A quick story about racism.

Joe Nation wrote:

It is quite clear that the writers on one side of this discussion haven't ever had to lead a workplace team.
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It is clear? You don't know very much about people do you, Joe Nation.


I taught in an inner city school for four years in my twenties. Five years after that I was appointed as a principal in a school which was changing from white to black demographically. I had a faculty of 43 teachers. The teachers were white, black and ethnically Hispanic.

I LED those workplace teams many manytimes. The school and my teachers and I were honored several times for the level of achievement reached by the students despite the fact that so many of them came from homes below the poverty level.

Joe Nation is just ignorant about the fact that you cannot get into people's heads. You can try to educate them but it is difficult.

Joe Nation does not know that in spite of many WORKPLACE TEAM meetings to enhance sensitivity training, some teachers, both white, black and Latino, who decided to talk to me privately held what Setanta and Diest TKO would excoriate.

A Black teaches came to me and said, If that woman( a noisy black lady who used the most filthy language when visiting a teacher) I am going to insist that you call the police-_I don't care what the PTA will think.

Some white teachers opined privately---You are the principal but I can only give my opinion. I have seen what happens when a school becomes all black. If you can, try to take in a program which will give us more white or Latino students.

Joe Nation. Diest TKO and/.or Setanta could never ever handle a situtation like this. There was animosity between some teachers that could never be solved based NOT on race but rather on how some of them viewed each other's professionalism and teaching ability.

Because some of the black teachers did not have a great amount of training, their spelling was abysmal. I had in my files several notes sent to me by parents which said, in effect--How can this person teach my child, she can't even spell.

Joe Nation never handled anything like that and never could.

Yet, the best teacher I had was one who worked in Reagan headquarters before he was elected. She was a black conservative who was popular with most of the faculty but dismissed by the black far left wing teachers.

Could you handle that, Joe Nation??

PS, Nation-- You know, of course, that millions and millions of dollars have been given to inner city schools since the Great Society began under Johnson.
Some of it was for "sensitivity' training/Most was to raise the abysmally low reading and math scores.

Neither has worked.

I guess the solution for the problem is to get the selfless people--those who are pure of heart like Diest TKO and Setanta to run these schools.

They wouldn't last two weeks!!!!!! They would soon find out that the students and the few well intentioned parents don't care if you say--I am not a racist--They want results. They want good reading and math scores.

David wrote:

OK, Engineer:
go ahead and PROVE that YOUR sense of good taste
is better than that of someone of the exact opposite sense of good taste
who is equally offended as u r. Show us the structure of your argument, Engineer.
I wanna SEE this.
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DAVID--
DIest did not answer. He can't --
I don't know why. He is such an accomplished work team leader!!-HE SAYS!!!

I am intolerant of intolerance. And if you don't like it, you can suck it.

People in a public space should filter what they say. It's called "having good judgment."

They get to make a choice: work here and be polite, or work somewhere else. They have the freedom to take their language elsewhere.

WHAt dishonesty! You are tolerant of those beliefs and practices that are on your approved list, that which you don't wish to be tolerant of you label abuse, criminal, immoral ....and condemn. You may well be more a more black/white thinker than most, stuff is either completely OK or completely not OK, no shades of grey. It may also be that you make no evaluations for yourself, that you accept the majority society biases as your own without question. None the less, you are not the monument to tolerance that you claim to be.

Great, so not only did we allow employers the right to monitor their employees on the job, then moved to allowing drug tests and credit checks so that employees can be monitored off of the job, but now employers have the right to force employees to pretend that they agree with the institutional biases imposed by the bosses??!!!

Capitalism was supposed to be an improvement of Nazism and Marxism correct? You sure are fast to give away your and the rest of our freedom.

It's weird. This thread is from over a year ago. It had been long gone, and then it just popped up again. Meh. Thanks for the affirmation of good judgement. The most relevant affirmation of good judgement came form the other team leader which is what some knuckleheads can't seem to understand.

T
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OH ya, said as if no one else besides "team leaders" know what team play is all about. Almost everyone knows a great deal from personal experience about team dynamics and what the responsibilities of the leaders are. You find an excuse to dismiss what you don't want to deal with, and then ignore.....your usual pattern.

Hey Diest,
I grew up in Holmes Run Acres next to Fairfax Hospital and in those days schools were segregated and our neighborhood of 300 homes had no black families. But my parents had black friends in D.C. and one summer day they announced that one of their (friends)kids, a 10 year old was going to stay with us for a week.

You have to understand that as a 10 year old myself, I knew that racism was wrong but peer group pressure kept me from speaking out.

Well, it was only a matter of days before we all trooped up to the community pool with our friend's kid. I'll never forget it. As soon as he jumped in, all the moms pulled their kids out of the water.

I was wracked with conflicting emotions...anger , that my parents had brought this shame on me in my playground. Embarrassment, that these adults were behaving so...so...irrationally, and later, guilt for I thought my folks had used this kid to integrate the community pool.

Sometimes that's how progress is made...but it is so slow and painful.

As always you're as sharp as a wet feather hawkeye.

Nothing was dismissed.
The situation was dealt with (and professionally as well) .
Nothing was ignored.

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I live out here in Falls Church. I'd say the neighborhood has come a long way. Very multicultural, very friendly.

I don't understand the guilt you felt. Can you explain more?

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yes...I reread the last part and what I meant was : I felt guilty about the 10 year old sort of being used to integrate the pool. It must have been very stressful for him...or perhaps, I don't remember, it might not have dawned on him that there was hate and distrust being shown towards him.

so in the context of this thread a small move was made toward the desired goal of not categorizing by race, but individual freedom was sacrificed for the goal, and to you this is progress? That is a highly debatable conclusion, which is wholly dependent upon the subjective bias of the looker, upon his proclivities.

But never mind, I wouldn't want to interfere with your self esteem raising project.

Right. I'm not gonna go over and over it - except to say this: If it had been me that had used an inappropriate term and others heard it and didn't say a word, but then went to my higher up and effectively told on me - I think in the long run- that'd cause more tension, whether rightly or wrongly- than if someone on the spot had said, 'You know - that's offensive to me. Could you please refrain from using that sort of language in front of me in the future?'

And then if they still felt the need to go to my superior and say, 'This is what happened- I think you need to do some diversity training with your team...' so be it.

Believe me - I'm not at all advocating racist language in the workplace. I'm just in favor of adults treating other adults like adults.

But I also realize, as I said, that Diest's situation is his situation and I don't know all the ins and outs and it sounds like he did the right thing as far as his situation was concerned.

Joe Nation wrote:

I agree that when u r put into a leadership position
it is necessary to assume a different demeanor.
There is a radical difference between the freedom
that I take and enjoy in such fora as this and the tremendously
more conservative demeanor that it has been necessary to show as a leader.
We are not being leaders now; we are being discussers on an equal plane.



I see no merit in competitive athletics, Joe.
Unless u bet on the result, thay r exercises in futility.
If u win the ball game, u win nothing and u lose nothing.
For muscular exercise, I believe that lifting weight and running r good.
U win the bet.
What is your point about that ?


David

Team leaders have a responsibility to the institution that they work for, to their bosses, and to the team. Policing team member conversation is problematic at best, and can easily become a detriment to at least one of the three entities that have invested into the team leader.

It takes a hell of a NERVE
for people demand of their fellow citizens:

" u have THINK this and SAY that, to be in good taste,
and I get to decide what that is. U ` THINK what I want u to think
and U SAY what I want u to SAY and if u disobay me, then u are in bad taste. "


I don 't buy into that.
Stuff your political correctness up your asses.





David

I honored my responsibility to my institution.
I honored my responsibility to my faculty.
I honored my responsibility to my team.

Nobody was policing conversations here hawkeye. Get that in your head. Their team leader chose to address this with them in terms of their goals. It is a lot better than a different team leader (myself) coming over and assuming an authority I didn't have with them.

I think it should be said that team members/employees can seriously compromise their employer/boss/team/themselves by what they say, and that it is in everybody's interest to be professional in the work environment. People can continue to speak as they wish, but to say that it doesn't matter is idiotic.

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Hawk


...in the context of this thread my narrative didn't really pertain to what Diest and Snood were describing...I was describing something that happened 45 years ago

Hawk



...no, you didn't get the gist of my story. A small move was made to end racism. Not categorizing by race is the problem we're dealing with AFTER the end of legal segregation

Hawk


You mean the individual freedoms of the white families to refuse to let black children swim in their pool? I don't think this situation applies.

I'd guess you didn't experience segregation, you're much too young, but then again, I've been wrong before.
The only thing I can guess from your post is that you're concerned about race quotas and reverse discrimination which is hardly the theme of this thread

Hawk


This was unwarranted and so untrue. I clearly showed how uncomfortable I was with the whole episode. Perhaps you are dealing with problems of self-esteem, I certainly wasn't in my post.
And another thing Hawkeye. I've never exchanged posts with you before so I don't understand where you get this sarcastic belittling tone from.
Do you think it makes you sound clever, grown up or macho? I resent it and find no place for it in these debates. You'd probably garner a lot more respect from the people on this site if you kept your innuendo's in yourendo

I'm not particularly interested in what you buy. I'm not particularly impressed with what you sell.

I'm not appealing to political correctness here David. I'm appealing to good taste and professionalism. If I'm to put something up my ass that you hate, I'd like to put the correct thing there.

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