Why should we learn this?
On 9 February 2017, I had my first lecture on Understanding Media in a Multicultural World. Afterwards, I felt immensely intrigued by what this course had to offer and looked forward to the next lecture. However, I couldn’t help but to wonder about a question that I had yet to google: Is the human brain wired to categorize?!
After some shallow digging, I came across this article: The Psychology of Stereotyping. Apparently, your brain is ‘hard-wired with a basic instinct that has [you] making snap judgments’ about other people, in order to ‘distinguish who’s a friend and who’s a foe’. Therefore, stereotypes, labels and generalizations are the deep-seated outcomes of the human brain automatically and tediously categorizing everyone, based on a person’s sex and race. My initial reaction to this discovery was, to simply put it, as indifferently as an ‘umkay’. I hastily came up with a conclusion that eras of civilization didn’t come without a price: these stereotypes were deeply wired to the human brain to begin with, in order to assist human beings navigate in this big bad world since Stone Age. It was then I began to wonder: If forming stereotypes are inevitably part of the human nature, then what is the purpose of learning such theories on race and gender of the East and West, other than merely out of interest?
In the next couple of weeks of learning and discussing about themes and theories like ‘Asians as perpetual foreigners’ and Said’s Orientalism, during the fish bowl group discussion, I came up with the answer to my own question.
Within the process of confronting unconscious bias and racism, not only are we acknowledging their existences, but we are also proactively disentangling these deeply wired misconceptions, pulling out the deeply rooted prejudices that originate from our very own unconscious minds. To combat against racism, deconstruct stereotypes and fight back against unconscious bias, one must be willing to unlearn what she or he had believed to be true. For instance, upon the discussion on yellow fever, other than coming to terms that indeed Asian women like myself are often fetishized in Western countries, through examining the underlying consequences of being ‘admired’ by a white male, I am giving myself an option to critically rethink on the difference between being appreciated as an object of desire due to my race, or simply as a woman.
On a lighter note, thoughts like ‘raising blue-eyed, bilingual, bombshell half white babies’ will still be lurking around at the back of my head as I scroll through my Instagram feed of Asian mothers lovingly showing off their new born mixed race babies. However, with the insight I have gained through understanding where Asians stand in the Western world, other than having second thoughts on being impregnated by a white male, most importantly I will metaphorically slap myself in the forehead, as a reminder that it is exactly a thought like this that contributes to the ever-thriving yellow fever.
