Stereotyping

A couple weeks ago I sent a link to a friend of mine about a new documentary called You Don't Know Jack: The Jack Soo Story. My buddy, Gene, is a Chinese American and we've known each other for ages – 32 years (!!). As kids, we were both fans of Barney Miller and Jack Soo played Nick Yemana. Several years ago Gene decided to try his hand at acting and now he does ads here and gets bit parts there. He appeared briefly on an episode of "The Beast", Patrick Swayze's last gig, and was an extra for Baby On Board. (Gene tells me that Lara Flynn Boyle is a really funny lady.)



And so, when I heard about the Jack Soo documentary, I sent Gene the link. In his reply, he thanked me as he found Soo's story to be very poignant. He complained that there are precious few roles for Asian actors and that most of the ones available are pure stereotypes. He illustrated this last point by telling me about a seminar he attended the topic of which was getting started in the acting business. One of the speakers was a talent agent who demonstrated her ability to peg attendees for different roles.

The blonde white chick would be cast for scenes requiring a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. The black guy with braids would be relegated to hip-hop artist or gansta rapper roles. And Gene was told that his lot in the acting world would be for "ethnic characters".

This irritated my friend. He wondered why do epicanthic folds = "ethnic" roles? Why can't people see him in a boyfriend/girlfriend scene? Apparently the black gentleman said aloud that he hated being typecast as a rapper, so why pigeonhole him in that way?

Post-racial society, my ass.

Stereotypes hit home again last Friday when The Dulcinea, Miles, and I were out at a pizza joint. As we were eating, a group of black teenagers came in to grab some food or a soda. To me, they looked like, well, teenagers. On the way home, Miles admitted that he thought they could have been dangerous. Now why would a 10 year-old look at a group of teens and think them a threat?

As near as I can tell, it's because they had baggy pants that could have used the help of a belt. In other words, that fashion trend is linked in Miles' mind with rappers who are, in turn, linked with the gangsta lifestyle, i.e. – guns, bitches, bling, etc. That's the theory, anyway. It got even stranger as the conversation wore on. Miles wanted ice cream and the conversation got to the point where I told him that it wasn't necessary to drive to the store when it could easily be gotten to on foot. His response was that, after dark, paedophiles were lurking in the shadows and so it was unsafe for him to walk to the grocer. This conversation came after one a few weeks ago when he expressed his desire to have curtains placed on our front and kitchen doors as there are none now and people could peer inside our home. And before that he was out bicycling one day and called home to say that he thought someone was following him.



For a 10 year-old, Miles sure seems to view the world as an incredibly dangerous place. For him, people have nothing better to do than stand on our porches and peer into our windows, people who wear baggy pants are all violent, and the landscape is littered with paedophiles on the prowl after dark. Should we be worried? Should we do something to disabuse him of these views?

I suspect that his things about bare windows and nocturnal paedophiles will disappear as he gets older as they're more general anxieties. However, fear of black kids in baggy pants is very specific and a stereotype, hence more troubling.

I'm not sure if anything needs to be done or can be done. (Will he freak out when we take him to Chicago next month?) Regardless, Miles is now disallowed from watching the news when he's at our house. And I suppose it wouldn't hurt to drag him out into the world a bit more.