As with 'Smith' and 'Lee,' stereotypes can be useful

The deadline for this column snuck up on me unawares while I was putting the final touches on a very long essay about medieval monasticism, an essay that, while undoubtedly deathless, would not in any event win the approval of the 'Prince' editors even were it not already promised to a competing journal. More's the pity, for while there are all kinds of 'sources' for newspaper columns, they still don't exactly grow on trees; and if I am to be thrown back upon my own resources, I'd prefer to realize that fact earlier than three in the afternoon of deadline day.

But one of my editors suggested the other evening that he'd like to see in essay form the "defense of stereotypes" I hinted at in the Whig-Clio forum "Confronting the Stereotype" some 10 days ago. That very intelligent and well-attended conclave apparently suggested to him that I was the only soul in Princeton, and probably on the globe, who thinks that stereotypes can be good and useful things. My eccentric opinion is born of the knowledge, with which few others seem to be burdened, of what a stereotype is, to wit, a solid printing plate of a kind invented in the 18th century, much improved and advanced by Lord Stanhope, that allowed books to be published more accurately, more cheaply, more profitably, and more copiously than ever before.

Moveable type is terrific, mind you, but it does have a tendency to move. This fact kept bread on the table of a whole generation of Shakespeare scholars, and it has its amusing implications. A famous non-Shakespearean instance involves the work of a French demographer. Concerning the density of human habitation in southern Africa, he wrote of "la population enorme du Cap," but the type got jiggled and reset, so that most copies of his book read "la Copulation enorme du pape." How usefully served he would have been by a stereotype.

Of course "stereotype" is hardly alone in being a word now known almost exclusively in an inappropriate metaphorical application. All Princeton students know about Stanhope is that it's where the proctors hang out; the "stereotypes" they abhor are gross generalizations, especially those having to do with large groups of people, or, for that matter, animals. A couple of examples found in a widely disseminated text might be "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons" (Titus 1.12) or "The conies are but a feeble folk" (Proverbs 30.26). Only a cretin could say such a thing about Cretans; and as for old Solomon, he obviously had never encountered the "Monty Python" rabbit!

But what I seem to have picked up over many years at Princeton, and to have found ratified at the Whig-Clio event, is a rather soft-minded and often politically dismissal as "stereotypes" of all sorts of comprehensive statements and broad generalizations without which the classification, ordering and warehousing of ideas is nearly impossible.

Consider a hoary platitude famous in the history of thought: "All men are mortal." When put together with the more pleasurably individualistic and well distributed middle that "Socrates is a man", this is supposed to lead us to the certain truth that "Socrates is mortal." You might think this is a pretty good rule of thumb, but examine it closely and you'll pick up a positive reek of oppressive social construction. For starters the classical dictum that all men are mortal is an incredible stereotype of deep cultural insensitivity, potentially offensive not merely to Jesus himself but by extension to untold millions of his followers in the world's most numerous religion. And this leaves unmentioned the obnoxious and sexist language that might seem to exclude one whole gender from the rights and privileges of mortality.

The point is there are generalizations that are good and useful, as well as those that are not. Here are some observations I have made concerning monosyllabic surnames in two groups of roughly equal population — the strings sections of the Princeton University Orchestra and the faculty of the English department. First, even though the percentage of monosyllables is markedly higher in the strings than in English, still our chair, associate chair, and director of graduate studies are all monosyllables. Next, there are no fewer than three professors surnamed Smith, and four string-players surnamed Lee. Some of this data yields useful generalizations and some does not. The monosyllabism of departmental officers reveals only a curious coincidence. The plurality of Smiths remembers a fundamental fact of human society since the Iron Age, what might be thought of as a "safe stereotype." With the Lees and other monosyllabic violinists the discomfort level seems to rise. Not all Americans surnamed Lee are Asian-American (remember Lighthorse Harry and Robert E.?). Not all Asian-Americans are violinists, and not all violinists are Asian-Americans. But that said, it is no "stereotype" to acknowledge the rich Asian-American contribution to classical music at Princeton. John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 Professor of English. He can be reached at jfleming@princeton.edu.