>As a species, we can choose whether to repeat the actions and conduct of our ancestors.
The conclusion of this article does not match the intro/middle. It also isn't at all apparent to me that this is true from my observations of real life. It is certainly true at the individual-scale, but I don't see evidence for this at the civilization/global-scale.
> Even aside from the purely intellectual offense of their untruth, narratives of perceived Indigenous “naturalness” and ecological harmony have served to burden tribal peoples across the world with unreasonable and often impossible expectations, often accompanied by serious repercussions when they inevitably fall short.
At the simpler, personal level, it would also feel kind of patronizing to have some outsiders come in and start ascribing all these qualities to you, or expect certain behaviors, even if on the surface they seem well meaning. Maybe, someone doesn’t want to identify their past ancestors as some tree hugging hippies, may they were more likely warriors, hunting, killing better than others.
The whole culture relativism package is incredible toxic and unedible. Like nurture is the whole thing, but you shall not analyze,generalize and alter it. The noble savage is just one subgroup of people it shoves into a ,often racist box, providing power to some toxic speaker caste. And the rug under which cultural inabilities and incompatabilities are shoved is todays racists blanket fort. The culture.irrelevant left is a more horrible ally then enemy to have.
Apologies if I missed these references in the article, I found that the essayist was confused about the actual roots of the myth. Rousseau comes at least 200 years later.
The thing is "positive stereotypes" like Asians supposedly being great at math or tribal people being saintly are still harmful even if less so than negative stereotypes. Peoples and cultures are complex and all have good and bad traits.
If I make a factual statement, such as "among high school students who graduated in 2020, Asian students scored an average of 632 on the SAT math section, compared with 547 for white students" [1], is that a "positive stereotype" or a "statistical difference"? And would that labeling hold for the factual statement "Whites (184 per 100,000 white U.S. residents) and Hispanics (176 per 100,000 Hispanic U.S. residents) were jailed at similar rates. Asians were incarcerated in jails at a rate of 25 inmates per 100,000 Asian U.S. residents." [2]
Or would that become a "negative stereotype" about white and hispanics?
Those are measurements, prone to their own biases and variances.
> make a factual statement
People make statements for reasons. "Just stating facts" still, usually, says something other than the fact being stated, and that other thing is usually the actual goal of the message.
> stereotypes vs statistical differences
It's not quite an either-or scenario. The act of stating something was, by itself, neither a stereotype nor a statistical difference. The measurements being stated were not stereotypes. The reason you stated them might have been because of or in service of a stereotype, and derived statements (like "asians are good at math") might be stereotypes.
> negative stereotype
This is a bit harder to pin down to a definition. Stereotypes are "negative" when they're untruthful, misleading, unhelpful to the stereotypers, disproportionately damaging to the stereotyped relative to the stereotyper's gains, .... If you apply some combination of "for God's sake, don't be dicks to each other" and "despite best efforts, people think I'm a dick, maybe I should reflect on that for a minute" then you'll probably do all right for yourself.
Picking on incarceration rate as an example (I know you were asking about the nature of negative stereotypes, but let's assume you brought it up in some other context, just to have a hypothetical to work with), what purpose is stating that measurement serving? It doesn't help you with any decision you might be able to make, including parole, avoiding shadowy alley figures, hiring, lending, (even when legal), .... It strongly suggests something interesting going on, but there are too many obviously confounding variables to have a snowball's chance in Hell of using that statistic to make an informed decision about almost anything. Bringing it up, except in the context of using it as evidence that we need more data for something, is likely to happen because of and in service of a negative racial stereotype, and in most contexts that's how I'd interpret anyone making that statement.
Not the OP, but I don't interact with all the asians in the world. If I interact only with a small subset of asians and there's an observable statistical outcome when it comes to that particular subset, then that is the information I personally care about and will find useful.
I hope we are smart to see their utility as conveying statistical likelihoods, common occurences, and heuristics - while also understanding that some might be deprecated or not accurate (like everything else can be, from scientific studies to census data).
"Positive" stereotypes are also usually used as a way of pitting two groups against each other while making sure the stereotype maker group is always presented as the norm that both should actually be more like.
So many people these days attribute literally everything to some preconceived scheme by hidden malicious entities. The truth is that this like so many other things are emergent phenomenon that occur spontaneously due to the complex sequence of events that proceeded them, and not as a conspiracy to influence the future.
YMMV, but I see about a 1/10 ration of noble savage stereotypes to debunking noble savage stereotypes. And cynically, as a lead into "maybe the trail of tears / residential schools we're so bad after all."
I get that you're trying to be helpful but this dangerous thinking. Specifically the idea that there's some universal definition of "good" and "bad" is problematic. For instance, obesity: some cultures in Africa deliberately fatten up their young girls so they look more mature and can marry sooner[1]. If this seems reprehensible to you, if you think that practice should stop, would you be so quick to try to prevent all mother dogs from eating their own puppies' poop? I think most people would think it a fool's errand to try to "fix" mother dogs. It's important to examine why you think what a different culture is doing is right or wrong. Is it because you're projecting your own values onto them? Ultimately each people / culture (even species) should be able to define what right and wrong means to them, and they should be able to follow their own path without outside interference.
It is asserted every now and then that they are harmful (from people jumping on the "this is victimizing" bangwaggon or needing the attention), but no connection with actual harm is given, but I see them as neutral, if not possitive, including for my people's "positive stereotypes".
In fact, e.g. books, articles, or speeches about one's own heritage, even from the leaders or cultural representatives of a country, also list possitive and sometimes negative stereotypes, as good and bad traits of a culture. It's not just ignorant outsiders that use them.
>Peoples and cultures are complex and all have good and bad traits.
Hence good AND bad stereotypes. Also, I don't think most people regards the sterotypes as absolute (as in "EVERY Asian is great at math"), as opposed to a statistical thing.
The conclusion of this article does not match the intro/middle. It also isn't at all apparent to me that this is true from my observations of real life. It is certainly true at the individual-scale, but I don't see evidence for this at the civilization/global-scale.