“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” -Douglas Adams
I’d been in the car for a few days, driving non-stop from Louisville, Kentucky, to Stockton, California, with barely a single stop between the two. I had a new job, one of my first out of college. I was going to work with friends in a small theatre and I was eager to get to California. I was eager to start my life as an adult and as an artist.
In school, as an artist, I thought had two choices: New York City or California. I believed that New York, the big city (a place I had never been) would eat me like a small snack, a bit of cheese on a toothpick. California was my choice and held my destiny and I was in a rush to begin. My stop was in Denver to see my family and sleep a long night before the second leg of my epic journey.
I had a big breakfast with my parents and was in my room repacking my bag when my mother came in and sat down on the bed. That was the signal. She never came into my room and sat on the bed unless she had something weighty to say, something of great import to deliver. As a boy, it usually meant that I was in dire trouble. I stopped my packing, sat and readied myself for the news. This was it: she told me that I was in grave danger. She begged me to be wary because, as everyone knew, “Californians have no morals.” I could be led astray “out there” if I was less than vigilant. Assuring her I’d be careful, I put my bag in the car, and drove toward Sodom.
Growing up I also heard that “all cabbies will try and cheat me” and that I should never ride on public buses because, “only dangerous people ride on public buses.” I remember this was confusing because my grandmother took the bus everyday to her job in a candy factory; she was a tiny woman who enjoyed a good laugh; she wasn’t dangerous. Nevertheless, the stereotype, “only dangerous people ride buses,” stuck with me. I grew up actively avoiding public transportation. And taxi cabs. I became a world-class distance walker. When the day came that I had to - unwillingly step onto a public bus, I was terrified. I was in San Francisco and my friends (the moral-less Californians) wanted to take a bus across town. We were late for a dinner date. I pulled out all the stops, my bus avoidance techniques, my manipulations, my pleas for exercise glanced off my companions. They thought I was kidding. So the bus pulled up and I stepped on with all the dangerous people.
The riders who looked bored than dangerous. I found a seat near a door in case I needed to quickly escape. My seatmate was an elderly woman and after a few moments we struck up a conversation and had a nice chat. I confessed my virgin rider status and she reassured me that I would quickly master the art of the bus. I learned that she was on her way home from work. She’d taken the bus every day for over thirty years. I stepped off the bus unscathed and confused. There were no dangerous people on that bus; did I spin the wheel of fortune and manage to get on the only safe bus in San Francisco or was I given bad information about buses?
Of course, one bus ride did not dispel (dis-spell, as in, remove the spell) the fear instilled in me in my youth but after several rides, several personal experiences of bus riding, the evidence no longer supported the “dangerous people” stereotype. I let it go. I mastered the art of the bus.
My experience with buses and Californians taught me an invaluable lesson: If you want to know the truth of a stereotype, you have to step toward it; you have to take a few rides on buses to know for certain if what you heard is true. I began to live wild and hailed a cab!
Language is powerful.
Several years ago I went to a lecture given by Don Miguel Ruiz and he told a story about language. Basically he said that people in the United States misunderstand the word, “spell.” To spell someone is not a kind of weird voodoo or magic act. He said, “Tell a little girl that she is fat and you have spelled her forever.” “Language,” he reiterated, “is very powerful.”
Stereotypes are spells!
I remember the day, stepping out of a cab having just had a very lively conversation with the cabbie, when it occurred to me that no one in my family, none of those that warned me about cabs, had ever actually been in a cab! I grew up in a suburb. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts and my uncles all owned and drove cars. How could they possibly know that “all cabbies try to cheat their passengers?” Their fear was based on nothing in particular. Rumor, perhaps a story, but certainly not experience. They transferred their fear to me and I took it in and carried it with me for years. It shaped my beliefs. It informed my experiences. It limited my choices. I laughed when the spell was broken. So many lost opportunities, so many worn-out shoes!
Standing on the sidewalk, having just paid my honest cabbie, I had the kind of revelation you have, the kind of insight you see once a spell has actually been broken. A chain of very simple truths unfolded before me. They looked something like this:
• At the base of every stereotype is fear.
• Fear is not generated by that which is feared (i.e. buses, cabs, others) but by the one living in fear.
• Stereotypes are not passive, they generates and perpetuate fear; fear generates stereotypes. It’s a vicious circle.
• Fear is always projected outward. To reiterate: its purpose is to create more fear (in others) and foster more stereotypes (about others).
• Finally, stereotypes serve three specific purposes, 1) to mask the fear, 2) to justify the response to the fear, and 3) to elevate the status of the one who is afraid.
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