I've been developing a course on race/religion in antiquity and am currently reading through a book titled, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton University Press, 2004) by Benjamin Isaac. He has a very interesting section in the introduction on how prejudices continue to be propagated even in modern literature (as supposedly innocuous as a travel guide!). I hope to blog through some interesting points I come across as I read through this book and continue to develop my syllabus.
He cites what he names as a "random example" taken from the Michelin Guide to Venice (1st ed. 1996) that says the following [with bold print and italics from original text]:
To stereotype the flavour of Venice would be detrimental to the magic of the place and offensive to her proud inhabitants. The Venetian is born with a positive outlook on life that is maintained by an imperturbable nature in which emotional involvement is tempered, in a very gentlemanly manner, by a certain indifference to anything that lies beyond the lagoon. This leads to him being noticeably predisposed to being tolerant, an innate quality acquired from a knowledge of different peoples distilled over the centuries. The blend of an almost Anglo-saxon [sic!] aplomb with boundless and all-embracing curiosity renders this personality even more fascinating.
It may be a random example, but Benjamin's comments are helpful: "This continues for half a page. It is a good example, because the authors are demonstrably unaware that they are spouting stereotypes—which they claim to reject. It is interesting that the rejection of stereotyping in the first sentence itself is justified by a stereotype: to stereotype Venetians would be offensive to those proud people, it is claimed, as if it is legitimate to stereotype the inhabitants of a town without magic, provided its inhabitants are not proud. Venetians are born with a positive outlook on life and tend to be tolerant because they dispose of a reservoir of knowledge accumulated over the centuries. This betrays confusion between acquired and inherited characters, comparable with what we encounter in many ancient texts."
Benjamin warns that even a "positive" stereotype is damaging in its propagation of prejudices.