1This article traces the process that led, over a short period (1954-1966), to a complete reversal in judgments about the athletic achievements of Black runners. As East African runners gained prominence as athletes, the previous racializing stereotypes used to explain their inferiority were replaced by new stereotypes that referred to their physiology and environment to explain their success. The article shows that, throughout this process, observers interpreted the athletic achievements of African runners by ascribing them to a certain group without ever challenging prejudice regarding the physical otherness of the Black body.
2Until the 1950s, running was considered the preserve of European and North American athletes of European origin, who dominated in all distances, from the shortest sprint to the marathon (Amini 2009). Jesse Owens’ performance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics was interpreted as a strictly individual exception, and Black athletes were not taken seriously in long-distance running. It was only in sprinting, a discipline supposed to require “natural” qualities, that they were slowly being perceived as threatening in the United States (Jobert 2006). As for indigenous athletes in the European colonies, they were at best considered “noble savages” (Charitas 2017). David Lewis (1974) provides a good example of this stereotype in a description that most likely refers (Cobley 2017) to Kenyan Lazaro Chepkwony’s six-mile race on July 9, 1954, at the White City Stadium in London:
When every now and then, some benevolent colonial administrator recommended that one of his boys be shipped out to run around a real European track made of cinders, spectators knew full well what to expect of the lad. And he seldom let them down. He would line up at the start of a middle- or long-distance race and when the gun went off, more often than not, he would bolt like a jackrabbit down the track, opening a gap of 30 to 40 yards over his most “serious” White rivals. They usually left him to it, secure in the knowledge that he would only last a couple of laps before dropping back and disappearing into the rear of the field. Eventually, he would be lapped, and often, looking cold and unhappy and a long way from home, he would drop out. The African was the clown at the court of the European athlete.
3In the 1950s, at a time when colonialism was becoming increasingly difficult to justify, it was important for the dominant group of European nations to maintain clear distinctions between the capabilities of racial groups. Sports served this purpose. In long-distance and middle-distance races, David Lewis reports, “where such quintessentially ‘British’ traits as discipline, strength of character, foresight and reserve were at a premium, the ebullient front-running of the Africans seemed clearly ridiculous” (Lewis 1974). Here, racial prejudice based on the perceived physical otherness of Black people was expressed through negative stereotypes such as impulsiveness, a lack of tactical intelligence, and the inability to sustain a prolonged physical effort.
4A logical consequence of this stereotype was the sincere surprise that greeted the victory of Ethiopian Abebe Bikila in the 1960 Olympic marathon. As an African, Bikila was not supposed to be capable of such a feat, let alone of setting a new Olympic record. Like Jesse Owens a few decades before, his success could only be explained by individual factors, and all the usual stereotypical traits ascribed to other Black athletes remained unchallenged. Later, as African runners began to win other international races, their victories became less surprising, but they generated growing perplexity until a new explanation emerged to account for the long-distance running abilities of Black athletes, giving rise to a stereotype better suited to the new situation.
5After his Olympic medal in Rome, Abebe Bikila was invited to run other marathons. In 1961, he competed in only a few races, but he won them all: Athens, Osaka, and Kosice. In 1962, the Ethiopian authorities decided to send two runners, instead of one, to compete on the European circuit. In Malmö, Bikila won the one-hour race, and in Berlin, at the ISTAF, Mamo Wolde won his first international ten-kilometer race, with Bikila coming in second. Throughout the season, the world of track and field discovered that Bikila was not the only African long-distance runner who could reach the podium.
6Shortly afterward, Bikila ran with Wolde in Copenhagen, first in the one-hour race, then in the twenty-kilometer race, where they finished first and second both times. Bikila then returned to Ethiopia, and Wolde went on to compete in Oslo, where he finished third in one ten-kilometer race and first in another in Brussels. The Ethiopian runners proved during this European tour that they were equally prepared to win ten-kilometer and one-hour races as longer marathons.
7As for Kenyan athletes, for years they had competed in the regional East African Championships (EAC) without dominating their neighbors. Starting in 1961, and seemingly spurred by Bikila’s victory, they reached the highest step of the podium for the first time in all EAC track and field events: sprint, middle-distance and long-distance races, hurdles, jumps, and throws. The EAC championship only pitted them against Tanzania and Uganda, but these results boosted their confidence, a key factor in competitive sports.
8In November 1962, the British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Perth, Australia. A few days before these games, Kip Keino ran a two-mile race in his very first international meet, where he finished third behind a British athlete and the Australian Ron Clarke, who would in the next years become a serious rival of the Kenyans. In the Commonwealth Games, Kenyan Seraphino Antão, a member of the Indian community from Goa, won gold medals in the 100- and 200-yard dash. Another Kenyan sprinter, Kimaru Songok, took the bronze in the 400 m hurdles, but the rest of the Kenyan delegation was not yet able to challenge their foreign competitors: Keino finished eleventh in the three-mile race, immediately behind Aere Anentia. In 1962, Kenya was far from being an international threat in middle-distance, let alone in long-distance running.
9In the meantime, the Ethiopians were back on the international circuit. In 1963, Mamo Wolde broke new ground by taking part in two cross-country events in Spain (Juan Muguerza and San Sebastian), becoming the first international winner of one of them and the first East African to win the other. In March, he competed in the United States and won the Hyde Shoe AA race in Cambridge (MA), while Bikila took third place. They both lined up for the Boston marathon where Bikila finished fifth and Wolde twelfth. At this point, Ethiopian long-distance runners could no longer be considered “unknown runners,” and surprise was no longer the appropriate response to their good results.
10In August 1964, at the East African Championship (EAC), Kenya won its first international medals as a newly independent country. Naftali Temu, a new Kenyan runner, appeared in the ten-kilometer race and went on to win the six-mile in another meet, qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics. In these Olympics held a few months later, in October 1964, Kenya only won one medal (in the 800 m) and Ethiopia another one (in the marathon). This could not be described as an East African landslide, nor even domination in any specific track event. Kip Keino faced strong international competitors and only finished fifth in the 5,000 m race, failing to qualify in the 1,500 m. However, Abebe Bikila’s gold medal in the marathon caused a sensation: for the first time in the history of the Olympics, an athlete had won two consecutive marathons. Back in Ethiopia, he was promoted to captain and hailed as a demigod: his exploits were sung; copies of his portrait circulated among the population; artists drew inspiration from his achievements; and he became a role model for young boys who started to train in long-distance running. The status granted locally to marathon races, and more specifically Olympic marathons, was further reinforced by his second Olympic medal. Outside Ethiopia, Bikila’s prestige spread throughout the continent, as had already been the case after his victory in Rome. He was elected “Most Popular African of the Year” by the Jeune Afrique magazine (Tamini 2004).
11During this period, all Black nations felt deeply concerned by South African apartheid, which reminded them of their own struggles for independence from colonialism. In 1962, an anti-racist South-African sports association submitted a motion to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) requesting the expulsion of South Africa from the 1964 Olympics. After much resistance, the IOC finally excluded South Africa from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. This campaign confirmed the conservative stance of the IOC, as well as awareness of the new power of African nations, whose lobbying had been decisive.
12Following Kenyan achievements at the 1962 Commonwealth Games, military athletes gained prominence in the country by winning titles in East African competitions. Independence was being negotiated at the time and would be achieved in December 1963. In the first months of 1962, the soldier Kipchoge Keino was officially “scouted” during a track and field meet within the Kenyan police. He was then promoted physical education instructor at the Kiganjo Police Academy, following the same trajectory as Arere Anentia, a fellow Kenyan, a few years before. In this position, Keino embarked on a middle-distance training regimen and more regularly competed at higher levels (Noronha 1970) under a form of disguised professionalism (as a state athlete) similar to Soviet and Ethiopian practices at the time. All the Kenyan winners of Olympic medals in 1964 (Wilson Kiprugut) and 1968 (Kipchoge Keino, Naftali Temu, Amos Kipwabok Biwott, and Benjamin Jipcho), without exception, were serving in the Kenyan armed forces or national police. If there was a tribe to which all these runners belonged, it was the tribe of uniforms, military barracks, national anthems, and salutes to the flag, exactly like their Ethiopian counterparts.
13Patriotism was one of the main motivations of the Kenyan athletes who served in uniform in the Kenyan army or police. Instead of viewing African runners through ethnicist and culturalist interpretive frameworks, the strongly political and patriotic motivations of this first generation of athletes must be acknowledged. As Bale and Sang (1996) write: “Each title won by a Kenyan in the major championships is a triumph for his or her compatriots at home. In mimicking their former oppressors, however, they now dominate them.” For Kenyan runners, political motivation grew out of Bikila’s Olympic medal, fueled by the fight against apartheid, and reinforced by the struggle for independence.
14The growing perception that a homogeneous group of African runners dominated track competitions hid the historical reality that athletic achievements did not always fit the caricature. Individuals achieved varying degrees of successful and consistent results and were thus normal athletes who experienced a mixture of victories and defeats. During the 1960s and 1970s, Ethiopian and Kenyan runners did not clearly and completely dominate their sport but rather had the normal results of a group of challengers who were gaining experience and confidence. Compared to the new stereotype that was progressively emerging (that would ultimately portray them as “naturally advantaged”), their athletic achievements were much more nuanced and simply reflected a slow and steady improvement throughout this period.
15Back in the 1950s, there were virtually no long-distance runners in Kenya or Ethiopia. People were certainly running, but only a handful participated in athletic competitions. Nyandika Maiyoro (Kenya) started competing in 1951, Wami Biratu (Ethiopia) in 1953, Arere Anentia (Kenya) in 1956 (Tamini 2003-4). These runners remain pioneers rather than role models. None of them won a title or a medal of any real symbolic value. Their level as runners was not high enough to achieve more than a bronze medal in the six-mile race at the 1958 Commonwealth Games (Anentia) and a bronze medal in the three-mile race of the 1960 Welsh Games (Maiyoro). Wami Biratu did not enter a single race outside his country during this period. Kenyan and Ethiopian runners remained at this level until Abebe Bikila’s victory in the 1960 Olympic marathon.
16It has often been said that Kenyans and Ethiopians did not dominate international meets before the 1960s because they did not have access to competitions. However, this idea does not stand up to historical sources showing that the reason why the first Ethiopian and Kenyan runners, who participated in international competitions before the 1960s, did not win the highest titles was simply because they were not good enough.
17It takes time to produce champions, mainly because, in Africa as elsewhere, athletic performance depends on many factors. One of the factors most difficult to control is the social perception of the distribution of skills between communities and nationalities: who is perceived as legitimate in the role of winner, challenger, and outsider (Schotté 2015). This prejudice creates, on the one hand, expectations and confidence, and on the other, barriers and the idea that “it’s not for us” or “they are too strong,” until the day an outsider breaks the glass ceiling and dares to win, as was the case for Abebe Bikala at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. Bikila’s feat served as a catalyst for national initiatives in Kenyan and Ethiopian sports, which had begun independently of each other in the 1950s (Gaudin 2022).
18From 1960 onward, these dynamics influenced and stimulated each other, creating a multiplying effect that led to an improvement in the achievements of runners in both countries. The rise of East African runners also owes much to the technical contribution of the “major” nations in track and field. Coaches and specialists from countries that dominated the sport at the time shared their technical expertise with Kenya and Ethiopia. Sweden’s Onni Niskannen coached Bikila for the Rome Olympics and continued to coach him and Mamo Wolde along with their teammates until the 1976 Montreal Olympics. British coach John Velzian undeniably contributed his expertise to Kenyan track by coaching the runners (Kip Keino, Ben Kogo, Naftali Temu, Wilson Kiprugut, and Daniel Rudisha) who would go on to win Olympic medals. He notably served as a national coach for Kenyan delegations competing abroad. Bale and Sang (1996) consider him the main architect of the growth of Kenyan track and field.
19Apart from these full-time coaches, other specialists would come occasionally, mostly to Kenya, but sometimes also to Ethiopia, to lead training camps or practice sessions. Bale and Sang mention several European and North American champions of both national and Olympic fame. Some of them, such as Mal Whitfield, were Black and came on a mission to support their African “brothers.” In Kenya, most of these training sessions were organized among the police force, correctional officers, and the armed forces, since all runners at the time were housed and paid by these government agencies.
20When training sessions were led by Olympic champions and coaches of the national teams of leading countries, valuable skills were transferred, and the local teams improved more rapidly than with the previous colonial technical support from physical education teachers, religious missionaries, or provincial administrators. From the second half of the 1950s onward, this world-class technical assistance provided Kenyan runners, and to a lesser degree, Ethiopian runners, with the most advanced techniques in track and field in the world.
21In the first half of the 1960s, the growing achievements of Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes broke the stereotype that Blacks were unsuited for endurance running. This empirical contradiction became increasingly obvious and was regularly confirmed as the athletes won new titles. However, the facts only contradicted the stereotype of unsuitability, and not the prejudice of physical otherness: the belief in the biological otherness of a minoritized group remained unchallenged and thus required a new stereotype. The idea according to which prejudice and stereotypes are undoubtedly linked (Salès-Vuillemin 2006) reaches a new level of complexity in this case.
22In the mid-1960s, it took some time for a new stereotype about Black athletes to emerge and be formulated. Sports commentators were highly constrained by a discursive framework that required them to avoid justifications that could be qualified as racist (Van Sterkenburg 2011). Since the introduction of the principle of equality in the founding texts of our democracies, racial considerations had lost their moral, legal, and political legitimacy and had become taboo, at least in public circles. Thus, the new discourse on racial differences, in this case in distance running, could only be expressed in public if it was based on arguments originating from a strong and legitimate institution. The sports world traditionally called on the scientific community, and more specifically the medical and life sciences, to provide a scientific basis for their explanations. Scientific, or seemingly scientific, arguments had to be found to validate the belief that certain populations were biologically endowed with specific physical characteristics that allowed them to be more successful in certain sports. This reasoning, because it was based on the life sciences, was particularly in line with the traditional and visceral aversion of all major sports organizations to anything related to politics (Defrance 2000).
23When African runners were considered “clowns” by European commentators, this stereotype was only the latest manifestation of the standard stereotypes of inferiority imposed on all Black athletes. Following a tradition dating back nearly two centuries, these commentators drew from the biological and medical sciences (Peiretti-Courtis 2021) to find evidence for the supposed otherness of Blacks. They notably found proof in anatomical features such as the size of Black athletes’ heel bone, the thickness of the pads on their feet, the thinness of their thighs (Wiggins 1989), and then in the 1950s, in mysterious “black chromosomes” (Martin-Breteau 2020). When Ethiopian, and later Kenyan runners started winning races they were not supposed to win, the entire pseudo-scientific rhetoric about the effect of supposed anatomical differences on the distribution of skills between races was challenged. Justifications for the “speed of Blacks” versus the “endurance of whites,” such as the unequal distribution of “fast” and “slow” muscle fibers between these groups, which were once fashionable, had to be reexamined and quickly buried. Anatomy in general was losing ground in this debate., and when altitude began to be presented as an explanation, a more complex scientific discipline—physiology—was introduced.
24Because of the difficulty of articulating complex scientific explanations, notably relating to altitude or physiological differences between human populations, sports commentators introduced formulations that were less explicit, progressively using evocations, innuendoes, and insinuations, without much concern for logical rigor. This resulted in comments full of misunderstandings, approximations, and misinterpretations. However, scientific approximations and logical flaws were not a concern because in sports reporting, the expression of emotions always prevails over rational argument.
25When, in 1963, the IOC awarded the 1968 Olympics to Mexico City, the city’s altitude became the subject of heated debate. At that time, scientific knowledge on the topic was not as precise as it is today, but during the 1955 Pan-American Games, also held in Mexico City, observers had noticed that altitude had an impact on performance and that race times were slower (Wrynn 2006). In its bid to host the Olympics, the Mexican organizing committee focused on health rather than performance, rightly arguing that after a short period of adaptation, the athletes’ health would not be affected in any way (Wrynn 2006). For the IOC, altitude as such was not the major concern; at the time, the main issue for the institution was to maintain the athletes’ amateur status.
26In 1963, for the third year in a row, Ethiopian runners Wolde and Bikila competed on the European circuit. In Spain, Wolde won the Juan Muguerza International Cross-country Race for the second time (Bikila came in third) and the San Sebastian Cross-country Race (Bikila finished twenty-first). These repeated Ethiopian performances resonated with the Olympic debate about altitude, and observers started making connections between Ethiopia’s high altitude and that of Mexico City. The first premise of this reasoning was that lowlanders suffer from hypoxia (mountain sickness) when they travel to high altitudes. The second was that high-altitude runners win long-distance races. By combining these two claims, the unfounded conclusion was reached that highlanders had a clear advantage over lowlanders when competing in low-lying areas.
27From a physiological perspective, this reasoning is flawed: it is not altitude itself, but the change in altitude that causes an increase in the number of red blood cells in an individual’s blood and thus, potentially, an improvement in athletic performance. East African runners who were born, grew up, and spent their entire lives at a high altitude did not experience any change in altitude, and therefore no hypoxic stress. They also did not have a higher red blood cell count than people living at lower altitudes. This was confirmed by the hematology research of Cynthia Beall (2002), a world-renowned expert on the subject.
28From an empirical point of view, the reasoning behind the altitude effect would also later be contradicted by the facts at the 1968 Mexico Olympics, when a low-altitude runner, the Tunisian Mohamed Gammoudi, won a long-distance race (the 5,000 m) at an altitude of 2,450 meters, ahead of two high-altitude runners, the Kenyans Kip Keino and Neftali Temu.
29However, in 1964, a scientific article published by two physiologists who studied the 1955 Pan-American Games claimed that “some athletes collapsed or lost consciousness” due to the altitude in Mexico City (Wrynn 2006). Concerns about the difficulties low-altitude athletes would face at the upcoming Olympics further intensified when the IOC announced that the Olympic equestrian events would not be held in Mexico City, but in a lower-altitude venue due to the possible effect of altitude on horses (Wrynn 2006).
30While competing on the Scandinavian circuit, Kip Keino created a surprise, finishing second in the 5,000 m race at the Helsinki International meet, ahead of Ron Clarke. Two days later, in Turku, he beat Clarke again, winning another 5,000 m, before winning a 1,500 m in Kiskon two days later. He then lost to Clarke in Stockholm, finishing second in the 5,000 m. With these achievements, the Kenyan element was added to the equation linking altitude to African runners. Ethiopians were not the only skilled high-altitude runners; Kenyans also came from a high-altitude country and were leaving their mark.
31Observers searching for potential justifications to explain the new rise of long-distance runners from the same region overlooked several essential factors: the runners were Black in a sector (sports) polarized by race (and by issues of collective representation); they were soldiers (and therefore patriots) belonging to countries that had scores to settle with European countries; and they were neighbors competing in a regional rivalry. International commentators preferred to focus on another common feature: they all came from high-altitude countries. While the newfound discourse on altitude provided a ready-made explanation, Kip Keino’s intrusion into the world of track and field reinforced the hypothesis that mountain people had a little advantage due to altitude. However, on July 14, 1965, Australian runner Ron Clarke rose to the challenge and set a new ten-kilometer world record in Oslo, one of the 18 world records of his career. He confirmed that a runner from a lower altitude could be superior to any others, East Africans included, in distance running.
32As the Mexico Olympics approached, scientific research into altitude stepped up in several developed countries. The 1968 Olympics attracted the largest number of doctors and physiologists ever assembled at an athletic event. In the years leading up to the Olympics, a series of research projects were conducted on the effects of high altitude, using athletes as guinea pigs. In addition to this research, scientists, coaches, and athletes debated on the best training methods for high-altitude competitions (Wrynn 2006). All these efforts had one thing in common: they focused on low-altitude athletes and concerned acclimatization, which is the time needed for low-altitude athletes to adjust to hypoxia and achieve at high altitude the same performances reached at low altitude (Kasperowski 2009). The conclusions of these studies varied, ranging from three weeks to more than three months, but the debate was obstructed by the IOC, which considered that Olympic athletes, as amateurs, could not stay away from work for more than four weeks. None of the studies investigated athletes living at high altitudes, because everyone assumed that they would be at an advantage in Mexico City compared to athletes from the lowlands, even after these had acclimatized.
33White runners became even more uneasy when a Moroccan runner, Ben Assou El Ghazi, also a member of the armed forces of another newly independent African country, won the 1966 International Cross Country Championship ahead of an Irishman and an American (The Glasgow Herald, March 21, 1966). This unknown runner was a new African competitor, but from another African country. When sports journalists discovered that the Moroccans had been training in Ifrane at an altitude of 1,665 meters, they made an even stronger connection between African long-distance runners and altitude.
34Around that time, an international symposium on the effects of altitude on physical performance was organized in the United States, and its final recommendations were sent to the IOC, with the aim of softening their strict position by recommending an acclimatization period of four to six weeks (Kasperowski 2009). However, the president of the IOC, Avery Brundage, maintained his previous position and, in April 1966, decided that no athlete should spend more than four weeks in a training camp in the three months preceding the Games.
35Two years before the Olympics, the future looked bleak for white cross-country runners: most of them were low-altitude runners who, according to the recommendations of the best scientists of the time, required a longer period of acclimatization than what the IOC authorized. New challengers from African countries kept appearing in international races and were increasingly winning or reaching the podium. In April 1966, British athletes expressed their concern in a letter published by The Times, in which they accused high-altitude athletes of having an unfair advantage and demanded that all Olympic long-distance races be moved to a low-altitude venue (Kasperowski 2009).
36However, in 1966, even though East African runners were winning races, their domination was not yet overwhelming, and their opponents still believed in their own chances, even if some of them were beginning to have doubts. This was the case for Britain’s Alan Simpson, who, in 1967, admitted to using drugs before the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, where he finished second to Kip Keino in the one-mile race (Noronha 1970). He stated: “At the time, all I could think and talk about was Kip Keino, the flying cop from Kenya. No one gave me a chance of beating him.”
37When in August 1966, Keino arrived at the Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica, his reputation was well established. It grew even greater after he won the one-mile and three-mile races, just ahead of Ron Clarke in the second race, setting a new Commonwealth Games record along the way. During these Games, Ron Clarke also lost the six-mile race to another Kenyan runner, Naftali Temu, who was still mostly unknown. This defeat had a major impact on the world of athletics (Ndoo 1974), because it revealed that Keino was not the only top-level Kenyan runner and it reinforced the impression that a wave of African challengers were invading track events worldwide. As David Lewis (1974) wrote:
Somehow, just a dozen years after Dr. Bannister set that most celebrated of all athletics records [the mile in under 4 minutes], the African athlete was no longer a clown. A bewildered Western public watched the jester usurp the throne of their gentleman amateur princes, and they stopped laughing at him. A proud procession of black distance runners marched into the holy places where the white man celebrated his sporting rites, invaded them and took up residence there.
38One month after the Commonwealth Games, Roger Bannister, now a doctor, published an article in the New York Times predicting the collapse of distance runners in Mexico City. Of course, he was referring to low-altitude runners, and implicitly to white runners. According to him, high-altitude runners had an advantage at both high and low altitude. As an example, he mentioned the victory of Naftali Temu (a Kenyan) over Clarke (an Australian) at sea-level in Kingston, Jamaica, and Bikila’s two Olympic gold medals in the marathon won at low altitude, before concluding: “How far have we come from true sport?” (1966). From then on, the situation was clear: high-altitude athletes, who were considered to have a natural advantage, did not deserve any merit. The stereotype became that East African athletes had a “natural” athletic superiority, based on a hypothetical biological adaptation to altitude that gave them an advantage perceived as unfair by their opponents. The new stereotype had taken root and was clearly serving its purpose, since it still circulates today and continues to give legitimacy to the belief in the fundamental otherness of Black people.
- 1 All quotations from French authors have been translated into English by the translator unless other (...)
39This episode in the history of track and field illustrates Schadron’s (2006) observation that “the impact of racial stereotypes stems from the implicit belief that negative characteristics attributed to a race are caused by an underlying factor associated with that race.”1 In this case, racial prejudice rooted in the perceived physical otherness of Black runners remained constant while the stereotypes used to explain this otherness evolved: the underlying differences were first considered anatomical, then physiological, and finally environmental. The prejudice regarding the specific nature of the Black body endured even as the stereotype historically supporting it was refuted by athletic results that defied its expectations. Thus, a new stereotype emerged, in complete opposition to the previous one: the Black runner, once considered unfit for endurance racing, became the unbeatable long-distance runner. The physical otherness of Black people remained unquestioned throughout, as if an African, and more generally a Black individual, could never be assessed on the same terms as a white person. In one case, athletic success was attributed to the athlete’s individual merit; in the other, to the stereotypical characteristics of the athlete’s group. This reveals that the function of the stereotype is to give outward expression to a prejudice that justifies an unequal social order. It confirms Macé’s (2024) observation that “social inequalities produce hierarchies which stereotypes then explain and legitimize—by reversing their causes—as products of differences rather than of a dispute.”
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