Sometimes stereotypes can be unbearable
A WHILE BACK I browsed the Internet and noticed another hard-hitting online news story about how bears are, for all intents and purposes, addicted to scratching their backs on trees. The author said that a bear scratching his back on a tree was a “bear necessity.”
Big joke. Ha! Ha! And just like that another bear-related stereotype was perpetuated.
Maybe I’m getting a bit too sensitive here, but I think all these stereotypes attached to bears have kept our two cultures suspicious of each other. More than that, they cause misunderstandings – and it’s not good to have a misunderstanding with a bear.
Tell me all you like that this is not a problem, but all I know is these stereotypes surface almost every time someone mentions bears.
Don’t pretend you haven’t heard them.
Bears always visit the dump. Bears eat garbage. Bears love blueberries. Bears hibernate. Bears climb trees. Bears cannot run downhill. Bears are great wrestlers. Bears like to break into houses and eat porridge and sleep in your bed. Bears will steal
your picnic baskets. Bears prefer names like Baloo, Yogi or Ben. Bears like to hug. And so it goes.
I’m not making this up, people. These thoughts are out there.
But we rarely consider that all these stereotypes are harmful and unfair to the self-esteem of those bears. More than that, they make us look like uneducated rubes.
Let’s look at it from their perspective for once.
I mean, you might think you are being kind by walking up to a bear and offering it a hug and a picnic basket but in reality you are telling that bear that you have bought into the stereotype. And that’s just hurtful.
OK, I only mention this because if you have thought similar thoughts you are probably spending too much time, as I have this week, in a tree stand or ground blind waiting for a buck that might never show.
Having wasted your brain power on things such as bear stereotypes is undeniable proof that your mind has run out of interesting things to think about while you are waiting for a buck to make an appearance.
Before you arrive at the bear stereotype issue, you have probably already examined issues like, “Are there are any squirrels with nut allergies?” Or, “If you are a blue jay do you have to be a fan of Toronto’s baseball team? And what about cardinals? Or cubs?”
You might also have wondered what normal folks are doing right now or how you would explain yourself to aliens if they landed a spacecraft near you and then asked why you were sitting all alone 15 feet up in a tree. And then you’d wonder if you would have a hard time convincing them that you were not being punished? And once you did that, you would also have to explain why you are wearing hunter orange while trying to remain unnoticed.
Eventually, however, it all comes down to the bears. Thoughts on bears and how they suffer from our human stereotypes are generally the last thing I think about before I realize that maybe I ought to bring a book next time.
That’s not to say that all these mind games should be trivialized.
For instance, is thinking about stereotypes and how they affect us important?
To that I say, “Does a bear crap in the woods?”