Stereotyping Individuals on the Fourth
So the Fourth of July has come & gone and none of us is so much worse for the wear except for the smell of smoke, I suppose.
Depends on who you ask. If you ask me, I always smell like smoke: I smoke a LOT, so I always have that slightly singed feeling: smoky, but not burned. (Maybe one of these days I will stop smoking.)
While I personally have never been fired for the July Fourth fireworks, I have seen & felt the INTENSITY of the panic in an office setting with regard to who will be.
The entire office scrambling to make sure their NUMBERS are where they should be so as to escape the axe of fireworks wrath.
It’s awful…..
Everyone walking on eggshells proclaiming “Not Me!”
You can bet the farm on the fact that if they were announcing this year’s winners for the Heisman Trophy the entire staff would be singing:
MeMeMeMeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Instead of cowering under their desks hoping not to get grilled at the office weenie roast.
Well, ok, "MeMe."
Our livelihoods are NOT A GAME.
People have forgotten that we are ALL INDIVIDUALS, responsible for our own individual actions. Take for example this excerpt from my new book:
“Stereotyping individuals based on our thoughts & beliefs about entire groups of people is no different than Profiling – or Racial Profiling.
It is racism. Not even “reverse” racism, sexism or misogyny (& do we really need an entire new word to describe prejudice against women?) Nope. It’s just plain old racism.
For example, I am frequently seen as “that White Girl.” Pretty sad that people race against each other because of the language they speak or how they look. That is the definition of Prejudice or “Pre-Judging.”
We cannot hold entire groups of people ACCOUNTABLE for the actions of individuals.”
So how do we positively & productively learn how to stop the cycle of game playing & office politics?
With education.
We as a society have learned the game & how the game is played. Now we need to learn HOW NOT TO act that way.
We need to embrace others as INDIVIDUALS & treat them with the same respectful way we ourselves would like to be treated. It’s the Golden Rule: “treat others as we would like to be treated.”
We do that with Emotional Intelligence.
It’s how we break the cycle.
Because it’s the right thing to do.
