PERCEPTIONS
A little something different today, and I like to get an honest reaction or honest opinions on the following true story.
Now your reactions or opinions may be political, or social, or personal, or whatever, but the following story would not even have occurred to me except that I heard a passing comment the other day that has stuck with me.
Those who know a bit about me know that I live in an apartment building geared for mature adults - not exactly a senior's building - but there are no kids or families.
Our building is also exclusively white bread, not done intentionally, just the area we live in is mostly white bread and the residents of our building, which is only three stories, usually try to get their own friends and family members in when a vacancy opens up.
However, some of our older residents have personal care nurses or cleaning ladies coming in periodically, and they are usually of Asian descent or Hispanic. I have never heard a racist comment, but the other day two of our residents sitting out in our lobby happened to make a comment when they saw one of the Asian nurses leaving that "they" always look so neat and tidy, and they guessed it must be their "culture".
It made me wonder then if the nurse leaving were not Asian and didn't look as neat and tidy, if those two would have quibbed about it being the result of their culture. Made me wonder about perception, how we view certain people, races, cultures and fix certain attributes to those people.
It reminded me of an incident concerning my mother. She is in a nursing home, has dementia, and is barely functional, and has to have everything done for her, including being fed. The staff is largely but not exclusively made up of black nurses and aides though most of the residents are white.
AND NO - the FOLLOWING is not my imagination - but I have often noticed that the residents are very pleasant and cheerful when the nurse or aide is white, but when the nurse or aide is black the residents are merely polite and seldom are friendly.
Does this have anything to do with the perception that blacks are less professional, or less caring? The reason I ask, is that before my mother got dementia, when she was still living at home and was lucid, she often quibbed about black people not having the same work ethic as white people.
Could this attitude my mother had be prevalent in others of her generation?
So this is how I tie the two incidents together, whether the Asians are so neat and tidy, or whether blacks are some how less professional than whites, we have our "perceptions" and yet when challenged I bet we would either stick stubbornly to our perceptions or insist that we are being wrongly judged, that we don't see any differences between races and cultures.
But we do - one way or another, we are like the two residents on our building who see the Asians as neat and tidy or are like the residents in the nursing home who are not as friendly towards black nurses as they are towards white nurses.
Am I wrong?
Now your reactions or opinions may be political, or social, or personal, or whatever, but the following story would not even have occurred to me except that I heard a passing comment the other day that has stuck with me.
Those who know a bit about me know that I live in an apartment building geared for mature adults - not exactly a senior's building - but there are no kids or families.
Our building is also exclusively white bread, not done intentionally, just the area we live in is mostly white bread and the residents of our building, which is only three stories, usually try to get their own friends and family members in when a vacancy opens up.
However, some of our older residents have personal care nurses or cleaning ladies coming in periodically, and they are usually of Asian descent or Hispanic. I have never heard a racist comment, but the other day two of our residents sitting out in our lobby happened to make a comment when they saw one of the Asian nurses leaving that "they" always look so neat and tidy, and they guessed it must be their "culture".
It made me wonder then if the nurse leaving were not Asian and didn't look as neat and tidy, if those two would have quibbed about it being the result of their culture. Made me wonder about perception, how we view certain people, races, cultures and fix certain attributes to those people.
It reminded me of an incident concerning my mother. She is in a nursing home, has dementia, and is barely functional, and has to have everything done for her, including being fed. The staff is largely but not exclusively made up of black nurses and aides though most of the residents are white.
AND NO - the FOLLOWING is not my imagination - but I have often noticed that the residents are very pleasant and cheerful when the nurse or aide is white, but when the nurse or aide is black the residents are merely polite and seldom are friendly.
Does this have anything to do with the perception that blacks are less professional, or less caring? The reason I ask, is that before my mother got dementia, when she was still living at home and was lucid, she often quibbed about black people not having the same work ethic as white people.
Could this attitude my mother had be prevalent in others of her generation?
So this is how I tie the two incidents together, whether the Asians are so neat and tidy, or whether blacks are some how less professional than whites, we have our "perceptions" and yet when challenged I bet we would either stick stubbornly to our perceptions or insist that we are being wrongly judged, that we don't see any differences between races and cultures.
But we do - one way or another, we are like the two residents on our building who see the Asians as neat and tidy or are like the residents in the nursing home who are not as friendly towards black nurses as they are towards white nurses.
Am I wrong?
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