Can a stereotype be justified?

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A stopped clock is right twice a day. The odds are that you will occasionally see something in real life that conforms to a stereotype.

For example there are stereotypes about every state in the Union, including Massachusettes.


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FWIW this didn't happen on the Metro, it was on a commuter train.

BTW the Metro is a disgrace, I'm embarrassed for foreign visitors to see it. Even the one in Baltimore, although it's just one line, makes a better impression.

The stereotypes might be normative, or an especially-notorious example of real life.

For instance, the direction, clockwise, is an example of stereotype.

For some reason I decided to bump this miserable thread with a different train story that follows the same pattern (do I have some sort of obsession with trains?). However this is not related to race per se, but you could say it relates either to ethnicity or culture, or both.

The last time I was in Germany was over 25 years ago. I happened to be riding in the S-Bahn in Berlin, when I suddenly noticed that all the adverts posted inside the train, if they included any copy, were rhyming couplets. So I started to try to find one that broke the rule. I couldn't find any. I believe there were ads with no copy, for example there could have been an ad for Schultheiss Beer just showing a man drinking a beer, plus the logo. But all copy was in the form of a rhyming couplet. I Googled in vein for examples, but to give an idea what I'm talking about, here's one I made up in horrible German:

In fact this reminds me of a similar experience in Germany in the 70s. It occurred to me that all the cars parked along the street had some sort of seat cover - the beaded sort seemed to be popular, but there were many other kinds as well. So I tried to find one without - which is how most Americans drive (my wife and I have never had them). Again, I couldn't find any exception to the rule.

This would tend to support a common perception of Germans that they are conformist — which is ironic, if that's the word, because if you assume a group of people to be conformist, then it seems to follow that they would be likely to exhibit what one might call "stereotypical" behavior.

What exactly does the phrase "justifying a stereotype" mean?

There are both Blacks and Whites riding the same commuter train. Of the subset of Blacks who happened to be holding books in their hands- 100 percent were holding religious books. Of the subset of Whites who happened to appear to be reading, 100 percent of the time they had secular books in their hands.

So What? What does that mean? Even if your observation were accurate for that group of rides.
If you extrapolated from that to conclude that all Blacks are religious, and no Whites are, that would not be accurate.

But surveys have shown that in the USA Blacks tend to be more religious than Whites as respective groups (though White Americans are FAR more religous than are Whites in Western Europe or Canada).

So your observation could be said to be indicative of a real racial difference in religiosity. But again - it would still be "just a stereotype". Individual American Blacks (ranging from actress Butterfly McQueen, to astronomer Neil DeGrasse) have been outspoken atheists.

If the stereotype corresponds to factual reality, it is factually justified. When a stereotype "leaves out" too many real feature it becomes not only useless but very misleading.

That is more State of Maine than Massachusetts.

Nope I didn't extrapolate anything. I was just flabbergasted by how uniform my observations were. I expected to find exceptions. In my experience, stereotypes are usually disproved by empiric observation. In this case (and the 2 examples in Germany) they were not. This is what was so astonishing.

However, if I had to make a theory to fit my observations (and it would be just a theory, not some wacko dogma I'm trying to promulgate) it would be something like this. The people I observed had, in general, fought hard to get where they are — "white-collar" professionals in relatively well-paid jobs. But they have to deal every day with challenges faced by blacks in a white-dominated environment. Knowing full well how it is to face anxiety over a forthcoming work day, it doesn't surprise me if they turn to what they had always known, and what their parents and grandparents had known, which is their religion — from which they gain both courage and affirmation. I don't look down on them for this. In fact, I envy them, because as somebody who has never been able to believe, that source of comfort is denied me.

I don't fault you for your observations. The Asperger's mind loves simplicity. It's why we lump things into categories, make lists, seek patterns, etc. I'm guilty of something similar.

Whether I'm in the street, library, bus or the mall, and I see people with their faces pressed to their smartphones (some even dangerously crossing the street this way!), I'm thinking that whatever they're watching is unimportant. And by that, I mean videos of "baby vs bunny" or "kitten stuck in a tree" or "Little Johnny's 3rd birthday party," as opposed to articles and videos from National Geographic, The New York Times, Thought Co., Journal of the American Medical Association, The History Channel, or whatever.

There is nothing pathological, in seeing an observable pattern.

(Or else, it would be wrong to stereotype people, who see patterns.)

I had noticed the same pattern as OP. either Christian literature or, less often, paperback romance novels. and, yeah, it does interest me to see what commuters read. I will shamelessly look around to see.

Stereotype might not be the right word.

The question maybe should be "is it okay to make generalizations??"

Th

Yes, it can be justified, if it's one that I believe in (and which therefore, by definition, cannot be false).