- Joined
- Jul 24, 2003
- Messages
- 2,600
we believe every life matters. this forum is about Diamonds and Jewelry.
Amen
we believe every life matters. this forum is about Diamonds and Jewelry.
@m1918
I don't normally wade into these things, but a business is in a no win situation if it takes a strong stance. Emotions are high. Some will applaud an activist stance. Some will not and be angry by it.
Spend your money where you like and send your message that way. If it's at a black owned jeweler, great.
But I think calling out small business that is trying to walk a delicate line isn't the answer. Nobody will ever be happy with one response. This is complicated and always has been. What realistically do you want these businesses to do? They operate on small scales and many with tight margins. If they donate to a bail fund and post it, some will say it's pandering or just too little and insulting, angering some even more. Or what if they donate to the "wrong" cause or charity?
Further, none of us know what anyone does in private. Maybe they are donating and doing things you don't know about. I never advertise when I donate something. If you need to advertise that you have donated and want recognition for it, you donated for the wrong reason.
Have you surveyed the grocery store where you shop, Restaurants where you eat, the gas stations, every mom and pop store, the server who brings you your dinner, the cook who prepared it, the farmer who provided the produce and/or meat, the truck driver who brought it from one place to the other, the owner of the processing plant? I hope you don’t buy stuff from China because their human rights record is abyssmal. How far do you want to take this? You have quite a list of demands.....make a public statement, have m1918 approved HR policies, donate to m1918 approved causes.....and that’s just to engage in simple commerce. I’d hate to think of the requirement list for a more personal relationship....the application must be brutal.
the best comment i've seen about this so far was something to the effect of:
thanks for your email regarding your solidarity with people of color. please share with us an image of your leadership team and tell us about your programs for ensuring representative hiring.
i mean, that's the problem. it's just words and maybe they are well-intentioned but where is the day in day out action?
I'll try again...I said she doesn't define herself by her race. It's not even in a description/introduction I've heard her give of herself. Of course she knows she's black and I'm sure she thinks about it. However, (although I have not and would never ask who she would vote for) I suspect Joe Biden would say she 'ain't black' at all.
"...we all put on a face in public..." That is quoting your post.
I understand the desire for 'positive discrimination', in that it sends a sign, but surely employment should be a meritocracy and not in any way be at risk of being called 'virtue signalling'?
If the situation is that people of colour (if we can use that phrase) or the disabled or any other group are not receiving education and skills that enable them to be competitive within the job market, the reasons for this need to be understood and actually acted on.
Is the suggestion here that hiring of staff should be done to ensure a mix of skin colours that represents a given part of society, rather than hiring the best person for the job?
If so, should that society be the local area? The County? The Country? The world?
[/devils advocate]
I understand the desire for 'positive discrimination', in that it sends a sign, but surely employment should be a meritocracy and not in any way be at risk of being called 'virtue signalling'?
If the situation is that people of colour (if we can use that phrase) or the disabled or any other group are not receiving education and skills that enable them to be competitive within the job market, the reasons for this need to be understood and actually acted on.
The 2nd paragraph of the above would level the playing the field a bit as far as opportunity. But -- there's always a but -- it won't completely compensate for biased hiring practices.
I was a vp of human resources at a university. When I conducted diversity training with faculty and staff (most of whom were caucasian, none of whom thought they were biased and all of whom thought they were unimpeachably enlightened by virtue of their PhDs and many of whom were selected to be on hiring committees for vacancies in their respective areas), I used a tried and true method to reveal their biases. I gave them resumes of 2 individuals with identical educational and work experience. The applicant name on one of those resumes was ethnic. During the course of a decade of using this technique, 100% of the people in training 100% of the time chose the applicant with the white sounding name as more qualified than the one with the ethnic sounding name. That was just an exercise on paper when it's put into practice it looks like this:
We had a vacancy in the English Dept. The search committee selected their top 3 candidates. When their #1 ranked candidate came to campus for the interview, that person was a person of color who happened to have a caucasian sounding name. When poc candidate entered the conference room for an interview, the side-eye looks and downcast eyes of the search committee (all caucasian) gave fair warning of how that process would play out. After all 3 candidates had their interviews, it came down to preferred on paper candidate 1 poc vs close 2nd caucasian candidate. POC candidate had a warm engaging personality and glowing recommendations from peers, supervisors, and former students. Caucasian candidate had boiler plate recommendations from peers and supervisors and mediocre recommendations from former students. The search committee thought caucasian candidate was the better choice. I asked them to submit a detailed justification of their choice with a list of the differences between the 2 that would cause them to eliminate from consideration the poc candidate for whom they waxed ecstatic until they met him and they couldn't come up with any logical reason not to hire him, so we hired him. Had I not challenged their thinking processes and made them confront their bias, the best candidate for the job would not have been hired.
To the cynic in me, the Ben and Jerry’s piece comes across as a panicked, knee jerk response. It’s reactive and self-righteous, as well as slightly hypocritical given that a quick LinkedIn search shows *shock* almost all of their corporate workers are white.
Maybe these preaching companies could also consider what they can do in-house, and actually action their box-checking “HR values” claims of diversity in the work force, instead of lecturing law makers and the general public.
The 2nd paragraph of the above would level the playing the field a bit as far as opportunity. But -- there's always a but -- it won't completely compensate for biased hiring practices.
I was a vp of human resources at a university. When I conducted diversity training with faculty and staff (most of whom were caucasian, none of whom thought they were biased and all of whom thought they were unimpeachably enlightened by virtue of their PhDs and many of whom were selected to be on hiring committees for vacancies in their respective areas), I used a tried and true method to reveal their biases. I gave them resumes of 2 individuals with identical educational and work experience. The applicant name on one of those resumes was ethnic. During the course of a decade of using this technique, 100% of the people in training 100% of the time chose the applicant with the white sounding name as more qualified than the one with the ethnic sounding name. That was just an exercise on paper when it's put into practice it looks like this:
We had a vacancy in the English Dept. The search committee selected their top 3 candidates. When their #1 ranked candidate came to campus for the interview, that person was a person of color who happened to have a caucasian sounding name. When poc candidate entered the conference room for an interview, the side-eye looks and downcast eyes of the search committee (all caucasian) gave fair warning of how that process would play out. After all 3 candidates had their interviews, it came down to preferred on paper candidate 1 poc vs close 2nd caucasian candidate. POC candidate had a warm engaging personality and glowing recommendations from peers, supervisors, and former students. Caucasian candidate had boiler plate recommendations from peers and supervisors and mediocre recommendations from former students. The search committee thought caucasian candidate was the better choice. I asked them to submit a detailed justification of their choice with a list of the differences between the 2 that would cause them to eliminate from consideration the poc candidate for whom they waxed ecstatic until they met him and they couldn't come up with any logical reason not to hire him, so we hired him. Had I not challenged their thinking processes and made them confront their bias, the best candidate for the job would not have been hired.
Is the suggestion here that hiring of staff should be done to ensure a mix of skin colours that represents a given part of society, rather than hiring the best person for the job?
If so, should that society be the local area? The County? The Country? The world?
[/devils advocate]
I understand the desire for 'positive discrimination', in that it sends a sign, but surely employment should be a meritocracy and not in any way be at risk of being called 'virtue signalling'?
If the situation is that people of colour (if we can use that phrase) or the disabled or any other group are not receiving education and skills that enable them to be competitive within the job market, the reasons for this need to be understood and actually acted on.
The 2nd paragraph of the above would level the playing the field a bit as far as opportunity. But -- there's always a but -- it won't completely compensate for biased hiring practices.
I was a vp of human resources at a university. When I conducted diversity training with faculty and staff (most of whom were caucasian, none of whom thought they were biased and all of whom thought they were unimpeachably enlightened by virtue of their PhDs and many of whom were selected to be on hiring committees for vacancies in their respective areas), I used a tried and true method to reveal their biases. I gave them resumes of 2 individuals with identical educational and work experience. The applicant name on one of those resumes was ethnic. During the course of a decade of using this technique, 100% of the people in training 100% of the time chose the applicant with the white sounding name as more qualified than the one with the ethnic sounding name. That was just an exercise on paper when it's put into practice it looks like this:
We had a vacancy in the English Dept. The search committee selected their top 3 candidates. When their #1 ranked candidate came to campus for the interview, that person was a person of color who happened to have a caucasian sounding name. When poc candidate entered the conference room for an interview, the side-eye looks and downcast eyes of the search committee (all caucasian) gave fair warning of how that process would play out. After all 3 candidates had their interviews, it came down to preferred on paper candidate 1 poc vs close 2nd caucasian candidate. POC candidate had a warm engaging personality and glowing recommendations from peers, supervisors, and former students. Caucasian candidate had boiler plate recommendations from peers and supervisors and mediocre recommendations from former students. The search committee thought caucasian candidate was the better choice. I asked them to submit a detailed justification of their choice with a list of the differences between the 2 that would cause them to eliminate from consideration the poc candidate for whom they waxed ecstatic until they met him and they couldn't come up with any logical reason not to hire him, so we hired him. Had I not challenged their thinking processes and made them confront their bias, the best candidate for the job would not have been hired.
To the cynic in me, the Ben and Jerry’s piece comes across as a panicked, knee jerk response. It’s reactive and self-righteous, as well as slightly hypocritical given that a quick LinkedIn search shows *shock* almost all of their corporate workers are white.
Maybe these preaching companies could also consider what they can do in-house, and actually action their box-checking “HR values” claims of diversity in the work force, instead of lecturing law makers and the general public.
OH baloney, we all put on a face in public.
The Masks That We Wear
"Imposter Syndrome" and why we sometimes feel like a fakewww.psychologytoday.com
Masking (personality) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Now your friend and you may be one of the few people who don't mask..
I don't care who she votes for btw, although she may be putting on a great mask for you cause she thinks to be your friend she must.
I look at companies and people posting BLM or other messages with hope that it's a start for them to be better. Those of us who are white need to educate ourselves about systemic racism in this country, and we don't all start from the same place.
What we need to be looking for is what they do next. If posting those messages is both a start and a finish for a company or person, then yes, call them out as hypocrites or racists or whatever. But give them the opportunity to take the next steps before we judge how they chose to start. We all have to start somewhere.
I don’t eat ice cream so I’m not a fan girl of Ben & Jerry’s by any means. What caught my eye about that email is the fact that it actually acknowledges that this country is founded on white supremacy and that the whole system is functioning as the racist and oppressive lever it was designed to be.
"What happened to George Floyd was not the result of a bad apple; it was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and culture that has treated Black bodies as the enemy from the beginning."
This really resonated with me because I don’t think most Americans accept this fact, and it made me do a double take to see it coming from an ice cream company.
Edited to add: apparently they’ve been saying it since at least August 2019.
From Slavery to Mass Incarceration
2019 marked the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans being brought to America. Can we finally talk about slavery’s legacy?www.benjerry.com
You don't know me. You don't get speak for anyone but yourself. Who are you to suggest my friends have to be FAKE to do so? No one, myself included, is worth that....maybe you are fake but again....you may only speak for yourself. I read the article you posted...I think I outgrew masking by college. I don't relate to even one of their examples of masking. I never feel fake, I try intentionally to act in a way that I never would! Granted, it may take some people longer (if ever) to gain emotional maturity enough to learn to be honest with themselves and others, to engage in authentic relationships but please don't assume everyone shares your psychological issues.
Like I said BALONEY. I posted studies that show people DO.. you can turn it any which way you want, but people do it.
Boy you sure segue to FAKE from present a different face. Did you read the links I posted, not one FAKE in it.
Fake = NOT REAL
Present = wants to be accepted
Emotional maturity WTF? I'm talking about people who want to be accepted, obviously they have matured enough to present perhaps not who they really are but change to fit the circumstances for acceptance, fear, low self esteem, fake.
You and I are on different planes here.
It’s great that they’re pushing the agenda, my point was more that despite doing so (and apparently for years now), their corporate staff appear to be 99% white. That’s what makes me question their motives for these statements, because as an organization they don’t seem to be truly living these values.
If the social media trend of brands speaking up, whatever their motives, actually does drive change then obviously that’s incredible and it needs to happen. But if a business isn’t posting a black square or an “open letter” on their social channels then maybe it’s because it means more to them than image, and maybe they feel they have work to do in this area before they have a right to speak out...Does that make sense?! Not sure I’m articulating myself very well here to be honest.
Matata, I am really grateful you forced the committee to confront their biases. We need a whole lot more people like you when it comes to decision-making for hiring.When we say we don't see color, an ethnic minority may internalize that as "you don't see me". There is nothing wrong with seeing skin color. What's wrong is when we weaponize skin color against an individual.
Just curious, are you an extrovert? I sit on the border of introversion/extroversion in that I'm perfectly fine being alone, and being with people taxes my energy, but other people can recharge me, too. Introverts, from what I can gather, need to fake their extroversion in a professional setting, at least "fake it until you make it", because shyness is not appropriate in a business setting when you need to communicate with many people. In your book, does that shy introvert need to change the circumstances by leaving their job, or change themselves to not be an introvert? Does that shy introvert "stay true to themselves" and suffer the consequences of not speaking up when they deserve to receive credit for their work, or for a promotion? I find your "solution" not very well-considered and problematic, as it reads to me like a "one-size-fits-all".Be yourself, no mask. There's good, bad and ugly in all of us...but accept yourself and others for who they are. If you don't like something about yourself, feel you have to hide or change how you present yourself to fit the circumstance or to be accepted...please don't mask. That isn't helping because it isn't real. Change yourself or change the circumstances....you'll be much happier being an authentic person.