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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 431 Thus a stereotype identifies as persons those and only those who manifest the primary valued properties in the set ((a) and (b)), and subsidiary ones consistent with it (such as minor personality quirks or mildly idiosyncratic personal tastes). Call this set the honorific stereotype, and an individual who bears such primary valued properties the valuee. And reciprocally, the honorific stereotype by implication identifies as deviant or anomalous all those who manifest any properties regarded as inconsistent with it ((c) and (d)). Call this second set of primary disvalued properties the derogatory stereotype, and an individual who bears such primary disvalued properties the disvaluee. So, for example, an individual who bears all the primary valued properties of the honorific stereotype as required by (a) may be nevertheless disqualified for status as a valuee according to (b), by bearing additional primary disvalued ones as well. She may be related by blood or marriage to a Jew, for example; or have bisexual inclinations; or, in the case of an African American, an enthusiasm for classical scholarship. In virtue of violating (b), one may then fail to qualify as a full-fledged person at all (c), and therefore may be designated as deviant by the derogatory stereotype according to (d). The derogatory stereotype most broadly includes all the primary disvalued properties that fall outside the set defining the honorific stereotype (i.e. "us versus them"), or may sort those properties into more specific subsets according to the range of individuals available for sorting. A politically discriminatory stereotype generally is therefore distinguishable from an inductive generalization by its provincialism, its oversimplification, and its rigid imperviousness to the complicating details of singularity. Perhaps most importantly, a discriminatory stereotype is distinguishable from an inductive generalization by its function. The function of an inductive generalization is to guide further research, and this requires epistemic alertness and perceptual sensitivity to the possibility of confirming or disconfirming evidence in order to make use of it. An inductive generalization is no less a generalization for that: it would not, for example, require working class African Americans living in the Deep South during the 1960s to dismantle the functionally accurate and protective generalization that white people are dangerous. What would make this an inductive generalization rather than a stereotype is that it would not preclude recognition of a European American who is safe should one appear. By contrast, the function of a stereotype is to render further research unnecessary. If the generalization that white people are dangerous were a stereotype, adopting it would make it cognitively impossible to detect any European Americans who were not. Thus Kant might describe the reciprocal imposition of stereotypes as the fallacy of equating a partial and conditional series of empirical appearances of persons with the absolute and unconditioned idea of personhood that © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
