For the Other

Please stop telling me how to feel.

Stop telling me to calm down. Stop telling me to get over it. Don’t tell me to relax or to stop being offended.

If you know me, and you care about me, I would be grateful if you would give me a minute; if you would really pay attention.

I am grieving the outcome of this election. I am disheartened, discouraged, and disappointed. I have just recently attained a small degree of emotional health and stability after a crushing personal loss—and this feels like a set-back to me.

You may not understand this. You probably don’t understand it. That’s OK. You don’t have to understand it in order to be empathetic. All you have to do is believe me that this is really how I feel.

I am trying my best to not say unkind things about people who supported Trump. I think I’ve succeeded for the most part—but if I’ve said or written something that feels like a personal attack or insult, please bring it to my attention. I do not want to hurt or offend you. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, and I would like you to do the same for me.

You say how upset you are by the negativity—as though “negativity” on its own is a bad thing. “Negativity” is the only appropriate response to racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, and violence. No matter who we voted for, we should ALL be negative when we read a story about a young Saudi college student in Wisconsin beaten to death, or middle-school students in Michigan chanting “build the wall” at Latino classmates.

This is why I grieve. This is why I am discouraged, and even afraid for my friends who are Latino, black, gay, Jewish, or Muslim.

White Trump supporters do not, as a group, I presume, feel threatened and afraid when they leave their homes. They don’t wonder if they will be insulted or demeaned or threatened just because of who they are or what they look like.

But the groups that are targeted by Trump and some of his supporters do feel these kinds of threats and fear. The president-elect of the United States has said rude, scary, demeaning, threatening things about them—and some of his supporters take this as license to bring their formerly hidden racism, ethocentrism, misogyny out into the light.

Trump’s America is frightening for some people—entire groups of people. If you could acknowledge this without minimizing it, or contradicting it, or blaming it on the media, it would go a long way to helping those of us who are grieving and/or afraid to believe that this is not the America that you want to see.

Please don’t minimize it by saying it goes both ways.

I know of a few incidents that went the other way—Trump protesters that went too far, a white man who was beaten possibly because he voted for Trump. But these, I believe, are rare events in a backdrop of rising intolerance for the Other.

Pointing out that some Trump supporters have been insulted and even harmed by Trump-opposers does not mitigate the fact that Trump’s presidency, aligned with the KKK and other hate groups, represents an increase in fear and actual danger to at-risk groups. This comparison is another false equivalence in a sea of false equivalencies. It doesn’t even come close to being the same because Trump supporters are the ones who have the power and influence of the President on their side.

I’m not in any way saying that all Trump supporters are racist or sexist or any other “-ist.” I’m not saying you are. I’m saying it’s out there, and it appears to be getting worse.

I started out by telling you about my own grief and discouragement—but none of this is really about me and my feelings. I acknowledge my own white, cis-gender privilege. My sorrow is not for me.

I grieve for the Other. For the immigrant. For the mother of young black men. For a Muslim woman afraid to wear a scarf. For a brown-skinned store owner, for a young woman getting her first job, for a queer student in a classroom.

I am grieving for America.

The Elusive Definition of Intelligence

My kids are all brilliant, of course.

C. Peevie and M. Peevie have the kind of intelligence associated with traditional academic success—early verbal development, top percentile reading scores, quick grasp of math concepts and easy mastery of the basic facts.

A. Peevie, on the other hand, seems to my subjective eye to be brilliant in a completely different and often unappreciated kind of way. He struggles to master elementary math facts—but he worked his way through 15 pages of basic geometry lessons when he learned that one of his heroes, Albert Einstein, loved geometry. I blogged about it here:

Besides the intelligence that directly relates to math and reading skills, there seems to me to be a different kind of intelligence that fuels Middle Peevie’s learning. It has a creativity component that enables him to think differently about things than most people think. For example, one Halloween, he was contemplating his costume choices, looking over the traditional super-hero options. He picked up a box, cut some narrow slits in it to see through, and put it over his head. Then he searched the basement for accessories, and he settled on being Box-Head with Knife.

What is intelligence? You might be surprised to learn, as I was, that there are as many definitions of intelligence as there are "experts" who study it. Usually the word refers to general mental capacity to reason, solve problems, learn, and think abstractly--but the problem with this definition is that it's circular. If you look up "reason" in the dictionary, you will get "intelligence" as one of the definitions; and if you look up "think", you'll get "reason" as a definition.

So where does that leave us? According to the online encyclopedia Encarta, "no universally accepted definition of intelligence exists." (Here's the link to the Encarta article.)

One dude, Harvard University professor Howard Gardner, came up with a model of intelligence that includes nine abilities that work individually or together to produce "intelligence:" naturalist, musical, logical-mathematical, existential, interpersonal, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, intra-personal, and spatial.

Some of those abilities seem more like interests or skills than intelligence to me--but the list is helpful to frame the discussion about intelligence in a broader way than we typically understand it.

Cognitive psychologist Robert Sternberg proposed a triarchic theory of intelligence:

• Analytic Intelligence--the type generally assessed by intelligence tests; measures the ability to break down problems into component parts.
• Creative Intelligence--the ability to cope with new situations and solve problems in new and unusual ways. Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, but imagination circles the world."
• Practical Intelligence--Common sense. Using and implementing ideas.

Sternberg said you can grow your creative intelligence by questioning assumptions, taking sensible risks, and allowing yourself to make mistakes.

I like what Albert Einstein had to say about intelligence: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it is stupid."

This kind of thinking, I suspect, is what is behind Gardner's model of multiple intelligences; and it's what makes me see A. Peevie as a brilliant, out-of-the-box thinker. While C. Peevie and M. Peevie are climbing redwoods, A. P. is down below doing smart fish-things, like figuring out a way to swim upstream to lay eggs.

Diversity Training: Is anyone measuring outcomes?

When I think of diversity training--often otherwise known as the "Blame and Shame Game"--the first thing that comes to my mind is the episode of The Office called "Diversity Day." If you have diversity training coming up, and you have not yet seen this show, you must stop reading right now and go watch it.

Are you back? All-righty, then.

So Mr. Peevie has a full day of mandated diversity training coming up, and honestly, if it were me, I would have a really bad attitude about it. I can't help but wonder if diversity training has ever been shown to have a positive effect on a person who would otherwise have Neanderthal attitudes about someone because she looks, acts, or thinks differently than he does.

My guess--and this is just a WAG, mind you--is that most organizations that mandate diversity training do so not because it's evidence-based, but because it's expected. So, being the responsible blogger that I am, I googled "diversity training + outcomes" or "+ research." Here's a sampling of some of the relevant hits:

A study described in a 2004 article abstract in Group and Organizational Management concluded that diversity training resulted in a "resentful demoralization of trainees" and that organizations should be aware that "diversity awareness training may not have the desired effects in the absence of a supportive work context."

I totally get this. As a person who values diversity, and who somehow got on the mailing list for Black Expressions book club, I would be totally irritated if I had to take an entire day away from my actual work just to have a 20-something diversity cheerleader lead me in a role-play about diversity. "Resentful" does not begin to describe it.

Another researcher concluded that "Diversity training creates as many problems sometimes as it solves." Uh huh.

And a British blogger pointed me to a 2006 article co-authored by Harvard sociology professor Frank Dobbin with a title that says it all: Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies. The paper suggests that "there are reasons to believe that employers adopt anti-discrimination measures as window-dressing, to inoculate themselves against liability, or to improve morale rather than to increase managerial diversity."

The study also concludes that "practices that target managerial bias through feedback (diversity evaluations) and education (diversity training) show virtually no effect" and "they sometimes show negative effect."

I think (and really, that's what we're all about here in the Green Room) that organizations should swear off of diversity training unless the training is connected to real-life organizational goals and specific, measurable outcomes. I'm not talking about participants saying, "Oh, my this was wonderful!" I'm talking about outcomes that definitively demonstrate that the training actually makes a difference in how people think and act; that it has a positive impact on organizational meeting organizational objectives; that it's not just preaching to the choir.

Michael Scott's idea of diversity training was to stick race labels on people's foreheads, and then have them simulate offensive encounters with one another. In one scene, Michael says to Oscar, who is Mexican: "Um, let me ask you, is there a term besides 'Mexican' that you prefer? Something less offensive?" The Office is the All in the Family for the new millenium.

Here's my idea for making sure that managers are appropriately diversity sensitive: Have them watch this episode of The Office while hooked up to brain sensors. If they register a pre-determined minimum level amusement at the show, leave them alone. If they don't get it, and the sensors register "um, whatever": fire their asses.

Problem solved.

Plucky People You Should Know

Earlier this month, Samantha Larson (age 18) reached the summit of Mt. Everest, becoming the youngest person to have scaled the "seven summits"--the highest mountain on each of the continents.

Her first summit experience was Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa when she was 12 years old--and apparently, she was hooked.

Check out her web site at http://www.samanthalarson.com/index.html.

She's got a a pretty amazing level of focus and determination--not to mention pluck--for anyone, let alone someone so young. I wonder if that's something you're born with, or if you pick it up somewhere along the way.

I know a few people--very few--with that kind of focus. One of them is Mike Barratt, a NASA astronaut and mission specialist who's training for a long duration flight on the International Space Station. Here's a link to Mike's NASA biography: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/barratt-mr.html.

I don't have that kind of focus or pluck. (BTW, isn't "pluck" a really great word?) My kind of focus is the kind that enables me to write a blog post a few times a week on top of all the TV I've got to watch. Sometimes I just don't think I'll be able to get it all done.

Oh well, I guess there's a reason that there's all kinds of folks in the world. It would be so dull if we were all like Samantha Larson or Mike Barratt--everybody would be all fulfilled and high-achieving and stuff, and nobody would want to stay home and do the laundry. Then there'd be heck to pay.