Title: Mystery of Stereotypes: A Guide to Self-Understanding and Empathy
Author: Dr. Tsahai H. London
Publisher: Pen Culture Solutions
ISBN: 1638122679
Pages: 210
Genre: Non-Fiction / Self-Improvement
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
This book goes a long way toward explaining the ‘knee-jerk’ (instantaneous) perceptions we have of people – the labels and profiles that sometimes help us understand others but often freight us with resentment, anger, and irrational thinking. Stereotypes are mysterious, endemic, pervasive. We accumulate these habitual ways of sorting things out from childhood on; everything in our culture tends toward encouraging them and entrenching them. If you’re curious about yourself – if you want to free up vast amounts of emotional and cognitive space for better use – read this book.
Mysteries of Stereotypes: A Guide to Self-Understanding and Empathy, could not have arrived at a better time. Our society is fraught with divisiveness and strife: this is a society where scapegoating and quickness to blame have become the all too handy and all too destructive solutions to complex social problems. This book not only explains the how-and-why of stereotypes, but offers compelling and concrete reasons why each of us, as individuals, should upgrade our take on the world.
To the extent that we write off people – pigeonhole them – place them in categories; to that extent we are narrowing our depth of field. We box ourselves in every time we see the world in two dimensions. Assumptions we live with – stereotypes – touch every aspect of our lives, freighting the experience of work, school, and relationships with foregone conclusions and illogic.
Welcome to Sir Stereotype. The book, narrated in the first person by ‘Stereotype,’ is addressed to errant humans everywhere. For example: “Ask yourselves why stereotypes work you up the way we do. Can it be that we are hitting some exposed nerves?”; and, “We sharpen your sensibilities as you look at…societal, ethnic, racial and other forms of injustice.”
This chatty but telling narrative voice is accompanied by a series of highly engaging stories which further illustrate the main points. For example: A husband stays at home to mind the children while the wife goes to her high paying job. Traditional gender roles have been exchanged: is this acceptable? If not, why not? What inherited or acquired stereotypes can sabotage winning scenarios like this?
Stereotypes are thick as flies on honey, cropping up and clotting our vision, fueling sexism, racism, and ageism. They are based on physical appearance, nationality, the way people speak: precious (because at one time perhaps useful) assumptions. The book’s bullet-pointed lists of well-known stereotypes are spot-on: “Women can’t parallel park as well as men”; “Blacks are good at basketball”; “Whites have no rhythm”; “Mexicans come here illegally.” Etc., etc…Dr. Tsahai H. London, the author, brings authority and expertise to discussions of IQ, multi-culturalism, and their role in the genesis of stereotypes.
The solution? Heightened awareness, and further work on ourselves as individuals and as a society. Stereotypes are bad habits; bad habits that can be discarded. This book is a roadmap toward heightened self-awareness and awakening. It is exceedingly well-written and chock full of insight – a delight to read and explore.
