Intersections: The media exhibit the psychology of group-think

There are many reasons why being in Michigan lately has been exciting and important, but last week, the presidential debates and the primary overshadowed my adjustments to having moved across the country to an environment that commands something different from living in perpetually sunny Southern California.

After Bernie Sanders won Michigan, the media and its pundits were whipped into a frenzy, touting shock and confusion of how Arab and Muslim Americans — who constitute a healthy portion of the population in metro Detroit — could have supported a candidate who is Jewish.

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The only way it felt appropriate to respond was to ask: Why wouldn’t they? Why do we so easily fall into these polarizing traps set up by mainstream media that paint and pit two communities against each other and then accept the idea as truth?

To assume anti-Semitism on behalf of an entire, very large population is not just irresponsible, but as the International Business Times wrote, “Reveals how much reporting on American Muslims is still rooted in an unsophisticated naiveté about what motivates them.”

Some stereotypes are rooted in some truths, and we are all guilty of using them, but the bottom line is that they are simple. They require no effort, no investigation or curiosity. They require us to take something that applies to a few people and assume it then applies to millions.

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They also fit black-and-white narratives that the media thrives on, the kind that brings in clicks and, in turn, revenue, the kind that sets an always-extreme tone for the public, and leads to a host of many other problems.

However, this isn’t just a media problem, it’s a human problem. My reading about the psychology behind stereotyping led me to an almost 20-year-old Psychology Today article written by Annie Murphy Paul in 1998 that revealed more about it.

“Humans, like other species, need to feel that they are part of a group, and as villages, clans and other traditional groupings have broken down, our identities have attached themselves to ambiguous classifications, such as race and class,” Murphy wrote. “We want to feel good about the group we belong to — and one way of doing so is to denigrate all those who aren’t in it.”

This happens everywhere, between everyone, and I know for a fact that it happens all the time in Glendale — all you have to do is join a Glendale-oriented Facebook page group, or sometimes, read the comments left on the Glendale News-Press site, to get an idea of the stereotyping often directed toward the Armenian-American community.

I am not someone who gets offended easily, and I really do believe in the power of self-examination. Being critical of your own community is healthy, and I partake in it frequently, but sometimes I struggle with reading the often unjust, discriminatory commentary directed toward a group of people I am ethnically linked with.

It just reveals what narrow lenses many people who choose to project hate are looking through — and it makes the hard work of bridging communities together even harder.

This is also not to say that being part of a minority exempts that group from falling back on stereotypes, or discriminating, either. One recent example was a startling incident that occurred just before I left L.A. A man aggressively confronted me in person about a column I wrote and advised me that someone who is Armenian should never defend Muslims.

I was uncomfortable and extremely angry, but there is no point in communicating with people who are living in a bubble from another time.

There is a lot of historical and political context to this statement that I can’t possibly unpack in this column. Regardless of that, I’m living in the present, in the United States, in 2016, with people of all backgrounds, orientations and religions.

I grew up among many very different kinds of people. I have good friends who come from all parts of the world, I have met so many diverse communities during my reporting trips in the United States and beyond — I’ve hung out with people ranging from Mongolian shamans to Yazidi farmers to black midwives.

I am done with these antiquated, outdated, racist, ignorant ways of thinking from all sides. I fail to understand how we can grow if we continue upholding these narrow ideologies and stereotypes without widening our perspectives and experiences and doing what humans are supposed to do best: communicating.

A few days after the primary was over, I drove to southwest Michigan to meet members of a Native-American tribe who are dealing with a very serious environmental issue for a story I’m working on. The tribe, I was told, is combating the issue now because they like to think seven generations ahead, they know that what they do now is going to impact those who come after them. I think there’s a lot to be learned from this philosophy, for all of us.

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LIANA AGHAJANIAN is a Los Angeles-based journalist whose work has appeared in L.A. Weekly, Paste magazine, New America Media, Eurasianet and The Atlantic. She may be reached at liana.agh@gmail.com.