samedi 16 octobre 2010

By ; Khairi Janbek

Geography and Stereotyping.

What is it about stereotypes?. Take me for example, when I was younger, I got introduced to the names of the countries of the world; not through geography lessons, rather through my intense interest in soccer. Therefore, the news worthiness of one country or another; at least as far as I was concerned, was very much related to their soccer performance in world championships, or how well they faired playing against Brazil. In this sense, GDP, GNP, dictatorships, democracies, were all concepts beyond the reach of my evaluation of the potentials of any country in the world. What mattered at the time, was the names of goal scorers and brilliant goalkeepers.
I am sure that those nations wanted to be assessed by the usual socio-economic and political indicators, but as far as yours sincerely was concerned, every single person regardless of age and sex from the countries of the world, was judged in soccer standards. Therefore, a person from Germany; irrespective of how they felt about the game of soccer, even if they hated it, to me, he/she must be a brilliant player. The same went for any individual from Brazil, or anyone from Italy. In any case, those were the days of heavily censored mass media organs in our part of the world, and the only news worthy items that entered our living rooms, were those related to soccer.
However, as time went on, and in the age of breaking news, my geographical information developed according to the lines of war, death and destruction. For instance, I started hearing about Chechenia. I never knew before that Bosnia excited anyone outside the books of history and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I had hardly heard of Afghanistan let alone Tora Bora and the Panjir Valley, after all soccer was not a big thing in those areas. Who had heard about Rwanda and the Tutsis and Hutus until they decided to massacre each other, then of course Banda Ache came into the news, and made me wonder who was dreaming about its independence all the time, in our part of the world !!. In essence, war and destruction has brought in many nations to every household through the news, and very far away places into our living rooms.
However, just as the Soccer nations of my childhood may have wanted to be heard of through their other achievements, I am positive that the peoples of those war-torn countries wish to be known also with achievements other than, their ability of blood letting. But I think, my stereotyping and that of many others like myself, can take away from such nations their achievements as well as their humanity. I must admit, each time I meet someone from a war-torn country, it is his/hers potential violence that comes first to my mind, and not the fact that one is meeting another human being, whom wants the same safety and security which I am blessed with in my country. I am afraid, for me now, it is mass murderers that symbolize nations, in as much as Pele symbolized the nations of my childhood. I suppose, I have to thank again the mass media organs which report nothing but, statistics about war, death and destruction.
But, what can the mass media do, when we seem to be pleased with what they cater on their programme menus?. The next step of stereotyping for this century will be, crew-cut and short skirt/tight trousers, and the meaning of sporting a beard and wearing a veil.

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