bridging differences Archives

How to label people when bridging cultural differences? When the label doesn’t fit, Part IV

Thursday, February 24th, 2011 at 1:57 am  

Bridging cultural differences is challenging enough when people agree on the labels used to describe those differences. But when someone believes a label ascribed to them doesn’t fit, all kinds of hot buttons are pushed.

Let’s take race as an example. Most people assume that race is a biological concept. Whether this is true or not, though, is being hotly contested among physical anthropologists, the one group we would expect to have the definitive answer.

What we do know is that the meaning assigned to one’s race is what makes it significant. So how does it work when people believe that the label ascribed to them doesn’t fit?

Read the rest of this entry

How to label people when bridging cultural differences Part 3: When Meanings Shift

Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 10:43 pm  

Yesterday morning, my niece called me. With rage in her voice, she explained that her thirteen-year-old son had received a text message from a friend saying, “You f**king n****r”. “I called his mother — they’re Mexican American,” she explained. “I wanted to know if they understood the significance of that word.”

Read the rest of this entry

How to label people when bridging cultural differences, Part 2 — When the label offends

Friday, February 4th, 2011 at 12:39 pm  

Many people are confused about what term is appropriate to use when referring to different others. I provided examples of this in Part 1 of this series on bridging cultural differences. This topic is a hornet’s nest because a term that is appropriate in one context may be inappropriate in another.  Choosing the right word can be a daunting task for who wish to avoid offending others and are horrified at thought of being judged.

So what do you do if you use a term and someone is offended? 

This recently happened to Oprah Winfrey. For her 25th and last season on network television, Oprah arranged for behind the scenes taping of how each show was produced the entire season. The tapes are now part of a new series, appropriately called Season 25, on her recently launched network, OWN — or the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Episode 103 of Season 25 provided a behind the scenes look of an incident that happened during the taping of an interview with Terry McMillan, author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, and Jonathan Plummer, her ex-husband who had announced that he was gay after 6 years of marriage to McMillan.

During the taping, Oprah made this comment to Plummer:

“What’s interesting if I may say this and I mean this only in the best way and obviously I have a lot of gay friends and don’t mean any offense — you seem gayer than you were [during a previous interview].”

After the taping, Lisa Halliday, Oprah’s head of public relations called Oprah to tell her that she thought that the comment would offend gay people. The discussion afterward provided a vivid illustration of what can happen when someone with the best of intentions is accused of making an offensive comment.

Distinguishing Intent from Impact

Clipping Path copyright Palto
Used under license from Shutterstock.com

As might be expected, Oprah at first was incredulous that her motives would have been mistaken:

“Everybody knows I am very gay-friendly…. My intention was not to be inappropriate. My intention was to say you have obviously come out and come out in a very big way and now you are feeling your ability to be your authentic self.”

Halliday persisted, “I just say that it’s a very naïve statement, that’s all.”

Clearly still stunned, Oprah then asked her producer to find some gay staffers to solicit their opinion.

Three gay people came into her office, one after another. To each, Oprah asked a variation of the same question: “Was the comment offensive and should it be struck from the tape?” In explaining her rationale for asking them, she commented, “I have my own opinions about things, but when other people weigh in strongly, I’m willing to listen and do a gut check on it.”

What was striking about the ensuing discussion was that most of the staffers appeared to feel free to express their opinion even though Oprah was their boss. Although their nonverbal behavior toward her was deferential, two of the three gay staffers stood firm in their position that her comment indeed had been offensive. I was also struck with how light and friendly the conversation remained, even though it was obviously quite serious.  They laughed and joked throughout the discussion, a sign that they had had similar conversations before. One staff member even humorously demonstrated how he had done a double-take when he heard the comment.

When Oprah asked him to explain why her statement had been offensive, he responded:

“It implies that gay is an action and not who you are as a human being. You’re born black, you’re born gay. To allude that our action determines your sexuality is offensive. For someone who is battling his sexuality, I can see it would affect him and some of your viewers who are in his same position.”

As most people would do in her shoes, Oprah repeatedly defended herself by explaining that she had the best of intentions with her remark.  The staff responded by reassuring her that they knew this:

“I know that you didn’t mean anything offensive about it.”

“People know your heart and spirit and your intention is not to offend them.”

Once Oprah accepted that her statement had been offensive to some no matter her intentions, the next question was whether the comment should be deleted from the tape. After more back and forth, she thanked the staff and the discussion ended.

In explaining her final decision about whether to keep or omit that comment from the viewing, Oprah said:

“I ended up allowing myself to be censured on that comment because I am not gay and I don’t understand fully what it means to be in that position. So I think, well, gay people will know better than I. And the gay people in the building said ‘you’re wrong, so I was wrong.”

Viewer Reactions

Multicolored plasticine hands on a white background copyright MaleWitch
Used under license from Shutterstock.com

The clip has now been posted on her website. Viewer comments about her decision illustrate how challenging are such situations:

“I say we all need to lighten up a bit. It was funny. Stop being hyper sensitive.”

“I thought that word “gayer” when she said it, was funny. People shouldn’t be offended by it, just because of the way she said it. It was obvious she meant no harm there…..geeeeez!!!”

“The comment was offensive because it reduces being gay to one specific expression of “gayness” (an effeminate man) as if gayness could be reduced to its stereotypes.”

“That was a good call… because Great moments often catch us unaware—beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one. People may not remember exactly what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

What can we learn from this?

Here is what was so remarkable about the outcome:

  • Oprah was willing to test her assumption that her comment was unoffensive.
  • She wanted reassurance that the staff knew that her intentions had been honorable, and the staff willingly provided her with that reassurance.
  • Even so, she knew that good intentions are not sufficient to overcome a negative impact.
  • She also knew that she was not in a position to judge what might be offensive to a person in a social group to which she didn’t belong. She did not judge those who took offense as being “hypersensitive.”
  • She, the head of a billion dollar enterprise, had the courage and the integrity to say publicly, “I was wrong.”

If you want to know more about testing assumptions, see Reframing Change, Chapter 2.  For more about distinguishing intent from impact, see Chapter 5, “Bridging Differences,” pages 131-132.

Questions

  • What do you think of how Oprah handled the situation?
  • How do you think a person should respond if someone from a different ethnic group takes offense to her words?

How to label people when bridging cultural differences? Part I

Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 9:01 pm  

In my workshops and classes on bridging cultural differences, eventually someone asks, “What should we call a person with such-and-such background or characteristic?” Here are true examples of how this question has been asked:

  • “Is it better to say Hispanic or Latino?  Asian or Oriental? disabled or handicapped?”
  • “Should I use the term ‘Black’ or ‘African American’? After all, Whites from South Africa who are naturalized in this country are African Americans, aren’t they?”
  • “Why is it okay to say ‘people of color,’ but not okay to say ‘colored person’”?
  • “Why can’t I refer to people with AIDS as AIDS victims? They are victims, aren’t they?”
  • “I don’t see why some of the women in my class object to being called ‘girls’. My wife and her friends all refer to themselves as girls”.

The Power of Words: To Use or Not Use the N-Word

I’ll address those questions in the next series of posts. First, though, we must consider the power of words to define and to hurt.

The recurring debate about using the N-Word is an excellent example in recent years.

In a widely reported episode of ABC’s The View (7/17/2008), Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepard clashed with Elizabeth Hasselbeck on the use of the N-word. The debate was spawned by the release of a videotape in which Jesse Jackson used the term during a Fox News interview (Jackson didn’t know the mike was still on) even though he had publicly announced a campaign to stop its use. Whoopi and Sherri said that they approved of the word use among African Americans, but Caucasians could not use the term. Elizabeth thought this was a double standard.

A year later, Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z, the popular rap singer had a similar clash over the term’s use. Jay-Z explained his use of the term saying, “It’s just become part of the way we communicate. My generation hasn’t had the same experience with that word that generations of people before us had. We weren’t so close to the pain. So in our way, we disarmed the word. We took the fire pin out of the grenade.” Oprah responded, “When I hear the N-word, I still think about every black man who was lynched–and the N-word was the last thing he heard. So we’ll just have to disagree about this.”

This year, the debate popped up again — this time among advocates of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Recently, it was announced a new edition of Huck Finn for younger readers will replace the “N-word” with “slave” and the word “Injun” wth “Indian.” Alan Gribben, the Twain scholar who spearheaded this effort, explained his rationale: “This is not an effort to render Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn colorblind….Race matters in these books. It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

The idea to make this substitution came after years of teaching about the book when Gribben began substituting the word “slave” for the “N-word” while reading it aloud. One of his daughter’s best friends was an African American who “loathed the book [and] could barely read it.”

When he had an opportunity to conduct speaking engagements around the State of Alabama, Gribben realized that the book was headed for obsolescence if something wasn’t done.

As he explained, “After a number of talks, I was sought out by local teachers, and to a person they said we would love to teach [Tom Sawyer] and Huckleberry Finn, but we feel we can’t do it anymore. In the new classroom, it’s really not acceptable.” This dismayed him. “For a single word to form a barrier, it seems such an unnecessary state of affairs,” he commented.

The upheaval has been predictable. On the one hand are the advocates of free press and preservation of historical works who think that making the substitution is political correctness gone amok. On the other are legions of teachers and educators who want to make the book accessible and who, like Gribben, have witnessed the pain that words can cause.

What makes the Huck Finn controversy different from the Goldberg/Shepard-Hasselbeck and Winfrey-Jay Z debates is that Huck Finn is already written. The N-Word is used 219 times in the book. The question, then, is not whether to use the term, but whether to keep it in this particular edition for younger readers.

Those supporting retaining the N-Word argue that Twain chose that word to convey an irony. Adherents cite Pulitzer Prize-winner Russell Baker who explained the irony in a 1982 article:

The people whom Huck and Jim encounter on the Mississippi are drunkards, murderers, bullies, swindlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, mows, frauds, child abusers, numbskulls, hypocrites, windbags and traders in human flesh. All are white. The one man of honor in this phantasmagoria is ‘Nigger Jim,’ as Twain called him to emphasize the irony of a society in which the only true gentleman was held beneath contempt.

From this vantage point, Twain was “disarming the grenade” in his own way.

Those supporting the decision to remove the N-word argue that putting the book in the hands of more children is worth sacrificing fidelity to Twain’s original text. Plus, they maintain, any arguments for “the truth” about our country’s racial past should begin with actually telling the truth — which isn’t really happening.

The Huck Finn controversy (as well the Goldberg/Shepherd-Hasselbeck and Winfrey-Jay Z debates) illustrate the power of words. On the one hand are the sensitivities of those who are offended — if not deeply hurt — by the hidden stereotypes implied in the use of certain words. On the other are free speech advocates and those who believe that offended people should get a grip and not be so thin-skinned.

Should the N-Word Be Removed from Huck Finn?

I do have an opinion because I have skin in this game (every pun intended).

I was assigned Huckleberry Finn in college. I was the only African American in the class. We discussed the book for at least two weeks because our professor thought that it was one of the greatest novels in American literature.

I cringed the whole two weeks, sitting on the edge of my chair, fearful that someone in class would make a racial remark that I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate. Every racial stereotype I had grown up with was right there in the book. I was still a teenager and didn’t have the words to articulate what I was experiencing.

I definitely would have felt better had the word “slave” been used, although I may have still felt fearful and self-conscious — just not as much. I frankly don’t even remember whatever it was that I was supposed to learn about Huck Finn from the class. I only remember the experience as completely dismal and my intense relief when we finally moved on to another novel.

Yet despite that memory, I can see the arguments of those who think the N-word should stay in. I agree about the value of the historical record. We learn from history, or at least we are supposed to learn from it. I’m also an author. Would Twain have wanted his words altered? Most of those with an opinion on this believe not.

So what labels are okay to use anyway?

This controversy has significance for today’s workplace. There are clear cultural differences in what terms are preferred by whom.

I’ll say more Huck Finn and about labeling people in the workplace in the coming blog entries. There is no straight-forward solution to this issue.

Meanwhile, what do you think about it?


References:

  1. Reframing Change, Chapter 5, Bridging Differences
  2. For a summary of the debate about the use of the N-Word in Huck Finn, click here. For arguments in favor of keeping the N-word in the book, click here and here.  For arguments opposed to keeping the N-word, click here and here.
  3. Baker, R. (April 14, 1982). Observer: the Only Gentleman. The New York Times, 860 words.

With Liberty and Justice for all: DADT and Civil Rights

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010 at 11:14 am  

With Liberty and Justice for All

I have been eagerly devouring the news bulletins on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — delighted beyond description that the repeal finally passed with bipartisan support and is now signed into law.

The similarities between this repeal and the march toward civil rights in the 50s and 60s are uncanny to me. I remember sitting on my uncle’s knee as a child, listening to him talk about serving in a segregated unit during World War II. I was too young to fully understand what he was saying, but he, my parents, and their friends all talked about what an injustice it was.  He and other brave Negro (as we referred to ourselves at the time) soldiers were willing to die for their country, yet their country denied them equal rights under the law. They had separate units, inferior equipment, inferior assignments, and were routinely insulted and harassed.

As I recall, my uncle had lost hearing in one ear during the war. The outer ear was permanently numb, he said, although now I wonder if this was a bit of exaggeration. In any case, he would allow me to stick pins in it (very gingerly, of course) to see if he would flinch and he never did.

His lost hearing and numb ear were symbols to me of the sacrifice he was willing to make to defend liberty in a foreign land. Liberty had something to do with the Pledge of Alliance — as a young child, I knew that much.

I also could recite the Pledge of Allegiance by heart, having said it in my primary school daily since kindergarten:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, Under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

At that young age, I might not have fully understood liberty and justice, but I did understand segregation. To me as a child, segregation was epitomized by filthy bathrooms in the stores downtown. Every time my mother took my sisters and me downtown to shop, going to the bathroom was an ordeal. Often located in the basement of whatever store we were in, the bathrooms for “coloreds” were always nasty in stark contrast to the gleaming, clean bathrooms that we could peek in as the White patrons walked in and out.

Our teachers worked hard for us to grow up believing that segregation was an injustice — something that one day would be corrected and definitely not something we deserved. They proved to be correct on both counts as court case after court case and then the Civil Rights movement supported our advance toward legal and civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed everything for us. Legal and civil rights became the law of the land.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? — Same Wine, New Bottles

When “don’t ask, don’t tell” was first suggested by the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the arguments pro and con were eerily familiar to me — references to holy books, “God’s will”, “unnatural acts”, and public opinion adamantly against integration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBTs) Americans into the military. Each of these arguments had been used decades before to keep my uncle and other patriotic Americans in segregated military units.

Even so, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an actual improvement over the outright ban that had existed before. Since LGBTs could “cover” — conceal their sexual identity, they were permitted to remain in the military as long as their sexual identity remained hidden. For centuries past, an unknown number of African Americans have also “covered” — passing for White. During my uncle’s day and before, those who passed and joined the military served under a tacit “don’t ask, don’t tell” injunction.

Another March toward Liberty and Justice

The fervent opposition to segregation that my parents and teachers instilled in me as a child has now expanded to my equally fervent support as an adult for full human rights for all.  While I may get discouraged whenever the latest legislative or court initiative is set back, my spirits are immediately lifted when I look at the historical progression of human rights over time.

Year by year, decade by decade, century by century, human rights have been expanding for group after group. Slavery and indentured servitude have been abolished. Women and people of color have won the right to vote and been integrated into the military. Segregation and laws against miscegenation have been overturned.  It is no longer fashionable or even acceptable to declare oneself as a racist or sexist.

Achievement of civil and legal rights for each group hasn’t been fast, and it hasn’t been a straight road, but the march toward liberty and justice for all continues onward, nationally and internationally.

Specifically with respect to gay rights, many companies have adopted policies that protect domestic partnerships, yet marriage equality is still a promise in most states. Some organizations, including the University of Houston where I am a Professor Emeritus, have included sexual orientation in their equal opportunity provisions, yet there is no federal law guaranteeing it.  Even so, another sign of the changing times is that some House and Senate members who opposed repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” avoided any offensive implication that gays were inferior or “unnatural”.  Rather, they claimed that their opposition was based on concern about the morale of the troops.

Attitudes are changing and as they do, so will the laws.  In Reframing Change, Chapter 6, we emphasize the importance of celebrating small wins to keep up one’s spirits.  Liberty and justice have not yet fully implemented for all Americans, there is more to be done, but the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is a “Big Win” that I am delighted to celebrate with millions of others.

What a wonderful start for the New Year!

Happy holidays to all of you,

Jean

References:

1. Reframing Change, Chapter 6, Initiating Change

2. Yoshino, K. (2006). Covering : the hidden assault on our civil rights (1st ed.). New York: Random House.  See also http://www.kenjiyoshino.com/articles/pressure_to_cover.pdf

Workplace Undercover: Suffer in silence or speak up?

Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 8:00 am  

Preface:  Workplace Undercover will be a recurring segment of this blog, featuring a workplace scenario and a response by a guest consultant.  The scenario below was written by Eillen Bui, our research associate.  Mary Harlan of Harlan Consulting is guest consultant for this scenario.

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The scenario: Carina was recently promoted from Operator Technician to Engineer after working at TLC Co. for 15 years. To Carina, this promotion was bittersweet. She knew that she deserved this position, but felt it should have happened long ago. She was already doing everything the Engineer’s job description entailed years ago and was very experienced. The only thing was that she never earned a degree in engineering; everything she knew, she learned from working at the company.

Tom, the engineer she worked under, would assign Carina his tasks and then would take credit for her work. He even received a raise because of all the work that he was supposedly putting out. Carina would work in the background, believing she never received the credit she deserved.

Carina had many reasons for not wanting to bring up the situation to the partners of the company. She felt that as a female, she would never be considered for the position since only males held that title in her company. She also feared that she would be perceived as a weak, emotional female that would complain whenever she felt a “perceived injustice”.

As a first generation Filipino American, Carina was not as fluent in the American language as she wanted to be. She felt that if she brought up the subject, she would not be able to communicate her point to the partners effectively and that Tom would take that opportunity and discount her.

Carina would fume in the background, thinking that the partners surely knew she was the one who was doing all the work and was just turning a blind eye since Tom had seniority and was a white male, just like them!

The day after receiving her promotion, Carina began wondering whether she could now tell the partners how she had suffered in silence all these years, now she had had more of a voice in the company. She suspected what had happened to her was happening to another woman in the company and she thought the partners should know what was going on in their own company. Also, she just couldn’t bear to stay silent any longer.

But would she hurt her career by speaking up? And if she did tell them how she felt, what should she say and how should she say it?

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Today’s Response by Mary Harlan:

Carina, first of all, congratulations on a well deserved promotion! Yours is a difficult and complicated situation. It’s difficult because you must weigh the immediate emotional release you expect to get by speaking up against the longer term potential for backlash if do you speak up. Both options, particularly the potential for backlash are somewhat laden with assumptions. Consider the possibility that you could find a way to share your experience and your perspective in a way that provides insight rather than accuses.

Your situation is complicated because part of it is emotional (the accumulated years of hurt, betrayal, and resentment) and part of it relates to what you experience as fair or just in your work setting.

I would encourage you to work through your emotional charge on this before you do anything. A first step you might take is clearing your emotions to the point that you can sincerely appreciate where people are in the organization and how they have possibly and unconsciously acted out of their cultural conditioning – the way things have always been done in their organization . This could release you from having an emotionally driven agenda with your decision.

Once you have cleared your emotions, if you decide to say nothing, you will be okay your decision. If you decide to speak up, you will be able to do so with clarity of purpose. This clarity will increase the likelihood that your speaking up provides insight and has a positive outcome for others…and decrease the odds that you are perceived as a “weak, emotional female that would complain whenever you felt a perceived injustice”.

When (and if) you share your experience, two points are important to keep in mind:

  • Clarify your intention to share with those in the company regarding how their actions can result in perceptions of injustice.
    • Example: “I’m not sure if you know how or why what you are doing might seem to others such as myself even if this is not your intention. May I share this with you?….
  • Clarify your awareness that your perspective is born out of your history and emotionally-laden for you. This means that it easily could reflect a bias or slanted perspective on your part.
    • Example: “I want you to know that I know that because I was not born in this country, I am probably looking at what is happening here from a different point of view than others here. I feel strongly about this and for this reason, there may be important subtleties about how things are done that I am missing.

Both of these points can be positive for the other person to hear. Hearing that you don’t think they intend to be hurtful can mitigate the reaction that they could have of feeling falsely accused.

Hearing that you’re aware of your perspective can support their openness to understand much more personally and poignantly how their behaviors impact people in the organization and ultimately performance.

Can you imagine sharing with them your experience in such a way that they thank you and ask you to further share with them your experience and perception? This is the possibility available with cultural understanding, accountability (not blame) for our own history, and forgiveness (both for yourself and others).

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Mary Harlan, President of Harlan Consulting, is a consultant and coach, specializing in change management, cultural competence, diversity, leadership, and teams.  For more information, see www.harlanconsulting.com.  Mary is also a practitioner with Leading Consciously.

Stereotyping: Is it okay to label people?

Thursday, June 10th, 2010 at 6:57 am  

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine spoke passionately about his opposition to labeling people. We had been talking about differences between Republican and Democratic philosophies, and he objected to the whole concept.

Focusing on these differences was, in his mind, “labeling”, and he thought we all should move beyond labels and simply view people as individuals. He certainly didn’t want to be labeled, he said, nor would he label others.

I also have friends who think that racial/ethnic designations are offensive, unnecessary in this day and age, and potentially stigmatizing.

On the other hand, I have friends who proudly identify themselves as “Republican” or “Democrat” or “progressive” or “conservative.” And, of course, I know many people who proudly wear the label of “African American” or “Black.” Read the rest of this entry

WORKPLACE UNDERCOVER: The case of the stuck-up coworker

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 2:56 am  

Preface:  Workplace Undercover will be a recurring segment of this blog, featuring a workplace scenario and a response by a guest consultant.  The scenario below was written by Eillen Bui, our research associate.  Mary Harlan of Harlan Consulting is guest consultant for this scenario.

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The scenario: Thomas just began working at XYZ Corporation and still had not met everyone who worked there.  Today he decided to eat in the cafeteria instead of bringing his own lunch and sitting alone in his office.  He spotted Michelle, someone that he had spoken to briefly the other day and decided to go over to say hi.  Michelle was sitting with a group of her friends and they seemed to be in a deep conversation. As soon as he got near though, the group at the table suddenly became quiet and no one would even look up at him.

Thomas felt uncomfortable so he passed by the table without even acknowledging Michelle. At first he felt saddened by the fact that his new coworkers were being unfriendly to him but then he became angry.  “Why are all Asian girls so stuck up and rude?” he thought. Read the rest of this entry