Shared Experiences

Today I shall delve a bit into the idea of race. Oh, yes, that subject.

Atop the Stoa today, it was a beautiful morning. The sun rose over the Newport News shipyards, framing the heavy lift cranes and dry-dock slips. That facility employs over 24,000 men and women. Nuclear powered aircraft carriers and other surface ships are produced there. Floated, they are pulled around the Hampton Roads peninsula to have their weaponry installed in another shipyard. Truly impressive.

Why do I mention race and then swerve into the Shipyard? It is because people work there. I don't mean white people, black people, or hispanic people...I mean people. They all march into the gate, lunch bags in hand, in the morning, and march back out when the shifts change, grimy and tired. The arsenal of Democracy unleashed.

The US military wears uniforms of different colors and schemes, but is looked at as soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They are neither white, nor black. Those that work in a corporate setting are bound by policies that prohibit discrimination, of all kinds, against all kinds of people. In other words, all must be treated the same.

Why is it so easy to get along in our professional lives (affirmative action aside...another article) yet still seem to feel so uncomfortable out in public? Head scratcher, it is.

I think it is due to Shared Experience. I have read account after account of mixed racial groups getting along as if race were not an issue for centuries. Heck, back in the Roman days, ethnicity counted more than race. Think on that one for a while. Even in New York at the turn of the 20th century, the Irish and the Italians were being discriminated against in all things...but I digress.

The white Colonel of the 54th Massachusetts regiment, an all black regiment with white officers, loved his men as any colonel should love his regiment. He inducted them and then trained them hard. He worked to demonstrate that, if well lead, a black regiment was the equal to any other regiment. In reality, they tended to perform better since they had a point to prove. When pinned in an entrapment below a battlement, men being ripped to bits around him by concentrated rifle, cannon, and grenade fire, he stood up, drew his sword and then charged the top of the battlements. He made it about three steps before his body was torn to shreds by high calibre musket fire. To him, that regiment was his regiment, not a black or white regiment.

In 1854, for him, the black man was an abstract. He knew educated Northern blacks, had gone to school with them and had a common bond of class and upbringing. In 1863, they were not just black soldiers, they were HIS soldiers. They were not an abstraction, but flesh and blood. They had shared campfires at night, sang songs and eaten meals together. They went unpaid together to prove a point. In the end, they died together, as men.

I've read accounts that at the end of WWII, when the soldiers returned home that decorated, brave black soldiers were immediately segregated and treated poorly, and if a white soldier was nearby that fights would break out. Not between whites and blacks, but veterans agains the whites. The white soldier did not see a black man, he saw a fellow soldier.

Blacks have been working in professions for centuries. Doctors, lawyers, soldiers. Some of them quite famous for groundbreaking work. The black political agitators of today like to hold them up, though the individuals being held up always seem embarrassed and humble. Without exception, they say that the opportunity is there if you are willing to work for it. This implies that the American Meritocracy is still in play. As long as Affirmative Action can be eliminated, the best and the brightest will always rise to the top of any profession.

While I'm thinking of professions, let me ponder for a moment. Professions have by-laws, they have established dogma to determine who can be called a doctor or lawyer. These extend into trade unions (NOT UNIONS in general) as they relate to training and experience. Color and background are meaningless variables in the entire calculus. If a black person has M.D. after their name, they will lose their license as fast as any white person with M.D. after their name. If a CEO is not performing, the shareholders will show that CEO the door...no questions about race need be asked. Do the numbers add up or don't they. End of discussion.

The bond people share outside of the home and family tend to be the bonds of trade and/or employment. Others are the bonds of childhood. Think about your childhood friends and how diverse they likely are. How many of them would be your friends in the professional world? How many of them would even be acquaintances? Think about that. White or black, this is the same application of thought.

It is when, as professionals, that we move out of our comfort zone and meet each other on the street or at a gathering. Neither of us have the shared environment of work to frame our relationships within. It is a shame to think it, but it happens. The same individual that we share an office with may be thought of as a danger if encountered on the sidewalk or parking lot out in the world.

People need to think about this and adjust their behavior accordingly.

I have another article that will be out shortly that pulls apart culture much as this one pulled apart race.

Until then, live well.

--Zavost