Author (or Editor): |
Title:
101 Ways to Know You're
"black" in Corporate |
Fiction? Anthology? |
Publisher: Watts-Five
( |
Date: 1998 |
ISBN: 0-9666276-0-1 |
Series Name: |
Physical description: softcover, 140 pages |
Relevance to doaskdotell: racial discrimination |
Review: Deborah Watts is founder and president of a marketing consulting company, Watts-Five Productions which she used to (essentially) self-publish this interesting book. Her business is located in the Minenapolis-St. Paul ("Twin Cities") area. This might present an interesting observation. Many people tell me that the "liberal" upper-Midwest Twin Cities, located half way to the North Pole at the 45th Parallel, is the "whitest" major metropolitan area in the United States. One could quarrel with this: we have other robust minorities, like the Hmong and the Sioux, for which her book and world-view could reasonably apply. The book has a slick, horizontal black-and-white cover (the "Schindler's List" artistic effect), and consists mainly of a large number (starting with "101") of scenario-based aphorisms, one per page, in large, very readable type. There is a bonus of 33 extra "new" scenarios. In her appendix, she provides a positive interpretation of the word, "Black" which has (like "Negro") become somewhat a negative, almost derogatory expression (at least when compared to "African-American"). There is space for the reader to make his or her own notes, also done in one of Power's books listed elsewhere on this site; to me this seems to pander a bit to the reader. Many of the situations depict instances where
people believe that they are behaving "appropriately" (even given the
“new rules” about workplace conduct) but are actually in a subtle way
insulting the African-American staff member. Here is
one example, from p. 10: "When I see you, I don't see color. I don't
think of you as black." Other examples show much
deeper and more venomous discrimination. Today,
responsible employers (under considerable legal pressure) maintain
workplace conduct codes that prohibit offensive remarks, but it is
difficult to draw the line where commends have cultural innuendo
"between the lines." Jonathan Rauch has provided a
perspective on how the "hostile workplace" concept can be carried too
far in a New Republic article, "Offices and Gentlemen: Don't
Joke, Don't Preach, Don't Argue, Don't Comment, Don't Opine (and For
God's Sake Don't Touch)" in the I used to think that most of this ill-will had
been gone from corporate On Most readers of this web site know that I am no
fan of over-using the facile analogy between racial discrimination and
anti-gay discrimination, but I will make some comparison, based partly
upon a reading of Brian McNaught's Gay
Issues in the Workplace (St. Martin's Press, 1993), which
appeared during the previous (1993) March on Most of these commentaries about "the fair and prosperous workplace" (as I called it in the DADT book) assume that success is measured in terms of conventional ascent up the corporate ladder, and that the main barrier is "the glass ceiling." Indeed, in the age of the Internet and of entrepreneurialism, conventional ideas of "achievement" (and therefore, negatively speaking, "discrimination") in the corporate workplace may well become less relevant. Ruby K. Payne: A Framework
for Understanding Poverty. aha! Process, Inc. Highland, TX, various
editions from 1996 to 2005; Website:
http://www.ahaprocess.com (Do
not confuse with ahapress, which is associated with Health Forum, an
American Hospital Association company)
ISBN 1-929229-48-8 Susan Lipkins, Ph. D. Preventing Hazing: How Parents, Teachers and Coaches Can Stop the Violence, Harassment and Humiliation. Josey-Bass, 2006. ISBN 0-7879-8178-8. 179 pages, paper, indexed with references. This book reads like a handbook that analyzes the problem of mainly college hazing, with emphasis on fraternities. It contains an introduction that indicates that societies have often accepted hazing as a "rite of passage" but that has become much less acceptable as times change. She tells parents how to watch for signs that their kids have been hazed, or how to spot that kids could become perpetrators, wanting to "pay it backward" for abuse (sometimes sexual) that was done to them. She also discusses the responsibilities of bystanders. High school administrators (and especially coaches) need to be very determined to prevent bullying (a slightly different concept) and hazing in their schools, with zero-tolerance policies, whereas social pressures sometimes cause them to look the other way. |
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