But that's not what she says, her problem isn't that she doesn't like Marvel Cinematic Universe but that she feels that she doesn't have much in common with people of other races.
I think that's stretching it. What she said is she doesn't feel like she has much in common with these particular people, not people of other races in general.
Most "engineering-types" would probably feel the exact same way if they were asked to join the sales team at their company. Talk about culture shock...
Seems quite prejudiced of her to simply look at her colleagues skin color and assume that she doesn't have much in common with them. Unless by "much" she means "her skin color", but that seems even more racist. I'll give the article the benefit of the doubt.
What makes you feel that she is making this judgement based on skin color? From my reading it sounds like she tried going to lunch with her coworkers and the conversations that naturally came up were not of interest to her.
Cry me a river. Honestly, you're not going to share interests with everyone.
I'm a white guy. If I go to lunch with a bunch of manager or sales guys, and they start talking about sports, I'm going to have exact same problem. I don't give two shits about sports, and I think spectator sports are incredibly stupid. So if I find myself in a group of sports fans, then I'm also going to feel that I don't have much in common with these people. Does that mean they're a bunch of racists? Obviously not; we simply don't share the same culture. If the conversation shifts to technology, or sci-fi, or Game of Thrones (a lot of people are into that these days), etc., then I'll be able to join in, but if the sports fans aren't into talking about that stuff over lunch, then I'm out of luck. I'm not going to whine much about it, except maybe for making some snide remarks about how stupid sports fans are, but I'm certainly not going to go on a crusade about it.
Luckily, I usually get along pretty well with coworkers this way, but I guess engineers tend not to be sports fanatics as much as the general population. But I certainly have found myself in situations with groups of people with very different interests than myself. I didn't make a big deal out of it; I know that my interests are a little more narrow and that I eschew many things that regular people like (sports, popular TV shows aside from GoT), so I try to find people I do share interests with.
Maybe the point then is that if we are aiming for diversity, then we aim for diversity: come out of your own comfort zone and get to know something or someone that feels uncomfortably foreign, try to appreciate this for what it is. It applies as much for "engineering-types" getting to know "sales-types" as it is for people of different racial heritages.
Why should we expect "diversity" to have an appended, "as long as I'm comfortable with that"? Why do we struggle so much with what's "normative"? Why not treat this as an adventure, something unexpected and unknown to explore?
Another aspect of this is that, I think people want to feel like they are part of the team, working together towards a common goal. If what bonds the team are the things they like or dislike, that's a pretty weak team. Shouldn't the common goal that binds the team together be the product or features the are working on? Isn't that the point of company culture -- not to homogenize everyone, but to gel the team? (See: http://the-programmers-stone.com/ )
How about no? If I'm in a group of sports fans, then no, I really don't give a shit about getting to know about how these stupid teams are doing this season. If you have an interest in something, great, but don't expect me to give two shits about it. If I have an interest, I'll let you know, if not, I'll just politely decline.
This doesn't mean that the minority person can't ask, "hey, does anyone follow XYZ?". He might be surprised. But if not, don't expect everyone to have or feign an interest.
And surely, in a team of technologists, they can find something that they're all interested in and can talk about. Maybe something to do with, oh, I don't know, maybe technology? I have conversations at work all the time like that (luckily I work with some really smart people at my current job), about future trends in tech, etc. But I've worked with some dullards in the past, and I didn't get butt-hurt that they didn't want to talk about sci-fi or whatever.
In my experience in scaling applications, I've noticed there is a very big difference between measuring actual performance in production and taking a look with an open mind, and making wild-ass guesses.
You don't have enough data on other people around you, or even how they view the world, or feel about the world. It's like taking a wild-ass guess, and being proud of it.
I don't really care much for following sports teams either. I used to turn my nose at it, as if I am somehow a superior person for not giving two shits about who is winning. One day, I read Michael Lewis's Moneyball and flipped through Blindside and realized I had been an idiot. I still might not care about which team is winning, yet there are a lot of hidden depths to sports. How many other things have I missed by not looking with an open mind?
Everyone prefers their favorite things over things they don't like. Anyone who doesn't is insane. The sports fans probably think they're superior people because they spend all their time and energy following sports, instead of being like me and following sci-fi or programming or whatever.
It really doesn't matter. My whole point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have preferences. I don't give a shit about sports. I don't care about its hidden depths. I have the right to my opinion, and to turn my nose up at sports, just like the sports fan has the right to turn his nose up at sci-fi. Are you going to chastise him for not being open-minded and spending a bunch of time watching sci-fi movies he has no interest in and then being able to discuss them intelligently with coworkers?
The simple fact is that different people have different tastes and interests. If someone wants to be curious and try learning about something different, then great. If they've already given that thing a chance, or taken a quick look and decided it's not for them, there is nothing wrong with that. If that means that they feel "left out" when talking to coworkers, too bad. That's a natural byproduct of people having different interests. It doesn't need to be "fixed".
Basically, what you're doing is telling minorities that they need to take an active interest in things that the majority (meaning white people here) are interested in so that they can fit in better. That sounds rather condescending to me honestly. I used sports here as an analogy to point out that this isn't a racial issue, we only see it here because different demographics tend to have different interests because of their different upbringings and environments. No one makes an issue out of white northeasterners not being interested in gun shooting and muddin'.
But thats not what the article said.
>“It could be something as simple as, like, what they watch on TV or what kind of books they like to read. And those are just not TV shows that I watch or books that I read.”
It didn't say she thought those were books and TV shows that only people of other races like.
Yeah, but that's not related to the race aspect. Why bring up her race unless that's the reason for why they don't watch the same TV shows or read the same books?
Different races are exposed to different cultures and when everyone knows about some aspect and you don't, you will feel left out and experience culture shock.
My elementary school and middle school were about 95% black with rest mostly being white and my high school was about 85% white with the next largest percentage being Asian. The kinds of music, tv shows, and activities people did on the weekend had barely any overlap. Its not that those part of the culture are only for one race, or that you think one culture is better than another, its just what you are used to. I was exposed to and learn to like a lot of new things, but theres plenty I learned about and just didn't like. It just took time to figure those things out.
What bothered most of the other minority students the most is that just because we would sit together at lunch, somehow we were being racists, when in fact it was just wanting to talk about things that most of the other school had either no clue or no interest in talking about. It wasn't closed off, but usually the only people that would come sit at the "black" table were other students who had attended an inner city school like the rest of us.
Quick question, what was your experience as a white person in a majority black school? I always hear about the plight of black students in majority white schools but never the inverse.
I'll jump in and give you an answer. From 7th to 10th grade I attended a majority black school (a common "solution" to No Child Left Behind in the south eastern US was to move accelerated programs (IB etc) to the lowest preforming school to keep averages above the level required for funding). There definitely was tension (probably exacerbated by the academic divide on top of the racial one) most noticeable in interactions with the administration. Neither group having any incentive to integrate lead to a general feeling of "otherness" but I couldn't say I remember any overt prejudiced on the level experienced by people in the inverse situation.
I went to middle school in a majority black school. In all honesty, most of the white kids were in the honors courses and generally segregated from everyone else. In high school I chilled with more black people because the area was very country-culture influenced and we generally felt out of place.
Ok cool, I thought so but just wanted to ask. Thank you for sharing your experiences. I'm black and have never been in a majority black school (always either asian or white) so I lack perspective.
She said she didn't have much in common with those particular people, not non-black people in general. Had she thought that she didn't have enough in common with multiple races to work with them, she wouldn't have tried to work in a place where only 1% of the population would have the slightest chance of having something in common with her (and very reasonably so, if I may add).
to put it another way: if your white friends grew up watching spongebob squarepants and you grew up without cable, that could certainly make a cultural difference
Growing up, my parents watched pretty much only PBS and listened to NPR / classical music. Riding the bus for the first time in middle school, I was exposed to a lot of popular things (music) that felt very foreign. Any joke that referenced song lyrics or a particular actor was lost on me for a while. It's like making a meme-related joke to my parents: they weren't exposed to it, they don't get it. In many ways they don't feel like part of my "tribe" (nerds?).
I can certainly see how being exposed to (or immersed in) a different culture could affect your feeling of belonging in a different one.
For example, I didn't grow up listening to rap. If all of my coworkers listened to rap music, and talked about it in Slack or the like, I would feel almost completely lost. I appreciate flow, interesting lyrics, and the mastery that the artists have over words, but there are many layers of references to prior artists or prior songs that I am not at all familiar with, and didn't even realize existed until I started looking at the Genius.com lyrics for some songs I'd heard on the radio. So, some new song comes out that references Big Names in the industry, and I would not get them at all (or even know they were references to things) unless I were already familiar, or were dedicated to pursuing that art as an interest.
The same kind of thing applies for things like TV show references (Friends, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Family Guy, Spongebob, Star Trek, etc) or movies or comic books.
