Tag Archives: society

Feeding the rage machine

It’s really hard to avoid rage as a driving force in the news today. Article after article, video clip after video clip, there is anger, upset, and rage. There is a link between what we think and how we feel, and that used to be determined by us. Now it is determined by the headlines we read and the videos we watch.

Cognition used to drive emotion, now emotion draws us towards information and that information caries a bias that fuels anger in one of two opposing ways:

1. Disgust: How can this happen in our society today? What kind of world are we living in? This is so wrong!

2. Rebuke: This is not a crisis. This is overblown! Everything is sensationalized.

These two reactions towards the same topic fuel even greater rage. If you think something is completely unacceptable and I ask you, ‘what’s the big deal?’, how does that make you feel?

Anger does not invite clear thought. It does not invite discourse that we can learn from. It does not foster a healthy environment.

It upsets me that headlines are so geared towards rage and anger. It saddens me that I still follow the headlines, clicking links and watching videos. I’m not impervious to the emotional draw. It’s similar to slowing down on the highway to see why emergency vehicles are pulled over in the oncoming lanes… we are pulled in by the macabre.

It can not be healthy to draw our attention to the world through rage. It clouds the truth, hides it in bias based on anger. This is not how we should be learning about the going’s on in our world. This is not news.

Shifting winds

Most school years are like prevailing winds. You know which way you are sailing and you adjust your course a little and keep going.

This year, and especially these past 4 months, have created shifting winds that keep altering the direction we are going, outside of our control.

If you’ve ever watched a sailing race, the most important aspects of a boat being successful are leadership and teamwork. That doesn’t just mean working together when everyone agrees with the captain. In fact, the test of a true team is how well they work together when there is disagreement.

In the coming months there will be some metaphorical rough seas, and blustery winds. To sail through safely we will need good leadership and great teamwork.

In our Province, we have leadership worth following and listening to. It is sad to see a team crumble under good leadership.

In other jurisdictions people are not as lucky. It is equally sad to see a team crumble because of poor leadership.

What we have to remember is that we are all in the same boat. How well will we sail through this rough patch? Calmer winds and seas will come eventually, until then the shifting winds are testing our resolve to work together.

It will be quite different

I went to swap out my snow tires today. Usually when I go to the tire store, the show room for new tires is open, and there is free coffee and self-serve popcorn. Instead, a table sat in the front entrance blocking the showroom and allowing only one customer in at a time. The popcorn maker was empty. While at some point the showroom will open again, I think the days of self-serve popcorn are over.

Will we see self serve bulk food in grocery stores again any time soon? What will buffet meals look like? What new etiquette will be required for bathroom use in restaurants, or changing rooms in clothing stores? What will hair dressers and massage therapists do to their stations and rooms between customers?

Even without these changes, on a personal level, I look at door handles, railings, and elevator and crosswalk buttons completely differently than I did a few months ago. The new normal will be quite different than what we were used to in 2019.

What happens when we find a vaccine?

At some point scientists are going to find a vaccine for COVID-19, and two things become immediately evident. One: there won’t be enough vaccine to give to everybody as fast as they want them. Two: there will need to be a thoughtful plan to distribute the vaccine in a way that maximizes it’s effectiveness.

The three easiest places to start:

  1. Health care workers
  2. Senior homes
  3. High risk due to age or health conditions like immune sufficiencies.

But what’s the order after that? The reality is that money and power will play a big role, and so athletes and famous people will get an undeserved advantage with respect to how fast they get their vaccine. This unfair advantage will occur. But if you were in charge, who would be next after the list I mentioned above?

Where do grocery and restaurant workers fit in the schedule? Or workers at food production farms and plants? What about teachers and professors? Dentists, physio, and massage therapists?

What restrictions might fall upon those not vaccinated?Will their travel to other countries be limited? Will their ability to work in certain sectors be limited? Will there be consequences for those that decide they don’t want to be vaccinated? (Besides natural consequences.)

I’m sure countries have already made decisions like this. I’m also pretty sure how counties do this will look different around the world. How it plays out will be interesting to see. If production of a vaccine is extremely fast, this won’t be a huge concern, but the slower the production, the greater the distribution order of the vaccine will matter.

Start with Good Intentions

I like to think that most people come at life with good intentions. I give people the benefit of the doubt that they are positive, honest, and want an outcome that is favourable for themselves and others.

Upset? Intentions were not met.

Angry? Someone else’s intentions did not match yours.

Hurt? Someone’s intentions were blind to your injury.

When someone does these things intentionally, well then I have to question where this came from? Sometimes selfishness blinds people to the way their intentions can harm others. Sometimes there is actual malice. There are people in the world that enjoy inflicting harm and pain, people who derive joy from being a bully, or who don’t care about others. But this is a minority of people.

Most people want to have positive experiences, and share those positive experiences with others. Sometimes though, they don’t have a road map to get there. This gets tricky sometimes, especially when more than two people are involved.

Trying to meet the needs of three different people can be a bit like playing rock/paper/scissors with three people. Sometimes all three will agree, but often there will be either two feeling like they came out good, and one disappointed, or vice versa, and occasionally all three will feel like they have lost something.

A good example of this can be a parent, teacher, and student meeting where they are dealing with a concern. The positive intentions are for everyone to leave the meeting on the same page, having addressed the concern in a positive way. On some level, everyone at the meeting wants the same thing… for the student to have a better learning experience. But that intention can be lost. Instead, the it becomes a game of rock/paper/scissors with three participants.

That’s when it’s important to go back to good intentions, and to focus on what people want to achieve. If anyone is upset, angry, or feels hurt, then it’s time to realign intentions. This isn’t necessarily easy, but when you start from a place where you believe that everyone has good intentions, it does make things easier… and more likely to end with a positive outcome.

By the numbers

Documented worldwide cases of Covid-19 have surpassed 3 million people. The US will surpass 1 million of those later today. Canada will surpass 50,000 this week. And sadly, over 200,000 people have died as a result of contracting this virus.

Canada and California are similar in population size, both are doing a good job keeping the number of people infected down, and both are still dealing with 1,000 to 1,500+ new cases a day.

The good news, hospitals here on the North American west coast are not inundated like they have been in Italy, Spain, and New York. The challenging news, we are not out of the woods yet and diligence must be maintained… especially as we move to reopen parts of the economy.

I’m no longer making predictions about what things will look like in the coming weeks and months… the virus isn’t a weather system coming in from the west and bringing rainfall. It has a life of its own. While we have considerable influence as a community, and as citizens who want to keep the spread of the virus down, we also have to respond to new outbreaks and change our habits as suggested by health authorities.

It will be a dance… Opening things up, tightening things up, closing things down, permitting small gatherings, and then recommendations against them. The numbers will dictate what makes sense. And while that’s easy to say, as we do the dance, it will feel like the songs aren’t staying on long enough for us to get used to the rhythm.

It won’t feel like things are normal for quite some time. And that’s not the new normal, that’s a level of stress and uncertainty that will loom for a while. I was trying to avoid paying attention to the numbers, but I realize now that they are something tangible that I can pay attention to. I can see patterns, and try to understand why we are getting the provincial and federal health and social distancing advice that we are getting.

The numbers aren’t complete, they don’t tell the whole story, but they tell us when things are headed in the right versus the wrong direction. Whether they grow incrementally or exponentially, they tell us a story, and we should be aware of when that story changes… and be prepared for new changes to our rules of social and work engagement when they do.

What will it look like?

A few days ago I wrote a post This is not the ‘new normal’, and I said,

“This is not the ‘New Normal’, this is a pandemic that will come to an end. This is temporary.”

This morning I ‘met’ Dave Sands on Zoom and we recorded a podcast. We spent about an hour online together and it was great to ‘see’ him. The fact that this was not face-to-face didn’t matter that much. In fact, I’ve ‘seen’ Dave much more in the last few weeks than I have in months. The reason for this is that we’ve connected almost daily on Microsoft Teams for work, since the March break ended 3 weeks ago. But I would have loved to have Dave over to do the recording. To sit and have coffee and enjoy his company along with the conversation.

This afternoon my wife and I joined another couple in their back yard. We sat apart, respecting ‘social distancing’ norms. We brought our own cups and drinks, and left after only touching the chairs we sat on. No handshakes, no hugs, no communal snacks or drinks. This was our first social gathering like this in about 2 months. It was wonderful to connect.

This is not the new normal, but I wonder what the new normal will look like? Will we be less likely to greet people with hugs and handshakes? Yesterday I saw a girl and her dad at a crosswalk. The young girl looked like she was about 4 years old. She got off her bike and ran to press the crosswalk button… with her elbow. Will we ever look at things like elevator buttons, public handrails, and door handles the same way?

Part of me thinks that things will eventually return to a normal that resembled what it looked like in 2019, but part of me wonders about social norms and practices, and how these will change? Will we bow to greet someone rather than shake their hands, hug, or fist bump? Will restaurant workers preparing our food all wear masks? Will we carry hand sanitizer everywhere we go and use it constantly?

We are months and months away from any kind of normal, but when that normal arrives, how many norms and social practices will have changed as a result of Covid-19 pandemic.

This is not the ‘new normal’

Note to educators:

This is not the ‘New Normal’, this is a pandemic that will come to an end. This is temporary.

We need to be positive. Communicating that this is ‘normal’ is not encouraging to students or parents. 1/3

* This is an opportunity to try new things.

* We are learning at a distance only until we can work together again.

* What a pleasure it is that we can still see each other online.

* Aren’t we lucky to be living at a time when we still get to share experiences digitally! 2/3

Let’s face it, the term ‘New Normal’ is going to be tossed around a lot outside of education, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t construct positive vocabulary and language around these unusual times, in our digital classrooms, and in our communication home. 3/3

That is a thread of 3 tweets that I shared yesterday, and I want to add a little perspective:

Imagine being a grade 12 graduating this year and it was your last high school play that got cancelled, or your final season of Track and Field, or your graduation dinner-dance.

Imagine that you come from a single parent home, your parent works 10 or 12 hour shifts, you have siblings that you don’t get along with, and your daily escape to school is gone.

Imagine that you are 6 years old, and you can’t have a play date, can’t use the playground, and can’t spend time with your grandparents, who usually visit you every weekend.

Imagine any one of thousands of scenarios where your routines, your friendships, your family structures, your family financial well being, and all of your extra-curricular activities are disrupted.

Now let’s just call this the ‘New Normal’… No.

COVID-19, schools closing, and ‘social distancing’ have taken so much away from our kids, let’s not take ‘normal’ away from them too.

Positive shifts

Recently I’ve seen a lot of companies giving away resources and services for free. There has been a significant shift in thinking about how we are all in this together. This has been spurred by the now over 1.1 million people who have been struck with COVID-19, and the realization that this number is going to rise significantly before we see a slowdown in its spread.

Community members are helping each other. Birthday wishes to strangers are spreading like crazy. People are helping elderly neighbours. There is widespread appreciation for health care workers, and custodial workers that support them, and for people working in grocery stores and jobs like delivery drivers.

When I’m out for a walk, people are politely keeping there distance, but also looking up and acknowledging me. I’m not saying this didn’t happen before, but it’s much more obvious now.

I think things are going to get a bit harder before they get better. I think more than ever we need to be a society that supports the most vulnerable. I think we need to invest more in social services, and find ways to make basic needs more equitable. We have a lot to do to make the world a better place.

But maybe, just maybe, there are enough positive changes happening to shift our world to a better place, after the concerns about the virus decrease and the economy rebounds. These aren’t small things that need to happen, but I like to think that some positive shifts will eventually come from this globally unifying experience.

Blind to My Privilege

Part 1. “You silenced my voice.”

It was the summer of 2006 and I was spending five weeks in Eugene, Oregon, completing my Master’s degree. I was there with a cohort of teachers from Coquitlam, BC, Canada, and we had many classes together. A colleague Christine and I had every class together, including a Statistics class we had where there was also a larger cohort of new Oregon teachers who were much younger than us.

These early to mid-20 year olds were in a program where students did a masters right after their teaching practicum. I think at the time the US ‘No Child Left Behind’ policy demanded teachers have so much additional education within the first few years of teaching, beyond their teaching degree, that moving to your masters level before starting teaching made more sense than starting teaching then adding credentials while you taught.

It was the last week of school, in this Stats class, that I learned a valuable lesson about my privilege. The class was being taught by the Teaching Assistant, who we knew because she was also our program faculty advisor. The lesson centered around research done in a school. The data was tracked by race among other variables. I don’t remember why, almost 14 years later, but the data was interesting and the fact that race mattered was relevant to the lesson.

After the lesson one of us, Christine or I, had a question and since we were living one floor apart in the same complex and walked to and from class together, we waited together to speak to the Teaching Assistant. In front of us, a younger, female, (*I assume) Chinese-descent American student was talking to the Teaching Assistant. This student was saying that she thought it was not appropriate to bring up race in the example given in class. I don’t remember if Christine or I interjected first, but we joined the conversation. We didn’t see things the same way as this student. We couldn’t figure out what we were missing? After that conversation was over we finished up with the Teaching Assistant and headed for the door. Before leaving the class, the Chinese American student came up to us and said, “You silenced my voice.”

We asked for clarification, and she explained that she had an issue around race that she was trying to address with the teaching assistant and we interjected and silenced her. We dismissed her concerns and she felt hurt that we had done this to her.

We apologized.

We insisted it wasn’t intentional. She told us this wasn’t about our intentions, it was about how we made her feel. She had a concern, and we dismissed it, we silenced her.

We apologized again.

The walk home was solemn. Christine and I felt awful. We both shed more than one tear. We tried to rationalize our participation in the conversation, but no matter the reason, we could only see that we caused hurt. Our words had power, and that power usurped the power from someone who felt less privileged than us. Our reasons didn’t matter. We were two older, white people who were dismissing the ideas of a younger minority.

Part 2. Rationalizing my blindness

I will preface this rationale with an important clarification: This is not a justification of any kind, it is in fact evidence of my blindness to my own privilege.

My family: My wife describes me as ‘a Chinese Jew from Barbados’. My grandmother on my dad’s side is full Chinese. I have many cousins and second cousins who are full, half, and quarter Chinese. Those that are mixed have mostly white, but also black, and East Indian parents.

When I described the minority student who we silenced, I described her as “(*I assume) Chinese-descent American student“. It’s an assumption because I didn’t ask. What informed my guess was that she didn’t look like another kind of Asian, she looked like family. She had the look of one of my mixed cousins who are mostly Chinese. She wasn’t ‘other’, she was ‘like me and my family’.

That said, I don’t look a lot like that part of the family. Despite my 1/2 Chinese father and my predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish roots, I have a look that Italians mistake for Greek, and Greeks mistake for Italian. I am neither. I’m used to not fitting into any box. In fact, whenever I have to fill out a survey that asked my race, I never check ‘white’. I always choose ‘Other’.

So when I saw this student, I saw family, someone like me. She didn’t see a likeness. She didn’t even see an ‘other’. She saw a white guy… An older white guy and an older white woman, both taking away her minority voice, on the topic of race in a classroom.

My context: I was in a school of higher learning. I was in the last week of a 2-year program where I was invited on a regular basis to challenge the thinking of others. I was comfortable in this role with the Teaching Assistant, (our program advisor), and with Christine. With Christine the metaphorical gloves were always off. We fully engaged in challenging each other’s ideas.

Many a day leading up to that last week Christine and I, both educational nerds, would continue our classroom conversations all the way home. Often, we would arrive at the complex, where we would head our separate ways, but we would remain there for 10, 15, even 30 minutes continuing the conversation.

We saw discourse and disagreement as learning opportunities. We were comfortable with this. We were comfortable doing this with our advisor. But this other student was not part of our community where this was the norm. Besides that, the topic had a very specific charge for her, and we were totally ignorant to it. We were also blind and ignorant to the very different charge that our discourse had.

Part 3. I silenced her voice

I will reiterate: My rationalization above is not a justification of any kind, it is in fact evidence of my blindness to my own privilege. I lacked awareness of my privilege. I could not see it. But my lack of awareness does not negate my privilege.

It does not matter that I did not see her as a minority. It matters that she was one in her eyes.

It does not matter that I thought I was joining a learning conversation. It matters that by joining the conversation, I took away her ability to address a concern with her teacher.

It does not matter that it was not our intention to silence her. It matters that our interruption led to us diminishing her voice.

I am glad that she spoke up. I’m sorry because an apology didn’t feel like enough. I’m also sorry because I have to wonder, when have I done something similar and the person felt they couldn’t speak up?

I know how hard it is, I’ve heard slurs that impact my heritage, and I’ve had to choose when to and when not to say something. But even there I speak from a place of privilege. Those slurs were not directed at me, a person who looks like an ‘other’ to the slur. I don’t live in a sphere where I have to think about my race, and how others will perceive me on a regular basis.

Even in my years that I lived in Barbados and later in China, where I was an obvious minority, I was still in a privileged minority. I didn’t always feel that way, but my experiences that were positive far exceeded the negative. That is not the case for everyone.

If I’m in a conversation where someone will feel silenced, it likely will be me being the imposer, rather than the silenced. Even now, in my current job, I’m further put into that imposing position as a principal talking to students.

Part 4. Accountability

When I made the mistake of silencing this student’s voice I was blind to my privilege and did not see my error. I apologized. I cried. I learned a valuable lesson. I am more aware now of how my privilege can be unintentionally imposed on others.

This experience made me more aware of race and its impact on minorities. I’m bothered that while my heritage is mixed I don’t need to identify with any race, and other people need to; that my privilege gives me a pass that others don’t get.

But that pass does not excuse me from anything. In fact it makes me more responsible to recognize my privilege and to be aware that it can affect others. Being more aware and responsible doesn’t fix everything. I will still have blind spots. If we could see into our own blind spots, they wouldn’t actually be blind.

I will make mistakes. Some of those mistakes will be shared with me and I need to be accountable for how my words and deeds affect others. When the effect is negative, rationalizations are not what is needed, apologies and reparations are.

To ignore my privilege is to be doubly privileged. This is hurtful and arrogant.

If I am blind to my own privilege, it should not be because I have shut my eyes. It should only be because I was not aware… and when I am made aware, I need to be responsive and hold myself accountable. This can’t happen unless I recognize my own privilege.