Topic Proposal.

Posted byMora AlabiPosted inUncategorized
Why I chose this topic.

Alabi Mora

Nadine Gordon

UWRT 1104-029

21st February, 2020. 

Topic proposal for Extended Inquiry Project

“If you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story, and start with ‘secondly’…” –Mourid Al Baghouti 

In layman’s terms, stereotypes are assumptions, generalizations regarding a group of people’s character and attributes. In modern society, we battle stereotypes everyday. Trying to correct assumptions that people outside of our culture, society or background make about us. Stereotypes are extremely powerful instruments of representation and are almost always believed wholeheartedly by people who do not have any contradictory information. The power of stereotypes are so extensive that even when provided with information or representation that contradicts this stereotype, people and groups resist changing their opinion or acknowledging that the stereotypes, rather than reckoning with the fact that there cannot be one accurate assumption for a people, people outside of this culture, background or people will intentionally resist this knowledge and continue to stereotype people. So how come representations have so much power? Where do stereotypes get their power from anyway? 

 Below is a link to  a Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie- a  

 Nigerian-American Novelist and one of my role models, this Ted talk inspired my  Extended Inquiry Project Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ted Talk, 2009

 In the Ted Talk, she talks about a concept she has chosen to dub “the danger of a single story” in which she uses her own journey as an International student in the United States from Nigeria to draw attention to the power of representation and the danger of misrepresentation. An analysis I strongly identify with as well because I am also a Nigerian getting an education in the United States.  I will not spend more lines relating what it is in her Ted Talk, but I will begin my inquiry into stereotypes, not from novels and the art of storytelling as Chimamanda does, but from the media. 

The Media(the news in particular) has always had freedom to present information as they please and interpret people, places and situations however they see fit. I imagine  International News prides itself on reporting information and events from all around the world in a timely manner, without bias and misinterpretation. However, I think it’s unfortunate to say that I don’t think I have encountered another media source as talented at misinterpretation as they are. If there is a political debate on news channels regarding the potential presidential candidates in the 2020 elections, in the background of the newscaster, there is the gleaming white house and its perfectly groomed rose bushes or perhaps the Statue of Liberty proclaiming the long and (mostly) successful history of the United States, maybe it’s even the gleaming Manhattan skyline or the Washington monument. But when it’s time to share any (especially negative)  news about Nigeria, CNN takes the time to find the dingiest, dirtiest, poorest streets in Nigeria to be in the background while reporting the news, not to mention what I call the famous “oh no backward poor, suffering, dirty Africans!” look that all-not just CNN- newscasters seem to have mastered. 

 This representation doesn’t only  occur with negative news. When West Africans are found receiving international accolades international news has very little to  say about it On the other hand, when there is a disease outbreak, like the Ebola Virus in 2015, some email scammer or oil spill they have plenty to say. It may seem that this is a microscopic issue to be making a big deal about,  that we all know how news stations make things bigger than they are, but, recall, that in some parts of the world where people have almost no contact with foreigners or foreign culture, this misrepresentation from the media is all they have. Dirty, suffering, backward, poor, illiterate people dying from AIDS with no sense of civilization. Yes, those are Africans.

This is exactly why people remember countries like Nigeria as the “failed state” and “professional scammers” rather than the most educated immigrant group in the United States generating millions of dollars in revenue for various countries. For some perspective, watch these two links when two different things happened. When a travel ban was imposed on the Federal Republic of Nigeria by the Trump administration in 2020, Trump administration travel ban  

And when some Nigerian scammers were arrested for fraud 

,Nigerian scammers in four states caught

Take the time to  notice how the news keeps highlighting the fact that they are Nigerian like that somehow explains everything. And of course, in the eye of the populace, these dozen men who are fraudulent accurately represent the character of 200 million other people. Reasonable? That’s for you to decide.

I will not deny that Nigeria and even Africa at large are developing nations with image problems. There is suffering, poverty, under development and the occasional social delinquent. But like Chimamanda says in her Ted Talk, “the problems with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but rather that they are incomplete.” Representations like those can really go a long way in making or breaking impressions. So with that in mind is it really shocking when educated people say to me “African? Really? But you speak English so well! It must have taken you so long to learn the language!”  I am in fact multilingual, but the official language of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is English Language (U.K). I have spoken English all my life and it’s rather belittling to think that I may have struggled to learn English because I am African. Think of it like this, if some news channels had their way, every Mexican would be some dirt poor non English speaking man or woman digging tunnels to get into the US border. No one says anything about the thousands who come into the United States legally to make a living and how successful they are. To most people, every African American male is some police resisting, gun wielding, drug dealing maniac with no sense of morality and should be “slammed against the wall and frisked for weapons” ,no one says anything about those African Americans who have climbed ladders to success and are changing the world as we know it.

A one sided portrayal of an entire continent, country, culture, gender, race does a lot of harm, it makes people and culture seem distant, backward and not at par (at least socially) with western civilizations, it encourages stereotypes, assumptions, ignorance and worst of all it builds bridges, not walls between people and between cultures.

Let’s talk about stereotypes that hopefully more people can relate to, stereotypes based on gender. Why can’t men cry? Why can they not be vulnerable an emotional in the same way women are? Why does society assume that actions from men like showing emotion will somehow demean their masculinity? Assumptions so strong, some feel vulnerability is not even permitted in private. On the flip side, women are too emotional, unable to keep a calm head, too fragile and should have a “handle with care” sticker taped to the front of their heads. Why do women feel they have to include plans for a family at a certain age and feel pressured when they don’t? Why do my female Engineering major friends get raised eyebrows when they voice their dreams?

During rape investigations in some parts of the world, why do we ask what the victim was wearing? Like rape could ever be the victims fault? Why are there raised eyebrows when people find that men are raped or domestically abused, like it is somehow not plausible or it is far fetched? Why are psychologists for “crazy people” and are crazy themselves? Why? Why? Why? Where are these assumptions from?

I have many questions regarding modern stereotypes, that I hope my inquiry will answer.

  1. Where are stereotypes even from?  Who started the concept?
  2. What type of intercultural/interracial/intersexual/intercontinental/international  havoc do stereotypes wreak?
  3. Why is representation(read misrepresentation) so powerful?
  4. Most importantly, is this damage reversible? 
  5. If so, how can the damage be reversed?
  6. Are there any examples of reversed stereotypes? 
  7. How do stereotyped people feel about stereotypes? 

Next steps 

  • Find out about stereotypes, their origin and the degree of power they have in  shaping image in the modern world. 
  • Talk to people who have been stereotyped versus people who have stereotyped. 
  •  Achieve this using academic and non academic sources like movies, tv interviews etc.  

Citations. 

Annotated Bibliography.

(For both Topic proposal and extended inquiry project.)

Alabi Mora

Nadine Gordon

UWRT 1104-029

02-27-2020

Annotated Bibliography.

  1.  Ngozi Adichie- Ted Talk, 2009. “The danger of a single story”.  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ted Talk, 2009.   The Ted Talk by Adichie analyzes a concept she has chosen to dub “the danger of a single story,” she uses her experiences as an international student in the United States several years ago to narrate the misrepresentation that most Americans (read western countries) have regarding African countries like Nigeria( read foreign cultures) she warns us not to fall victims to these stereotypes and one sided opinions of people, races and cultures, she also highlights the part the media plays in the stereotype hysteria, the assumptions they force us to make and the impact it has on our interpersonal communication. It helps to hear her experiences with literature and story writing as a child to put the conversation in context, she mentions that it is an uncomfortable conversation to have but one we must address. 

I thought this was interesting to hear because I had never truly internalized how mainstream sources like literature, songs, documentaries and novels affect our opinion(s) of other places, cultures, behaviour and people. I reflected therefore on how I was represented by this sources and the impact it makes on the perception people have of me(and people like me) in the society.  

  1. Washington Examiner, “Mike Bloomberg tape in 2013 leaked” , Mike Bloomberg stop and frisk. This is an article from the Washington Examiner that discusses the political implications of the leaked video of Democrat presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg supporting controversial(and racist) “stop and frisk” policy back in 2013.  In the article, the audio transcript reveals Bloomberg’s warped opinions on fighting crime in New York, he says “Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims, fit one M.O….“They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. That’s true in New York, that’s true in virtually every city. And that’s where the real crime is….. “And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them.” The article helps the reader realise that simply because the statistics indicate something, the right way to “fix” it is not  using violent tactics and outright racism.( Perhaps finding out why the statistics indicate that is a good place to start.) The fact  that people in power who are supposed to be objective and clear minded when it comes to issues such as these are not, is very alarming. Politicians are just as susceptible to stereotypes and assumptions about other people and cultures, they make wrong decisions based on shallow opinions like Bloomberg did. Decisions and statements like Bloomberg said only encourage ignorance and build walls between cultures. 
  1.  Donald J Trump administration 2020 travel ban on countries. Trump administration travel ban  This is a CNN twitter news update from the official CNN twitter account by Fareed Zakaria analyzing why the claim by the  Trump administrations ban on countries like Nigeria to “protect the United States from terrorists” has many holes, namely because a huge percent on Nigerians are successful members of the labor force who work in respectable fields, and are the most educated immigrant group in the United States, these are educated people willing to work, so terrorists in what context exactly? Zakaria hints that there may be a sinister plot afoot separate from the good of the United States. A plot like “sending them back to their shithole countries.” This helped me in my writing to acknowledge the fact that policies may sometimes be implemented under the guise of “diplomacy” or for “security reasons” may actually be executed as a result of the biases and assumptions that people in power may make. Are they justified? Is it okay for people with immense political power to be biased in their decisions? 
  2.  Chronicle.com Most educated immigrant group, Nigerian American hustle.  Articles highlighting the statistics that reveal that Nigerian- Americans are the most educated immigrant group in the United States and the culture that comes with that overachievement -’the hustle’. 

I thought it important to read sources such as these because it showed the battles a group of immigrants face against discrimination and even official policy action. While stereotypes are not always completely false, they are always misleading and incomplete. And build walls between people that are difficult to bring down. 

  1. Transatlantic first impressions San Jose State University, California(n.d) 

 The Oxford English Dictionary: the meaning of black before the sixteenth century included:

“Deeply stained with dirt; soiled, dirty, foul. … Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister …. Foul, iniquitous, atrocious, horrible, wicked. . . . Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment, etc.” Black was an emotionally partisan color, the handmaid and symbol of baseness and evil, a sign..of repulsion”. 

This article highlights the “first impressions” European (read British) had of “Negroes” and “moors” the article highlights how nearly all records of British voyages highlighted how polar the cultures(and people) were,  the British prided themselves on being innovative and forward thinking these black foreigners were naked, seemingly uneducated and “ugly”

“… there was a special significance for Elizabethan Englishmen:… the color of perfect human beauty, especially female beauty… the Negro was ugly, by reason of his color and also his “horrid Curls” and disfigured lips and nose.”

William Shakespeare even wrote a crude poem to his mistress, informing her just how unattractive she was. For my inquiry, this source was essential in giving insight to the stereotypes that not too many years later morphed into transatlantic slave trade,  and even more time later, racism and racial profiling. These foreigners were black, so they have to be dirty, unattractive, malicious and evil. They were also backward, stark naked and seemingly illiterate. It is also very interesting to see that even when some have unflattering opinions about these people and this race that some forward thinking ones such as  Captain Thomas Phillips wrote in 1694

“I could not imagine why they should be despis’d for their colour, being what they cannot help, and the effect of the climate it has pleas’d God to appoint them”.

It shows that the hate and disregard for the black race was not absolute. In my writing, I use this article to demonstrate that history does matter. Some people think that discrimination does not really exist, that it should be left in the past and people who claim to be affected should just ‘move on’, but the truth remains that centuries of oppression and opinions do not just disappear, people of color all over the world are still considered by some to be savages, unintelligent, unable to flourish in academic environments, unattractive, backward as well as some other things. But also to demonstrate that if there could be forward thinking liberal minded people who refuse to stereotype in 1694, then there can definitely be in 2020 and beyond.  

7.) The case against Black History Month This is an interesting article I encountered during my research, the creator of this website and post did not leave a name on the site nor any contact information, but this particular post was released on 29th October, 2016,  (which in the long span of time, is really not all that long ago). The writer’s entire post presents some information on Black History Month- February-its controversial origins, hidden representation and the consequences of dedicating an entire month to the history of Africans who are in America. They present an interesting historical concept I hope to delve into more at a later time. They present the concept of scientific racism, findings by prestigious scientists most notably Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist responsible for the Binomial System of Classification.

“The race based nature of black history month is never referred to. Yet it is clearly a repackaged version of Linnaeus. Changing the characteristics of the black race to positive and white to negative, still promotes the racial classification based on scientific racism. This feeds into the later movements such as Black Lives Matter, which actively promotes segregation…”

They maintain that movements like Why is my curriculum so white? and Rhoda Must Fall are simply “repackaged” racism and prejudice used to portray minorities and colored people especially as victims while the white majority are the racists, a portrayal in their opinion, untrue and part of a more sinister plot.  I felt it integral to add a source that has a more conservative perspective on history it’s interpretations and its effects on today’s society. How their opinion differs from mine, and why it is essential to take into account varied perspectives. I found this particular source interesting because of how much historical background she uses to support her opinions.If  someone has a different opinion, should I view them as incorrect? Is it my job(or any person who has different opinions) to “correct” the interpretations?. In such a polarized world, how do you learn to respect other(different) opinions people may have? 

8.) Racial Science. The Binomial System of Classification is the system used by scientists to classify, name and understand the attributes of organisms, the father of scientific naming is unarguably Carl Linnaeus/Carl Linn, a Swedish Scientist (1707–1778) who introduced this system had his own prejudice. He believed that just like mosses, ferns and crustaceans,  he could classify human beings as well. He believed he could classify human beings by their race. He began the concept now known as “scientific racism”. He believed based on evidence such as direct observations of behavior, culture and 2.) Skull comparison of a European, African and a primate.

      examining the  skull shape of the various races, he could accurately classify the characteristics and attributes of each race. The first table is used to depict the attributes and abilities Linnaeus appropriates to each race, notice how he is very generous to his own race: The Europeans(clever, governed by laws, inventive) but the black, monstrous, Asian and Native American are sluggish, fainthearted, avaricious and combative respectively. As if attempting to classify an entire race of people in a few sentences is not absurd enough, his theories inspire some to go on in the same line of thinking. Just to show that Linnaeus was not alone in his thinking, the renowned Alabama based physician Josiah Nott in conjunction with George Gliddon wrote extensively on what they believe to be the hierarchy of the races(shown in the picture to the right) and why the theory of evolution(which suggests we are the same species) is untrue. This book was a bestseller and generally widely accepted as fact in Southern America.

I found the entire concept of racial science interesting because, in years and decades to come, this appropriation of race is a big part of what colonizing powers, slave traders and slave owners use in the defense of their practice.  Centuries later, you would be surprised at how little we have moved from such thinking. In my writing, this helped me answer where stereotypes are from, its history and why they have so much power. 

Carl Linnaeus full system of classification.

9.) Mary Wollstonecraft(1792) A vindication of the Rights of a Woman.

Wollstonecraft was a British author from the late sixteenth century who is widely considered the first feminist. The most famous book she authored ‘A vindication of the Rights of a Woman’ was a groundbreaking petition for the women rights movement at that time. Ironically, the book was written in reply to a man. A French diplomat and politician :Maurice Talleyrand, who said he could not understand “why one half of the human race could be excluded by the other.”(Talleyrand, 1792)

Wollstonecraft spends the entire book criticizing and challenging the social ladder present at that time. She is witty and sarcastic throughout the book and even cleverly criticizes women for accepting the roles that men have bestowed upon them.

This source was important to me because I wanted to take a perspective on stereotypes different from what I had been taking before(country of origin and race): stereotypes based on gender. This source was essential to my writing because Wollstonecraft is considered one of the first feminists and her work and many others were the sparks that began the demand for female rights.

10. Experiments on stereotype threat Claude ,Steele stereotype threat This was an experiment conducted by two academias (Claude, Steele) in 1995 regarding a concept they referred to as a “stereotype threat” In the experiment, some African Americans and Caucasian college students took a difficult test under two very different conditions. One half of the students were told that the test they were about to take was to be an indication of their intellect and the other half were told that the test was no indicator of the intellectual ability. Under the “threat” condition, the African Americans did significantly worse than their counterparts. And under the “non threat” conditions, the African Americans did as well as their counterparts. The experiments helped prove that in situations of consequence( that is, situations that will affect perception) the stereotype threat will manipulate its victims into “proving” those stereotypes. For example, the African American students in the stereotype threat group on hearing that the test would be a determinant of their ability began to fidget, panic, overthink and all those may cause them to do poorly.

This source helped me understand the consequences of stereotypes and the subtle way it is expressed in its victims. I felt it important in my writing because its results supported the message I was trying to put across.

Notes/comments on changes that I made.

This was an extremely tasking process for me, because my inquiry topics deals with peoples opinions of other people. There were very few people and sources who I could find without (obvious) bias.Also, the topic is very close to home so I was worried about presenting my sources and my writing argument as authentic and explaining/analyzing them objectively.

In my initial submission: I only had 5-6 sources. My sources on scientific racism, the rights of a woman and the case against Black History Month were not included. They were not properly annotated because I was not interpreting those sources as well as I could have. In addition, the format was incorrect, the direct quotes had no quotation marks, they were not italicized and were another text and size compared to the rest of the document.The direct quotes from my sources did not have the quotation marks around them neither were they in block form (as should be for direct quotes). The were a few typos, mainly words like organization and color being spelt in British English. I adjusted a few instances where the sentence was structured wrongly or I misused punctuation marks. I also had a couple of run on sentences which I had to fix to pass my message across more successfully.

One thought on “Topic Proposal.”

  1. Pingback: Final Reflective Letter.. – Shattering stereotypes, staying unorthodox.

Leave a comment

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started