I’m sure many of you are familiar with this movie, however if you are not I will provide a brief overview of the plot. Remember The Titans is a true story about a high school football team in Virginia during the 1970s, who became the first team in their conference to have not all white players, and even had an African American head coach. This takes place not long after the civil rights movement and as you can imagine tensions are very high within the team and the community. This movie has lots of examples of injustice as people were not treating the black players or coaches fairly. Referees were biased, the school set unrealistic standards for Coach Boone(the head coach), some local restaurants wouldn’t serve the players, and at first players were mistreating each other just because of race. If you’ve watched the movie you would know the team eventually comes together and rallies behind Coach Boone to form unbreakable bonds in the face of diversity and to finish with a perfect season. However there are still questions of injustice from this movie that can still apply today. Throughout the movie, white people were making unfair assumptions about black people and vice versa. We still unfortunately see this in society today, as people are quick to make assumptions about someone based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion etc. Identity was a major theme for this movie, as at first everyone had their own identity and were locked into their race, however by the end of the movie the team had one collective identity. I’m curious as to if we can learn from this team/movie and instead of having identity based on skin color, we can unite and have one collective identity. While individual qualities are important, it should be based on personality and not on how we look. To end, I think the point of this movie was to ask the basic question of why we judge people off the color of their skin, and is open to discussion on how we can solve this issue in the future.
Author: wall.233
Yo is this sexist/racist?
LINK TO YOUTUBE VIDEO:
Kenny Wall, Emma Bubolz, Christabel Paul
Diary of Systemic Justice Showcase: Diversity In The Workplace
As a business student it is important to me that there is diversity in the workplace. This is why I chose my diary on diversity in the workplace for my showcase. Diversity in the workplace means that a company should have a large variety of people of different genders and ethnicities working for them. Obviously, companies should not hire someone just because they are a minority. However, seeking out more diverse talent is important. It is even proven that companies who exhibit gender and ethnic diversity are respectively 15% and 35% more likely to outperform companies that do not. Diversity in leadership positions is also important, as companies in the top quartile of executive-board diversity reported returns on equity that were 53% higher than those in the bottom quartile. Some more interesting statistics on workplace diversity are shown below:
The reason that companies with more diversity are more successful is because they are bringing in a group of people who all have unique perspectives and can problem solve in many different ways. A possible explanation for a potential lack of diversity can be from forms of unconscious bias. These are biases that we apply to someone without even thinking about it. People tend to hire people who are similar and have similar backgrounds to themselves. Getting rid of these biases can go a long way in terms of creating more diversity in the workplace. Stanford Business released an interesting article on how to get rid of some of these biases. It is a model where companies provide bias training to employees and experts would analyze the company’s procedures and determine if any bias is creeping in. The experts would then work with the managers to determine how to fix these issues. These biases can lead to gender inequality in the workplace as well, as research has shown there are stereotypes between what men and women are capable of in the Workplace.
This figure shows that while men and women are both equally entering the work force, very few women get executive or managerial positions. Clearly women are being promoted at a much lower rate than men, which also stems from unconscious bias as most people probably do not even realize they are discriminating against women in the workplace. From gender and ethnic inclusion in the workplace, it all relates to the self vs the other in my opinion. People are naturally going to have a bias in hiring people who are similar to them. By not looking at people who are different than us as the “other” we can make serious strides for diversity in the workplace which should in turn increase the company’s success.
SOURCES: https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0217/pages/disrupting-diversity-in-the-workplace.aspx
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/reducing-gender-inequality-work-one-small-step-time
Context Presentation: The Leavers page 150-End
Migrating from another country to the United States for a better life can be very rewarding. However there are many unforeseen challenges in moving to the United States, the biggest one being employment. More often than not immigrants have a very hard time finding a job in the United States, even if they had good jobs in their respective countries. Not only are the hours bad, they pay is very minimal, and according to the Quinn Law Firm, a few of the common struggles for immigrant workers are working long hours without being paid overtime and oftentimes paid below minimum wage. These struggles make it very difficult for someone to assimilate in the United States.
I bring up this topic because it seemed relevant in The Leavers when Polly first moved to America and got a very bad job in some factory that worked long hours and did not pay well. Along with horrible pay and grueling hours, immigrants have to overcome language and obstacle barriers according to Washington Technology. When someone moves into a large city in big country like the United States, not being able to communicate with co workers and employers is a major obstacle to career success and will likely lead to getting a very poor job instead of one they might be qualified for.
These struggle make me think of the self versus the other theory we have been talking about throughout the semester. Immigrants are often thought of as the other in the workforce. The Chicago Tribune had a really interesting article that talked about how highly skilled immigrants face many obstacles when finding a job in the United States and often have to settle for lower level jobs than what they are used to. They are thought of as the “other” since it is assumed they don’t know anything, even if they are qualified. Given the language and cultural barriers, lack of significant job opportunities, low pay and long hours are just some of the reasons it is hard for an immigrant to live a successful life in the United States.
Works Cited
Alison Bowen, Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz. Skilled Immigrants Often Struggle to Put Degrees, Credentials to Use in U.S. 27 Mar. 2017, www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-merit-immigration-brain-waste-20170326-story.html.
Bouglai, Katherine. “WTIA Blog: 5 Biggest Challenges Immigrants Face When Job-Hunting.” WTIA, 12 Mar. 2019, www.washingtontechnology.org/5-biggest-challenges-immigrants-face-looking-job-us-overcome/.
“How Serious Are Employment Challenges for Immigrants?” The Quinn Law Firm, www.thequinnlawfirm.com/articles/how-serious-are-employment-challenges-for-immigrants/.