Getting an anonymous annoyance off my chest

[jack]

1. When recounting, you often call out one or two of the most obvious characteristics of someone involved. Eg. if you said "And I overheard two professors walking across Trinity College, and one of them says to the other 'And, ninethly...'" or "And I overheard two students walking across Trinity College, and..." even if it doesn't actually make any difference to the story.

2. I think this ties in to the tendency to make little provisional pictures in your head when listening to a story or hypothetical.

3. People often have a default little picture.

4. Sometimes their default little picture is unfair, (eg. a default doctor being male) and in aggregate constitutes prejudice.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except that I often see an exchange that goes something like:

A: I saw a black man in the grocery store and he said...
B: Why is it relevant that he's black? Eh? Eh?

And I've a feeling that's a result of a miscommunication somewhere. I imagine that (1), (2) and (3) are natural human behaviour and inherently harmless (I may be wrong?), but often reveal a problem with (4).

Particularly, a noticeable characteristic is often one that differs from the default, so if the default is eg. adult white male, you might mention someone's gender or race if it's different, but mention some other characteristic if those are your "default" expectation.

I think you can try to change (4) by changing (3) and (2), eg. the common technique of picking a variety of people as examples. This can be clumsy, but is a sensible approach. However, whenever I read the A/B exchange I feel guilty for ever doing (1) at all. It may make sense to avoid it if it has the likelihood of bringing up prejudiced ideas, but I don't think it's inherently bigoted. However, of course, A and B often don't have the vocabulary to express the difference, just know that something's wrong with what the other said, so end up arguing without knowing exactly what they're arguing about.

Comments

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I get more cross when it's the BBC doing it :-/ The one that really annoys me is "female motorist", when half the motorists on the roads are female anyway and it's not relevant.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah. You could argue which of "motorist/motorist" or "man/woman" is better[1], but "motorist/female motorist" plainly sucks.

The example in my mind was "his neighbour's wife"...

[1] Motoriste would be pleasingly archaic, but even more offensive... :)

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with specifying is that, whilst you might just be trying to get people to quit imagining that all doctors (for instance) are white men it comes over as implying that the blackness of the doctor is somehow the cause of the thing that you are about to say OR that you are trying to somehow impress people by saying that you know/listen to/are in a position to overhear this person (some of my friends are black, I hang out in Trinity).

I don't like irrelevant details - but often other people get confused if you don't include any, if I tell my Mum "oh, and then Jack said blah blah blah" my Mum will want to know who Jack is; if I say "a friend say blah blah blah" then she'll want to know who. And the other problem is that if you say "I overheard" or "I read somewhere" then you sound like you are just repeating urban legends, which is OK for "and this is a very funny story" but less good for getting people to think that you *actually* heard someone say this so sometimes including some small detail makes your telling seem more true (but it would be best to include a relevant one; such as "I heard the professor of economics saying how the stock market blah blah").

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with specifying is that,

Yeah. I see A/B both when what the following anecdote is stereotypical of the characteristic, and when it isn't.

Of course you're also somewhat trapped because if you want to be non-offensive, you have to guess what other people might have prejudices against: if you lived in a colour-agnostic world, you might still mention it, which would be offensive to people used to prejudice based on colour.

I don't like irrelevant details

Yeah, IKWYM. I'm generally happy with them, but not if people are going to be confusing about it.

And *sympathy* with family. I generally use names, and try to convey psychically that "The name may well not mean anything to you this time, but if you spot a pattern, feel free to start allocating mental space for the person" (which mum is good at picking up on) :)

Maybe you should invent a virtual housemate and attribute the comments of all friends your family don't know to him :)

[naath.livejournal.com]

Heh, maybe. I generally use the name just so as to distinguish between different people that I might mention in the same conversation. I don't really expect my parents to know everything about my friends... but apparently they think you can't talk about some remark a person made without knowing who that person is.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the anecdote: your person going '...and ninethly' gets a slightly different spin depending on whether or not you set it up as part of a university experience or not. But for many anecdotes the colour or gender or whatever of the person isn't important. However, if you are trying to identify an individual in a college or workplace or other setting, her gender or colour might be a pretty quick way to identify her. (So, in trying to identify a fellow compsci, the fact that you're talking about a woman is sadly a pretty quick way to narrow the field.)

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly! I think this is something that's always bothered me but I've never put it into words.

I think maybe there's an aspect of 'otherness' going on as. So, e.g., if you have characteristic X, which is a characteristic that cannot be held mutually with characteristic Y, then an opposition between X and Y is bound to be perceived even if it's not significant. There may be an assumption by X people, for instance, that when you refer to someone they're likely also to be an X person, and if they're not then you'd specifiy that. Does that make sense? I don't think I'm making much sense today, so now I'm going to crash out and play a computer game to give my head a break :)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My position on this is one of the reasons why my gender's not out online; because it matters to me that it should not matter, and really, it isn't relevant to anyone except medical professionals interacting with me in their professional capacity and some of the people who might be interested in getting involved with me (though one of my current sweeties has said they fell in love with me without my physical gender mattering, so not all).

I think it depends on what it seems necessary to distinguish the person one is discussing from, and the assumptions underlying that for different people are worth querying.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, of course, that's a really interesting instance. Gender is such a loaded example it needs lots of people pushing back by ignoring it to make any sort of dent in people's conceptions at all. (Ie. Yay you :))

But now I feel my good sense in trying to ignore things that don't matter is about to lead me onto a path of never telling anyone anything about anyone until I have to, which seems incredibly odd to me...

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I completely know what you're talking about! Especially - over here at least - with race. I occasionally want to say in an anecdote "this white person..." but then, since it's an unusual thing to say, there follows the assumption that it will matter that the person is white.

The other time it comes up for me is when you are trying to specify a person from a group. If that person is black or Asian, is that an acceptable characteristic to use to distinguish them (assuming they are the only person of that race in the group) or is that racist? And if you instead say "the one with the black hair" will you instead just get confused looks - since the assumption then is that you *don't* mean the person of unique skin tone - since a different/unique color of skin is way more obvious than a different/slightly unique hair color. *shrug*

[redbird]

Part of it is that in the first case you're describing a social role, and in the last you're referring to a physical characteristic, and one that people are often prejudiced about. People would likely think it odd if you said "I saw two tall people walking across the quad, and one of them said 'and, ninethly'" because their being tall feels less relevant than their being professors. ("If it was "I saw two tall people, and one of them said "I've always hated basketball," there would be a connection to their being tall.) Again, if you said "I was in the grocery store, and one of the other shoppers said..." or "someone carrying a stack of pies said..." there'd be an expectation of connection. I could come up with examples where the man in the grocery being black is relevant, of course, but usually it's not.

[liv]

That's a really good point. Thanks for expressing it that way, it makes me understand something I didn't realize before.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, hm. That's a good description. Except I would have guessed people would often include noticeable but non-relevant physical details like that, and the problem is that often, such detail turns out to have been implicitly relevant (black, overweight, etc). I wonder which is more true.

[redbird]

It's often hard to tell what's relevant, especially since it can tie either in to the speaker's prejudices (e.g., that a cart of groceries that's unremarkable if bought by an average-sized person may excite unfavorable comment if the shopper is fat) or be relevant because the story is at least in part about other people's prejudices and is unclear or entirely incomprehensible without the information.