Tuesday is my new regular volleyball game with the Old Men.
Truth be told, I'm the second oldest in the bunch about half of which are over 40. That's old for just about any sport including volleyball. What we lack in speed we make up for in humor and no matter how old you are, it's always good to be on the beach in a California summer and watch the girls jog by. And of course since we're all old, we take a less time perfecting our game and a little more time observing the traffic.
As a former resident of Hermosa Beach and host to legendary beach parties during my young adulthood, I personally know more black beach volleyball players than most people imagine even exist. Back in the late 80s when I first started playing, I imagine it was something of a novelty, but we did win gold in Sydney with a black player.
Anyway there was something that got me to thinking about corporate culture vis a vis socialization skills. Ahh, I remember. It was this discussion over at Dell Gines.
Blacks are at a fundemental disadvantage, because managers tend to hire in their own image. In an America largely still segregated by neighborhood, it’s harder for white managers to see black (or Hispanic for that matter) subordinates as peers. Further, it’s more difficult for minority subordinates to “connect”. That isn’t racism - it’s human nature.
And during one of our games Tuesday evening I had one of those brief moments when I thought to myself "Hey, I'm the black guy". To make a short story long, for some reason the Old Men (all of whose names I haven't yet memorized since this is only my 5th outing) decided to start naming each other animals. Somehow, I became 'Flea', which immediately made me think of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and images of myself onstage naked except for a tube sock. Then my second thought went directly to the old Richard Pryor routine about Dracula in which Pryor says "Dracula? What kind of name is that fo' nigga?". Flea? And so I had no response to the appellation as my mind drifted away from the game. The rationale was about my vertical leap, a compliment, so I'll let it stick, but I'm going to have to indicate that to the Old Men next week. But all that existential stuff doesn't concern me in the least, except on the rare occasion when I wonder what it might be like to have known somebody from the neighborhood I grew up in as a professional colleague. Why? Because the world of business partnerships is hella dicey. Nevertheless, in business as in volleyball, I am perfectly comfortable and without much more than an iota of self-doubt. Mostly that iota comes from the fact of my 36 waist, but that's going away soon.
Still, I have to note the exceptionalism of my ability to code switch. And really for me it's not hard, it's just expected. The other tangent to this discussion is how comfortable latinos think they are around whitefolks yet how alien whitefolks percieve latinos to be, meanwhile blacks and white get along much better comparably speaking. The study was at Booker Rising.
Only 9.3% of whites said few blacks work hard, only 8.4% said few or no blacks are hard to get along with and only 9.6% said few if any blacks can be trusted. 78% of Latino respondents said that they have more in common with whites than blacks. However, white respondents said they have more in common with blacks -- 45.9%, as opposed to 22.2% saying they have more in common with Latinos.
Thirdly and finally yesterday an old colleague wrote me an email saying "I'm not dead yet" a reference to the Monty Python skit "Bring Out Your Dead". And so it occurs to me...oops, there's one more side reference that contributes to the vibe I'm setting up here. Damn you Typepad for giving me intellectual constipation being down all yesterday. The other reference is Abiola Lapite's destruction of Japanese 'inscrutability' through the actual deep learning of the language. He says it takes 3 years, if you're serious. If you're not, then you are doomed to be a go-between who still really doesn't get it.
To my mind, in no field is the lack of solid Japanese language skills more glaring than that of journalism. The general quality of English-language reporting written by foreign correspondents in the country is simply abysmal, either concentrating on the lewd and sensationalistic or seizing on the odd anecdote to puff up the old clichés about Inscrutable Japan™; if more foreign journalists actually spoke and read Japanese at a decent level, perhaps they'd actually begin doing some investigate journalism of their own for a change rather than filing tired "Wacky Japan" stories.
Last night the Spousal Unit was watching, for the first time, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and it was at the part where the two (white) guys were playing Mortal Combat and having the "ya know how I know you're gay" argument. I'm cracking up.. that's still a hilariously funny movie to me. She's not. And so I began this post thinking about listing all of the dumb movies that make perfect sense to a black man who is effortlessly socialized with the white male upper middle class and a few that don't. But now I think that's not so interesting as the tangents. Ahh nevermind.
I will never like Caddyshack, period. I don't think Chevy Chase is cool or funny. I don't relate to Harold Ramis the actor, though he's directed some damned good stuff. Bill Maher I get. Bill Murray is a genius and as Steve Zissou in Life Aquatic as well as that movie about the actor in Japan, what is it 'Lost in Translation'? Perfect. I'm right there. Steve Martin? No. Bruce Willis? Absolutely. Monty Python? Of course. Firesign Theatre, not hardly. Howard Stern? Once upon a time. Doctor Demento? Always and forever.
The subtext of integration is a critical appreciation and identification with the artifacts of cultural sensibilities. It's much more than skills on the job. I say critical appreciation, not wholesale assimilation.
Oh yeah, and nothing says whitebread like when the Asian guy at your table orders food for you in the Asian restaurant and asks, 'are you sure you want spicy?' You can be sure that never happens to me.
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