maybe God created Man, but Man created stereotypes

Just as our American People have been conditioned to respond to the Blind Stereotype, without even thinking, so we Americans have also been exposed to the Black Stereotype. 

Both stereotypes have been created by the public in control.  In the case of the blind it is the sighted majority who have defined Blind People.  In the case of Blacks, it is the White majority who have done so. 

Working for many years in an International neighborhood, I have encountered good and not so good folks of all ages, colors and assorted sizes.  As a blind man, I have started to board a transit bus only to be shoved out of the way by angry Black men, humongously fat and surly women, lippy teenagers and unminded thoughtless people. 

Now, being contaminated in the same pool as all other American fish, I would be lying if I told  you that I respond the same way to each of these rude, pushy folk. 

My initial reaction is based upon who I believe is pushing me and what prejudicial baggage I carry about them.  Haughty, lippy teenagers always get my blood pressure rising.  I push back.  With women, I am more polite because I was raised to be a gentleman.  The weaker sex thing, you know. 

But with Blacks, I am careful.  I don't want to have my face smashed in.  All of those reactions have been put in me by  years of living in our society filled with gurgling, frothing prejudices and stereotypes. 

Why should I feel more threatened when pushed by a big Black man than by a big White man?  I push back on the White man.  But not on the Black man.  Yet the Black man might very well be the local preacher in a rush for a meeting with his church elders.  I'm blocking the bus doorway and he believes he can just squeeze past me.  The White man could look like an upstanding businessman but in reality be hurrying home to murder his wife. 

We are constantly responding mindlessly to one prejudice or another.  Who jostles us in the checkout line, who crowds ahead of us at the bank, which neighbor's dog is howling half the night, each one is weighed by what we have been conditioned to believe about that person. 

Being robbed by three Black men, one of them with a gun, is no fun.  But would I feel differently if I'd been robbed by three gorgeous Blondes, one of them with a gun?  Would I be fearful of blondes the rest of my life?  Of course not.  My blonde stereotype tells me that being robbed by a blonde is the exception.  Most of them are out there having more fun. 

But Blacks.  That's a different stereotype. 

When I was a boy, during the Second World War, it was sneaky Japs that we had to look out for.  And look at how America treated some of our citizens because of our national stereotype. 

It's a fact of life, but it's a fact that we can change.  Not easily, but we need to start pushing back. 

 

Carl Jarvis