotypes found in mass culture today are those of menacing Indians and ruthless Arab terrorists.
A mass culture free of stereotyping would depict members of all ethnic groups in their full humanity as athletes, as adventurers, as professionals, as workers, as both pretty and plain, young and old, and good and evil. That ideal is still far from reality.
[Stereotypes: Image Archive]
[Balch Institute] [Catalog Contents</ font>]
© 1996 The Balch Institute For Ethnic Studies
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