[yt=...and makes a very good point about the marriage of politics and media]KGAMnOjfnkE[/yt] Thoughts?
I can't stand people who suddenly "discover" that the other side "are people too". If they need a personal meeting to realize and understand that, then they are pure idiots to being with.
Perhaps a better explanation would be that they "discover" they other side "aren't the stereotype I was led to believe they were."
Stereotypes are formed for a reason. They don't just magically appear from the vacuum to label people.
They are generalisms. Formed often in the absence of available information. I think in all likelihood, in the majority of cases stereotypes are accurate to a point. Otherwise, these stereotypes would not develop in the first place. If an idea that becomes a stereotype was quickly contradicted by other information, it would not become a stereotype. I mean come on. How do we find serial killers and arsonists (mainly)? Criminal profilers are often used which in no small part use or develop stereotypes to nail down the potential pool of suspects.
I'll let someone else enjoy this opportunity to troll you. It's just too easy. I'd argue that stereotypes generally exist as a result of the absence of real information to contradict them. How many people that subscribe to stereotypes about a given group tend to have friends that are members of that group? Profilers might be highly effective on television, but they're very, very wrong more often than not. Which was terrible for Richard Jewell, but great for the Washington snipers.
Yes, they are inaccurate from time to time. But they are useful enough that they are still a tool of law enforcement when conventional information sources are not available. Just as stereotypes are useful when you don't have a chance to sit down with a person and get their life story and have them psychoanalyzed.
I'd argue that that's about half of why they persist, certainly. But the question remains, how do they come to exist in the first place? My opinion is that it's through widespread observation of fact over a long period of time, which is the other half of why they persist. Hood rats aren't exactly trying to alter the stereotype about them from "illiterate and prone to crime and violence" into "Shakespeare aficionados and connoisseurs of exotic cheeses," for example.
Profilers work with studies of anomalies, outliers, sociopaths...not mainstream, normal people. Not a good example.
And how do you classify someone as a potential undiagnosed sociopath Garamet? Stereotypical behavior that fits the profile of a sociopath.
The point is, profilers work within a very narrow field of the small percentage of people who become rapists, murderers, and/or serial killers. You can't "profile," for example, "all white males in their 40s." Even if you tried with a very small sample size (members of WF), you still couldn't say with any certitude "they all have the following behaviors in common." Take a really small sample size: You and EP. Now, create a profile of "white males in their 40s" out of that.
Yeah, because, I mean, if people start listening to each other's POV and finding common ground, they might actually accomplish something constructive. How boring.
Garamet don't take it so personally. I wasn't even talking about you but instead referring generally to these types of threads. Just sayin that there are lots of other disciplines in the world, maybe talk about something else for a change.... Also, I'm not buying the "I'm trying to save the world, one thread at a time" act.
Asked the wife-beating, oft-fired, gay bashing, minority-hating, Bible-thumping, Bush-fellating, mildly autistic chickenhawk. Yeah, I guess first impressions are pretty accurate.
On all accounts? OK, I'll give you that you may never have sucked off GWB, but other than that, he's spot on.
To be fair, Dayton's not done much to alter the stereotyped perceptions of him being a wife beating sociopath to enjoying "rosenberg and gouda curds". I'll just add on topic that I think stereotypes also exist/persist based on outdated information as well. In absence of information, they are expanded through reinforcement by retelling and time.