Be Bold And Steer Your Life Out Of Stereotype Jail

The order I found was the order of disorder

william saroyan

Landing in the city opened the door to my world of fantasy.

The food was plenty and tantalizing, without the terror of hard chewing. The owners of the city must have sympathized with my long mealtime suffering. That is why they cooked everything soft and friendly to my jaw. There were eggs for breakfast, a rare and random village snack in an everyday meal. I wondered how many hostile, brooding chicken they battled to snatch all of them.

There were modern sausages for breakfast every day. It confused me much because our blood-stuffed mutura, was only available upon the rare slaughter of a goat for an important celebration. I wondered how many animals had to die to avail mountains of offals. There was unlimited bread with margarine and meat in every meal. Without a doubt, this city appeared to hold a feast for me every day.

I got a semi-private room in a high-rise building.

No bed-sharing nor frequent relocation to create room for visitors or resident herds boys like back at home. I got the freedom to invite and entertain mates too. This freedom had been highly censored and constricted by my parents because hosting friends was a thing for the lazy. It was an act of wasting valuable time for chores. And entertaining girls? That was a no-go zone. My folks did not want fights with neighbours over teen pregnancies. And having experienced their own hardship of early marriage, they never wanted their children to fall into the same trap. Neither would they risk ruining the reputation of a stable Christian family. Our faith was more about respectability than taking us to heaven.

A hot shower in privacy was most liberating.

The only place I had experienced a shower was in high school. Being at the foot of Mt. Kenya, the area was ice cold in the mornings. So nobody dared to enter the bathroom. It took days to gather the courage to hop, scream and scrub in haste. Often, we braved it to avoid bullying by older boys. But this campus shower was way different, in temperature, freedom and dignity.

It marked the end of public bathing – the only way to get clean in the village. That involved walking down to the river in hot and dusty afternoons. Usually after dusty farm work in sweltering heat. The lowest lot leisurely strolled without bathing items.  A splash or plunge of cold river water was their portion. Middle class, like myself, paced carrying a bar of crude soap and a bush loafer. While the wealthy clasped a fragrant soap and a change of underwear. They proudly marched, strutting a pair of old, tatty flipflops, with a massive hole at the heel.

The riverine pools were designated by gender.

Women and girls shared the same spot in the middle, separating boys on the upstream, and men on the downstream. None of these places offered privacy, not even from the busy path leading to the ford. The lack of seclusion made bathing difficult for young men like me. It was even more challenging for women and girls. Because public display of bodies to everyone was inevitable.

We stripped naked, hurriedly folding clothes, and placing a stone on top to secure them from violent wind gusts or chomping by cows. People often walked out of the pool to find their clothes chewed into pieces, or blown away, not to be seen again. For most villagers, the standard practice was to combine washing for both body and clothes. It started with laundering all garments, including underwear, and spreading them to dry on the rocks or nearby bushes, then dipping into the pool to enjoy the cool waters, while waiting for the clothes to dry and wear.

The scene was pornographic.

Men, women, boys, and girls, all in proximity, starkly scrubbed their bodies with sisal twine or wild loafers. While standing or sitting on soap-stained stones, leisurely chatting. It was an involuntary and uncensored display of bodily wares. Even harder for those with torn underwear or with none. And worst for men and boys not endowed well enough, to meet the expected village manhood standards.

In this case, the secret stealthily spread, and one would only know from the open chuckling or disdain by females. At times in school, boys carelessly discussed their nude observations at the river, to embarrass their ‘enemies’. In actual sense, the hot shower in my campus hostel not only refreshed my mornings, but restored my privacy and dignity.

Surprisingly, the campus had unspoken rural and urban code.

I thought joining an institution of higher learning in the city made me equal with everyone. To my amazement, I was welcomed by the metropolis, but not embraced by its dwellers. Coming from the village directly categorized me as District Focus, or politely, DFs. The tribe of backward people, who needed special government attention to civilize them. We were singled out by way of dressing and grooming. And from our heavy tongues while talking English.

Earlier on, I had made some effort to learn some sheng, by befriending townies in high school. I thought speaking this slang that blends Swahili and other local languages, would mix me with city dwellers on arrival. Little did I know that sheng was a low-class jargon, not an acceptable language for learned people. The university community conveyed in English, and DFs like me, had trouble with that.  

The challenge of speaking English was impossible.

A son of unschooled parents, I grew up speaking my mother tongue and went to a high school that helped me master it. By the time I joined the university, I could proficiently read and write in English, but not speak it. Adding voice to grammar was dreadful for all DFs. Whenever I talked, the townies quickly picked that I was not one of them. And after that, dodged me permanently.

I faced the unique challenge confronting every member of my Kikuyu community while learning to speak the queen’s language. Our tongues automatically switch r for l, and vice-versa, no matter how hard we try. Frustrating both the speaker and their audience. If the Kikuyu persists without extra caution, English turns into a strange language that they call ‘speaking in tongues’ in some places of worship.

We chose to stay close to avoid embarrassing ourselves.

The townies struggled to communicate or socialize with us. They giggled or openly laughed when we spoke. Occasionally, acting friendly by unleashing the scanty, twisted, mother-tongues they rehearsed on their rural relatives. This alienation in the first weeks of campus gave me little optimism in being integrated by the city folks. Language barrier even made me abandon the quest to upgrade my social status by dating a city girl.

Somehow, I got the determination to get out of my DF detention. I committed to practising and speaking some reasonable English and shed off the ‘backwardness’ tag that I had been assigned. And with some unrelenting effort, I and many others qualified. Because no one laughs when I speak today. But three decades on, some midlife agemates are still trying.  While others, gave up on it, and continue to talk in half dialect, undeterred.

Stereotyping was both ways.

Most DFs had grown up and schooled in their native districts. Meaning they brought along their cultural mindsets. We started to learn about other tribes and their ascribed attributes. We observed traits where none existed and formed fictitious opinions that further rifted the prestigious academic community. Coalescing in mother-tongue clubs separated villagers and townies on campus and considerably amplified ethnic stereotypes in the city.

Stereotyping is oversimplifying and assigning the personal behaviours or attributes to a category of people. The act does not see a person as an individual, but rather, belonging to a particular social class. This category has a set of beliefs assigned to it, that we allocate to the people belonging to this group. Meaning, it starts with the creation of a category. Then assignment of traits to that category. And eventually, linking a person to that group with those assigned traits.

Stereotyping is about blanket judgements.

The categories can be based on race, gender, ethnicity, skill sets, occupations, and many others. Some are the ordinary ones like women and men, blacks and whites, scientists and artists, villagers and townies. Each one of us ‘belong’ to several groups, whether we know it or not. We are classified by the society, with or without our consent.

We practice stereotyping by placing expectations of a social group when judging a specific individual, depending on a particular viewpoint. Imagine a white man meeting a black woman in a western city’s streets and the perceptions he may form around her.

The story in this white man’s head could be – she is black, and black people are not that smart, so she must hustling. Or maybe, she is a woman, and women are not good in math and science, so she must be a student studying a mediocre course because there are no good schools in Africa. Now that she is a black woman from Africa, African women are romantically and financially deprived. So she must be trying to trick and marry a naïve northerner: same person, different tags. And the reverse will happen to a white man in the streets of Nairobi.

Stereotyping makes our life more comfortable and reinforces our ignorance.

According to researchers, there are good and ugly sides of this old-age social grouping practice. It helps us identify opportunities without much effort. For example, if you lose your way in a new, insecure town, you will likely seek help from a woman with a baby strapped in her back and a basket on her head. And not a muscular, young man with shoulder-long locks and a gait. Because we believe a mother is protective, and therefore, she cannot be a member of a street gang. Sizing up people with our stereotypes makes our life easier by reducing the complexity of our predictions and decisions.

In equal breadth, stereotyping is damaging to our relationships and the society. We tend to treat people we are close to in a certain way as individuals, but also different when we put them into social categories. We overgeneralize them when we consider them as belonging to a particular group. I may have a friend who is kind, loving and brutally generous. But because they come from a tribe that is known to be industrious and loves to hoard wealth, I may never understand when they cannot help me financially. I know them, I am close to them, but I still generalize and hold them against my stereotypical belief of where they come from. In other words, my knowledge is clouded by wholesale societal judgements.

Like everyone else, I struggle with freeing myself from labelling.

Sorry to say, I am not clean on this one. We are all perpetrators of typecasting because every group has racial or ethnic stereotypes of other groups. I may have been a victim in college, but I am in it too. Living and serving different societies from where I come from proved I had to keep shaking off stereotyping. My technical training background created perceptions that I could not see things clearly when it came to social work. My tribe meant that I could not be trusted in serving some other communities with dedication. I was always made to feel that I was pursuing self-serving interests. In the same places, I picked up some labels on those people too, which I may ignorantly be peddling.

Thoughts occur that my skin colour has stood in the way of many opportunities, even though no one speaks openly about it. A person of my capability from a different race could have a lot more in my profession now. But who knows? Possibly, these are just my perceptions, a way of convincing myself that I am not responsible for my inadequacies. And maybe, people have always been kind enough to me, and rewarded me with much more because of the same thing I suspect is inhibiting.

I try very hard not to perpetuate stereotyping in my personal and work life.

I have built a broad community of family and friends, from different tribes, races, social classes, and nations. I have made deliberate effort to be curious and not merely believe in stereotypes of people and places. And this often proves that labels are unfounded and slanderous. And as a result, I enjoy relationships and opportunities that those who ascribe to stereotyping cannot access. I consider doubting what everyone else tends to ignorantly believe in as a special gift of courage.

I cannot deny that stereotyping has stood in my way. Believing in the tags that have been given to me, and my kind of people has impacted me negatively. I have lost opportunities or made bad decisions because I believe in something about other people that is not true. I have withheld my capabilities because of self-limiting beliefs. Be it in my career, social or economic progression. Fear or lack of confidence to pursue what I am capable of has always been confronted, by what others branded me from the source. But now, I must take full responsibility.

Everyone should free themselves from stereotyping.

We should shed careless grouping and baseless judgements about other people. And fight to free ourselves from assigned labels. When we stereotype, we judge others unfairly, and deny them the opportunity to become. Believing in allotted markers is accepting to carry the dishonourable load we have been given. And displaying the fake badge of ignorance that has been pinned on our personal and community lapels.

We can erase this unfair branding and liberate ourselves, and all those placed in this category. Contrary to what many believe, we can rip off these identifiers without losing our exceptionality as individuals, and as members of a unique community.

For your own sake, stop aimless stereotyping.

Look and listen keenly on how ignorant pigeonholing has affected you. You will know stereotyping others has made your world a small cage in this expansive universe. Without this act, our politics would be different because your voting would not be based on ethnic profiling. You could be happily married to that awesome woman or man from that family or tribe. Maybe you could have invested and thrived in that friendly town. Or started a business with that prospective partner you ducked due to labelling. Your skills may have led you to an exciting frontier, or you could be living happily single or without children.

Empower yourself by separating truth from myths.

Know that stereotypes are fake, but sound real. Seek knowledge and learn on everything that people casually made you believe in. Eat that food associated with a community that your people despise out of ignorance. Spend time with people your peers believe that they are not worth it. Visit places that people like you can never visit, and experience what they may never know. Stop bundling people based on myths and lies.

Like author Shannon L. Alder says, “Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.” Shake-off the self-loathing and mindset-chaining beliefs that come with years of stereotyping yourself and others. And you will be surprised how much this will open your way to limitlessness.

Because greatness is only possible when you are out of captivity—that of your own mind.