hkellick | *buh-link*

Well.. that was odd. And more than slightly amusing.
Just got off the phone with a requestor. Now, by and large, as many of you know, most engineers seem to be white. There's a pretty even mix, nowadays, of women and men, but white people tend to dominate my industry.
So it was... odd.. to get off the phone with a requestor who spoke perfectly coherently for someone who seemed to sink into occasional ebonics. It was a perfectly normal and intelligent conversation otherwise.
That just made my day :)

EditEdit: Fine. Let me explain again. Clearer for those of you who want to jump towards being offended.
Guy calls up. Doesn't matter from where or what company he represents. He wants to talk about a case I've been working on. We have a five minute conversation about the case in which I go over what I was asking for and what I need from him. Throughout the conversation, especially when I was talking, he'd sort of revert into using slang that I don't hear much (No I won't tell you what, fuck you very much. Wouldn't want to be called any more racist than you already think I am.). It was only the junction of slang and engineese that amused me. For the millionth time, it wasn't because he was black, it was because he was using two different and what I'd consider otherwise incompatible slangs.
It was just one of those "Had To Be There" Moments. Or maybe not. Maybe, I'm just a fucking rascist bastard :p

Edit: The new web updater is funk-ay

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Ok, so I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a moment. Why should it be surprising to you that a black person can be just as competent as you in your field? I mean, read what you've said, it's really patronizing. That'd be like going to, say, an insurance agency and being helped by a disabled person... say you remark, "Wow, she had no use of her legs and she had to use a motorized wheelchair, but she sounded perfectly intelligent!" It's a tempting train of thought, but think of the position it puts that person in. People direct that kind of thought (and energy) in their direction all of the time. They're just trying to earn a living like you, and especially in the case of this person whose only perceived "disadvantage" is being black, it's not giving them very much credit to congratulate them for doing something that you are not similarly surprised to see yourself achieving.

What made my day wasn't that a black person could do my job.
What made my day WAS that he was slipping in and out of ebonics.
It's.. about jargon, more than the color of the person having the conversation. It was, for me, the conversation that held both "engineering jargon" and "ebonics jargon" that caught me as extremely funny.

I'm not saying that people of any color or sex can't be engineers. We have all sorts working in my company as well, including more than a few african americans (and one african), but I've never heard the mixture of ebonics and.. engineering before.

Be offended if you like (and that applies to anyone reading this post and comment and not just you), but it was never about the color of the engineer's skin, but about the language he used.

But, then, hell.. I've had a really tough week at work and am just glad that it's nearly over.

I'm not looking to pick a fight right before you leave, however...

I thought it came across (in the post) as kind of garbled, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But the way you phrased it, it really did come across as "hey neat, a black guy who puts some effort into speaking normally!"

(BTW, I'm pretty sure Jaspreet, for one, was Indian-subcontinent of some sort, not African-American.)

I'm trying very hard not to take offense here.

It was never about what color his skin was, it was about how he spoke. The post was not "Hey, look, some black people can sound intelligent." It was my amusement because this guy was sorta-kinda-simultaneously speaking "ebonics" and engineerese.

Maybe it was one of those You Had To Be There moments. Because for all of your righteous indignation, I sincerely doubt you.. all of you... would have been able to listen to the conversation I had and not be at least somewhat amused.

But, hell, at least I was amused.
Until you all took it away from me.
Because it isn't PC to be amused at the way a person speaks? Not his accent, but the particular incongruence of words he uses? Whatever.

*grrr*

I wasn't being indignant. I was just trying to point out that there was a gap between what you meant, and what you actually typed.

OK.. wait.. an example.

Here, you are, a Computer Science student and your new instructor happens to be Jewish. No problems. Except that in the middle of his lessons he'll start using Yiddish.

Oy Gavolte, that (computer jargon. don't ask me.) is a really firemacher, you know what i mean?

In this situation, are you sensitive to the fact that this is simply the way the teacher speaks without any amusement whatsoever about the merge of jargon?

For what it's worth, I get what you mean. I remember an english friend telling me they were amazed I could flit in and out of my local dialect while talking about computers once.

I think sometimes people are really quick to jump to defensive - how hypocritical of I, eh? :) I have calmed down though recently :)

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