How to Construct A Stereotype

The common phrasing is that race is a social construct. By labeling it as such, it means that society's continuation of racial stereotypes is what ultimately contributes to their existence, rather than the members of the race themselves. Through the perspective of the terministic screen, Burke would say that the main contributor of this constructed classification system lies within the construction of the "lens" of our own terministic screens through which we all view our world from, not within the person upon which these racial labels are placed. Knowing this, it's no wonder that Gates, on page  five, states that race is "a dangerous trope". When the power to classify lies within the classifier, not within the subject of their classifications, an arbitrarily slippery slope can be created and a line of fairness can be crossed and assumptions can overpower rational thought, all due to a socially constructed classification.

Race seems like it's deeply ingrained in our culture, as there are undoubtedly physical differences between races and from those differences sparked conflict, warfare, violence, and prejudice. Yet, as Gates quotes Bakhtin on page one, "one makes language their own [when using it]", performing an action by speaking that does not directly physically affect or change the described person or thing, therefore, the danger and application of this trope is arbitrarily decided by anyone with vocal cords that spreads around these unfair ideas and assumptions.

This classification conundrum continues not only in the realm of race, but it has uses to classify and split up humanity more and more with ideas like gender. Really, gender is a lot like race in that there are objective physical differences but those differences are seen through everyone's terministic screens, magnified through society's lens by repetition enough to become the artificial, constructed consensus among those spreading rhetoric about the "other", whether it be race, gender, nationality, hair color, or otherwise.

Seeing these tropes develop in what can be described as the "pontificating third", one really gets a look at the objective side of what can be impassioned and determined defense of racist beliefs that someone has as a part of their terministic screen.