“They are like that only…”

Stereotypes are like statistics. In that they try to summarize and generalize about a large population. Only that they too often do not carry the margin of error, that pesky little level of significance with them. And so they breed universal truths. They are of the general form:

"All ** insert race, gender, minority, special interest group** are **insert qualifier: lazy, happy, poor, dancers, singers, good at math**".

It is a widely accepted idea that these stereotypes do more disservice to said minority, race, gender, special interest group, than good. Because they refuse to address specific cases (Statistics on the other hand has room for errors, margins of error, standard errors, residuals and you name it. Also as a scientific method it is generally more rigorous). Rather stereotypes enable people to air their most repugnant and divisive views in the name of being "universal truths"- after all "Everyone knows that xyz is like abc".

And yet it makes life so easy. It becomes so simple to classify reactions, behaviors attitudes- even assume thoughts for people one does not know about. It just saves the trouble of going through the bother of trying to find out first hand. And makes for excellent scapegoats.

Something that was borne to me over the weekend. They are a newly-wed couple. He is from India. She from Arkansas. And it should have meant the death knell of that, had they merely been dating. But he went ahead and married her- despite stiff opposition (and possibly threats of dying and younger brothers never finding suitable matches , the works of the ocular waterworks). And his family still do not communicate with her.

Yes, I know, boring. Happens all the time. Heck, change a few details, it is the story of my wedded life. Silence replaced by hostility. But the fact that they are from two totally different cultures is where the stereotyping comes in. For both of them are under the impression that her being a American and white Christian is the reason for his families reaction. "I am not Indian and from the same caste" she stated- and he nodded in assent, adding the "what will people say" spiel that he had to listen to even as his family (after their marriage) tried to drive sense into him by advising him to split from her.

"In India, people are so concerned about the opinion of their social circle."

"They( his family) will be ostracized from their society if they accept her".

By this time I was already screaming "Bull crap" silently (they were company after all, and I like them both very much indeed). Because this case has really nothing to do with the great and glorious Indian arranged marriage within caste tradition. It has nothing to do with difficulty in accepting a foreigner either. Nor is it really about social sanction. Even though in cases like this all these are used as excellent excuses. In reality this story and my own and the millions of other stories similar to this are not reflections of the greater social context. They speak of things going horribly wrong in the individual families. Terrible as it sounds, they speak volumes, not of society, not of culture, but of family. Culture and tradition and for other instances even religion are mere excuses.

And what excellent excuses they are. Want to control your grown children's lives? Play the tradition card. Want to express racism? Call it cultural. And wrap it up under "hygiene" (Oh yes I have heard these excuses for segregation from "lower" castes enough times. Want to be misogynistic? Present it under religion sanction. And quote from some rules laid in a written-in-the- bronze-age-or-before in a text in a long dead (or if used, used by few people language) which is so open to interpretation it could be made to mean anything. And it can be used to justify anything.

Or to make as glorious justifications for stupid, downright nasty behavior. Or even attempt to disguise jealousy as a global conspiracy to defame your nation (and agree that "foreign" rewards are just a lot of noise, especially if a homegrown music director gets them for a film made by a director from another country). Because it is just so easy to play so many cards and pretend that it is something else's fault- culture, tradition, religion, and now jingoism disguised as patriotism.

But in the end these gross generalizations, do not serve to help anyone. They keep the real reason- and hence even the cure – for bad behavior, screaming mobs away even while opening up futile dialog that obfuscates rather than tries to address issues. A malady which pervades social, political, cultural, familial and even global discourse. It is so easy to wear blinkers when looking at things. Most specially things that impact us. It is so easy to ascribe external causes to things that bother us. Specially unsavory things that throw families and near and dear ones in bad light. But it does not help the problem any. It only helps perpetuate a stereotype which complicates ideas worse- drawing ever further from issues that may really matter.

 EDITED TO ADD: 

And here is just what I was talkig about in stereotypes- Called "Indian Americans: The New Model Minority" it just reiterates every gneralization- what if they are good ones. And th commens at the end show how deeply people like to drink the KoolAid.