QotW [5-04-03]: Discrimination
 

While FIRST's mission is to inspire all students, we often see that a special emphasis is placed upon recruiting, involving, and inspiring women and minorities. Often, this is because these groups have experienced discrimination; either currently, or in their history.

Question 5-04-03: Have you ever witnessed or experienced discrimination through your involvement with FIRST? How did you respond? How should we, as a community, respond?

Where this exists, I'd like to see it vanish. Where it doesn't exist, I want to learn what people are doing (or not doing), to keep things that way. This can be a positive experience for everyone.

Today's Question of the Week was inspired by the actions of two individuals during the 2003 season. I am refraining from posting their names, which is something of a radical departure for me. I expect for that to set the tone of this thread. I want this to be a learning experience, not an exercise in libel.

Thanks.

I myself have felt like girls cant build as good a robot as guys. The Fembots proved me wrong, in their driving and in their robot. So simple yet able to do so much!

How should respond? No need to, all girl teams are making a big showing.

I think that a lot of times, veteran teams are discriminated against, especially ones that have done well in the past. Talking with other mentors, I can see that sometimes teams are expected to do well because of past successes, or are expected to do badly because of past losses.

I guess what I'm getting at is that a lot of times teams or individuals make pre-judgements about other teams, and that is kind of aggravating. Nobody wants to come into a team with a lot of pressure to do well, and nobody wants to come onto a less successful team and get no encouragement. Sometimes good sportsmanship isn't present where it should be.

I'm sorry M. seemed to have experienced some bad times herself.

I find myself guilty of that. I know I really shouldn't, but I always find myself making judgements about veterans based on past performance. However, it's like the stock market: past performance does not dictate future performance. I'm sure there were some really good teams that I overlooked, either because I didn't know them by reputation, or I remembered a less-than-stellar robot of theirs from past years. Given the lack of success my team had with our 2001 robot, I probably should be more sensitive to that, but it's hard to get away from watching the big-name veterans.

But of course, all the time. Engineers against the students because they dont know how to do anything, because you have to have to go to college to know anything about anything, against girls, because girls are stupid and are only good for spirit and making dinner, against other teams, because their robot sucks, againts judges, because they're always out to get you, against the good teams, because they always cheat, against, against something or other because of the person doing the thing.

People are always going to discriminate, because it's what people do. People judge, wheter you like it or not. FIRST or no FIRST. The only thing you can do is either stand up for yourself/others, or ignore it and let them think what they want. Of course it's not the way things SHOULD be, but it's the way things are.

Go ahead, desciminate this post. I don't care.

Re: QotW [5-04-03]: Discrimination
 

We are two rival schools. They used to have 2 girls on the team. My freshman daughter recruited the more. We now have 8 on the team.

The other schools' team members view was, "Girls don't want to do this activity, and don't want to put in the time."

Several years ago underclassmen had to do the "b(^)_%" work. At the beginning of this season, those now upperclassmen had expectations that others would do "b^)(^)" work.

I as team mom would fill in. Nuts and volts...periodically need sorting. I would pull in ANY student who wasn't busy.

At one point the *ahem* captain made a remark about "b^)^%" work. I told him I'm doing the so-called "b(^)" work and he's not to call it that again - everyone is doing the work. Even captains are expected to pitch in.

Okay, I have a lot to say on this subject, but I'm going to try to make this short...

Discrimination happens, it's unfortunate, but it does. I mean, hey, I've been discriminated against for being Asian (even before I knew what discrimination was, but that's a different story). It sucks, but it happens.

On that note, I have to say something else. Everyone has their reasons for discriminating, whether it's something that was instilled in them as a child or whether it's through their own experiences that swayed them to think a certain way. From my own experiences, I've learned that yelling at someone or constantly berating someone for what they think didn't help sway my opinion.

I'm not saying discriminating is a good thing, in any way, shape, or form; being alienated is a horrible feeling. But, everyone has their opinions. Sometimes, those who are the most "open-minded" forget that sometimes you have to accept those who don't share your opinions or beliefs. Discrimination is a horrible things, but people do it because of what they believe. Sometimes, you can change someone's opinion on something, other times you can't. Just don't forget that discrimination works both ways.

Re: QotW [5-04-03]: Discrimination
 

It depends on your definition of discrimination. I'm sure at one point in our lives, we've all been guilty of it even without realizing it. I personally haven't seen it directly related to FIRST, but I'll assume that there is some going on. Hey, we are only human. It's in our nature to descriminate, and even if we don't want to, it ends up happening.

Actually, I think M's point is being misanswered. M asked about examples of this and what as a community we should do.

I've seen it many times - such as driver's being chosen just b/c they are seniors when others were better qualified, teams getting picked jsut b/c they have done well in the past and so on...

I dunno...
I wish people would just become more accepting.

Perhaps I didn't structure my question well. Perhaps I made a few poor assumptions about how people felt about discrimination. I'm not sure.

There are many common forms of discrimination. They're so common, in fact, that our society needs to enforce laws that prohibit them and penalize people for exercising such discrimination. Age, race, sex, gender, orientation, religion, disability; or someone's perception of these characteristics are all common causes for discrimination.

I should also be clear that I understand the difference between making an informed decision that's based on some level of merit versus passing judgement based on stereotypes and accepted behavior. I know that this is a difficult question, as well, but I have been impressed by peoples' responses to difficult subjects in the past.

So, to elaborate further, where do we draw the line where discrimination is concerned? If the KKK wanted to bring FIRST to two dozen white children in Mississippi, but would only do so by the conscious exemption of black children, is that acceptable? If a church sponsored a team but excluded Buddhists? If a Boy Scout troop sponsored a team but excluded gays and women? In each of these examples, there doesn't seem to be any logical reason to exclude another group based on their ability and potential to accomplish the same things and benefit in the same ways as any others.

I understand that we, as a culture, and as individuals, cannot cater to the needs and desires of every individual, everywhere, all at the same time. To even attempt to do would drive us all insane. I understand that our beliefs and opinions are formed by our experiences. I understand that we're each entitled to form and hold opinions and that we're each, at some level, obligated to tolerate the opinions of others.

What I can't yet grasp, however, is where we draw the line.

You must understand that it is human nature to compete, and a way of competing is discrimination. If we make such extreme laws against such things we have gone to far. Discrimination is so ingrained in our lives and characters that it is impossible to eliminate most of it with out extremely limiting laws. You cannot makes laws to control all aspects of our life like that. When that happens we stop being a democratic republic, and start being some sort of dictatorship. Ever read Fahrenheit 451? The best that we can do is to not accept such actions in anyway, and to apply the laws that we currently have to such situations.

Those are my feelings.

Discrimination occurs differently per person... you may try to coax them to do something but in the end it's always that person's free will.

I haven't seen that much discrimination in FIRST... on our team, one of the mentors (not mentioning gender) seemed to have a problem with Steve and I sometimes getting frustrated at people who screwed things up... well, we mentioned it to the person that screwed up regardless of who was doing it, we'd get frustrated; just because it happened to be a larger percentage of girls was not our fault. That in itself is not supposed to be a sexist remark. What I feel like pointing out is that sometimes descrimination will be used against someone. In this case, a mentor seemed to think that we were being sexist even though it was more of "screwingupist". Another example, even though I'm part of a minority, I think affirmative action is a pos because it gives unequal oppurtunity. In fact, I'd rather agree with the Bush administration's stand on it; base grants/scholarships on family income and not genitalia or race.

Okay so going back to what Mike said about being tall. I dont know if one of my experiences would fall into discrimination since discrimination has a negative conotation that goes along with it and my experience wasn't a negative one. But 2 years ago at Sweet Repeat i was chosen by my team to be human player for 2 reasons. 1> I am tall 2> I knew the game and we didn't have alot of experienced people going with us. Basicly when we got to competition it was my first time ever being down on the field and it was a little scary. At first i didn't know what to do but all of the other coaches and human players assumed because i was big they assumed i knew how to play human player and that i had done it before. I ended up being human player in every single match that day including during the finals when we won. Basicly because i was tall and it was easy for me to load over the top of the wall.

Further then that i know i have experienced discrimination because i am A>Big, funny looking, and have strange hair. B> i'm a high school student C>On a team that isn't really known for being that good at the robots side of things. I know that often times when i talk to members of other teams they automaticly make judgements on me because the assume that i dont really know what i'm talking about. Also people often judge my team, partialy i think because we have a midrange number and partialy because we have never had that great of robots. People assume when i go up and start talking strategy that they have it all figured out and that i dont know what i'm talking about. Or when i talk to engineers and I must not have any idea what i'm talking about because i'm merely a high school student.

Further i think there has been in the past alot of discrimination against rookie teams. This years game really allowed the rookies to shine and to be just as good as the double diget teams tend to be. Team number needs to not be a way of judging teams. Team numbers are merely there to make identification and administrative tasks easier but no team should be judge by the number that they were assigned.

Umm so yah there is my rant about this topic.

As far as fixing it, i think that just showing everyone respect is often the best way to avoid discrimination. I try not to judge anyone until i have atleast talked to them, first impressions are more often then not decieving.

there is my 2 cents.

That is awsome, more people need to do that, not only in FIRST, but in the world as well