the soft bigotry of low expectations

I can't remember where I first read that line. Maybe it was The Audacity of Hope, or Freakonomics. Maybe one of the painfully dry books I force myself to read, like The Paradox of American Power or maybe Guns, Germs, and Steel. I think President Bush said it in a speech once (or maybe it was President Obama...). The soft bigotry of low expectations.

Two days ago I had coffee with a very good friend of mine not far from where this picture was taken.

Covington Square. This is in front of more than one store. Gotta love working in the rural South.

We talked a little bit about stereotypes. Not for long. I'm not good at talking about stereotypes. Mostly because I haven't felt discriminated against too many times in my life. A few cases, for sure, but not enough to know right away when I'm being discriminated against. I'm a racial and religious minority in a conservative, Christian part of the country. I'm a woman in a male-dominated industry and profession. But John is a successful and talented software engineer for a high-profile startup in San Francisco. And he's black.

Last week I wrote about defying people's expectations. Working a lathe as a 5' 2" Indian girl wearing pink heels. Engaging in a Milton and Faulkner discussion group as an engineering major. Leaving cheerleading practice to tutor someone in calculus. But I've found in my life that those aren't the biases that bother me. It's the small things - having someone assume that I will quit working in three years to get married and have children. Assuming that I can work on a Sunday because I'm not going to church.

We don't live in the days of segregated stores, but that doesn't mean we don't discriminate. Real diversity isn't about race anymore (although our attitudes about race are still deeply ingrained). It's about socioeconomic status and life experiences. Malcolm Gladwell makes obscene amounts of money talking about this in Blink - about how we expect people with certain backgrounds (and yes, certain looks) to behave and perform a certain way. And how those expectations can shape how we treat someone - from people we hire, to people we fall in love with, to people we elect as President.

I love this line so much, the soft bigotry of low expectations, because it illustrates a perfect point. You don't need a plaque that calls out the color of skin to exclude or offend. We do it through the things we say, and sometimes the things that we don't. We do it when we ask a woman we've just met how many kids she has, and asking her husband what he does for a living. Sure, it might be a fair point, but by doing it, we've made an assumption about what's important to someone because it fits our model of what's important to us.

defying expectation (why do engineers wear ugly clothes?)

This morning I checked into Hartsfield an hour before my flight. After finding a parking spot (which proved to be more difficult than you'd think), getting my baggage squared away (I'm carrying a Chatillon gage and some other assorted medical-devicey-things), and getting through security with time to spare, I found out my flight had been moved from the T-gates to concourse E. So, still with time to spare, I made my way to the other end of the airport, and to the gate with 15 minutes left, only to be told by a Delta gate agent that they had given my seat away and I couldn't board.

Let me recap for a minute: I had time to check my bags, go through security, get through a gate change from one corner of the airport to the absolute farthest point, and still made it in time to see people on the jetway boarding the flight. And couldn't get on.

So basically I spent the morning waiting in line, on the phone with Bard Travel, emailing Hertz, and dealing with the general annoyances of rebooking flights and cars to obscure cities and small airports.

OK, vent session over.

I also spent the morning people-watching at the world's greatest airport. Over lunch, I met a man who runs a logistics company and he asked me, as most people do, what I do for a living. I told him I was an engineer, and he laughed. As most people do. He told me I didn't look like an engineer.

This is not the first time I've heard this. Once, when Iris and I were at an ICU visit in Fort Lauderdale, the nurse told us that when he heard he would be hosting two engineers, he was expecting "two old white guys."

We are about as far from two old white guys as you can get.

It doesn't really faze me. Or at least, not any more. I've grown up doing things that people don't expect. I grew up listening to emo and country.

With my dad (Happy Father's Day!) on senior night at Parkview.

I was probably the first Indian cheerleader at Parkview High School. We'll say that I was, because who even knows how we would every verify that. One time I skipped an AP Comparative Government exam to go shopping. I was Student Body President of a student body that is only 30% female. I get french manicures and operate heavy machinery.

OK, a Dremel isn't heavy machinery, but I don't have pictures of myself operating the band saw.

When Frank told me I didn't look like an engineer I laughed. I told him sorry that I wasn't wearing ugly clothes. I don't know why engineers have a tendency to wear ugly clothes. If I were married, or wealthy enough to have my own photographer, I would post photos of outfits, like Anh does on 9to5chic. I love her, because she works in the old-boys-club of the medical device industry and makes it a point to not look frumpy or old fashioned.

I don't know that we always realize how important our expectations are. Expectations color our perceptions, and no matter how unbiased we try to be, our perceptions shape our realities. This is especially true if you're a woman working in a male-dominated industry. When men dress well for work, it's seen as dressing well. When women dress well at work, it's seen as trying to leverage their looks to get ahead in their careers. When I was at Georgia Tech, I would read blogs about the perception gap about women and men in high positions. I showed up to meetings in pants suits because I didn't want my legs to communicate that I wasn't capable of doing my job.

I did all my headshots in pants. No exceptions.

At some point in the past two years, I stopped caring. Not because I didn't have to, but because, like Penelope says, I'm over it. Other people have fought that fight for me, and I can move on to bigger issues. Whether or not a man thinks I'm as intelligent and as capable of doing my job isn't dictated by my hemline. I've proven my point.

And now I wear a skirt and heels to work almost every day.

Because there's nothing wrong with wearing pretty clothes to the clinic or the lab.

I was going to make this a post about how unexpectedly nice the Delta agent who rebooked me was, but now I'm tired. And I'm on a flight to Manchester, NH and my bags are en route to Burlington, VT by way of JFK. And I haven't figured out why engineers wear ugly clothes. And now this post is about me, pretty clothes, and how not to be afraid to tell someone that I'm good at something because I'm a girl.

I wish I remembered her name. I would write to Delta about how she was the third agent I talked to, and all of them acted like they were too busy to do the job of finding me a new flight. I defied her expectations and walked across two concourses to get to an open Delta desk. She defied my expectations too, and rebooked me without a fuss.