So perhaps it is because they are attuned to find it, that
kindly people discover so much reason for kindness, malicious people
so much malice. We speak quite accurately of seeing through
rose-colored spectacles, or with a jaundiced eye. If, as Philip
Littell once wrote of a distinguished professor, we see life as
through a class darkly, our stereotypes of what the best people and
the lower classes are like will not be contaminated by understanding.
What is alien will be rejected, what is different will fall upon
unseeing eyes. We do not see what our eyes are not accustomed to take
into account. Sometimes consciously, more often without knowing it, we
are impressed by those facts which fit our philosophy.
3
This philosophy is a more or less organized series of images for
describing the unseen world. But not only for describing it. For
judging it as well. And, therefore, the stereotypes are loaded with
preference, suffused with affection or dislike, attached to fears,
lusts, strong wishes, pride, hope. Whatever invokes the stereotype is
judged with the appropriate sentiment. Except where we deliberately
keep prejudice in suspense, we do not study a man and judge him to be
bad. We see a bad man. We see a dewy morn, a blushing maiden, a
sainted priest, a humorless Englishman, a dangerous Red, a carefree
bohemian, a lazy Hindu, a wily Oriental, a dreaming Slav, a volatile
Irishman, a greedy Jew, a 100% American.
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