Doing justice both to the history of discrimination and the complexity of cultural formation has been the challenge of American democracy’s public discourse on diversity. Glossing over the complexity of cultural formation simply leaves stereotypes of cultural groups in place and doesn’t allow for genuine identities to form outside of those stereotypes. However, the existence of stereotypes undoubtedly forms the conceptual backbone in the narrative of discrimination across America’s history. A fine line has formed between recognizing the reality of stereotypes that have been placed on others and accepting those stereotypes as defining their key identity markers. Turning generic ethnic or racial categories into defining cultural frameworks pigeonholes individuals and communities into the very stereotypes that created the problems in the first place. It also imposes undue obstacles to the emergence of transethnic and transracial communities, and thereby makes it more difficult to fully engage the work of reconciliation across these differences.
Re: the placing of stereotypes on others and the receiving of those designations from others, I’m reminded of a Phil Christman quote from How to Be Normal.