Here are some of my notes from a toastmasters CC4 speech I completed recently. This is not my speech, but rather an altered version to make it more suitable for reading
Whistling Vivaldi
Should you put toastmasters on your resume?
The typical response is “Of course you should!” but for myself in particularly, it will remain purposely absent.
Micro-affirmations
Imagine a generic asian male who has a technical, male dominated role sitting in a work-related meeting. You would probably never hear questions related to technical things like:
- Are you sure you know how to do this?
- How about we ask David for his opinion
- Its okay if you’re not sure.
Directed at him. At least that was certainly true for myself.
I had the privledge of an implicit endorsement. This was despite coming out of university with a maths degree, walking into an industry which I didn’t know existed and to be quite frank didn’t care about, and using tools which I had essentially zero experience. Yet for some inexplicable reason, stakeholders, like Sarah, would almost always give me the benefit of the doubt; even when I had no idea what was going on.
This is a silent privledge. It had much less to do with what people said to me, but instead everything to do with what people did not say to me. There was no interference, interpersonal friction, or implicit discouragement, more or less because I looked the part.
Micro-inequities
Would it be so different if I was female? The best way to answer this is to consider an inflammatory statement which cause a Havard’s president to resign.
Sex difference in math and science achievements were substationally rooted in sex differences in a genetically based capacity for math.
Two psychologists tried to explain this statement. It was related to the frustration that women may have when they are given a difficult maths test; that they may worry about whether they confirm or being seen to confirm societies view about women’s poor math ability. This cognitive stress, interfered with their performance.
This is how they conducted their experiment. They took students in the top 15 percentile (cream of the crop) from the University of Michigan and gave them a difficult maths test. And yes, they found thatt women did appear to underperform compared with expectation. But to see whether there was this cognitive stree, they repeated the experiment again, but this time before taking the exam, the examiners said to the women,
You may have heard that men are better than women in difficult maths tests, but for this particular test that isn’t true
Simple change of context removed the underperformance that was observed. And that is micro-inequity; nothing to do with your own inate ability, but your perception of what you think society thinks of you.
Recalling that we have looked at micro-affirmation, where people allign their actions to their expectations of you, what can we do about this?
Whistling Vivaldi
Several years ago, an up and coming New York journalist faced an problem. Being black and living at a time where New York were known for violence prone black people, white people would feel uncomfortable, they might walk on the other side of the road, or conversation swould stop and people would avoid eye contact. There was a lot of tension. So our young journalist devised a plan. He whistled vivaldi’s four seasons. And he foudn that all that tension would go away. Since he was no longer seen as a threat.
While hardly being aware of it, people will drop stereotypes or pre-conceived ideas, when it was challenged.
Conclusion
Where does this leave me? My old colleague and I concluded that the only way in which I myself can demonstrate without hinting first that I was a capable public speaker.
But what about everyone else here? I hope, although extremely difficult that people have a stronger understanding of identities, that they are not rooted or unalterable essenses that control the character of a person all the time.
Evaluator’s notes: use more rhetorical devices. Perhaps write terms like “micro-affirmations” or “micro-inequities” on the whiteboard provided.