Stereotypes

All right, Team. All right, so here we are again, another Workshop Wednesday, and today I want to share a video with you that I’ve used for years. I’ve used this on a very important topic, I think that we, as a team, need to understand and make sure that we’re very cognizant and thinking about it.

It’s funny; I think you’re going to like it. But more importantly, I want you to understand the message about stereotypes behind it. So here we go. I’m going to share my screen, and you guys will get a chance to watch this video.

[Video Begins]

Man jogging: “Hi there.”

Woman jogging: “Hi.”

“Nice day.”

“Yeah, finally.”

“Where are you from? Your English is perfect.”

“San Diego? We speak English there.”

“Oh no, where are you from?”

“Well, I was born in Orange County, but I never actually lived there.”

“I mean, Before that.”

“Before I was born?”

“Well, where are your people from?”

“Well, my great-grandma was from Seoul, Korea.”

“I knew it. I was like she’s either Japanese or Korean, but I was leaning more towards Korean.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah. There’s a really good Teriyaki barbecue place near my apartment, so I actually really like kimchi.”

“Cool, what about you? Where are you from?”

“San Francisco.”

“But where are you from?”

“Oh, I’m just American, really.”

“You’re Native American?”

“No, just regular American. Oh, well, uh, I guess my grandparents are from England.”

“Well, Top of the Morning to ya. Double Double Toil and Trouble. Oh my God, get away, Jack the Ripper! I think your people’s fish and chips are amazing.”

“You’re weird.”

“Really? I’m weird? Must be a Korean thing.”

[Video Ends]

Okay, so like I said, it’s funny, right? But the concept behind it is pretty serious: stereotyping. We don’t want to be stereotyped, and we should be careful of who we’re stereotyping. When we’re looking at somebody based on the color of their skin, their ethnicity, maybe what they’re wearing, or the location we’re at.

If you think of all people who are houseless in a certain light, then you’re going to treat them a little bit differently. And the way you treat them is felt, it’s heard, sometimes in what you say. Maybe not quite as obvious as what the video was; that obviously was tongue-in-cheek. But some of those attitudes play out in our actions and some of the things that we say because we take our own experiences or what we think or what we’ve heard or maybe read about a particular individual or group of people and we apply it to people that we think fit that stereotype.

And again, do any of us, as security officers over the years, want to be stereotyped? Do you want to be lumped in with what somebody else thinks about a security officer based on either their experiences or what they’ve heard from others? Sometimes those aren’t so great. Do you want to be viewed as a rent-a-cop, or do you want to be viewed as somebody?

Imagine yourself walking into Safeway or something, and you ask the security officer, “Hey, I’m looking for ice cream,” and he says, “Well, you know, there are signs up above each of the aisles that list out the kind of topics that are there. You should probably read those. You can read, right?” How would you feel if a security officer treated you like that?

What if you ran into two or three security officers at different venues, maybe at the motor center or something like that, in different locations? Maybe it’s your apartment complex near the hot tub and the pool, in the sports center, and you got kind of the same kind of treatment, you know, condescending attitude? The next time you ran into a security officer, you would maybe start out the conversation in a different way, or you would avoid the conversation entirely because you think that person is going to be like everybody else you’ve met or what you’ve heard stories about.

So it’s important for us to be generous and to be empathetic and to be caring and to be observant of our surroundings and not take that stereotype or that belief from what we’ve heard or seen ourselves into every conversation. But to be open and to be respectful are really important things. So that’s the message for today on this Workshop Wednesday because it’s really important. We want to be valuable because nothing less will do. We want to be humble. And we want to be invested in our communities. We want to be transparent in the way that we act, and we want to have resolve. And of course, we always like to eat cake because we’re a family, and our family has lots of different people in it from lots of different walks of life, and that’s important for us to recognize.

So again, Workshop Wednesday. Let’s be valuable because nothing less will do, and I’ll see you guys next week. God bless. Have a wonderful rest of your week.