This has nothing to do with national sporting events, but just a couple of events in my own life that has affected my view in the way people work.
Yesterday, I had spoken to a friend who works for a prominent investment bank in the Northeast. She relayed to me how many people were being laid off at her job, and that it has made the environment pretty sad and tense.
She said that due to the shootings over the last few years, management now feels compelled to escort people out of the building with police officers, and are given little time to be able to pack their belongings. She said that some of her co-workers already have started packing just in case the pink slip falls on their desk.
” Don’t you think that the embarassing moment of forcing people out of their work by police officers would make someone upset enough to be even more disgruntled?” I asked.
She replies with the reasoning that some people are inherently psychopathic and that you need cops to escort people out of the building. I responded that the situation would merit a cop in appearance, and that very rarely a person is going to react beligerently if there is a cop around. I also responded that if the person is psycho enough to cause trouble with the boys in blue watching, then the person was crazy in the first place, and might have done greater harm if the office was less secure.
I then told her a better position for management for workers being fired would be to offer some type of sympathetic approach to someone getting canned. They should allow them to continue working ( but start freezing any passwords or keys to documents or important data ) for two half-days. From here, they can be allowed to cope with the fact that they are leaving, get their stuff, say goodbye to friends, have an office party etc.
Anywho, she stomps my argument by saying that people are inherently selfish and that management power is always a lot better when people are segregated. She says that corporate offices are full of cutthroat people, and there is no incentive for empathy for any of the workers or management. She goes on to say that essentially humans are almost like “animals”, and that they are unpredictable when they are getting fired.
This is a friend who thinks of greatness and good within people ( and I do too ). Over the past year, arguments like above give evidence that she is becoming jaded of how people are in her workplace, and the conversation lead me to end my day pondering:
“Are people inherently evil?”
My day begin with the same exact thought. I had another friend who couldn’t go to the funeral of his best friend because of racism. My friend is black, and his friend going to the funeral is white, but the white friend’s family has given the black friend a lot of undue criticism because he had dated a white woman. The black friend feels bad because he didn’t want to cause a scene at the funeral, but felt he let down his friend by not showing up.
This had hurt me because I am African-American as well, and for this situation to happen ( in the Northeast of all places ) in 2009 only saddens me. The feeling is equivalent to having someone break up with you, or finding out your girlfriend is cheating. It sucks that he was inhibited from supporting his friend only because he was black.
I know the family, and only a couple of them have issues with race. It isn’t in my good grace to call them out, and I feel I am doing them a favor by not publicly writing out their names. But I just want to say that racism isn’t dead, and for those who don’t understand: it hurts.
Did you ever have in high school, that if one or two people didn’t like you, it would stress you out to interact with them in the hallways? Or were ever assaulted? Those days, months, and years afterward, you feel like everyone is out to get you, even though its only a couple of people.
With racism, it is the same. You feel it is stressful to know that out of millions of people, there are only a handful that will disrespect you because of your color. But the stress occurs because you don’t really know, so you assume everyone is evil. And I don’t want to feel that way, but the pain is real, and it hurts.
After that story, I had to ask myself again whether people are evil. There are many who guffaw at the plight of black people under racism, and will say that racism is dead, or they aren’t responsible for slavery, or they think people use racism as a crutch.
I ask that people see racism as someone disliking you for no reason. And not only that, but never coming forward to reveal their views. I know that 99.99999% of people are not racist. But it only takes that one person to ruin a week for me. As an African-American male, I have had many ruined weeks. And even for these two small stories, I have to still ask myself of the state of our current civilization.
Can we do better?
March 10th 2009 — DO SOMETHING! — Share Your Thoughts — Subscribe
