Author(s): Andrei VLĂDESCU
Publication name: Romanian Intelligence Studies Review
Publisher name: Mihai Viteazul National Intelligence Academy
Publication type: Journal article
Publication date: June 30, 2020
Pagination:
Issue/ Volume: 23/2020
DOI:
Abstract:
From 1798 until now, the society has passed from the term of “stereotype”,
which at that time called the typographic moulds of lead, to that of “stereotype” in the
sense given by Walter Lipmann, that is of the images in our mind, which helps us build an
interpretation of the world, necessary to understand it, to adapt and find a place and a
role within it.
Although stereotypes seem to play a positive role, helping us to think and react
more quickly to a new situation, they are a kind of false friends, leading us to a subjective
form of normality, and what lies outside this normality it becomes the fuel for
stigmatizing those who are not “common”.
Stereotypes contribute to increasing social distance and push people to act to
the detriment of other people, such as ethnic stereotypes, those antipathy based on
inflexible generalizations, resulting in the emergence of vulnerable communities in the
face of aggressive discourses.
The importance of stereotypes as precursors of prejudices and foundations of
discrimination is equally great, regardless of whether we talk about the abundance of
negative references to Jews in Romanian proverbs and sayings, the negative attributes
related to the Roma ethnicity in various Romanian dictionaries, the journalistic
discourse related to the “exoticism” of the LGBT community or the unfavourable views of
the Hungarian minority by the Romanian majority.
Therefore, conceptions such as “eating at the Jew but not sleeping at night alone
in his house” or “they will call the gypsies to take you if you are not behaving yourself”
are equivalent to ideas about genetic determination or mental disorder that induce
homosexuality, as well as eating meat kept under the saddle by the predecessors of the
present times Hungarians and all these ideas are efficient fertilizers for conflicts, waiting
only for a trigger.
Keywords: stereotypes, prejudices, ethnic stereotypes, aggressive public
discourse, intolerance, cognitive closure
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