Diversity and Skiing

[SallyCat]

So I do not understand why parents, who are part of my generation, coddle their kids to the point where they cannot cope with any minor let-down.

It comes from intense anxiety about their kids' economic security for the most part. They see the elite-level college admissions process as a frightening, zero-sum game, and they're not wrong. There's a sense that any stumble, no matter how minor, will close off opportunities for their children. And when I say "college admissions," I should clarify that many of my tenth-grade students and their parents are already anxious about medical school admissions.

What does this have to do with skiing? Well, I teach at a fairly high-pressure private college-preparatory school and though we have a small ski cub, it's not populated with our highest achievers. The reasons are as follows:

1. Ski club is not competitive, and therefore it's not seen as a serious sport. There's nothing a student can put on his or her college transcript; no recognizable achievement milestones to note.
2. Ski club does not exempt students from gym class. Getting out of gym is serious business on our campus, because doing so frees time for academics, either as a study/tutor period or a chance to double-up on science classes.
3. Ski club is "so middle school." There's no distinction in format between 6th grade ski club and high school ski club, and that makes ski club very uncool.
4. Skiing is dangerous. Many kids have told me that they used to ski with their families when they were younger, but they're "not allowed" to ski now because a ski injury might impact their golf/soccer/music/theater careers.

I do have students who are ski and snowboard instructors, and we've had a couple of competitive racers in the Blue Mountain Race program. But if we're speaking of the high-achieving children of ambitious high achievers: not so much. Our Asian and South Asian students tend to participate in traditional sports (tennis, soccer, field hockey, etc.) and they tend to be focused on entering traditional professions (mostly medicine). Once the kids enter high school, the perception is that it's Game Time, and there's no room for superfluous activities, especially risky ones. There's a student out there that wants your place in Princeton's 2021 freshman class and he didn't get there by f-ing around on skis every Friday night.

 

[Jenny]

I feel sorry for those kids.

 

[SallyCat]

I feel sorry for those kids.

Me, too.

 

[nopoleskier]

^^^ Just what I was thinking....

 

[bounceswoosh]

Regarding the original topic, not the recent digression ...

I just listened to a Planet Money episode about Tom Burrell, the first black man in Chicago advertising. He apparently became known in the ad business for saying "Black people are not just dark skinned white people." He recognized how, for example, the Marlboro Man with its nostalgia for the "good old days" of the USA might not sit so well with black consumers. That white people in the 80s saw McDonald's as a family treat, spending a lot of money there but not so often - while black people saw it as a place to take a break from work, so they would spend less but more frequently. So he built up different ad campaigns for black people. Massive generalizations, obviously - but it worked.

He also seems to have coined a term, which I can't currently remember. He noticed that campaigns targeting black people also increased sales with white people.

Anyway, I wonder if the ski industry needs someone like Tom Burrell to come up with a marketing campaign that would take into account black / other minority culture - and then it could boost white skier numbers, too.

 

[ski diva]

Anyway, I wonder if the ski industry needs someone like Tom Burrell to come up with a marketing campaign that would take into account black / other minority culture - and then it could boost white skier numbers, too.

That'd be great! The problem is getting companies to realize this is something they should be doing -- which is incredibly hard, even if it'd have a good result. I was in advertising for years, and the most difficult part of the job was getting companies to try something other than the tried and true. And since the industry is dominated by white males who have always sold to white males -- and want to continue selling to white males -- well, you see the problem. Getting them to market to women has been a huge undertaking. Getting them to target to anyone else would be that times ten. Things have to be incredibly bad for someone to make that jump, or else there has to be someone in there who really wants to shake things up.

 

[bounceswoosh]

That'd be great! The problem is getting companies to realize this is something they should be doing -- which is incredibly hard, even if it'd have a good result. I was in advertising for years, and the most difficult part of the job was getting companies to try something other than the tried and true. And since the industry is dominated by white males who have always sold to white males -- and want to continue selling to white males -- well, you see the problem. Getting them to market to women has been a huge undertaking. Getting them to target to anyone else would be that times ten. Things have to be incredibly bad for someone to make that jump, or else there has to be someone in there who really wants to shake things up.

I wonder what motivated the first accounts that came to Tom Burrell ...

 

[SallyCat]

Subaru had an interesting marketing strategy in the 1990s that reached out to niche groups, particularly LGBT consumers.
Article from the Atlantic here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...-came-to-be-seen-as-cars-for-lesbians/488042/

 

[bounceswoosh]

Subaru had an interesting marketing strategy in the 1990s that reached out to niche groups, particularly LGBT consumers.
Article from the Atlantic here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...-came-to-be-seen-as-cars-for-lesbians/488042/

There was a great podcast about that, too. Planet Money or This American Life.

 

[newboots]

Here's an interesting article about a related topic (sort of). "In case you hadn’t seen, a new startup called Bodega launched this week, its headline claiming to want to “make mom and pop stores obsolete.” Much to the surprise of the founders and investors, but not surprising to the rest of the internet, it was not well received."

https://www.fastcompany.com/40468873/7-lessons-white-people-can-learn-from-bodegas-apology

The article is not (just) about trashing the start-up's conceptualization and publicity, but about how white people who screw up royally can own it, and apologize meaningfully. I guess this is serious thread creep, but I thought this article really explained things clearly, and was worth sharing.

 

[bounceswoosh]

Here's an interesting article about a related topic (sort of). "In case you hadn’t seen, a new startup called Bodega launched this week, its headline claiming to want to “make mom and pop stores obsolete.” Much to the surprise of the founders and investors, but not surprising to the rest of the internet, it was not well received."

https://www.fastcompany.com/40468873/7-lessons-white-people-can-learn-from-bodegas-apology

The article is not (just) about trashing the start-up's conceptualization and publicity, but about how white people who screw up royally can own it, and apologize meaningfully. I guess this is serious thread creep, but I thought this article really explained things clearly, and was worth sharing.

I just heard about this this morning, on Slate Money! Yeah, people were really not excited about the idea of a startup that celebrates killing off businesses typically owned and operated by brown immigrants. But then again, new tech often kills off jobs ... it's just the pure ballsy privilege of the name and the pitch.

 

[Sandrine]

There seems to be quite a bit of Asian skiers/snowboarders in Australia. But Asians here tend to be pretty wealthy, so it's very different from African-Americans and Hispanics in the US.

 

[newboots]

I just heard about this this morning, on Slate Money! Yeah, people were really not excited about the idea of a startup that celebrates killing off businesses typically owned and operated by brown immigrants. But then again, new tech often kills off jobs ... it's just the pure ballsy privilege of the name and the pitch.

Ballsy and clueless, yeah.

 

[marzNC]

There seems to be quite a bit of Asian skiers/snowboarders in Australia. But Asians here tend to be pretty wealthy, so it's very different from African-Americans and Hispanics in the US.

Be careful of stereotypes. There are plenty of relatively wealthy Asians and African-Americans on the ski slopes at my local ski hill. Massanutten is a summer and winter vacation spot for people from northern VA and the Washington DC area. Some of the African-Americans have owned a timeshare unit there for decades.

Most of the Asian-Americans I see on the east coast are relatively new immigrants, meaning since 1990 or so. Quite different from the Chinese-Americans who have been in California and in the Pacific Northwest for a few generations. Out west, more likely to see three generations who ski/board. I see a lot of Asian kids of all ages on the slopes in the east who have parents sitting in the lodge. Although at Wachusett (near Boston) I saw quite a few skiing families where the parents obviously were as good or better than their kids. Those were the families who owned gear.

 

[santacruz skier]

Quite different from the Chinese-Americans who have been in California and in the Pacific Northwest for a few generations. Out west, more likely to see three generations who ski/board.

Definitely the case in Tahoe with mostly Bay Area skiers.... It's not unusual, it's expected.

 

[newboots]

Outside magazine published this painful article:

https://www.outsideonline.com/2242361/confronting-racism-my-summer-job

about a young Jamaican-American man who worked for two seasons in housekeeping at a ski resort out West. He endured all the n-word jokes he could, and eventually fled.

I've never lived out there, or worked in seasonal work. But I imagine some of the white folks the author worked with were uncomfortable with the racism, but kept quiet about it. It takes courage to stand up to it, but we (white folks) can't leave that to people of color. They carry enough of the burden of racism; we need to share it. It's very difficult to speak up, but how awful for this young man, to be stuck in that environment with nobody speaking up? We have to learn to do this, and call on our moral courage.

Sorry for the soapbox. I found this article so painful. Being able to escape to the wilderness is important to me - I think it's awful that he feels it's just not an option for him. We all need sanctuary.

 

[bounceswoosh]

Outside magazine published this painful article:

https://www.outsideonline.com/2242361/confronting-racism-my-summer-job

about a young Jamaican-American man who worked for two seasons in housekeeping at a ski resort out West. He endured all the n-word jokes he could, and eventually fled.

I've never lived out there, or worked in seasonal work. But I imagine some of the white folks the author worked with were uncomfortable with the racism, but kept quiet about it. It takes courage to stand up to it, but we (white folks) can't leave that to people of color. They carry enough of the burden of racism; we need to share it. It's very difficult to speak up, but how awful for this young man, to be stuck in that environment with nobody speaking up? We have to learn to do this, and call on our moral courage.

Sorry for the soapbox. I found this article so painful. Being able to escape to the wilderness is important to me - I think it's awful that he feels it's just not an option for him. We all need sanctuary.

I can't "like" your post. But yes. So painful.

One thing white people *can* do - something his co-workers certainly failed to do - is to create a culture in which such talk is simply not acceptable. I read this recently, and I found it to be a pretty good idea for how to stand up to it without engaging in argument about it - but it only works if you have some sort of authority in the culture (like if you've been at a company a really long time):

https://thagomizer.com/blog/2017/09/29/we-don-t-do-that-here.html

The college I attended was small and very LGBT friendly. One day someone came to visit and used the word “gay” as a pejorative, as was common in the early 2000s. A current student looked at the visitor and flatly said, “we don’t do that here.” The guest started getting defensive and explaining that they weren’t homophobic and didn’t mean anything by it. The student replied, “I’m sure that’s true, but all you need to know is we don’t do that here.” The interaction ended at that point, and everyone moved on to different topics. “We don’t do that here” was a polite but firm way to educate the newcomer about our culture.

 

[VickiK]

I wonder if "we don't do that here" is clear or direct enough. Seems like it calls for a little bit more.

 

[bounceswoosh]

I wonder if "we don't do that here" is clear or direct enough. Seems like it calls for a little bit more.

Well, if you read the whole post, the author describes when they'd use it vs trying to educate.

Shaming might work in the moment, but I think is more likely to make people dig I their feet rather than reconsider. Honestly, I think "we don't do that here" would be more effective in making people think on their own, later, and causing real change. Because it doesn't directly challenge or insult the person. Less satisfying, but maybe more effective. And that's what we need as a society, right? Not punishment, but change.

 

[RachelV]

Reminds me of this video (how is this video from 2008???? god):

"We don't do that here" takes it even 1 step further as far as depersonalizing what you're saying.. you're not saying they're a bad person, you're not even saying that what they said was bad, you're just saying that's it's not something that happens in the environment you're in. There's almost nothing left to argue with.