What is Stereotype Threat?
In explaining what “stereotype threat” means near the book’s opening, the author makes a comparison to the—hopefully gone and done with—days of racial bans on public facilities and then extends that to wrap it in a metaphor of inescapable paranoia:
“It is a threat that, like the swimming pool restrictions, is tied to an identity…that follows members of the stereotyped group…like a balloon over their heads.”
Mythologically Hard
Just how hard is it to break the chain of stereotypical thinking? As difficult as the most impossible punishment in the history of ancient myth:
“Disproving a stereotype is a Sisyphean task.”
“We’re a nation of segregators.”
The metaphor of America the racially separator does not refer to enforced segregation, but rather the effects of mobility and the natural desire to be around others who resemble yourself. The ultimate effect is to create without intent self-segregated zones.
Contingency
“identity threat is not the threat of prejudice alone; it’s the threat of continencies.”
By framing identity threat within the construct of this metaphor, the author is suggesting that key to instilling that balloon which follows one around is not just a display of prejudice toward them based on stereotyping, but the specific context of that impact. Manifestation of bias, after all, can result in positive reactions by the victim as well as negative. It is when the result is a negative reaction that identity threat is engendered.
Where's the Threat
The engages a particularly unpleasant metaphor to expand upon what is describe as the diffuse quality of identity threat. It is not always a sharp-edged or starkly defined concern. The quality of the threat varies depending the contingency but also on the person who may fall victim to the contingency. This diffuse quality is thus said to be:
“like a snake loose in the house…where will the snake be…how hard its bite?”
