Last Sunday was Father's Day. I missed posting my Sunday rant thanks to real life (hereafter in any rant RL,) but there was an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that caught my eye. This was supposed to be last Sunday's rant. Defying Stereotypes was the headline which I thought was cool then I read the subheading: Study shows black fathers are just as involved as other dads in parenting their children - even when they live apart.
Okay...so I never heard anything about black fathers being less of a dad than mine, nor did I hear derogatory things about other races' male parental figures. Then I thought what is a stereotype? According to the Merriam-Webster website a stereotype is "to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same" or "an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic."
So essentially, our nation is based upon stereotypes and trying to outrun them. We've had the prohibition era which was full of stereotyping. We learned about the "savage" Native Americans. We even learned about "evil" Nazis and how their main goal was to rid the world of Jews (which is a religion, not a race) using stereotyping(Jews weren't human, brown hair and eyes was Jew, etc.).
Even our entertainment includes stereotypes. In Harry Potter, it's symbolized by the house partitions in Hogwarts. Tamora Pierce emphasizes it in her Circle of Magic series/set with a noble, thief, tradesman, and nomad. Then she does so in her Tortall set stories with the men vs. women issues. And she shows it through both knights-in-training and police force. She also shows the stereotypes about different areas that they travel amongst. From the Lower City of Corus to the Scanran raiders to the north. In Twilight (which honestly I don't like) Stephanie Meyer throws most of what is known about werewolves and vampires out the window. Perhaps she did her research to find these different kinds of creatures, but hers aren't the stereotypical which had caused arguments to spawn across readers and movie-goers about whether the stories were any good.
Then there are the stereotypes about items. One that I personally tend to agree with is when a book is made into a movie, the book is always better. That however isn't always true. Sometimes they are just as good, my biggest book to movie adaptation let-down? The Harry Potter series. The disappointment began all the way back with movie number one. I was looking forward to the logic problem scene. That and Hermione's impassioned speech about how there is more to life than books and cleverness. The third movie in my opinion was the largest let-down, of course my expectations weren't nearly as high after that for the rest of the movies, so for me the disappointments weren't nearly as devastating.
Although Ella Enchanted, I thought, was well done. There are likely others that don't fit the proverbial mold. The fact that we still allow ourselves to follow stereotypes managed to upset me. I fit numerous stereotypes without actually fitting them.
Yes, I game, but I'm not a hardcore gamer. Yes, I know random trivial facts, but I don't follow any particular trivia type. Yes, I watch drama and chick flicks. I have my favored actors and actresses, but unless it relates to what they are doing next in their careers, I don't really care. The whole Lewinski thing back in the late nineties, why did it matter if it didn't affect his job? I mean I could understand if Clinton were say a priest or minister or an advocate for monogamous relationships, but why was seemingly everyone so concerned with whether or not he had had sexual relations with Lewinski? Then again the fact that he lied while under oath? That was a felony. We've gotten to a point where if we hear someone is a politician, we automatically don't trust them quite as much. I can't tell the number of times I've heard the phrase "No such thing as an honest politician." Isn't this just another stereotype?
How about the abused will become the abuser? I know a fair few people who have been either abused or neglected as a child and never had the help we claim they should have had. They've been doing just fine. So how is it that when claiming something like defying stereotypes the article only focuses one particular stereotype? Not just any stereotype either, it's the the stereotype of black fathers being less fatherly than others. So why is it that stereotypes are so much a part of our lives and society?
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