Yesterday was my first day back in school after the Christmas holidays. This isn't as horrible as it sounds, because I really enjoy my job. I have even discovered, recently, that I quite like a little bit of teaching. I've long noted that someone with such an abhorrence of children should, under no circumstances, ever be placed in charge of a classroom full of students. My boss, on the other hand, thinks it's character-building. Why, only last term I actually wrote a lesson plan, and delivered the lesson. OK - the results were mixed. I aimed my little seminar at year 5, who had been playing a game called The Wizard's Apprentice, an educational piece of software from Sherston, in which the children learned to use the "Magic Tablet" to perform calculations. In case you can't guess, the "magic tablet" is, in fact, a spreadsheet. But perhaps this is a story for another day. The crux of the matter is that teachers were back in school yesterday for the traditional "Training Day".
Usually, as the IT person in the school, there is no specific training for me, and even if the training is general enough to expand beyond teachers, I can usually wriggle my way out of it - if only they'd provide serious computing training at the beginning of term - I'd be there with knobs on then! Sadly for my wriggling skills, yesterday's training was obligatory for ALL staff, so I wended my way over to our Studio, a cold building, smelling slightly of damp, for my session. It was fire safety training.
Remembering my last fire safety training session, many years ago shortly after I'd joined the Institute of Aviation Medicine, I was nervous and slightly apprehensive, when the trainer announced that he'd be showing us some scary videos. My mind flashed back to that earlier training session, when I was shown an extremely scary video of a fire in a high-rise building in Brazil (someone suggested that this was a 1974 fire), the footage showing people leaping out of the building. I'm sure it showed something else - like how fast a fire spreads - but I don't remember that. I'm sure you can imagine the nightmares which followed for quite a few weeks. In actual fact, the videos our trainer showed yesterday were nothing like as traumatic. The main one was the
Bradford football stadium fire in 1985, used to show how fast fire can get going. While I gather over 50 people lost their lives in this horrific fire, I was grateful that we weren't shown that.
But there I go, digressing again.
Our trainer, as he pointed out to us, has been in firefighting for many years. As such, I imagine that much of the humour has been squeezed out of him, due to dealing with the aftermath of many fires, and the apparent idiocy of the human race. So while he tried to lighten the training session with a few jokes, these fell slightly flat, leaving us with a feeling of mild irritation. My moment of intense irritaition arrived when the morning tea/coffee arrived from the kitchen, and having poked her head round the door, the person bringing the tea backed out, concerned that she'd interrupted our training session (she had, I was grateful!). At this point, our instructor, in another attempt to lighten the mood, leapt for the door, flung it open, and stepped back quickly, muttering to us all - "Oh dear, I was about to yell "Kato!"" It turned out that the person who'd brought the tea was Asian. If possible, this little aside to us was more racist than actually yelling "Kato!" as he'd intended. I'm sure she'd have no idea what he was talking about, and it might actually have been funny for the rest of us (well, those of us old enough to understand the reference).
I know I'm probably making a fuss over nothing, but I'm starting to dislike this chuckle-behind-your-hand-while-offering-a-bit-of-a slur type of humour. I'm beginning to find it way more offensive than I should. This, to my mind, is real racism. The perpetrator is bringing attention to the race of the person, while pretending to be being sensitive about it.
I'll never forget, many years ago, being told I was being a bit racist. I'd been asked, by a colleague where they would find a certain person. I'd spent some time trying to describe exactly where, in the faceless, open-plan office on the floor above, this person was located, all the while my colleague was clearly trying to mentally navigate the area. In the end, in order to shorten this process (and avoid having to walk up stairs and physically point), I rounded off with "He's the only black person up there - you can't miss him." At which point another colleague said "Isn't that a bit racist?"
Well, is it? I was using a physical attribute in order to locate someone. As I pointed out to the second colleague, I'd locate
him by telling someone that he was the grouchy red-head in the computing department. Calling him white would have been redundant, as the only people in the computing department were white. But drawing attention to his hair colour is perfectly valid, because he was the only person with red hair.
I might have been located by someone suggesting they look for the only girl in the computing department, although it's possible that this might have been regarded as sexist!
I think that the difference was that I was calling attention to a person's race in order to point someone in the right direction. The trainer yesterday was calling attention to a person's race to gain a laugh.
D'you think I'm being over sensitive?
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