I'm heading up to St. Louis tomorrow to attend a retirement dinner for a friend who was just 'retired' from TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name). When I was first hired by TCIDNN, he was my mentor. I continued to work for TCIDNN and he left the company twice to pursue other endeavors. How he came back to work for TCIDNN is an interesting story in itself but I'm not gonna relate it here. He's leaving again, albeit involuntarily, but he is getting full retirement and severance pay. And TCIDNN is giving him a retirement dinner and I'm attending.
I'm not writing anything this week after today and I see many lost opportunities. Monday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation was a target rich environement. I mean it was just begging for ridicule. There was the expected anti-gun editorial. Joseph Lowery wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed. And, I cannot leave out the incredibly funny column by that noted humorist Molly Ivins. She once again points out that the Israeli military offensive had no effect on Palestinian terrorism. Did I miss the reports of all the suicide bombings that have occured since the Israeli offensive? That Molly. What a kidder.
But I'm not gonna write about any of that stuff. Since I have to attend a Diversity Meeting today, I'd like to say a little bit about the full day Diversity Awareness Workshop I had to attend a few years ago.
If you read my LFQP blog from two days ago you might remember GOC's rule
of thumb about training sessions: If, when you walk into a classroom, the tables and/or chairs are in a horseshoe shape, you have a Ken and Barbie in the front of the room, and they call themselves facilitators, it's gonna be a long day. It was.
When I arrived and saw the danger signals, I had my action plan in place. I would sign the class roster and, at the first break, I would split. Alas, Ken and Barbie had safeguards in place. They would not allow us to sign the roster until after lunch. Hmmm. This Ken and Barbie team is smarter than the usual Ken and Barbie team. Curses! Foiled again!
Ken, who was very obviously gay, introduced himself and told us how much fun we were gonna have. Ken, ol buddy, you should never start off a class, uh, a workshop with a blatant lie. Barbie, introduced herself, and told us, with pride, that she was a New York Jew. Huh? What do we care? Maybe this was supposed to heighten our Diversity Awareness.
Our first exercise was to recall some time in our distant past where we had experienced the feeling of being different from others. We had to share this moment with the other members of the Workshop. I could think of some time in the current present. I felt different from anyone who thought this day wasn't gonna be a total waste of time. But, I played along, and shared my experience of being the first person in my second grade class to wear glasses, and being called four eyes by my classmates. I feel much better now that I've shared this experience. I understand how others must feel about being different. I see the light. I embrace Diversity. Can I leave now? No? Damn!
Nope. We have more to come. We have to see the visual about the purchasing power of various groups. These groups include:
So since all these groups have a lot of money, we should make sure we have people who look like them, selling products to them. Uh, excuse me, isn't this kinda like white people should only vote for white people, and black people should only vote for black people? Uh, Isn't this, like, racist (or sexist, or ageist)? No? Oh, this is Diversity. I understand now. Are we all done here? No? There's more?
Now it is time for the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes video. An elementary school teacher divided her class into two groups: blue eyes and brown eyes. (What she did with the green, gray, and black eyed kids wasn't mentioned.) One day the blue eyed kids had all the privileges and were able to look down on the brown eyed kids. The next day the roles were reversed. The kids were amazed at how bigoted they became. Wow! Bigotry is bad! I'll never be a bigot again! Are we done? Can I leave? There's more? Groan!
Yup. We gotta talk about stereotypes. Ken and Barbie put up this big poster that had various nationalities on it and we had to put our impressions of them by putting postit notes under each nationality. Example: Japanese...good at math. Chinese...bad drivers. I got a neat thing about stereotypes: In European Heaven the English are the police, the Germans are the mechanics, the French are the cooks, the Italians are the lovers, and the whole place is run by the Swiss. In European Hell, the English are the cooks, the Germans are the police, the Swiss are the lovers, the French are the mechanics, and the whole place is run by the Italians. Anyway...
And right here in mid-sentence, I have to go to my annual Diversity Awareness Meeting. I will have a summary of that when I finish this at home tonight.
I'm back, I got my SHTS done and I'm logging off and going home
(as I finish the sentence started before Diversity Meeting) ...Ken and Barbie inform us that all stereotypes are bad. OK Are we finally finished? Nope. Got to pull our chairs in a circle and summarize. About now, I'd like to take a chair and beat Ken and Barbie over the head, but if I did, I would probably have to go through this all over again for not valuing the worth of Diversity Awareness instructors.
At least there is some justice in the world. The Diversity Awareness Workshop that managers have to attend is two days long. Heh Heh Heh
But now things get real bizarre. Our annual Diversity Awareness Meeting today was conducted by one of our employees. I shall call him MC (Meeting Coordinator). I was gonna call him Meeting Facilitator, but didn't think MF was appropriate. He started off by telling us that he had asked our manager if he could do the Diversity Awareness Meeting today because Diversity was real important to him. As some of you may know or not know, I am gay. I'm sure you suspected as it's unusual to be over forty five years old and not be married.Uh Oh. I'm fifty five and not married. MC says I, that's stereotyping.Anyway, MC thanks for sharing. I didn't really want to know that and what's more, your sexual orientation is none of my goddamn business.
He then had to spend another fifteen minutes discussing about how things at TCIDNN had improved over the nineteen years he had worked for the company. And now he felt comfortable about being gay. Hey! What about me? I don't feel comfortable about you talking about being gay. It's none of my goddamn business!
And then.....He asked Are there any questions?And this little voice inside me was screaming NO! NO! Don't ask any questions! I'm begging you! Please! Please! No freaking questions! Stop! Stop! I give up! I can't take any more! No such luck. Someone asked another question. This led to another ten minutes of shit that I didn't care about.
Look. I don't care if you are black, white, red, purple, green, yellow or orange. I don't care if you are monosexual, bisexual, trisexual, or you perform disgusting acts involving a monkey and a football. I don't care if you're Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish or Islamic. There is a caveat here. You can't be the type of Muslim who's idea of a good time is killing himself (or herself) and taking a bunch of us with you. That's where I put my foot down. All I care about is can you do the job and carry your share of the load. Don't try to ram your beliefs down my throat.
Now we come to the high point of the meeting. MC introduces and then shows a fifty minute video about the life and times of Ruth Ellis. Ruth Ellis was born in 1899 and lived until 2000. And she was an inspiration because...she was Gay, she was Black, and she was Female. See she had to overcome three obstacles: homophobia, racism, and sexism. When I left the meeting I was truly inspired. I would really like to write a description of the video, and the effect it had on me, but I honestly could not do it justice. I guess one of the inspirational moments was when she was given an award at a Black History/Herstory Festival. MC told us she was all over the internet and, sho' nuff, I just did a Google search and the first hit had all sorts of info, including the name of the video Living With Pride: the Ruth Ellis Story.
So now I can value Diversity for another year. And I'm gonna go look for Ken and Barbie and tell them about Ruth Ellis.
They can add her video to their Workshop.
Posted by denny at May 15, 2002 12:47 PM