Reciprocal prejudices

It should not be surprising to anyone that, in many languages, the word used to describe the community of speakers of that language means essentially "people", especially among remote tribes where the contact with outsiders was rare, so that the illusion that the tribe was "all the humans that be" could be somehow maintained. This is the case of the terms Inuit ("the people" in Eastern Canadian Inuit), rroma ("Romani men" in Romani) or newe ("the people"in Shoshone language) among many other examples. It is just a direct corollary of the fact that the language is defined by its speakers: those who speak the language are people and the rest are... something else, a word that is also defined by the speakers.

Once trans-cultural contact ensues, it is common that these words (called endonyms) are adapted to neighboring languages, in the same way that we use Romani or Inuit in English today instead of using words of external origin (what would be called exonyms). One side effect of this practice of using endonyms is that topographic names and up been somewhat redundant, like the famous cases of Lake Tahoe (tahoe means "the lake" in Washo language) or the many Rivers Avon (avon is "river" in British Celtic language). It is easy to imagine that, when a foreigner asked "what is this body of water called?" (asking for a toponym) the native would simply answered "lake" (using the local language) and the explorer dutifully wrote the "strange word" on his map next to the lake and that is how the name stuck. And the procedure would be similar when asking "what is this group of people called?" and the locals asked "the people", "the tribe", "the humans" or anything of the sort in their own language.

Photo: ClaraDon

One common line of thought among all these examples is, to use the term defined by Marilyn Frye, the arrogation of the definition frame. In her collection of essays "Politics of Reality", this American philosopher describes how a group, by dictating a term to be used, can implicitly ascribe to it certain characteristics, in particular its not being something else. Frye explains how the patriarchal culture essentially equates "person" with "man", so that the rest of the people are to be consider "quasi-people", either incomplete (children) or simply substandard (women). In the case of the languages, foreigners are obviously not "the people", so they would be denied the favor of their gods, the support of the tribe and other advantages that "the people" had. Furthermore, they have absolutely no say in defining the concept that "the people" should have of them: if the tribe decides that the foreigners are "evil spirits" regardless of any evidence in that direction that is what will stick in the community and they will be regarded in that way for generations to come. This is how prejudice is born.

Precisely this morning I was listening an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast and it provided a very interesting insight: people who were afraid of being typecast into a stereotype were frequently under such an emotional stress that it significantly limited their cognitive abilities, an effect called "stereotype threat". It had never occurred to me that the fear of a woman of performing poorly in a math task (and thereby confirm the gender stereotype) could actually hinder her ability to perform to her full potential, but looking at it in this new light it makes perfect sense. Of course, there is the "embassy effect" that I have mentioned before, where the bad performance of a member of an easily identifiable group is quickly attributed to the group as a whole (see this inspired cartoon by Randall Munroe on XKCD).

The podcast provided yet another surprising insight: the fear of reciprocal prejudice. The direct stereotype means that, when a woman and a man interact in a working environment she will question if the man's actions are truly caused by her actions and abilities or the contrary, respond to the stereotype that the man might have of her. The reciprocal prejudice means that the man fears that his action will be interpreted as a response to the stereotype, not to the actions of his co-worker. The end result is that both are sitting in the meeting room with two storms brewing in their heads: she thinking that he will never take her seriously because she is a woman, he thinking that she will always despise his opinion because he is a man.

I would like to take a moment now to point out that the situation, even if it hold some parallelism, is in fact very asymmetrical: while the reverse prejudice questions the interactions of men with women, but not their overall intellectual capabilities, seriousness, reliability, etc., the direct prejudice puts into question every single aspect of the women's work, so the latter is much more damaging to their victims. The same applies to the prejudices in the interaction between African Americans and the police. The fact that police officer are often accused of racism in their interaction with African Americans is much less damaging that the stereotype that blacks are criminal and violent, because the latter permeates all aspects of their life.

Marilyn Frye mention in her discussion of racism that, being born and raise in an American white family it is just not possible to be "non-racist" (and I would add that the same applies to the impossibility of men being non-sexist), because the underlying superstructure of thought is so pervasive that you cannot completely escape from it. However, this should not prevent us from being "anti-racist" (or "anti-sexist" for that) whereby we make a very serious effort to avoid and compensate our inherited prejudice, in the hope that "non-racism" (and "non-sexism") will eventually become the dominant line of thought. In the meantime, if you find yourself as being object of reverse prejudice just keep in mind that the other part has, by far, the tough end of the deal. Have a nice evening.