Voice of the DBA

Tag: social

  • Social: Keeping Perspective

    I was lucky enough to be able to get together with some friends recently, outside, socially distanced, and relax with a few drinks. The few of us together have different types of careers, we’re different ages, we have much different perspectives on the world. We also end up dealing with people in the world in much different ways and places on a regular basis. While some of my friends are at home, some work in town and some go to an office.

    We talked a bit about the unrest in one of our local communities, Aurora, CO. It has been the site of protests, and unfortunately, violence against both members of the community and police. I support protest, I do not support violence.

    In any case, a few of my friends, who are white, noted that some police officers don’t like to go out in the community, even for things like groceries. People yell at them, or give them mean/bad/angry looks. One of my friends has a truck that looks like some of the undercover police vehicles, and he’s been yelled at by random people who think he’s a law enforcement officer.

    Their thoughts were that there are bad police, but to lump everyone together in one group isn’t fair.

    That’s a powerful statement. It’s also from a specific perspective. Someone that sympathizes with the change in the lives of the police, with their discomfort with the status quo not being the same. With police not being respected.

    My statement was, think about lumping everyone on the protester side, or the Person of Color side. How often have black people, or middle easterners, or asians, or women been lumped together? How often have you taken a stance based on your tribe, on who you identify with?

    Most of us do it often. Tribal identity is a human characteristic. We often choose to identify with others. We also allow a narrative, a story, a certain presentation to influence us. This has been shown in study after study. We often are less unbiased than we think.

    It is sad that police don’t feel welcome in their community. It’s also sad that many others feel discriminated against or oppressed. It’s distressing that we don’t all get along better, even with basic respect if there isn’t any reason to like each other.

    We all need to do better, both in our behavior and in the way we look at others.

  • Social: Respecting Names

    This is a non-technical post, and my opinion. If you don’t want to read it, please ignore future posts with “Social:” at the start of the title.

    My nickname is Steve. Actually, it’s my middle name, but it’s a name I chose and I decided that I wanted to go by that moniker. I used to dread the first day of school as a kid when teachers would take attendance and use my name. I didn’t want them to use it, and I’ve certainly had my share of giggles or jokes directed my way during my youth. It got to the point where I learned in high school and college to go to class early and have a private moment with a teacher and ask them to call me Steve.

    It was annoying, stressful, and honestly, rarely a problem. However, a few times I had teachers that refused to use nicknames, and I hated going to their classrooms. Heck, I likely thought I hated them. I’m not sure how far that hatred would go in different situations in the real world, but I had no respect for those individuals and tried to never interact with them.

    In some sense, the world has changed a lot. My kids have gone to school with classmates that have all sorts of names, from different cultures and strange spellings. They accept them all and address them however they wish to be addressed.

    To me, that’s one sign of progress. Names that would have been made fun of or blatantly laughed at over and over during my childhood, are just accepted as the way it is. I see this even in my rural county.

    These days in a professional environment, I couldn’t imagine ignoring a co-worker’s wishes. If someone asked me to call them Jack when their name is Joseph or Sally when their name is Sandra, I would. I coached a kid for a couple years as Katie. She asked me at some point to call her Kate, and I did. Her Mom forgot constantly and referred to her as “Katie”, and I could see how annoyed the young lady would get. I remembered my experience and acceded to her wishes.

    When I read Randolph West’s recent article, I was reminded of my youth, reminded of how I wouldn’t ignore the wishes of someone I knew well, and questioned why I, or anyone, wouldn’t just be polite to others and address them as they would prefer.

    I find the idea of referring to a singular person as “they” to be strange. But how hard is that to change? If Randolph asked me to call them “Buddy”, would I object? Why is a pronoun harder than a noun? It’s not, and I’m working to adjust.

    I find the same thing to be true of other references, nouns or pronouns, that people find objectionable. Often I don’t think the term is offensive, but that’s my view. Is it really that hard to change my language, my writing, my speech to treat someone else as they’d like to be treated?

    It’s not. It might be annoying for me. It might be uncomfortable. Heck, I’ll make mistakes. I’ve apologized to Kate a few times. Not that many because I learned quickly, and she was worth the effort to learn to do better.

    I think most of us feel it’s worth the effort for those that we are close to, or that we know. Why would it be harder to adjust for those we don’t know, and respect their wishes.

    I’m sure I’ll mess up with Randolph, but it’s on my mind to do better. I actually typed “him” above and caught myself, adjusting to the unfamiliar “they”. I even learned to ignore the grammar checker and let it know that I know better in this case.

    Learn, adapt, grow. Many of us do this all the time in technology. We ought to do it in our dealings with others as well.

  • Social: Thinking about those that have less of a voice

    I saw a few things posted this this week that got me to think. One was a note about the end of pride month, where I realize I hadn’t said or done anything to promote inclusiveness. I don’t think that LGBTQ people are any different than me in most ways. They chose to live a portion of their life in a different way than me, but lots of people do this, just in other different ways.

    There was no Pride 5k this year, and few other events in the real world. However, I should have made some effort to promote this event, along with Black Lives Matter, and other things in the world that I’m thinking about.

    We have LGBTQ people in the #sqlfamily. Andy Mallon has run an event at the PASS Summit, but I don’t see much else talked about. There are people that feel ashamed, second class, angry, and many other things about their lifestyle because many in society don’t openly welcome them. It’s not enough to

    Kendra wrote that she’s sharing pronouns, which I think is a simple, easy thing to do that promotes inclusiveness and helps anyone that wants to share something different than my “he/him”, to do so. I’ve seen some people share “they/them”, but it takes some bravery to do this when most people don’t think about it and a few openly mock the choices.

    I just updated my base Powerpoint deck and bio that I keep around on my site and machines to include pronouns. It’s an easy thing to do, and hopefully it makes others more comfortable expressing their own thoughts.

    I also need to go out of my way to encourage and support others. I have tried to promote the WIT groups and spoken at a few of their events. I hope that others build groups to support their own underrepresented causes, because there is strength in numbers. However, I also hope that more people that are parts of less mainstream groups find a voice and promote themselves at other events.

    That also means I need to make more of an effort to actively include those people when I can and go looking for them.

    If anyone feels they are a minority and needs some mentoring, coaching, or wants an opportunity to write/speak, please feel free to reach out to me. I will do my best to include you in our community.

  • Social: Going Along to Get Along

    It’s the eve of the Fourth of July, when the Declaration of Independence is celebrated in the US. I’ve always like this holiday, but lately I find myself less enamored. This section rings hollow:

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

    Mostly in light of this passage: three fifths of all other Persons.

    As a person growing up in the South, I had lots of friend that had Southern Pride, self-described rednecks. I also grew up in near military bases, so there were a fair amount of diverse ethnicities, but still minorities overall. In my high school of about 900, I’d guess it was 20% African American, Oriental, Hispanics, and a few people with Middle Eastern backgrounds.

    I mostly had white friends, some because of academics, some because of sports, some because we lived near each other. Overall, friends treated me well.

    Some of their friends, no so well. I was fortunate that I grew up on a somewhat isolated street with a couple brothers, one older, one younger. The protected me a few times in high school when some of their friends threatened and physically assaulted me in other neighborhoods. I learned very quickly in middle school that my freedom to ride my bike far from home didn’t mean the same thing as my friend’s freedom.

    Later in life, I tended bar in Virginia Beach. I worked in a nightclub at one point, a place notorious for not allowing blacks or Hispanics to come in. Bouncers would find reasons to not let them in, including suddenly raising the cover charge, finding minor faults with their clothes that crossed an imaginary dress code, and flat out telling some they weren’t welcome. Police were our friends, as we gave them free meals often, and drinks on their nights off.

    I got hired when the place was sold, since a friend told me the previous owner would never hire me and not to apply. I did, and didn’t get hired before the sale, but did later. Most of the staff stayed on, and I’d say that I was uncomfortable and wary of about a quarter of the bouncer staff, trying to ensure I was never alone. I laughed at their racist jokes and behavior. I sided with their disgust at the riots on Labor Day.

    I didn’t make waves, instead doing a good job, making money, enjoying the beach, and getting promoted to assistant manager.

    A couple years later, while working there and back in grad school, the previous owner bought the place back. We were all told to come in early one weekday and be ready for a deep clean of the nightclub and bars. As I worked along, the owner asked to seem me just before lunch and told me my services were no longer needed. No explanation, just leave.

    The other assistant manager was demoted to just a bartender. I get the desire to have new management, I get the need to perhaps keep less staff. I was the only person let go.

    I was the only non-white person.

    I can’t prove racism and have no desire to do so. I can only speculate, and I do think that was the reason. I also accept I could be wrong.

    I’ve gone along too often, but I don’t think that helps us move forward. We can all grow and change, we can all learn to treat others more fairly and fight our inherent biases, our prejudices. We can always admit we were wrong and move forward. The great thing about much of humanity, and often in US society, is that we give second chances.

    I’m not condemning anyone for life, but I also don’t want to put up with discrimination, racism, sexism, and unequal treatment of other humans. You don’t have to like people, but you should treat them fairly.