Silversea Water Cooler: Part 3, Welcome!

[mysty]

Greetings Coolers!

 

If I may weigh in here. Everyone's experiences are different. That is what gives our world colour, vibrancy, and the opportunity to learn.

 

I don’t believe for a minute that white men are the only ones who discriminate. We all have biases and sometimes we are not even aware of them until we are confronted with situations where our bias rears its head. The true test of our humanity is whether we can acknowledge the prejudged view, confront the bias and change the way we think.

 

Many people, men and women, have struggled from less than ideal childhoods and circumstances to create good lives for themselves without any hand up. Their accomplishments should definitely be acknowledged and celebrated. Not all people born into these circumstances will be inclined or encouraged to strive for something better for themselves without some kind of support and motivation. Does that make the people who have succeeded any less successful? I don’t happen to think so. I believe there is room to celebrate success alongside the recognition that some will need a hand up. True generosity of spirit means that we do not begrudge the help offered to others. I don’t think anyone should get a free ride. Once help is offered in whatever form the individual must pick up the ball and run with it.

 

It is also important to recognize that the playing field may not be even. Just because “affirmative action” plans are in place does not mean that the successful candidate will be less qualified than a white male. It seems there is an assumption that if there is an “affirmative action” plan in place, the most qualified candidate will not be chosen. I would love to see the statistics that would support that assumption. Hiring managers are human. They all (men and women) have biases. I think affirmative action helps with confronting the biases.

 

Have a great evening all!

[Lois R]

Hi Terry, are you still working? Just curious and if so, are you now in the Media business? And no fooling:) I enjoy your posts.

 

And do you know Douglas Brinkley, the Historian? What do you think of him?

[TLCOhio]

Hi Terry, are you still working? Just curious and if so, are you now in the Media business? And no fooling:) I enjoy your posts. And do you know Douglas Brinkley, the Historian? What do you think of him?

 

YES, Lois, am still working. My wife has her doubts at times, but likes it when the money comes into the bank account to pay bills and fund travel, etc. Fortunately, I do not have to do an 8:30 am to 5 pm type of job. Have good flexibilities with my time, various things I do, talking regularly with a number of smart/savvy people, etc. Also, do a number of different activities where I am in frequent contact with many print and electronic media folks, etc. While I do not know personally Douglas Brinkley, I have followed him and his various media interviews, etc. Does this help? Any other questions?

 

THANKS for your nice comments on my posts! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

AFRICA?!!?: Lots of interesting and dramatic pictures can be seen from this live/blog at:

www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2310337

Now at 34,091 views for this visual sharing including Cape Town, along South Africa’s coast, Mozambique, Victoria Falls/Zambia and Botswana's famed Okavango Delta area.

[Lois R]

Thanks Terry:)

[UKCruiseJeff]

Greetings Coolers!

 

If I may weigh in here. Everyone's experiences are different. That is what gives our world colour, vibrancy, and the opportunity to learn.

 

It is also important to recognize that the playing field may not be even. Just because “affirmative action” plans are in place does not mean that the successful candidate will be less qualified than a white male. It seems there is an assumption that if there is an “affirmative action” plan in place, the most qualified candidate will not be chosen. I would love to see the statistics that would support that assumption. Hiring managers are human. They all (men and women) have biases. I think affirmative action helps with confronting the biases.

 

Have a great evening all!

 

Hi M,

 

I've thought about this topic an awaful lot. This is from the standpoint of someone who has worked for a corporation and genuinely found the quality of the average female around me as better and superior form many standpoints. Better managers, more direc, better team players, less selfish, more inuitive, better at trusting their instincts etc etc. t but more caring .... I could go on. I ran a team that females gravitated to. These are terrible generalisations but are my experience and opinions. So if I have a bias it is for want of a better phrase "pro-women".

 

However I have concluded that whilst affirmativee action helps to a degree the individual who has been affirmitively actioned it damages her in many ways and many more women who become collaterally damaged. Whether you think so or not the whole idea and connotation of female affirmative action is in shorthand to give an advantage to the female she wouldn't have if she were male. The consequence of that if she will be seen as having got the job despite her relative weakness. That will stuff her credibility. There is also the issue of how this effects the male dominated hostile environment in which this takes place. For the one woman who was promoted and presumed to be lessor (warranted or not) many, many more men and women will have their prejeudices increased. This makes the longer battle of all the other actions required to flatten the playing field more difficult to achieve becasue you have increased rather than decreased resistance and made the hostile environment bigger and mre hostile, and more who might have been ambivalent take the side of opposition. You create enemies..

 

The type of affirmative actions that make sense to me are those that enable women to play and compete on more equal rather than advantaged terms. That is the only long-term viable solution. So greater job sharing. greater sharing of duties normally seen as the role of the female. More nurturing of skills associated more naturally of females than males whether they be fashionable or PC or not. Better education to ensure females know that they can compete and beat.

 

Affirmative action in my view harms the environment in which the many could do better simply for a bit of rather misplaced tokenism.

 

IMHO

 

(sorry for typos but this is an ipad .....)

[mysty]

Thanks for your response J! I do agree with a number of the points you raised. Affirmative action does not only involve females. Minority programs are also in place for some locales. Affirmative action is a dirty word these days. And I understand the points you are making about the perceived suitability of people hired through this program. In order to confront biases (even pro-women biases), it is sometimes necessary to be very blunt and direct. Not everyone is open-minded. How many qualified candidates are dismissed because of factors not at all related to their qualifications and suitability for the position? When hiring practices get entrenched, it is sometimes necessary to disturb the status quo.

 

As a women, and from your description of your supervisory style, I would have enjoyed working with you. Unfortunately, this is not the way of the world in general.

[UKCruiseJeff]

Thanks M,

 

I am probably thinking of this flakily, but although both are called "affirmitive action" isn't the nature of the flavour for females and ethnicity completely different?

 

It seems to me that a reason for it in ethnicity has an element of atonement for past wrongs and so is in a sense is compensatory? It also seems to me that when applied to females it is more for an individual in a moment in time but for ethnicity has more of a nature of wider programmes touching many more people?

 

Funnily enough only today was Soapy and I discussing Status Quo ..... eery! :)

[mysty]

J...thanks for continuing the discussion! Many would have stopped communicating at this point. As a woman who has experienced being excluded from a position because I am a woman, this is near and dear to my heart. If you want to consider "affirmative action" for minorities as a compensation for past "wrongs", how is that different from the experience of women? We were also excluded from consideration on grounds that had nothing to do with our qualifications for the position. Not for an individual woman in a moment of time but for many women over a span of time. I am very sure I was not the only woman to have been excluded from consideration due to my gender. If you consider "affirmative action" for minorities as compensation for past "wrongs", then it should follow that "affirmative action" for women should fall under the same umbrella. I really appreciate your willingness to engage Jeff!

[UKCruiseJeff]

I think it is different because of relative prevalence.

 

If you take females as a group, although those that are enthusiatic on the topic would say it is a problem that is widely prevalent it seems to me that it isn't. In the female group a large number bring up children, or do not enter competitive employment scenarios and it seems to me that probably, relative to ethnicity, a minority present themselves to situations where they may be subjected to discrimination.

 

With ethnicity it seems to me that this is much wider than say employment and those in this group do not seek any scenarios where they might be subjected to it, but touches all almost every day in pretty much everything they do. Police, work, justice, education, access to employment, housing, health etc etc

 

I may have characterised it extremely simply to illustrate the flavour.

 

No?

Edited August 21, 2017 by UKCruiseJeff
i

[mysty]

OK J...I understand where you are coming from now. This is not necessarily related to employment now. And I agree that minorities are subject to biases extending beyond the employment issues. And I definitely agree! I took your comment on "affirmative action" relative to minorities to be related to employment issues. And for the employment issues, women suffered too. In terms of social issues, of course we do not experience the same hardships as minorities. However, I'm not sure it is fair to say that women do not face discrimination in this day and age. We are definitely much better "received" as potential employees than we have been in the past. No argument there! However, why should the numbers of women discriminated against versus the number of minorities discriminated against weigh against us? Really....any kind of discrimination, be in based on gender, or ethnicity, or religion, or sexual orientation should not be condoned. Saying one is more serious than another is just another form of bias. And again, thanks for not "closing shop"! :)

[UKCruiseJeff]

But isn't a significant percentage of discrimination towards women is simply failures to proactively level the playing field and simply subconscious thoughtlessness, as well as bad attitude whereas racial and ethnicity discrimination stemming almost entirely from practive and conscious endemic and some would say institutionalised and politicised hatred?

[mysty]

I'm not sure what you are asking here J? Are you asking if white males discriminate more over ethnic issues than over gender issues? Or are you asking if more white males discriminate over ethnic issues than white females do? If the first, I will have to mention the prevalence of violence against women. In terms of domestic abuse and rape in addition to employment hiring decisions. If the second, ethnic discrimination does not belong to one gender over another. The difference may be related to the level of violence more than attitude. In any case, one is no more innocent or harmless than the other.

[mysty]

Sleep well J! :)

[mdpa]

Hi Doug, yes ... I was thinking fo you and your trip, and I simply hadn't realised you'd already started.

 

I am so pleased you have found some good food, particulalry fish. I also hope that you really get a chance to wander when the streets are more empty. Perhaps the benefit of a lousy body clock. But like many places suffering from too many tourists (present company excepted) Venice is a city of two. It is an almost soulless stifling money-grabbing place during the day particularly this time of year, but venture out on a rainy night or early morning when all the deliveries are being done and Venice can be your own for a while. Sleep another time, but you'll get few opportunities in life to experience a quiet Venice.

 

All clouds often bring a silver lining and our dairy farmers earning too little for milk has regenerated an interest in small cheese makers and I have always considered British cheeses amongst the finest. Your comment about me reminding you of your neighbour who irritates you I take in the spirit I think it was offered.;)

 

Your other incisive and perceptive comments have made me consider your view against my own ... perhaps mine are ill-informed prejeudices. I think it possible for two opposing views to be right, alongside each other. All that you suggest is wrong I agree with you is wrong. Perhaps in trying to right one wrong society creates a whole new set of equal wrongs. Perhaps we should simply say two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps using sticky plasters on a seriously deep wound doesn't makes the infection worst.

 

From my perspective it seems that the US has simply not found a way of demarginilising people that it has previously accepted it has marginilised. I'm involved with an organisation called Reprieve. Whilst I have some undecided ambivalence about capital punishment I do feel that it is essential that people receive the best quality of justice possible and I feel that some marginilised groups suffer injustice at the hands of the American justice system because of their ethnicity. It is inescapable logic that serious crime will not be equally spread across all groups, but it is unpolitically correct to be clearer than that. But it is clear that some groups have greater access to justice than others simply due to resources.It is also clear that treeatment is differnet at all levels. Reprieve for example spends a lot of cash providing Black inmates on death rows with dna funding for example. Out of the justice system, it is clear that the US wants to think of itself as an inclusive society but in reality it still doesn't appear to be so.

 

I think what you refer to is political tokenism where politicians and corporations who wish to be seen as being good do things that have unintended or unwwelcome consequences and that isn't right either.

 

The only solution is to make a genuine start of demarginilising those that have been historically marginilised but the current trajectory doesn't look hopeful and perhaps some of the cack-handed efforts you allude to might make matters worst.

 

Jeff,

 

Always appreciate the detailed insight! I also agree with you that it is important for everyone to get access to justice. Although 97% of my interactions with police have been great, I can think of at least two instances where I had thought differently (does that make me look bad ;) ). Nothing more than speeding tickets.

 

Also glad that you took my neighbor reference positively. It was my way of trying to say that I think you have much to offer in the world and are an interesting person that I don't intend to offend even if some comments might come from an opposite perspective. We will do our best to visit Venice early and late in the evening!

[TLCOhio]

But isn't a significant percentage of discrimination towards women is simply failures to proactively level the playing field and simply subconscious thoughtlessness, as well as bad attitude whereas racial and ethnicity discrimination stemming almost entirely from practive and conscious endemic and some would say institutionalised and politicised hatred?

 

It was not too far back in American history that women suffered very significantly. Sandra Day O'Conner, appointed in 1981 by Ronald Reagan was the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court Justice. From highly-rated Stanford University, she received both a B.A. in economics in 1950 and then a law degree from that school. She graduated third in her law school class. BUT, at least forty law firms refused to interview her for a position as an attorney because she was a woman. She finally got a job as a deputy county attorney in San Mateo, California after she offered to work for no salary and without a separate office by sharing space with a secretary. That was in the 1950's. Now, most law schools have about half of more of their students being women. By the way, Sandra Day O'Conner is a very interesting and fascinating person. In September 2001, after the 9-11 incidents, I had a chance at Dulles airport to chat with her for about 15 minutes while waiting to board air flights.

 

Progress has been made, it was not too far back when these "attitudes" existed.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

For details and visuals, etc., from our July 1-16, 2010, Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle cruise experience from Copenhagen on the Silver Cloud, check out this posting. This posting is now at 218,917 views.

www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[spinnaker2]

Terry,

I know I have mentioned this before, but not long ago a certain Judge called me and other female lawyers honey. When arriving for a deposition, often the Receptionist would announce me as the court reporter, or ask me if I was the court reporter. Court reporters are amazing people, and do amazing jobs, but I can't type fast at all. I could never be one.

As a nurse I was subjected to nasty bullying doctors, who got away with it because the Hospital admin didn't care.

As a ward secretary, I had to get up and give my chair to the doctor, who never once thanked me as I stood with my back against the wall. Moreover I was told by the Hospital admin that it would be more "seemly" if I didn't eat my lunch with the nurses, and kept with my own "kind".

As a college freshman I was told by the Dean of Women I could not be a psychologist, she said my career path was limited to wife, teacher or nurse. ( that discussion had nothing to do with my decision to become a nurse several years later in life)

 

I am sure many coolers have similar stories.

 

We are too often blinded by stereotyping and prejudice.

 

Rant over...

 

And now back to preparing for the eclipse. I made two pinhole viewers, as there are no more solar eclipse glasses to be had anywhere.

 

Carpe diem all.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[UKCruiseJeff]

Spins,

 

I do not doubt for a moment that you suffered all of those things many years ago, but are you suggesting the same things would happen today and be tolerated?

 

I'm not trvilialising but I dont't see equivalence to current racial and ethnic discrimination.

[TLCOhio]

Terry, I know I have mentioned this before, but not long ago a certain Judge called me and other female lawyers honey. When arriving for a deposition, often the Receptionist would announce me as the court reporter, or ask me if I was the court reporter.

I am sure many coolers have similar stories. We are too often blinded by stereotyping and prejudice. Rant over...

 

For Spins, do not call it a "rant". It's just history and true!!! Sadly. Over the years, I have been fortunate to work with a number of strong, successful women. This includes in Ohio in the 1990's and early 2000's with the first and only woman to be the House Speaker and head of a state legislative branch. She was helped in learning how to work with the "Good Old Boys", by growing up with three older brothers. Also, have worked with the current female who is the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court and another top elected official who was Ohio's first female as both State Attorney General and also State Auditor.

 

Interestingly in Central Ohio, there are six top TV news anchors in our town at the three main broadcast stations serving America's 21st largest market. Three anchors are men. Three anchors are women. Today, that 50/50 gender balance on TV anchors is fairly normal. Of these six anchors, four are African-Americans in a TV market that is about 15% Black in its population.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

Super loved Dubrovnik!!! See more details and lots of great visual samples/examples at this link. Have had over 37,920 views on this posting and appreciate those who have tuned-in and dropped by.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1439227

[UKCruiseJeff]

I must admit, I'm losing track of the argument a bit.

 

No one has ever suggested that women suffered a lot more descrimination in the past than today so I'm unclear as to what point exactly is being made. :confused:

[TLCOhio]

Spins, I do not doubt for a moment that you suffered all of those things many years ago, but are you suggesting the same things would happen today and be tolerated? I'm not trvilialising but I dont't see equivalence to current racial and ethnic discrimination.

 

As Jeff and others might have guessed, I am not any type of "flaming liberal", but I have eyes and a brain. Here in this part of Ohio, there are some realities that I have observed over time. With many larger corporations, governments and institutions, there are certain "sensitivity" when making hiring and promotion decisions to value "diversity", merit, etc. BUT, for many smaller and family businesses, there some different approaches in dealing with certain personnel practices. It happens, even today. Much of "it" is based more on "class" than just race or gender. Human nature, however, is somewhat to prefer and promote people who are more like you and your values. It happens!! Even now in 2017!!

In many of our urban areas of America currently, the schools and family structures are less than ideal. That affects the abilities of certain people to be able to compete and do as well as others in competing economically and socially to get better jobs, promotions, training, having good mentors, etc. Just my observations and opinions.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

Wonderful Kotor and nearby Montenegro? Check these postings. Have had over 37,664 views on this posting and appreciate those who have tuned-in and commented.:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1439193

[mysty]

Greetings Coolers!

 

YES!!! Terry, you have managed to put things in perspective. You made the point more clearly than I did in my attempt from a previous post. :)

 

J...The issue is not about there being less discrimination against women now than years ago. Improvements are great. But does that mean that everything is now fair and it's time to move on to another group? Why must there be a choice about which group should be helped? Why not attempt to make efforts to look beyond gender, nationality, skin colour, religion, sexual orientation to allow all people a reasonable chance at a productive, satisfying life?

[UKCruiseJeff]

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[UKCruiseJeff]

Greetings Coolers!

 

YES!!! Terry, you have managed to put things in perspective. You made the point more clearly than I did in my attempt from a previous post. :)

 

J...The issue is not about there being less discrimination against women now than years ago. Improvements are great. But does that mean that everything is now fair and it's time to move on to another group? Why must there be a choice about which group should be helped? Why not attempt to make efforts to look beyond gender, nationality, skin colour, religion, sexual orientation to allow all people a reasonable chance at a productive, satisfying life?

 

No, but if the only examples that are being used are histroic ones rather than current ones, perhaps that indicates that people are projecting past issues onto todays much improved climate.

[mysty]

OK. That is fair. I'm not in the work force anymore so I can't provide examples to illustrate either side of the "women are now treated fairly" discussion. Not sure there are any Coolers who could weigh in on the issue. But just because there are no concrete examples readily available, why assume that all is well? To be clear, I am not suggesting that women should get preferential treatment over everyone else. I'm just saying that discrimination against any person is nasty! One form is not more "acceptable" than any other. There doesn't need to be a hierarchy of the grievousness.

[UKCruiseJeff]

Conversely, isn't it a stronger case that if no examples are forthcoming why presume things aren't OK and put in place programmes to cure problems that have yet to be articulated? We all read the newspapers, and I do not see the problems today that the earlier examples highlighted. In fact it has sometimes seemed to have gone too far.

 

For example. we had a case here a week or so back when a manager said in a bit of harmless banter that women tend to get a bit emotional, and the lady was so traumatised, she took extended sick leave and received several hundred thousand pounds in compensation. I found myself wondering that if the complainant hadn't been a women whether it would have had the same outcome.

 

Also you say that women shouldn't be given preferential treatment, but wasn't that exactly what you had previously argued, and the issue Doug had raised?

 

:)