Stereotype Cast

One day in college, on a break between classes, I went into a pizzeria with my friend Rey. Behind the counter, a heavyset Italian pizza man waited to take our order, as in any other pizza place. I didn't notice much odd about his abruptness, as that's common. Food vendors want to take an order as quickly as possible to move on to the next customer. “I'll be sure to make yours extra spicy,” he told Rey, “because I know how you Indian people like spicy food.” Because Rey is in fact Dominican, and because the comment was unwarranted and crappy even if he was Indian, we walked out immediately. I forget whether or not Rey corrected the jerk on his racial assumption, but either way the man lost two customers that day, and apparently didn't care.

We're all racist, or at least harbor some stereotypes, aversions, and assumptions. Maybe it's not as blatant or stupid as the idiot who'd rather lose business than serve someone different than he is, and maybe we call it different things, but it's there, sometimes beneath the surface. How many people thought twice when I wrote that pizza places always have an overweight Italian guy behind the counter? Whatever our ethnic, religious, or political background, we've all been guilty at one time or another. Maybe we won't eat food of a certain ethnicity, or lock our doors driving through a certain neighborhood. Maybe we'll only date a certain race exclusively, or there are one or two we won't date, and simply brush it off as “taste”. If the person behind the counter at your local fast food establishment has an accent, do you check the bag to make sure you got the right order? The “some of my best friends are...” defense might spring to mind as a natural counter to such an accusation, but does that mean anything? Are our friends our friends, or are they our white friends, our African American friends, our Filipino friends, our Greek friends, our Asian friends, our Hispanic friends, our Jewish friends, our Indian friends, our Persian friends, our Italian friends, etc.? Even when we don't add the adjectives, do we think them? There are many ways to deal with stereotypes. One way is to get them out in the open and face them, while another is to keep them to ourselves. The latter method may in fact be more insidious.

Bottled up racism or stereotyping may also be passed down from generation to generation. On a recent musical gig, when our drummer was trying to describe another drummer in the band to someone who didn't know the guy, he referred to him as “dat colored fella”. He could have said the guy with the glasses, or the shaved head, or the goatee, or the one carrying the bass drum. And of course there were more current and politically correct ways to describe his ethnicity, if that had to be his method of differentiation. What really struck me was that the speaker is about my age, in his early thirties. I think I just stared when he said it, but it didn't register. I've heard his father, who's in his 50s, use the same term, so I know where he got it from, but even then it was both dated and unexpected.

Comedy can be a healthy approach to getting such opinions, skewed or otherwise, out into the open. My friends and I have said some horrible, horrible things to each other because we're close enough to know we don't really mean it. Yet the basis of these jokes and stereotypes comes from things we've heard growing up. Say what you will about the current state of Dave Chapelle, which has been covered in detail elsewhere, but beneath the surface of his no-holds-barred, occasionally sophomoric humor, is real intelligence. Back before I got into his show, one of my friends, a college professor at our old university, shared the fact that he'd shown the DVDs to his class. The reaction of most of the guys who'd seen the show was, “are you trying to get fired?” He explained his rationale which sounded logical at the time, but it was only after I'd seen some skits that I fully understood. Mind you, many are silly and simply poke fun at celebrities or aspects of popular culture, but even the crudest ones might open the floor for healthy discussion. While Dave left his show over creative and/or salary disputes, the bits he had filmed for the third season are now airing. Check out this one and the ensuing discussion the audience partook in(caution: strong language):





Just to sum up, on the off chance that these videos aren't available in the future, Dave had filmed a series of sketches in which he played various racial pixies that tempted people to give in to their inner stereotypical behavior. An African American man is encouraged to eat fried chicken. A hispanic man is tempted by leopard skin car seats. An Asian man is encouraged to turn his l's into r's. Finally, a white man is advised to dance badly and seek out a female with a smaller posterior. After filming them, Dave had second thoughts and wondered if he wasn't now supporting stereotypes. While he left the show, the skit was aired anyway, and the audience was asked their opinion. Some opposed it, and felt that it would encourage people to make the same jokes in real life. It was okay for Chapelle, but not someone in the office. Other people felt it was good to get these things in the open and encourage discussion, doing so in a humorous way. The things people talk about and the things people think are often different. If they can laugh about it, they can move on.

Too much political correctness could lead to segregation as in the film PCU where various groups become so ensconced in their causes that they cease mingling with those in other groups. Quick review: Good flick; clear homage to Animal House and other college movies that preceded it; Piven only annoyed me in the commentary when he wouldn't shut up about the director not letting him ad lib his lines; and I watched the entire thing without realizing which character was Jon Favreau, though I noticed his name in the opening credits. It's a college fantasy movie, so of course beer, a big party, and a famous musician are key to solving their dilemma. Real life isn't so simple though, and as long as we keep to ourselves, the stereotypes won't go away. Some can and should be fun and harmless, but it takes communication to get there.

Every now and then someone reminds us of our own subconscious stereotypes, or we surprise ourselves. I'm sorry to say that on my first day of college, I walked into a class room and saw a hulking black guy that terrified me. After four years of being out of public school and not getting beat up, save for verbal abuse and a harmless after-lunch game called “let's get [MCF]” in which all these preppie jackasses in my high school would tackle me into the lockers, I was certain college was about to offer a return of the true physical abuse I suffered during my first eight years as a public school student. I suppose it was his size as much as the color of his skin, because I got beat up by just about everyone except for the nerdy white, Asian and Indian kids I ran with. I had gone four years without anyone twisting my arm behind my back, punching me in the gut, or poking me with sharp sticks. I wasn't going anywhere near the big guy. He looked mean, and therefore HAD to be mean. I took my seat and the class began. A few minutes into the class, I noticed some people gathered by this guy, looking at his sketchbook. Curiosity overcame fear, and I peered over to see various perfect marker drawings of cartoon characters that looked exactly like the originals. In that moment his appearance and my initial impression were forgotten, as I asked what cartoons he watched and how he was so good. Fourteen years later, he's still part of a close group of friends I consider family, brothers and sisters with common interests and humor that I relate to better than my own cousins. I'll always feel guilty about those first few minutes though.

The unknown breeds fear. We might even think we know someone based on past experiences with others of their “kind.” You might not think you have any of these notions, but without insulting anyone specifically, if I ask you which people are slow, who likes watermelons, who are notoriously frugal, or who looks like a terrorist, you're all going to have mental images immediately sparked by each of those questions. Just like the man in the pizzeria, you might even assume a person's ethnic background based on their appearance. At various time in my life I've had people think I was Jewish, while at other times people thought I was Greek. I have some form of pasta three nights a week because my family is Italian. The sauce comes from a jar because we're Italian-American. It's okay for a person to laugh about his or her own people, but not to be laughed at by a group of outsiders. I think it's only when we can laugh at ourselves collectively as a group of humans, that we can embrace the occasional positive stereotype, and discard the hurtful ones.

All this heavy typing has made me hungry. If it wasn't 2 AM and I wasn't on a diet, I could really go for some pizza right about now...