In January of my third year at the University of South Carolina, my mom and I hauled a carload of winter clothing, various business casual attire, and blankets to Washington, D.C., where I spent the semester as an intern at a think tank through the South Carolina Honors College’s Washington Semester Program. As part of the program, sixteen of us lived crammed together in a three-story house on Capitol Hill and attended evening classes as a group. In one of these classes (which I will call UNIV 300: Topics in Washington, D.C. in order to respect the identity and privacy of my former professor) the professor spent our weekly meetings discussing issues of politics and government, all from a D.C. insider’s perspective. The beginning of the semester began fairly standard, with a brief overview of the branches of government and a few pertinent political principles, but after a few weeks of class sessions, our Monday night discussions started getting more and more heated.
During January’s eight-hour trip to D.C., I had finally come out to my mom as bisexual; this, combined with a new relationship as well as an internship in which I worked with many other LGBTQ+ people, put my queer identity in full, glaring, focus that semester. By the time our final few classes rolled around and it was my turn to present on a topic of my choosing, I worried about how my presentation on LGBTQ+ issues would be received. Although our professor had casually come out to us as a lesbian early on in the class, she often framed LGBTQ+ issues in a questionable manner and even claimed that despite her sexuality, her lack of involvement in activism allowed her to be “impartial” on the issue. Despite the fact that my professor openly belonged to the same community as I do, supposedly facing similar challenges and obstacles, our perceptions of the LGBTQ+ movement looked entirely different. In our class discussion after my presentation, it was clear that my experiences with the LGBTQ+ community’s struggles were rooted in Southern activism, while her stance was a product of decades living in a progressive, urban area. Due to the previous year’s marriage equality ruling and the rapid, positive upticks in public opinion surrounding same-sex couples, she no longer viewed LGBTQ+ issues as issues to fight for.
Surprisingly enough, PSYC 430: Survey of Social Psychology, a fairly standard lecture course I completed in order to finish my major in psychology, not only proved to be incredibly interesting and relevant but also heavily applicable to social justice issues. While admittedly, most psychology courses are heavily applicable to everyday scenarios due to the nature of the field, I found myself making more relatable connections back to theories and frameworks through social psychology than I had in any other psychology class before. After the halfway mark in the semester, a particular theory called the outgroup homogeneity effect piqued my interest due to its direct relation to the concept of monoliths, or groups of people who are perceived as being all the same because of a shared identity or community.
In psychology, an “outgroup” is any social group of people of which you are not a member, while an “ingroup” is a social group with which you identify. For example, someone who identifies as exclusively American is in an ingroup with other Americans, viewing people of other nationalities as members of the outgroup. In the outgroup homogeneity effect, as defined in "Social Psychology," people view members of their own ingroup as being varied from one another, while members of an outgroup are viewed as more similar to one another, lumped together in ways that are often based on stereotypes.
The outgroup homogeneity effect is especially visible when examining race relations in the United States. Oftentimes, white people tend to group members of other races together, binding them by generalized stereotypes or through the behaviors and opinions of a single person belonging to that demographic, yet viewing other white people as inherently different from one another and themselves. This contributes to instances of racism, blatant or covert, like when a white woman crosses the street or clutches her purse more tightly because a man of color is walking on the same side of the street, or when a Black person states an opinion and it is accepted as representative of all Black people, even if the claim is actually a deviation from the majority of opinions. These examples are perpetuated by stereotypes of how we expect members of an outgroup to behave combined with the propensity to believe that, unlike outgroups, our ingroup is not monolithic. By viewing our group membership as non-monolithic, we allow ourselves and the others in our ingroup a sense of individualism that we do not afford to those in outgroups. In an ingroup, since everyone is a member of the same group, it is simple to recognize that no one specific member should represent the entirety of the group. But this sense of individualism allows us to separate ourselves from any member of our ingroup that we may disagree with, while still blinding us to the fact that the same disagreements and differences may be taking place in an outgroup. For instance, a college student stereotyping all people lacking formal educations as “backward” and viewing this entire group as similarly inferior, yet thinking that their university peers are both different from them as well as dissimilar from one another. I have become much more aware of differences between members of the marginalized communities that I occupy (from instances like my “We Aren’t Done” presentation), and this awareness has pushed me to be even more conscious about avoiding generalizations of those belonging to other identity groups. Since I differ greatly from others within my same community based on sociopolitical perspectives, behaviors, and attitudes, why should I not expect the same from those in communities I do not belong to?
Ultimately, the outgroup homogeneity effect allows people belonging to certain social groups, identities, or demographics to make generalizations about others. Depending on the situation, this effect can take shape in forms as trivial as collegiate rivalries, or it can be as insidious and harmful as the continuation of structural oppression against marginalized communities. When considering intersectional feminism, monolith making is discouraged in order to preserve nuance: without the subtleties that characterize the differences between lived experiences of members of a marginalized community, my feminism cannot truly be intersectional and representative of everyone it claims to support. In practice, this means actively shirking stereotypes, even benevolent ones; challenging my own ingrained prejudices and problematic ways of thinking; prioritizing the voices of others, specifically other marginalized people, over my own voice; and actively listening to the experiences and thought processes of others in order to expand my understandings of the depth of other communities.
Through facilitating LGBT 101 and Safe Zone (and existing as an active member of many social justice communities), I have learned to preface or qualify nearly anything I say with a disclaimer that my experiences do not represent everyone in my community, but that they are still real, lived experiences that contribute to the depth and variety of individuals within the community. Understanding the toxicity of monoliths within my own identity groups, I am much more intentional in working to dismantle subconscious monoliths I make about communities outside of my own. Now, I actively acknowledge that monoliths contribute to the tokenization of marginalized people, and speak out when I hear others making generalizations about groups of people.
I am a single member of many communities, just as anyone else is. While we can all speak for ourselves about our own experiences and opinions, one person will never truly represent the entirety of a community, even if others outside of the community believe that they do. Without the voices of many to convey the diverse and rich narrative of these communities, monoliths that continue to harm the most vulnerable within marginalized communities will continue to grow, along with the threat of enduring systemic oppression.
Within the Classroom Artifacts: "We Aren't Done" LGBTQ+ rights presentation
Beyond the Classroom Artifacts: Planned Parenthood clinic greeting, Safe Zone Ally Workshop Evaluations |