Author, Adam.
Published, May 23, 2009.

“We should recognise humanity wherever it occurs, and give its fundamental ingredients, reason and moral capacity, our first allegiance and respect.” - Martha C. Nussbaum.

It is difficult to talk about people in general terms without using stereotypes. If we were to clarify what we mean when we use such generalisations we would be forever bound up in definitions. Whereas, for the sake of expediency, we brush aside rash stereotypical descriptions or labels of others and are content in reading between the lines.

But is this really the way it goes? Are our uses of stereotypes and generalisations really for the sake of expediency, or are they reflective of how we really feel?

There is a danger when our lack of knowledge and understanding about other people’s ethnicity, culture, religion, or sexuality is compensated by our imaginative powers in speculation; when we take the 1 percent we know and allow that to represent the whole.

There are two concerns. Firstly, the 1 percent that we think we know may be mistaken. Secondly, the 1 per cent is hardly a sufficient sample size for the whole population. Especially so, when we assume that everyone thinks or acts the same way within a particular group. Moreover, the dominant ideologies communicated to us from various categorical groups (eg; gay community, Chinese, or Christians) have both the inbuilt bias of whoever speaks on their behalf, and the selectivity of the media. It would be an error to assume that what we hear of a particular group is a true representation of the group as a whole (i.e. “All bikies are criminals”, or “all homeless people are homeless by choice”).

In a recent conversation with a friend about the Israel-Palestine conflict, I was told that a certain Arab leader has said, “Arabs love death just as you (Westerners) love life”. This statement was taken to represent the entire Arab world, which is quite an astounding thing to believe. The assumption was that Arabs can be represented by one person. It, in fact, ignores the political principles of democracy that we live under – although perhaps ones that we don’t ourselves understand. That is, democratic values do not assume that those in power necessarily speak on behalf of every individual in that group. It is the individual to decide, at least theoretically, of what it is that they will believe. It would be like suggesting that Kevin Rudd speaks for us all on our stance to refugees. No, at most he speaks on the government’s behalf. At the best, he speaks on the behalf of popular opinion. And all this is in the context of Democracy – where we have the best chance of everyone being represented.

Democracy is the individual having the ability to speak on their own behalf. So when we allow ourselves to think that what a particular Arab leader has said (from a position of power) is representative of an entire ethnic or religious group we are really showing that we don’t understand our own liberal ideas.

We must be aware of how we have come to hold certain ideas of people we do not really understand. Is it through popular media; snippets of footage that we see on the TV News, or from Hollywood, children’s books? Do we attribute a person’s appearance to their intelligence or their moral worth?

If on the surface of things we do not understand a person’s behaviour, it would be wrong to assume that they are less intelligent or somehow morally inferior. We need to acknowledge both our naivety and the humanity of other humans, no matter how different they seem to be. Preconceptions of other people’s beliefs often need to give way to a more universal need for compassion or understanding.

This is an interesting talk by Karen Armstong about this very thing.