stereotype

Divides.

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

DivisionIt was the first day of the flooding in parts of Trinidad and Tobago. I had been keeping up to date on things as best I could since I no longer have the 4×4 to roll in with. It was really bad in some areas, so I went out to handle some errands close to home and get back so I wouldn’t be unnecessarily on the road.

I stopped at the local Starbucks, walking in on a scene of some children at the register looking awkward.  Suddenly, a woman rushes in front of me, flustered, handing over some cash and complaining about her bank loudly. That her bank had sent out a notice earlier through social media that their network was out of service because of the flooding hadn’t made it into her busy life.

She was embarrassed and inconvenienced because her card didn’t work. She continued complaining about the bank to the point where it was interfering with me moving on with my life, so I gently made my presence known by waving my cash toward the register. She moved on with her children, awaiting their drinks.

Meanwhile, not far away, people had slept on the roofs of flooded homes. Not far away, people had lost the things that they had worked hard to get. Supplies were just beginning to get in from people not unlike her, though perhaps squawking less.

A snap judgement would have defined her as someone divorced of the reality of the flooding, but that would have dismissed the children in uniforms. I could question why schoolchildren needed Starbucks coffee, but I would be creating a prejudice from one data point – which is wrong. Maybe the woman had a hard morning. Maybe things weren’t going well, maybe the kids didn’t get breakfast. Maybe she was worried about something.

To many people there, that snap judgement would stick, perhaps unfairly, creating a division where there might not be one. Or maybe there is.

The moment sticks. We need to remember the power of moments.

Respect, Trust

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

RespectWe know a few things about respect: it has to be earned and it’s hard to get back when lost. This parallels trust – trust and respect go hand in hand this way.

Can you trust someone you don’t respect? Can you respect someone you don’t trust? There is nuance in there beyond the black and white responses, the default ‘no’ we are taught as children.

We can trust someone we do not respect to do what is in their ‘nature’. In fact, some even expect it of them: A simple label can conjure up images of what such a person is or might do based on what they have done. That label and ‘trust’ is what builds out our negative prejudices (yes, there are good prejudices as well). Feminists often make the case that simply being a woman means that they are ‘trusted’ to be certain *things*, objectified in their own way. Black Live Matters makes a similar case about people of African descent (paying lip service to other minorities), Blue Lives Matter makes a similar case about police. We trust for better and worse that people will act in certain ways based on other things in common.

It should scare people slightly that this is how we write our software that analyzes data as well.

But there are good things about such stereotypes, too. We are more friendly with certain people, more comfortable around certain people where we blend in well. Those of lesser pallor will quite obviously feel more comfortable with those of their pallor, and those of greater pallor the same. People who wear jeans are more comfortable around those that wear jeans, those in suits feel more comfortable around people of business attire.

The problem isn’t respect as much as it is trust. It’s what we trust others to do that is the problem, our brains evolved for survival in a planet that we have become dominant over except in a few special cases.

So the next time you distrust someone – which is just trust in a different direction (for the nerds, it’s a vector instead of a scalar) – take a moment and allow that trust to change.

Or don’t and submit yourself to the status quo.