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jack1. When recounting, you often call out one or two of the most obvious characteristics of someone involved. Eg. if you said "And I overheard two professors walking across Trinity College, and one of them says to the other 'And, ninethly...'" or "And I overheard two students walking across Trinity College, and..." even if it doesn't actually make any difference to the story.
2. I think this ties in to the tendency to make little provisional pictures in your head when listening to a story or hypothetical.
3. People often have a default little picture.
4. Sometimes their default little picture is unfair, (eg. a default doctor being male) and in aggregate constitutes prejudice.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except that I often see an exchange that goes something like:
A: I saw a black man in the grocery store and he said...
B: Why is it relevant that he's black? Eh? Eh?
And I've a feeling that's a result of a miscommunication somewhere. I imagine that (1), (2) and (3) are natural human behaviour and inherently harmless (I may be wrong?), but often reveal a problem with (4).
Particularly, a noticeable characteristic is often one that differs from the default, so if the default is eg. adult white male, you might mention someone's gender or race if it's different, but mention some other characteristic if those are your "default" expectation.
I think you can try to change (4) by changing (3) and (2), eg. the common technique of picking a variety of people as examples. This can be clumsy, but is a sensible approach. However, whenever I read the A/B exchange I feel guilty for ever doing (1) at all. It may make sense to avoid it if it has the likelihood of bringing up prejudiced ideas, but I don't think it's inherently bigoted. However, of course, A and B often don't have the vocabulary to express the difference, just know that something's wrong with what the other said, so end up arguing without knowing exactly what they're arguing about.
2. I think this ties in to the tendency to make little provisional pictures in your head when listening to a story or hypothetical.
3. People often have a default little picture.
4. Sometimes their default little picture is unfair, (eg. a default doctor being male) and in aggregate constitutes prejudice.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except that I often see an exchange that goes something like:
A: I saw a black man in the grocery store and he said...
B: Why is it relevant that he's black? Eh? Eh?
And I've a feeling that's a result of a miscommunication somewhere. I imagine that (1), (2) and (3) are natural human behaviour and inherently harmless (I may be wrong?), but often reveal a problem with (4).
Particularly, a noticeable characteristic is often one that differs from the default, so if the default is eg. adult white male, you might mention someone's gender or race if it's different, but mention some other characteristic if those are your "default" expectation.
I think you can try to change (4) by changing (3) and (2), eg. the common technique of picking a variety of people as examples. This can be clumsy, but is a sensible approach. However, whenever I read the A/B exchange I feel guilty for ever doing (1) at all. It may make sense to avoid it if it has the likelihood of bringing up prejudiced ideas, but I don't think it's inherently bigoted. However, of course, A and B often don't have the vocabulary to express the difference, just know that something's wrong with what the other said, so end up arguing without knowing exactly what they're arguing about.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 05:10 pm (UTC)I think it depends on what it seems necessary to distinguish the person one is discussing from, and the assumptions underlying that for different people are worth querying.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 06:24 pm (UTC)But now I feel my good sense in trying to ignore things that don't matter is about to lead me onto a path of never telling anyone anything about anyone until I have to, which seems incredibly odd to me...