Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero [41]
Here are two tips for freeing yourself from stereotyping. First, remind yourself often that people and institutions and processes seldom fit into neat categories and that critical thinking demands that you evaluate each on what it is at the particular time and place and circumstance, not one preconceived notions. Second, whenever you begin observing, listening, or reading, be alert for the feeling that you needn't continue because you know what the correct judgment must be. If that feeling occurs early in the information-gathering process, you can be reasonably sure it is a sign of stereotyping and should be ignored.
APPLICATIONS
Review the stereotypes mentioned in the chapter. Select three of them. For each, recall an occasion when that stereotype was revealed in the thinking of someone you know. Detail the circumstances in which you observed it. If there were other people present and they reacted to the stereotype in any noticeable way, explain their reactions. If possible, decide what prevented the person who stereotyped from seeing the reality in its complexity.
Compose a summary of the chapter for one of the people whose stereotyping you described in application 1. make the summary as persuasive as you can. That is, make it focus on the particular occasion of that person's stereotyping and the effects of that error on her or his thinking.
List the stereotypes that you are most inclined to accept uncritically (or at least are not quick to challenge). Try to determine what has conditioned you to be vulnerable to those stereotypes. For example, it may have been something you were taught as a child or some traumatic experience you had.
Apply your critical thinking to each of the following cases. Be especially careful to avoid stereotyping.
Reverend Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, has a plan to meet the needs of unmarried pregnant women and the poor. "Sheperding families" would provide the women with homes to live in until the babies are born (as an alternative to abortion) and would guarantee adoption for the children. Churches would aid the poor (as an alternative to welfare), providing food, clothing, medical care, legal advice, plumbing, and in many cases, job.10 Do you support this plan?
A Monroe, Michigan, hospital has a policy that only members of a pregnant woman's immediate family can be present in the delivery room. An unwed couple, wishing to be together at the birth of their baby, challenged that policy in court. The judge upheld the hospital policy.11 What would your decision have been?
Sixty-five percent of all school-age children have working mothers. (Twenty-two percent are "single-parent children.") A great many of these children are "latch-key kids," those who come home before their mothers, let themselves in, and amuse themselves, in some cases for several hours. Some of these children must also let themselves out in the morning because their mothers leave for work early. Many "latch-key kids" are as young as eight.12 Do you think this is a desirable situation for a child? If not, what would you do to improve the situation or eliminate it altogether?
Some people believe that gays should be barred from certain jobs, such as military service and elementary school teaching. Do you agree?
Read each of the following dialogues carefully. Note any instances of stereotyping. Decide which view of the issue in each dialogue is more reasonable. (Be sure you don't engage in stereotyping.)
Background Note: A born-again Texas businessman and a television evangelist smashed $1 million worth of art objects and threw them into a lake after reading the following verse from Deuteronomy in the Bible: "The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver and gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, lest