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Monday, August 14, 2006
Ignorance
We had a board meeting last night for Project 311. It's a good board, made up of a diverse collection of guys from all sorts of backgrounds. We were talking before we got down to business and one of the board members, Tim, was sharing a couple of stories on the impact of prejudice from his childhood and how it impacts him today. Tim is black. He was telling a story about how someone had talked with his son, where this guy had referred to his son as 'boy'. I asked the question, 'Is that bad?' Tim explained to me that the word 'boy' carries a lot of baggage in the black community dating back to the way slave-owners would refer to their slaves. He told me that in the ranking of names, 'boy' is worse than calling someone a nigger. I had no clue. Another good reason why diversity in a team is a good thing. I saw a statistic recently that South Lyon is 96% white. I think that number is generous based on what I've seen.
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One way to be culturally diverse is to not say names like 'boy' where they aren't appropriate. Like this.
But, I see a side that gets glanced over all to often. There are a million different terms that get taken the wrong way by the wrong person or group. There is no way for one to know them all and avoid them all when we live in a diverse culture.
Another way to show diversity of for someone who hears a term like 'boy' and knows it is a bad in their culture to let it go and teach the person saying it when they know the person saying it doesn't know the term is taken badly. This type of diversity I rarely see.
We aren't perfect and diversity goes both ways. To not say something offensive is great. But, to know when someone wasn't trying to be offensive and showing them what's going on is another form of diversity that should be more highly rewarded.
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