Four Bees, One Cup...
Yep. That's exactly how it sounds. Four bees, one cup. Before I explain exactly what that means, I should probably give the context. I just spent the last day at Camp Cazadero, about 2 1/2 hours north of San Francisco. It was an overnight Creating Community Retreat where RAs, RHA, GO Team, and other student organizations participated in ice breakers, reflections, and group discussions. It's a pretty remote location in the middle of the woods where you have to drive over an hour away from the camp just to regain your phone service.
According to the staff there, Camp Cazadero is the second rainiest spot in California. Although it didn't rain while we were there, it wasn't exactly as sunny as we had hoped it would be. It was about 60 or 65 degrees out with cloudy skies. We were hoping for it to be warm enough for us to swim in the camp pool, but it didn't start to warm up until about 5 in the afternoon, so only a few people swam. I spent most of my free time playing an intense game of kickball with about a dozen other kids. I hadn't played kickball since about the 3rd grade, but I'm glad to announce that I feel a little more coordinated than I was at 8 years old. At least now I can kick, catch, score runs, and tag people out. All the soreness in my legs and shoulders that I'm feeling now is all worth it.
In our group sessions, we discussed some of the components of socially constructed human identities. For example, gender, sex, race, age, religious affiliation, spirituality, education, socioeconomic status, etc. are all components of a person's identity. In our discussions, we talked about how society's perception of an individual's identity can sometimes give that individual certain privileges or certain disadvantages. For example, a person of a racial minority may or may not be welcomed by the racial majority. Before we even attended the retreat, I suspect a lot of us already knew that other people's judgment of an individual affects how that individual is treated. Whether this is fair, unfair, correct, incorrect, the fact remains that we do have preconceived ideas of how a person belonging to a certain identity group should look, think, and behave. An example is how our society conditions us to hold certain gender roles. Boys are supposed to be rough and interested in sports. Girls are supposed to be more delicate and interested in crafts and playing with dolls. If a girl would rather play football than with dolls, is that ok? If a boy abandons sports and becomes interested in knitting, does that make him any less of a boy? Some say yes, some say no. Are boys naturally more interested in sports than in dolls? Are girls naturally interested in tea parties rather than baseball? Or perhaps, are they pushed into these roles by society?
Rather than answering these questions with a simple yes or no, I want to think more about why we automatically assign certain characteristics to certain identity groups. One of the hypothetical situations we were asked to respond to asked us to imagine that we were in an express line at a local grocery store. We were the third person in line with a couple in line ahead of us and a woman at the head of the line. The woman at the head of the line has two cartfulls of groceries in a 10 item limit line. She also has four children in her cart, while she pays the cashier with a handful of food stamps. Unfortunately the food stamps only cover half the food, so the woman unsuccessfully tries to find more money in her purse. The couple in front of you begins to talk about the woman. The question posed to our group was, "What was the couple saying to each other?"
A lot of people volunteered that the couple would probably be impatient to get their grocery shopping done and that they would be irritated with the woman for holding up the line with two carts filled with groceries. Some said that the couple would take pity and offer to pay for the rest of her food. Others ventured to say that the couple might be saying that the woman was too uneducated to use common sense when she decided to have four children she couldn't support. Others even said that the couple might be saying how the woman's children probably all have different fathers.
There was a lot of speculation regarding what the woman's situation might be like. And then one person said, "We're coming up with a lot of different scenarios, but the reality is, we know nothing about this woman and her situation." The whole group kind of stopped talking for a moment as we realized how true this statement was. Those children might not even be hers. She could be a nanny who was told to buy groceries for the children with food stamps. If they were her children, she could have been in a better financial situation when she decided to have them. This is when a lot of people volunteered how they knew people who had similar situations. One girl shared how a good family friend is raising her four children, all under the age of five, by herself because her husband died. They were once financially secure because her husband was an architect. However, once he passed away suddenly, the mother had to care for the children by using food stamps. She could easily fit the role of the mother in the hypothetical situation. It just goes to show that we can never assume anything. Automatically, many of us assume that she's a poor, single mother who can't provide for her children. This may not be the case at all. The point is, why do we jump to these stereotypes? Perhaps it is easier. Mindlessly falling back on stereotypes is easier than admitting that we don't know about something.
A lot of other thought-provoking ideas were discussed in our groups, such as why are some people privileged and some are not? What causes poverty? What are the characteristics we believe are fundamental to our identities?
It was a great retreat and I got to meet a lot of great people. Also, I haven't forgotten. I promised to explain the four bees, one cup thing. At dinner last night, my friends and I were eating barbecue chicken at a picnic table outside. There were a lot of yellow jackets flying around and landing in our food. Then, we had the idea of trapping them under our plastic cups. First, we caught one. Then another, then another. Pretty soon, we had a line of seven plastic cups, each with a yellow jacket in it. We started to run out of cups, so we combined the yellow jackets into only a few cups. As a result, my friend Michelle yelled out, "Four bees, one cup." We ended up trapping about 16, then letting them go after we were done eating. We weren't that cruel.
Anyway, we got back to USF at about 3. As soon as we got back, I jumped in the shower, which felt so good. I love the feeling of being clean. As for now, I need to get some sleep. Training tomorrow, bright and early.
According to the staff there, Camp Cazadero is the second rainiest spot in California. Although it didn't rain while we were there, it wasn't exactly as sunny as we had hoped it would be. It was about 60 or 65 degrees out with cloudy skies. We were hoping for it to be warm enough for us to swim in the camp pool, but it didn't start to warm up until about 5 in the afternoon, so only a few people swam. I spent most of my free time playing an intense game of kickball with about a dozen other kids. I hadn't played kickball since about the 3rd grade, but I'm glad to announce that I feel a little more coordinated than I was at 8 years old. At least now I can kick, catch, score runs, and tag people out. All the soreness in my legs and shoulders that I'm feeling now is all worth it.
In our group sessions, we discussed some of the components of socially constructed human identities. For example, gender, sex, race, age, religious affiliation, spirituality, education, socioeconomic status, etc. are all components of a person's identity. In our discussions, we talked about how society's perception of an individual's identity can sometimes give that individual certain privileges or certain disadvantages. For example, a person of a racial minority may or may not be welcomed by the racial majority. Before we even attended the retreat, I suspect a lot of us already knew that other people's judgment of an individual affects how that individual is treated. Whether this is fair, unfair, correct, incorrect, the fact remains that we do have preconceived ideas of how a person belonging to a certain identity group should look, think, and behave. An example is how our society conditions us to hold certain gender roles. Boys are supposed to be rough and interested in sports. Girls are supposed to be more delicate and interested in crafts and playing with dolls. If a girl would rather play football than with dolls, is that ok? If a boy abandons sports and becomes interested in knitting, does that make him any less of a boy? Some say yes, some say no. Are boys naturally more interested in sports than in dolls? Are girls naturally interested in tea parties rather than baseball? Or perhaps, are they pushed into these roles by society?
Rather than answering these questions with a simple yes or no, I want to think more about why we automatically assign certain characteristics to certain identity groups. One of the hypothetical situations we were asked to respond to asked us to imagine that we were in an express line at a local grocery store. We were the third person in line with a couple in line ahead of us and a woman at the head of the line. The woman at the head of the line has two cartfulls of groceries in a 10 item limit line. She also has four children in her cart, while she pays the cashier with a handful of food stamps. Unfortunately the food stamps only cover half the food, so the woman unsuccessfully tries to find more money in her purse. The couple in front of you begins to talk about the woman. The question posed to our group was, "What was the couple saying to each other?"
A lot of people volunteered that the couple would probably be impatient to get their grocery shopping done and that they would be irritated with the woman for holding up the line with two carts filled with groceries. Some said that the couple would take pity and offer to pay for the rest of her food. Others ventured to say that the couple might be saying that the woman was too uneducated to use common sense when she decided to have four children she couldn't support. Others even said that the couple might be saying how the woman's children probably all have different fathers.
There was a lot of speculation regarding what the woman's situation might be like. And then one person said, "We're coming up with a lot of different scenarios, but the reality is, we know nothing about this woman and her situation." The whole group kind of stopped talking for a moment as we realized how true this statement was. Those children might not even be hers. She could be a nanny who was told to buy groceries for the children with food stamps. If they were her children, she could have been in a better financial situation when she decided to have them. This is when a lot of people volunteered how they knew people who had similar situations. One girl shared how a good family friend is raising her four children, all under the age of five, by herself because her husband died. They were once financially secure because her husband was an architect. However, once he passed away suddenly, the mother had to care for the children by using food stamps. She could easily fit the role of the mother in the hypothetical situation. It just goes to show that we can never assume anything. Automatically, many of us assume that she's a poor, single mother who can't provide for her children. This may not be the case at all. The point is, why do we jump to these stereotypes? Perhaps it is easier. Mindlessly falling back on stereotypes is easier than admitting that we don't know about something.
A lot of other thought-provoking ideas were discussed in our groups, such as why are some people privileged and some are not? What causes poverty? What are the characteristics we believe are fundamental to our identities?
It was a great retreat and I got to meet a lot of great people. Also, I haven't forgotten. I promised to explain the four bees, one cup thing. At dinner last night, my friends and I were eating barbecue chicken at a picnic table outside. There were a lot of yellow jackets flying around and landing in our food. Then, we had the idea of trapping them under our plastic cups. First, we caught one. Then another, then another. Pretty soon, we had a line of seven plastic cups, each with a yellow jacket in it. We started to run out of cups, so we combined the yellow jackets into only a few cups. As a result, my friend Michelle yelled out, "Four bees, one cup." We ended up trapping about 16, then letting them go after we were done eating. We weren't that cruel.
Anyway, we got back to USF at about 3. As soon as we got back, I jumped in the shower, which felt so good. I love the feeling of being clean. As for now, I need to get some sleep. Training tomorrow, bright and early.