Category — SocialSkills

Dear Commenters:

This is a subject I wish I did not have to address, but I am receiving too many comments that are repetitions of the same thing, in other words…SPAM! I truly appreciate the attention I am receiving for my work, but trying to weed through all the spam is really distracting from continuing with providing articles. I try to read each comment and personally respond to quite a few, but the task has become quite tedious of late.

I know there are many who use translators and perhaps it is easier to make one good comment and use it throughout, but I also use translators to respond and it doesn’t take that long to do. For many of the articles, lively discussion has become impossible because of the number of comments that are not relevant to the topic of the post.

This plea is not to stop or reduce the number of wonderful comments I receive, but offered in the interest of other readers who are making comments about the number of redundant comments. So I am asking that you please continue to let me hear from you, but reduce your self-promotion and advertising, and as of 1/21/2011, any repeated comments and those which do not address a specific subject will be marked as spam and deleted.

Please help me make this site a beneficial one for everyone who reads it.

Thank you, Paris

There are certain strengths or abilities that human beings possess. The most well-known or discussed is the power of love. But recently we are seeing the negative results of another power that is becoming more infamous in everyday life. That power is influence.

Influence is the ability to manipulate another person or persons into doing or carrying out one’s desires. These desires may be positive or negative. For example, you may want someone to attend an event with you, so you provide the tickets and transportation. Or, in the case of negative exploitations, someone may carry out violence at the suggestion of another person whom they may recognize as an authority figure; or they will do something to get the attention of someone whom they perceive as being stronger or more powerful than themselves.

Unfortunately, incidences of violence from school yard bullying to political assassinations are growing in number, and many people are falling under the power of influence. This relinquishing of one’s will may cause them to also become a victim of the circumstances themselves. Too often the bully or victimizer has low self-esteem or could be suffering from some kind of emotional or mental defect.

The power of influence is used, however, by all of us against each other in order to have our way or to get the things we want; i.e. wives to husbands, and vice versa; children to parents, and vice versa; friends to each other; employees to employers, and vice versa; governments to other governments; and on and on. In one of my previous blogs, “Choose your battles,“ I enumerated several ways we can avoid becoming embroiled in conflicts by restraining our desire, or influence, to have authority or control in the situation.

We are constantly in battles of trying to influence our way through life; most often with little negative effect. But when influence is used to carry out schemes causing harm to another, should the person wielding the influence be held as accountable as the perpetrator? By recognizing that the power of influence is at work in our day-to-day interactions, we may be able to consider our motives first  before we try to get someone to do what we want. This self-examination will reduce our responsibility for injury or harm to another. Connecting compassion to the power of influence is a fundamental way.

The story of the young woman who lost her job after posting a remark on Facebook about her customers brings us a great opportunity to discuss something that is running rampant in this country…bad customer service. With today’s economy being what it is, I am sorry she lost her job, but her firing brings up another point. If she was a good employee, her bosses could have taken the time to teach her a life-long lesson in etiquette and superior business practices by explaining the policy that was in place and why. Perhaps the subject never came up during her interview and probationary period and she was unaware of it. Many young people do not understand or have not been taught the same level of respect for the company and its customers that is necessary to display good work ethics or company pride as in the past.

The primary problem that exists in most business interactions today is the rudeness or complete lack of good customer service. Whether it is on the phone, or in person, workers act as if they are doing you a favor when they wait on you, rather than the other way around. If the customer did not patronize their business, the worker would not have a job. This concept does not seem to register with many clerks or service personnel. When did it become the duty of the customer to please the person behind the counter or on the other end of the phone?

Being a service person or government bureaucrat calls for being of service as one of the undefined duties and a great part of one’s responsibility. Besides, being nice will always made your day easier and more pleasant. Knowing that you can either make or break someone’s attitude or well-being just by the way you approach them, handle their affairs or respond to their needs should be a power booster and an incentive to act in a non-passive-aggressive manner.

If you do not like dealing with people, why take a job that has you interacting with other human beings on a constant basis? But just taking a job because it is available can put the company owner’s business in jeopardy, as shown by this incidence. So it is a warning to business owners to add instructions of proper social skills to their list of items to discuss during the training of their service workers. Better still, a primary question during the interview would be, “how do you get along with people?”

In a series of articles I have written for this blog, I focused on the intolerance perpetrated by U.S. blacks toward other U.S. blacks. But the subject of this article has gone around in my mind like bits of fabric loosely sewn together with threads of memory and heartache. So rather than continue my own tirade regarding black intolerance, I decided to flip the script and discuss another valid point. Instead of focusing on the pieces, why not reflect on the whole?

Research for this project contained a patchwork of discussions with peers, reading material provided by “experts” and statistics about the supposed division of black people which serve to stir up much debate. Controversy has produced a tattered remnant with uneven edges and puckered seams; an unattractive and uncomfortable quilt whose rhetorical shape does not resemble the blanket which enfolds us all. They do not speak the language of truth that despite our differences we are all black, therefore, we are one.

First, to those who are not black descendants of slave forefathers, or might not have been born in the U.S., I believe I can unequivocally say that there are few blacks in America who are not proud to be black. Whether we are accused of “acting white,“ dye our hair blond, talk “proper” or only date members of other ethnic groups, we love, and are proud of being black.

Second, we recognize each other for the special-ness that we share.  After slavery was abolished in the 1860s, we formed intact communities and lived among those like ourselves. Because of segregation and Jim Crow laws, we were generally separated from white Americans because of  the color of our skin.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought the illegality of our separateness to the forefront of the world’s attention, and new laws allowed for desegregation and integration. For many, the opportunity to relocate allowed more urbane blacks who could afford it to move beyond our communities into new neighborhoods. So, we were again separated except it was from our own people due to differences in economics, education and social skills. That separation marked the beginning of the situation we find ourselves in today.

Prior to the 1960, there were variations in education and economic classes among blacks, the same as in other groups. But the one thing that most of Americans, black and white, had in common was their social skills. We all knew “please,” “thank you,” “sir,” and “’mam.” Direction, support and aptitude were the most determining factors as into which class blacks would fall.

As the years have gone by and the populations of both those who left and those who remained behind have grown, the inequality between the two has come more forcefully to the attention of those who made it out. They are looking back, seeing their brothers and sisters lagging behind, and wondering what to do about it.

The success of many who have risen from the ranks has shown such outstanding achievement, the question of why we all have not made it has come to the forefront of discussion. I believe the reason is that there is not enough directional and economic resources available, and not for a lack of inspiration, imagination or ingenuity. There are many local people making and plying goods and services, some legitimate, some not.

The crux of this problem has been how we can focus assistance on blacks without appearing bias toward other groups, as there is a definite desire to help. We see it in the flourish of entertainers and others aiding blacks in African nations rather than at home, because it was viewed as the job of government or churches to provide for the needs of lower income Americans, and those entitlements and charities continue to some extent.

However, in the present economy, black culture needs are not being addressed because items that had a slight resemblance to ridicule or stereotyping was made “politically incorrect” in 1965. That ban on such items, even those created by blacks,  has attributed to their being shunning by other blacks. So the need to support each other has created a microcosm of human to human assistance that is existing to the extreme in the macrocosm of need in the world.

As before, blacks helping their neighbors on the other side of town would serve as an example to the world of raising up a culture from its lower status. The opportunities are plentiful as there are many black artists, writers, inventors and designers, dreamers of great dreams, who could use financial backing, direction and support. To be able to move their products and services to the mainstream would allow them to return the favor and help those organizations struggling to educate, feed and clothe others. The trend could continue until the majority of, not only blacks, but all Americans are achieving on the level of which we are capable.

There are many who are capable and desiring to move beyond their undeveloped state to be able to realize the American dream. But without help, their dreams will not be realized. Recognizing that we are one, our blackness should serve as the cover big enough to enfold our discomfort and discontent, as we bind the edges with the distinctive fabrics that represent our unique and varied features.

No longer do we have to hand stitch our identity with the tattered rags and scraps left over from cloaks of servitude and slavery, or sew them together with worn and tired fingers blistered from the drudgery of picking cotton. Now we can construct a quality cover sewn with the finest needles and thread on a marvelous machine stitched by the efforts of the hearts of brotherhood.

It is time for black people to wrap ourselves warmly in the mantle of our blackness, proudly edged with the many colors of our attitudes, quality of our souls and feel of our culture. As James Brown penned so long ago and we heartily sang to help us survive the hostilities of the civil rights movement, we should pick up the song again and sing with spirit and dignity, “I’m black and I’m proud.”

I am proud to be me, proud that as a people we have overcome tremendous odds and prospered and proud that we can finally come to terms with the truth that has always existed from arrival in this country. We were brought here with one identity…we were black. That identity still exists today. We are an American group among many American groups, and in both cases, there’s no disputing the  fact that we are one.

Song by Frankie Beverly and Maze.

In a recent article appearing in the Sacramento Bee, dated October 10, 2010, a proposal to remove black children from traditional integrated schools and place them in segregated charter schools has been suggested. This proposal has been made by a black person, Margaret Fortune, who has operated a similar school in Sacramento.

Ms. Fortune suggests that up to 5,000 black children, who are also considered low-income, and beginning with K thru 3rd graders, would benefit from receiving an education in a school set apart from their peers of the same age. To me, this is absurd as this nation has and continues to fight long and hard to diminish and extinguish the ugliness of segregation in all of its stigmatizing forms, in all systems of our society.

To consider returning to the dysfunctional method of segregation in our system of education is not only frightful but downright bizarre. Poor, black children already suffer from two strikes against them. To put them in a situation which sets them apart will not only affect their self-esteem, but may also cause them to suffer the pain of being stigmatized for not attending an integrated school with other children who are different from them.

A great part of one’s education, particularly as access to the global community is opening up to anyone who may chose to explore it, is to be socialized to understand, tolerate and accept the differences between us. How can that be accomplished when one begins their educational experience with only faces of one’s own kind? How can one perceive a different reflection of how the world is made up if one only sees one image, the same as oneself ?

I can understand the intent of providing a more intense educational experience for children, but the effort should be open to all children, not focused on any particular ethnic group. As for the children being low-income, there are low-income children in every ethnic group who need and require a quality education. For a black person to focus this attempt to obtain funding for charter schools by selling out black children is shameful.

If tax-payer money is used to fund charter schools, representative children from every group should be represented. Placing black children in segregated schools is a backward move and should not be considered as being in the best interest of those children.

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/10/10/3093039/former-st-hope-leader-begins-push.html

When I attended school in the southern part of the U.S. during the Jim Crow days of the mid 40s and 50s, my father placed me and my siblings in Catholic school. Although he and my mother were Baptists, he felt that we could and would get a better education at the hands of the nuns, rather than attend the segregated all-black public schools.

Whether or not that was true, the difference between our school and the others was the teachers. All of our students were black, but all of our teachers were white nuns. So not only did we get an education laced with religious instructions, although prayer was still a mainstay in the public schools, our social education was given from a totally different perspective oftentimes based on the racial differences of student and teacher.

I imagine the nuns felt it was their “Christian duty” to inspire confidence in us to counter the racism we faced day-to-day. Even to some of the protocol our parents insisted we show to the whites with which we came in contact, the nuns added stipulations. We were not to say “yes,” or “no, mam” to anyone who was not as old as our grandparents, including the nuns.

The nuns’ influence made an indelible impression on me, and probably my two sisters and brother also. So much so, that our father relocated the family to California for more than financial reasons. In great part, I expect, it was to protect us from the authority we had learned to defy.

I recently heard the statistics that 75% of teachers in the U.S. are white, and the schools have been integrated since the 60s. But there is something as sinister as segregation afoot in our school system. Many of our children are struggling, particularly in the area of social skills, and there are a number of things which have attributed to this situation.

For one, the banishment of prayer and along with it the teaching of good and bad. I too believe in religious privacy, but now children learn about actions and consequences, and everyone’s rights must be respected. It seems they are getting the message that if it feels right to them then they can do it, as long as they are willing to face the consequences. Our jails and prisons are filling up with criminals, many wealthy and famous, who acted on their feelings rather than whether what they were doing was right or wrong.

It seems to go back to the teachings of the nuns that we were supposed to respect our rights regardless of how others were disrespecting us. But somewhere in there was also the lesson that others had rights too, and it was wrong if we did not respect them.

With everyone seeming to go for themselves lately, along the way we, especially our children, have become lost. It seems that a return to treating others as we want to be treated is in order, but this concept can only be learned. Whether from our caregivers’ laps or in the classroom, social skills training and empathy for others is crucial for a civilized society. We must relearn the values that contribute to an appropriate way of life, and education is the key.

Here is a great video of children learning social skills rules in class. Thanks to the students and their teachers for this effort.