The Stereotype of All Stereotypes

Established ideas and frames of mind direct every other aspect of one’s life whether he or she is fully cognoscente of it. Some of the effects on those aspects are more explicitly influenced by details of the subconscious than others, but are nonetheless present factors. Cultures make it a point to acknowledge differences based on physical attributes and qualities, using them to construct ideas and form assumptions as means of categorizing people. Society and exposure are mainly responsible for these perceptions and understandings of how the world works and how people are; things heavily associated with other things frame these expectations that people have for things or people categorized in a certain way (going beyond race). A specific case that demonstrates the concept is the influence of racial gaze and perception of “design”.

Design is based on expectations. How an artist chooses to capture images or moments can be quite reliant on the participants and environments of the photos. In a Westernized society, using mainly ethnic models for a photo shoot in an urban area reflects a subconscious observation of the one who chose the models for the shoot, as they found that choice to be most apt for the scenario. Having the models wear certain outfits or hairstyles reflects other expectations that acknowledge things to be “fitting”. The idea of the racial gaze is pulled from theorist Sue Hum in her own analysis of the concept. She recognizes that race is a socially constructed concept based upon associations that then form expectations from members of society to see said observations repeated continuously, or even perpetuate those expectations for other members of society to normalize. This is how people form stereotypes.

In Hum’s text, “’Between the Eyes’: The Racialized Gaze”, she refers to design as the way individuals construct their “rhetorical agendas” (Hum 191). This insinuates that portrayals also aim to push notions about certain groups into circulation rather than only for that text, labeled an “agenda” for trying to make personal conceptions commonalities among members of a community. It is an implicit persuasion, as Hum notes that even things such as political cartoons, certain features of caricatures that are meant to depict a race, no matter how unrealistic, have an almost “instantly recognizable” quality (195). Without there even being time to look over and analyze/process images, society has trained people to associate the exaggerated features (that caricatures tend to possess) with racial groups, being able to point them out and note them immediately; what could be called, “physical markers” (202). Hum makes it clear that this is done so intentionally, and so collectively, societies are conditioned to understand another’s ideas, as they have been promoted continuously for generations (also having effect on how others capture images and members of groups, because they tend to recreate things that they have seen before, how they were forced to understand things). Minds are wired to subconsciously validate the subliminal messages the world works so hard to enforce.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a theorist who has some beliefs that would seems to function as a sort of proof for the notions of Hum. In his text focused more on the establishment of race as a concept than how it influences social cultures, Gates takes time to try to analyze and understand the roots of “race” as a concept and just what the term encompasses definitively. He quotes Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine as saying that “’race’ was the source of all structures of feeling and thought: to ‘track the root of man,’” is “to consider the race itself... the structure of his character and mind, his general processes of thought and feeling” (Gates 3). This follows what Hum acknowledges to be apart of design. When the racial gaze influences art creation, the design follows formats that seem stereotypical, unbeknownst by the artist as a subconscious influence or most definitely done to perpetuate/incite a racial gaze in others. This design will ultimately call on what one was conditioned to be the “root” of an individual and how his or her character would function from a visual aspect. In order to make sure personality is captured, elements that seems to be chosen based on the understanding of one’s race seems to be quite common, as the misconception noticed by both theorists is that race and character determine each other (this goes as far as how someone dresses, speaks, and how they behave).

These elements are not scientific in anyway, but rather based on perception, which is, yes, subject to change, but also tends to do so faster and at far more widespread rates the more advance the media and technology become, becoming so prevalent, people take these observations and treat them as legitimate facts. Gates examples even seem to show that people might as well have thought that people of different races were of a different species. Describing a scenario where President Lincoln perceived black and whites to be of opposite spectrums in nature, and that no “bridge” could be constructed (which I assumed to mean that blacks and whites were not acknowledges as one in the same in terms of “humanness”), pushed as a justification for sending slaves back to America (though not explicitly stated, is referencing the construction of Liberia, and notes that blacks must have been conditioned to believe these difference just the same because of the subhuman treatment during slavery) (3). Gates dismisses the current understanding of race to be true when he observes that our understandings are unfounded. Perpetuation is such a tired term when it comes to this subject, however it holds much weight. Traces of this mindset that seems so ignorant when read, but is very much so a force in present day (especially with issues of cultural appropriation) as “our conversations are replete with usages of race which have their sources in the dubious pseudoscience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (4).

Hum’s theories set up a critique that fit comfortably when placed with the examples and theories of Gates. Hum had more of a focus on imagery and portrayal’s influence while Gates’ theories demonstrated how the influence shaped early America’s racial perceptions well into the future, perpetuating biased views that truly do not have scientific standing, and would have any individual trying to propose so to be viewed as a racist. Anna Julia Cooper wrote in A Voice From the South “’isms’ have their day and pass away” with “new necessities” arising “with ne conditions and the emphasis has to be shifted to suit the times” (Cooper 381). She wraps up the arguments of both theorists’ ideas combined. The information is recycled from generations to generation only conforming slightly to changes in popular culture, and both theorists unpack and uncover the origins of racial stereotypes.