Avoiding Stereotypes

It’s imperative that as you start to learn about the cultural groups in your community, you don’t just revert to learning a few things and then lean into stereotypes. Our brains are wired to ingrain our social beliefs and the stereotypical associations that go with them, so empathy and diversity training alone won’t help you overcome stereotypes or prevent you from creating new ones in your brain (Marini et al., 2018). What does help to eliminate stereotypes is increased exposure. With the increased exposure your brain has the opportunity to engage in stereotype replacement, counter-stereotypic imaging, perspective-taking, and individuating(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, n.d.).

Stereotype replacement occurs when you become aware of the stereotypes you may hold (like the ones I referenced about working with Black dads in chapter two) and provide your brain with non-stereotypical representations instead. Stereotype replacement is related to counter-stereotypical imaging which is the practice of stopping yourself from having a stereotypical thought by imagining someone who doesn’t fit that stereotype. Both of these strategies require that you have varied and positive experiences with the stereotyped group. These experiences can be with actual people or can be gained through engagement with books, movies, TV shows, or social media.

Perspective-taking is a strategy that works to combat stereotypes and implicit biases by taking on the perspective of someone in the group you hold biased opinions about. One of the most significant experiences I’ve had with perspective-taking occurred early in my career. I held a lot of stereotypical and biased beliefs about American Muslim women who cover their heads or wear a niqab to cover their faces. I went to college during the beginning of the United States war with Afghanistan and quite clearly remember learning about how the Taliban forced women to cover their faces and bodies. I saw many images of Afghan women in the 1970s wearing miniskirts contrasted with images of Afghan women in 2001 covered by long black abaya dresses with niqabs. Based on my limited exposure to nuanced and realistic representations of religiously observant Muslim women, I internalized stereotypes and biases that all Muslim women were somber and oppressed by their religion and their husbands.

After these initial stereotyping representations of Muslim women, I didn’t interact with any religiously modest Muslim women until I was referred to work with the Zahir family in 2009. The mother, Maryam, wore a full niqab when out in public (even to open the front door of their apartment to let me in, as there could be others in the hallway). I took all of my biases with me into the home visit, so I was shocked to learn that Maryam’s husband, Nadeem, was soft-spoken, kind, and attentive to the baby. He often deferred to Maryam to make decisions about their son’s medical and developmental support. Several weeks after I settled into working with the Zahirs, their oldest daughter came bounding into the living room after school. She was wearing a hijab which I hadn’t seen her wear before. It was a beautiful green color that made her hazel eyes pop. “Megan Auntie! Look! I finally get to wear a hijab! I am so happy that Allah can see my faith!” She exclaimed. She was so excited and proud that I tried to hide my judgment as I replied, “Wow! You look even more beautiful now! And you are so happy!” Maryam reminded her that now that she was home and only I was in the house with the family, she could remove it. “No way! I love wearing it. I just want to keep it on a little longer.” she replied. Then she told me about how as a young girl she would try on her mother’s hijabs and niqabs. She felt so close to both her mother and Allah when she would drape the fabric over her head. Then, she shared a story about how she waited to start covering her head until she knew she was ready to make a deep commitment to Allah. As we worked together on ways to position the baby for tummy time, Maryam shared the story of how she had shifted from not covering her head at all to wearing a hijab, and then after her oldest children were born, she felt called to begin wearing a full niqab outside the house. Maryam and her daughter both exuded such joy when sharing how they came to their decision to wear the religious coverings. As they were telling their stories, they used the hijab fabric to cover their faces and play peekaboo with the baby.

As I drove from the Zahirs’ to my next home visit, I thought a lot about how much contentment Maryam felt in her decision to wear a niqab and how delighted her daughter was to don her first hijab. This situation was so different from the feelings I assumed a woman would have about covering her hair or face. Once I knew enough about Maryam and her daughter, I was able to take on their perspectives and realize they weren’t at all oppressed by their faith. This perspective-taking helped me to replace my previously held biases and stereotypes about observant Muslim women.

A couple of years after I met the Zahir family, I happened upon the reality show All-American Muslim, which chronicled the daily lives of Muslims living in Detroit. This show also depicted one woman’s decision to begin covering her hair in her thirties as she became more intentional about practicing her faith. I remember watching that and seeing the commonality between the story the woman on the show told and what I had learned about Maryam and her daughter’s experiences. I remember thinking about how differently I viewed Hijabi women once I was able to take on their perspective.

In 2001, when I was internalizing stereotypes about women like Maryam, it was much more difficult to access books, movies, and television shows about the American Muslim experience than it is today. As you learned in chapter two, cultural racism, or in this case, cultural Islamophobia, meant that the representations of Muslims that were available reinforced bias. At the time, TikTok and Instagram didn’t exist, so finding Muslim content creators was almost impossible. Luckily, with the proliferation of social media, it’s become relatively easy to find content creators who post insights into their lived experiences as members of their racial, ethnic, religious, disability, gender, or other social identity group. In fact, broadening your social media feed is one of my favorite ways to increase your exposure to positive, stereotype-defying representations. I enthusiastically recommend that my students and participants in professional development classes intentionally curate their social media feeds to include creators who share identities with the people in their catchment areas. Most of us spend over 2 hours a day on social media already (GlobalWebIndex,  2019), so by making slight adjustments to whose content we are following, we can learn more about the members of the community without adding another thing to our daily routines. You often don’t even have to look outside your interests to find content creators who share at least some of the identities of your clients. My social media feed is full of educational news, size-inclusive teacher fashion, horse training and horseback riding videos, romance novels and children’s book reviews, and child development and parenting content. Recently, my community saw a large influx of Haitian migrant families. With just a couple of searches and in less than twenty minutes, I was able to expand my feed to include Haitian content creators. As I  do my usual afternoon scroll through my social feeds, I also pick up some information about some Haitian and Haitian American ways of being along the way.

In addition to broadening the identities of the content creators in your social media feeds, you can also learn through expanding the identities of the authors, creators, actors, producers, and showrunners of the books, movies, TV, and podcasts that you generally consume. In recent years, the publishing industry has begun to highlight more culturally and linguistically diverse authors across genres. As I mentioned above, my favorite genre is romance. Rather than doing “extra” reading, I sought out authors of color including Talia Hibbert, Alexis Daria, and Danica Nava. I know that whatever your hobbies, you’ll be able to find media created by and for folks sharing the identities of those in your catchment area.

While I truly believe that you can learn a lot from simply expanding the identities of the people creating the content you would consume anyway, you also need to dedicate time to learning more about the cultures in your catchment area by spending time there rather than driving in for home visits, seeing a family or two and immediately returning to your own neighborhood. You can peruse community libraries, attend community events, and take your kids to play in the local parks. I also recommend making it a point to get to know the social service agencies in the area.  One of the ways that I was able to build trust with Crenisha was by connecting her to the local Early Head Start Program. Despite her partner’s initial concerns about working with someone who grew up in predominantly white, middle-class spaces, Crenisha said that my familiarity with the neighborhood helped her be less guarded when speaking with me.