Well, I spent a good part of the day gathering my thoughts, looking back over notes, and taking a lot of deep breaths. I’m not sure, however, that I’m any less troubled by how bad we are at categorization. So, let’s get started, shall we? But first, a flashback …
More than a decade ago, while leading a team at Symantec, one of my favorite schticks at lunch was doing an Andy Rooney impression (I was old way before I actually got old). The premise was his thoughts after going to the farmers market.
“I went to the farmers market with my wife this weekend. She likes to get our produce fresh. Have you ever noticed how strange the names of fruit are? As we wandered around, I kept noticing them. I like oranges. Oranges make sense — they’re orange. But why don’t we call bananas “yellows”? I like grapes, too. They’re fruit. But grapefruit? That’s not only redundant, it’s just factually inaccurate. There aren’t any grapes in grapefruit! …”
I can go on like that for a while. A long while. But it brings me to my point: Every name you can think of came from a human. A wonderful, fallible, living, breathing human, much like yourself. Maybe. It could have also come from a racial segregationist and apparent accessory to murder. So, you know, maybe not like you at all. But these names tend to stick around, no matter where they came from. And no matter whether or not we have any similar intersections with the people who came up with them, we have to live with their consequences. And, not to get too TED Talk-y, but we need to be a lot more diligent and thoughtful about the labels we place on things and — especially — people.
I mentioned last night that this came up again for me as I was applying to jobs. A lot of the online systems I’ve been using for applications have sections which gather demographic information. Some of them are well thought out. Others, not so much. But one thing they all have in common is a set of labels each and every candidate needs to fit themselves into, whether or not they identify precisely with them or not. And all of them are fiction. To quote one of the Daniels during one of their acceptance speeches at the Oscars the other night:
“We are all products of our context.” – Daniel Kwan
Names, labels, categories. They all result because of somebody’s decision. We can decide how we want to be identified. But we can’t impose that choice on someone who’s meeting us for the first time. They are going to bring all their lived experience and bias and assumption to define you for themselves. Until you define yourself for them. But if they only give you a few options for how you are able to do that, are you defining yourself, or are they still defining you?
It all comes down to choices. And the more of us who are making those choices, the better. I know I don’t want rooms full of people who look like David Starr Jordan to come up with the names of things that I am going to have to use for the rest of my life. Not only do I not have a lot in common with him, but I don’t really trust his judgment. And when it comes down to it, don’t we need to trust the labels and categorization which we give to things? Otherwise, we are entrusting a handful of the powerful to decide between terms like “looter” or “survivor,” “refugee” or “migrant.” Let’s take two more examples that have always gotten under my skin.
First up, Comcast. Or Xfinity. Good lord, now that I think about it, they can’t even get their own name right. And when I scroll through their program listings looking for soccer, I find everything with that label is all men’s teams. But if I want to watch the NWSL, I have to search for “women’s soccer”? Why is that? The number of players are the same. The objective is the same. The field, ball, and rules are the same. So why are the listings named differently? Soccer is soccer, no matter where it’s played or who is playing it. So the distinction is either unnecessary or sexist. If it’s unnecessary, then any match, whether it features men or women, should just be labeled “soccer”. If it’s sexist, then let’s list “women’s soccer” next to “men’s soccer” so that there’s no question as to why Comcast/Xfinity includes “women’s” on certain events.
Another example is musical. And may be a bit more controversial. It’s about genres. These are tried and true, sure, but are they still helpful? Take jazz, as an example. How are we defining what jazz is? And who came up with that definition? Is it dependent on the instrumentation? The composition? The performers? What Miles Davis did with J.J. Johnson is very different from what he did when he played with Carlos Santana. Are they both jazz? And if so, why? I think it comes down to putting a label on something so that it’s easier to find. And now we’ve gotten to the content strategy portion of the program.
All of these categories and labels and taxonomies are methods to try and bring some order to what is, essentially, chaos. We try every day to communicate the amorphous ideas and emotions trapped in the squishy collection of fat and water and protein and nerves, we call a brain, housed inside the bone helmet we call skulls. And we have to do it in a way that makes sense to other people with a completely different collection of fat and water and protein and nerves. So whatever names we come up with have to be understood and agreed upon, otherwise, it’s just more chaos.
To go back to the candidate identifications, I have to ask myself who is imposing these choices on the chaos of our varied identities? I know when I look at these lists, I have a hard time figuring out which levers to pull. How do I qualify my own heritage? I’ve learned the birthplaces of most of my great-grandparents. But the lineage of one of them has become a bit more muddled the closer we look. And some of those Italian secrets were taken to the grave long ago. Without divulging too much about our own possibly torrid family history, though, it makes me wonder how much of my identity is truly definable, and how much of my presentation is quantifiable. Do I present as Hispanic to you? What if I tell you that I grew up eating much more ropa vieja than apple pie? Does that, along with the fact that my grandfather was born in Cuba, qualify as enough to put a tick in the Hispanic box? And who’s checking anyway? It’s a name. A label. A category some fellow human came up with so that I could be quantified. And, these days, it sometimes sits right next to the relatively new “LatinX” label. I have no problem using it, especially when referring to people who prefer it, but when I talk to family still in Florida, they have no idea where it came from or why they need it. It’s just a new square-shaped box they’re not sure how to fit themselves into.
I wish that this post had a really concise solution for this problem. It doesn’t. Sorry about that. But I do have a suggestion: Bring more brains into the conversation when you are naming and categorizing and sorting your information. If yours is the only collection of fat and water and protein and nerves coming up with a name, you’re going to miss something. Or unintentionally exclude somebody. Or worse. We have to be more deliberate, and careful, about the way we are identifying things. Especially people.
Non-State Actor
15 March 2023
Checking a box.
Well, I spent a good part of the day gathering my thoughts, looking back over notes, and taking a lot of deep breaths. I’m not sure, however, that I’m any less troubled by how bad we are at categorization. So, let’s get started, shall we? But first, a flashback …
More than a decade ago, while leading a team at Symantec, one of my favorite schticks at lunch was doing an Andy Rooney impression (I was old way before I actually got old). The premise was his thoughts after going to the farmers market.
I can go on like that for a while. A long while. But it brings me to my point: Every name you can think of came from a human. A wonderful, fallible, living, breathing human, much like yourself. Maybe. It could have also come from a racial segregationist and apparent accessory to murder. So, you know, maybe not like you at all. But these names tend to stick around, no matter where they came from. And no matter whether or not we have any similar intersections with the people who came up with them, we have to live with their consequences. And, not to get too TED Talk-y, but we need to be a lot more diligent and thoughtful about the labels we place on things and — especially — people.
I mentioned last night that this came up again for me as I was applying to jobs. A lot of the online systems I’ve been using for applications have sections which gather demographic information. Some of them are well thought out. Others, not so much. But one thing they all have in common is a set of labels each and every candidate needs to fit themselves into, whether or not they identify precisely with them or not. And all of them are fiction. To quote one of the Daniels during one of their acceptance speeches at the Oscars the other night:
“We are all products of our context.”
– Daniel Kwan
Names, labels, categories. They all result because of somebody’s decision. We can decide how we want to be identified. But we can’t impose that choice on someone who’s meeting us for the first time. They are going to bring all their lived experience and bias and assumption to define you for themselves. Until you define yourself for them. But if they only give you a few options for how you are able to do that, are you defining yourself, or are they still defining you?
It all comes down to choices. And the more of us who are making those choices, the better. I know I don’t want rooms full of people who look like David Starr Jordan to come up with the names of things that I am going to have to use for the rest of my life. Not only do I not have a lot in common with him, but I don’t really trust his judgment. And when it comes down to it, don’t we need to trust the labels and categorization which we give to things? Otherwise, we are entrusting a handful of the powerful to decide between terms like “looter” or “survivor,” “refugee” or “migrant.” Let’s take two more examples that have always gotten under my skin.
First up, Comcast. Or Xfinity. Good lord, now that I think about it, they can’t even get their own name right. And when I scroll through their program listings looking for soccer, I find everything with that label is all men’s teams. But if I want to watch the NWSL, I have to search for “women’s soccer”? Why is that? The number of players are the same. The objective is the same. The field, ball, and rules are the same. So why are the listings named differently? Soccer is soccer, no matter where it’s played or who is playing it. So the distinction is either unnecessary or sexist. If it’s unnecessary, then any match, whether it features men or women, should just be labeled “soccer”. If it’s sexist, then let’s list “women’s soccer” next to “men’s soccer” so that there’s no question as to why Comcast/Xfinity includes “women’s” on certain events.
Another example is musical. And may be a bit more controversial. It’s about genres. These are tried and true, sure, but are they still helpful? Take jazz, as an example. How are we defining what jazz is? And who came up with that definition? Is it dependent on the instrumentation? The composition? The performers? What Miles Davis did with J.J. Johnson is very different from what he did when he played with Carlos Santana. Are they both jazz? And if so, why? I think it comes down to putting a label on something so that it’s easier to find. And now we’ve gotten to the content strategy portion of the program.
All of these categories and labels and taxonomies are methods to try and bring some order to what is, essentially, chaos. We try every day to communicate the amorphous ideas and emotions trapped in the squishy collection of fat and water and protein and nerves, we call a brain, housed inside the bone helmet we call skulls. And we have to do it in a way that makes sense to other people with a completely different collection of fat and water and protein and nerves. So whatever names we come up with have to be understood and agreed upon, otherwise, it’s just more chaos.
To go back to the candidate identifications, I have to ask myself who is imposing these choices on the chaos of our varied identities? I know when I look at these lists, I have a hard time figuring out which levers to pull. How do I qualify my own heritage? I’ve learned the birthplaces of most of my great-grandparents. But the lineage of one of them has become a bit more muddled the closer we look. And some of those Italian secrets were taken to the grave long ago. Without divulging too much about our own possibly torrid family history, though, it makes me wonder how much of my identity is truly definable, and how much of my presentation is quantifiable. Do I present as Hispanic to you? What if I tell you that I grew up eating much more ropa vieja than apple pie? Does that, along with the fact that my grandfather was born in Cuba, qualify as enough to put a tick in the Hispanic box? And who’s checking anyway? It’s a name. A label. A category some fellow human came up with so that I could be quantified. And, these days, it sometimes sits right next to the relatively new “LatinX” label. I have no problem using it, especially when referring to people who prefer it, but when I talk to family still in Florida, they have no idea where it came from or why they need it. It’s just a new square-shaped box they’re not sure how to fit themselves into.
I wish that this post had a really concise solution for this problem. It doesn’t. Sorry about that. But I do have a suggestion: Bring more brains into the conversation when you are naming and categorizing and sorting your information. If yours is the only collection of fat and water and protein and nerves coming up with a name, you’re going to miss something. Or unintentionally exclude somebody. Or worse. We have to be more deliberate, and careful, about the way we are identifying things. Especially people.
See you tomorrow?