Opposites Confuse

Observing the news and everyday choices, I find a series of opposite reactions that seem confusing. In one case, Americans have an overwhelming sense of safety, while being constantly on guard against a multitude of possible dangers. In another, they praise diversity while at the same time seem averse to the idea.

The first thought comes as a result of a news item on a proposed law banning texting while crossing the street in New York. As the USA Today reports, “The law would be simple enough, the bill states: ‘No pedestrian shall cross a roadway at any point while using any portable electronic device.’ ” Police could issue tickets charging from $25 to $50 for a first offense – “unless you can prove it was an emergency.”

Here is the contradiction. Americans were constantly reminded that texting and driving can be very dangerous. Now they must be told that texting while walking across the street is dangerous. Apparently “look both ways” is just for kids. We are too busy for that! States feel they must add the threat of a fine to get people to comply. The same applies to the 10% who still do not wear seatbelts on a regular basis. As a driver or pedestrian, Americans act as if they are indestructible.

Now shift the scene to the grocery store, and some of the same people go to the opposite extreme. Advertisers and food packaging attract customers by boasting that their products have none of the ingredients that have, usually erroneously, been tagged as scary or dangerous. Walking down the aisles we read of foods that contain no artificial ingredients, are gluten-free and contain no GMOs. They have no high fructose corn syrup but do contain sea salt and are locally sourced or organic. These scare tactics must be working because they spread with new fears being invented by influencers, celebrity chefs and marketing departments.

How can we be so casual about truly dangerous behavior while being so hyper-vigilant about details that make little or no difference?

The second example came to light from a CBS This Morning report. “West Point says the class of 2019 is its most diverse ever, both by race and by gender,” including 34 African American women, the most ever to graduate. That is very nice, but look closely at the comments of a couple of the representative cadets.

"We don't want everybody in the Army to look like me," says First Captain David Bindon.  He believes that working with people who don't look like him “brings different perspectives” leading to better solutions. (That, of course, assumes that diversity of gender and skin color is always a reliable indicator of diversity of thought and experience.) 

Immediately following came the opinion of another cadet that “it really helps if you can look up to a leader who looks like you who comes from the same background as you." Everyone nodded in agreement.

Which is it? Does the army, and everywhere else, need diversity for different perspectives or do we need diversity so that those who identify a certain way can feel more comfortable? Do we need role models who look like us or role models who show that hard work and perseverance pay off?

The news media often celebrate firsts by race and gender to achieve certain milestones and positions. Those firsts had no mentors or role models that looked like them, yet they made a difference. Are we teaching our children that they are not capable of doing the same? Especially as society recognizes so many more ways to identify, that seems like a negative, defeatist message.

Instead of pulling everyone together to share perspectives and come up with better solutions, is the current emphasis on diversity actually highlighting and emphasizing differences, acting as a subtle divisive force?

Opposite reactions to similar situations can be very confusing, and it can’t be sorted out without some critical thinking.

Learning From France

Over five years ago I wrote a piece with the title “Learningfrom Italy,” and earlier this week I wrote about “Learning From Harvey.”

One benefit of behavior having consequences is the ability to use those consequences as feedback to make changes and corrections – or to continue on the same course while enjoying favorable outcomes.  When a bad situation can be traced to our own choices, it makes sense to change.  Many people figure this out.  The wiser ones look at the behavior of others, those who are struggling, to discover what behavior to avoid before they encounter the same difficulties.  Learning from the mistakes of others is always the recommended path.

What struck me about the news from France last week was the Washington Post headline about their president:  “French President Macron has spent $30,000 on makeup services in just 3 months.”  That comes out to about $330 per day.  “The fees were apparently for doing up the president in advance of news conferences, public appearances and various travels.”  (And he’s doing this while trying to cut government spending!)

But as long as we are looking at France, what about Macron’s predecessor?  Going back to a New York Times article from about 15 months ago, “President François Hollande’s personal hairdresser has been paid 9,895 euros – over $10,000 – per month since Mr. Hollande was elected in 2012, about the same amount as a government minister’s salary.”  That comes out to a total of close to half a million dollars – for haircuts!  The previously cited WAPO article points out that the makeup spending of Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, who was president before him, was not much different from Macron’s.

French voters are suspicious of their motives for such extravagant spending.  They accuse their leaders of being vain and out of touch.  But as politicians in a digital age, they probably recognize the power of optics.  Anyone who wants to make them look bad need not go to all the trouble of debating official behavior.  All they need are some unflattering pictures to promote a negative impression.  Everyone in the public eye must always look their best, lest their opponents take advantage.

Who decides that?  It’s not the politicians nor the advisors nor the press.  It’s the voters themselves – who not only vote, but also purchase products, attend movies and back causes using the same criteria.  This need for optimal optics is more evidence of the victory of the superficial over the substantive – and that’s a perspective issue.  How much better off would the French citizens be if they put more stock in competence than in appearance.  Shouldn’t we learn from them to avoid facing the same problems here?

That would be great, but everyone knows the same kind of book-by-its-cover judging goes on in America to at least the same extent, as attractive movie stars are allowed to claim credibility on subjects they have no expertise in, from vaccinations to climate change.  Celebrities run for office and win based on popularity rather than qualifications. 

Ordinary Americans also understand the power of appearance in their personal lives spending over $60 billion a year on beauty and cosmetics.  As another example, check out this on-line eyeglasses site offering 200,000 different frames with, of course, many choices of designer brands.  For glasses these days, it’s less about seeing than being seen.  The examples are legion from designer clothing and accessories to fine wine and impressive cars!  (Possibly the core of the race-relations problems and other discriminatory practices in America is the looks-like-me criteria unconsciously practiced by hiring managers and others, and assumed as an imperative when children choose a role model.  Even the concept of diversity is defined more by appearance than true variety of contributions.)

Who are we trying to impress, or a better question may be, why do we let ourselves be so easily impressed by surface characteristics?

How much better off could we be if we wisely learned from the French, demanding our public figures act the part rather than look the part – and especially embedding that philosophy into the rest of our behavior.

The Role Model Freak Show

Sometimes being blunt and marginally irreverent is the only way to get a point across.  That’s what I’ll do today.

There is absolutely no reason why a role model has to look like me, yet politicians and the media continue to propagate this idea.  I can look up to, admire and try to emulate the positive character traits of anyone I want to.  I don’t have to get distracted by their physical characteristics.

This recent news feature bought the subject to mind.  A star wide receiver on the Florida State football team befriended an autistic middle school student.  When he noticed the young man sitting alone in the cafeteria, he "grabbed a slice of pizza and asked if he could join him."  This so impressed his mother that she posted a thank you on line, which led to the gift of a jersey and tickets to a game.  The mother said they both would be his “fans for life.”  It made no difference to anyone that they were of different racial backgrounds.

President Barack Obama is another good example.  Many people can argue with and disagree about many of the paths he followed in his life and many of the decisions he has made or failed to make as president, but there is one series of behaviors that everyone should agree were praiseworthy.  He got an education, got married and had children – in that order.  He stayed married and took responsibility to help support and raise the children.

There is absolutely no reason why a young man of any background or heritage cannot look at this and see that it is the proper course to follow.  He doesn’t have to search around for some guy of his particular race with good behavior to understand that he too can have good behavior or accomplishments.

I say behavior or accomplishments, because anyone can pick and choose what parts of someone else’s life are positive examples. A young swimmer, either a boy or girl, can look at Brian Lochte and tell that hard work and practice got him to the Olympics, and adopt the hard-work and practice as a personal goal, ignoring the arrogant, immature and dishonest behavior that came to light in Rio.  A young soccer player (boy or girl) can look at Hope Solo and see a great athlete with a sour attitude, electing to adopt the work ethic and standards of performance that made her great, while adopting the standards of sportsmanship from another source.  This is common sense.

But the media sees it a different way. They seem to believe, if the person is not of your race or gender, most people can’t figure out how to act or can’t believe that certain accomplishments are even possible.  So we hear almost daily that person A is the first woman to hold a particular position or that person B is the first Hispanic to do something.  Sometimes they even double up:  Person C is the first African-American woman to receive a certain award.  All this does is reinforce stereotypes in the minds of the so-called victims or minorities.  And those personal stereotypes can be the most destructive.  With them in place you don’t need to wait for the system or the uneven playing field to hold you back, you get to hold yourself back while you wait for someone with your physical characteristics to excel at what you always wanted to do.

So instead of encouraging folks to work hard and excel on their own, the media and politicians continue to highlight this as a kind of “accomplishments freak show.”  They hold people up as role models by emphasizing their physical traits - emphasizing differences instead of those things that bind us together and then wondering why the country is so divided.  This emphasis on appearance is reminiscent of a circus sideshow with the bearded woman and the rubber man and other oddities.  "Oh, look, it’s the first [race, gender or sexual preference] kind of person in a particular category!"  They see it as a measure of progress, but the real measure of progress would be judging people not by the color of their skin (or gender or preference), but by the content of their character.  (A 50-year-old idea that still rings true.)

Silicon Valley Diversity II

In previous posts I have mentioned what I call “trigger words.”  These are words that fire off an automatic judgment in our brains as either good or bad.  We have been conditioned to react to these words.  Words like natural, green, organic and sustainable automatically draw a favorable review.  Words and expressions like chemicals, carbon, big business and radiation automatically make us scared or less trusting.  Although everyone learned in school that the entire universe is made of atoms and compounds, also called chemicals, and it’s common sense that nicotine and snake venom are all natural; many people still have the predictable gut reaction to these words.  Advertisers and advocates use these automatic responses to draw us on board, hoping that a trigger word will get us to act before we spend too much time thinking.

Another trigger word is diversity.  When it is thrown into conversations and arguments, it carries an automatically favorable connotation.  Another assumption about it is that you can tell by looking at a group of people whether or not it is a diverse group.  Diversity, we are told, leads to more creativity and better solutions in all cases, sometimes even when the pursuit of diversity supersedes the pursuit of competence.  If these are facts rather than beliefs, I would like to see the data on those studies.

Mohamed El-Erian in his book The Only Game In Town devotes several chapters to the advantages of diversity for companies and governments to meet financial challenges in the near future citing several experts on the subject.  Even after his high praise for the power of diversity he warns:  “This is not to say diversity should be pursued at the expense of competence…it is about getting the right mix.”  But there may be another issue.

A couple of summers ago the big crisis of the month was the lack of diversity in Silicon Valley.  There were too many white men and not enough men and women of color, or women in general.  My conclusion was that to reject anyone because of some prejudice against his or her physical appearance, whether conscious or unconscious, is wrong.  Likewise to favor anyone for the same reason is to risk producing a substandard product.  I would rather that the applications on my computer not crash than to feel an inner glow knowing the programmer was hired based on his or her ability to represent some victim class and thereby help even up the score.

With all the fuss at the time, there was no mention that all Americans might soon become underrepresented.  Look at the tables below.  The first shows the proportion of graduate students in several graduate STEM majors in US universities. The second shows the number of US colleges with a majority of international students and their overall proportions in graduate electrical engineering and computer science programs.  These numbers do not reflect well on America’s continued leadership in this area, nor do they proudly represent how well our school system is doing.

Perhaps if the country spent more time educating students and preparing them for difficult courses, and less time worrying about things like diversity, problems would sort themselves out.  We’d have qualified and interested men and women, blacks and whites, and everyone else.

Window Dressing

This point was not inspired by a particular news story.  It is more of an accumulation of observations over a long period – OK, I’ll admit that it’s a pet peeve.

I am getting pretty tired of hearing people presented in the news as a representative of some category, as if that were one of their most important qualities.  Take for example this website that lists firsts in America.  It covers about 70 categories and almost half of them are based on a person’s outward physical characteristics:  first woman, first African American, first Hispanic American.  It includes a reference at the bottom:  for more information see first Asian Americans.  Other lists of firsts are similar.

In some cases we have people who qualify in more than one category.  Where do these lists of firsts leave Loretta Lynch?  She is neither the first African American Attorney General nor the first woman Attorney General; but wait, she is the first African American woman to become Attorney General!  Will we just continue to add categories and combinations?  At some point will it begin to seem pretty silly, like we are stretching to create a way to celebrate a person’s appearance, ancestry or preferences.

Personally, I think this approach detracts from a discussion of the person’s great performance or outstanding job qualifications and leads to many questions.  Why are they bringing this up in the first place?

Is it a celebration of the cracking of another (real or imagined) glass ceiling?  If so does it really show competence on the part of the person or is it merely the voters or appointers attempt to advertise how open-minded they are?  Will the person selected always have a haunting feeling about the objectivity of his or her selection?  (When an African American is nominated for an Academy Award next year will he or she think it is for an outstanding performance or perhaps at least partially as a payback in light of the fuss this year?)

Does this type of publication promote a victim mentality among others in the category - the feeling that it’s about time someone like me got a break because I never have?  As such, does it promote the very limiting belief that my role model has to look like me?  Isn’t it difficult enough these days to find people of excellent character and courage for role models without adding hurdles of race, gender or predilection?

 Does this emphasis instead show progress toward some goal; and if so, what is that goal, and who decides when it has been achieved?  Is it when we have some kind of equal representation?  If so, the concentration on categories and outward characteristics persists, and it will become an exercise in accounting rather than objective judgment.

At some point will we as a nation get over this obsession with background and appearance and just be grateful to get an individual most capable of a competent performance?  Or will we continue to feel the need to celebrate and recognize individuals as icons of a certain category of formerly unaccomplished or unrecognized people?  Again, who has the authority to declare which categories are eligible for distinction (and which are not)?

In the end this is a lot like curb appeal for home sellers.  Make your house look good as people drive by so they will slow down and consider buying it.  Plant red flowers, have cookies baking when potential buyers come in the door.  These are all tricks that fly in the face of critical thinking and practical analysis.  Smart people are not distracted and make decisions based on overall qualities – just as they should with other people.

To me, presentations of this kind (e.g., first Native American lesbian?) bring to mind the idea of the old circus side shows, an arrangement of tents with performers whose primary claims to fame were based on unusual or extreme physical characteristics:  tiny or overly large people, bearded ladies, etc.  I think it will be a healthy thing when we can totally drop the labels.