The Relationship between Literature and Society
“overgeneralize” it to represent the whole race. People that stereotype Chinese as “nerds” for example, perhaps only found a number of Chinese who are like that.
However, they “overgeneralize” it so they all have a thought that all Chinese are nerds. The next question to be asked to those people is “Can they prove that all
Chinese are nerds?” Of course the answer is that they cannot prove that their stereotype is 100 correct because not all Chinese behave or are born like that.
This stereotype can be dismissed easily should there be a number of Chinese who are not “nerds.” However, the stereotypes will always be repeated eventhough it
has no proof because as Feagin noted, stereotypes is “overgeneralization associated with racial or ethnic group that goes beyond existing evidence.”
Therefore, basically stereotypes need no evidence to work because it “goes beyond” it. That is why stereotypes usually only consist of thought and
perspective, not a scientifically proven fact as it tends to use overgeneralization and goes beyond evidence.
In the practice stereotypes cannot be separated from prejudices, which themselves have many definitions, two of which are “a set of attitudes which
causes supports, or justifies discrimination” Rose, 1951:5 and “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization” Allport, 1954:7. These two
definitions define prejudice as an antipathetic attitude toward a certain group based on generalizations that are not true. Prejudices are very closely related to
stereotypes, because prejudices are “reinforced and maintained by racial stereotypes and thus make stereotypes the mechanism while prejudice is the action
Kitano, 1985:49-51. Therefore, as long as stereotypes persist, prejudice will
continue to exist. For example, there is a stereotype that Chinese are stingy and not generous. This will lead people to the prejudice that all Chinese are like that.
This will become more and more dangerous later as prejudices and stereotypes lead to avoidance e.g. “Let’s not make friends with Chinese”, later to
discrimination e.g. “We are not allowed to accept Chinese here”, and later into segregation, e.g. “Neither dogs or Chinese people allowed in this area” Kitano,
1985:52. Kitano also noted that this circle can probably lead to more extreme action such as concentration camp, extermination, and the most extreme one is
genocide. It should be remember that all of those actions discrimination, segregation, concentration camps, extermination, genocide were started by a
simple false-generalizations toward certain races. It should be noted that those false-generalization were made unilaterally by a group of people based on their
own perspective only and cannot be proven scientifically. Related to the background why Western people have such one-sided
prejudices and stereotypes toward the “Oriental”, the writer refers to Orientalism by Edward Said as stated in Peter’s Barry book Beginning Theory.
Said identifies a European cultural tradition of “Orientalism”, which is particular and long-standing way of identifying the East as “Other” and
inferior to the West. The Orient, he says, features in the Western mind “as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” Literature in the Modern
World, ed. Dennis Walder, p. 236. This means, in effect, that the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which
Westerners do not choose to acknowledge cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness, and so on Barry, 2002: 193-194.
Said noted an important thing about the European’s point of view as the representation of the West see the people from the East. They identify the East as
“Other” which means that the East are aliens to them and even thinks that they are
not individuals but only anonymous masses Barry, 2002: 193. The East becomes the projection of emotions that the West refuses to admit such as cruelty,
decadence, sensuality etc. The East was judged as a group of people who uses emotion to determine their action. Their actions are judged from racial
determination rather than individual status or circumstances, as stated by Said Barry, 2002: 194. It means that when Eastern people do something, Western
people will think that the Eastern did that because it was usual for their race to do that, not because they had consideration as an individual to do it. In conclusion, it
can be said that one of the reasons those one-sided prejudices and stereotypes can arise is because the Americans as in the the past European immigrants still cling
to their old belief toward other races, Oriental in this case.