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> I don't understand the "as a man" part. That's further propagating the problem.

...

> You see, you are still treating her differently, where ultimately, no one treats her differently.

Actually, everyone is treating her differently. The problem isn't just that people see men and women differently. That's almost impossible to change in the short term. In the short term, all you can do is try to get people to treat each other fairly.

I've no opinion on whether or not "Black History Month" is a good idea or not. Maybe it's a piss-poor token effort. Maybe Freeman doesn't care, because people treat him fairly, as he's outrageously successful, but other African Americans don't get treated fairly unless people make a big deal about doing so (which they usually do, thanks to a huge amount of anti-black-discrimination sentiment ... Latinos aren't so lucky). I'm not an American. I don't even know what "Black History Month" is.

There's three things that should happen - everyone should try to treat everyone else fairly, people should stick up for groups of people who are treated unfairly (whether they are a member of that group or not), and people should try not to think of people as belonging to any particular group. But when a group is treated unfairly, if you don't think of them as a group (on occasion), you can't stick up for them.

What I'm saying is that your shouldn't primarily consider someone to be defined by their (race / gender / height / whatever), but should occasionally stop to think about whether people might be getting treated unfairly, and do something about it if they are.

I'd consider saying "maybe I should take notes, because it's not fair that the girl always seems to do it, and (name) is busy with her presentation right now".

in the long run, for the survival of the race, we'd better continue to treat them differently. Get over it already!! Women are different! All this pc stuff is drivel.

Please elaborate. Firstly, why is it necessary to treat them differently for "the survival of the race"? Secondly, yes, Women are different, but that doesn't mean that

a: It's appropriate to comment on a woman's cleavage at work

or b: that women can't be equally good software developers

I agree. I think though that you have to be more clear. I believe when you say "for the survival of the race" what you mean is that woman want to be with men whom they respect. I feel like that is true. Certainly woman are also different. However, when it comes to being in the workplace, I think what the OP and most of the people here are trying to get at is using better judgement. We are not animals here. We treat woman with the same respect that we treat men, while simultaneously recognizing that we ought not act the same around them as we do around men, or maybe specifically of men we are friends with.

PC is drivel. agreed. being respectful: definitely not.

Where did I "treat her differently"? I'd like to think that if there was any other member of my team that was consistently getting stuck making tea and taking notes, I'd do the same for him. Indeed, I have done that in the past.

It's true that people, observing just this one incident in isolation, might conclude that I was "treating her differently" because she was female. I can't help that. I, too, am stuck in the society we have, the one where people make assumptions like you have just made, and as you point out it's not productive to tell people not to assume such things, no more than if I asked them not to think of an elephant. If anyone asks why I "treated her differently" I'll say what I just said: Team members are team members, none of them should be stuck with the boring stuff all the time unless they really enjoy making tea.

Meanwhile, I used the rather clumsy phrase "as a man" not because I enjoy writing clumsily, nor as some sort of political statement, but just to get the mental picture clear: I'm a guy, who looks like a nerdy guy, and when I make tea I look like a nerdy guy making tea. I suppose I could have left that ambiguous, as I usually do online - hey, on the internet nobody needs to know that you're really a beagle who can cite SICP and make tea - but in a conversation that's essentially about the optics of an in-person social interaction I felt it was kind of important that we all try to envision an actual room, with an actual team, one member of which is a middle-aged guy who is stepping out to make some tea.

If I could upvote this twice, I would. The labels we use for each other are an elephant in the room. A lot of people came to this country and worked very hard to build it. Some by choice, others by duress. The ones who came by choice made mad bank and their descendants received all the benefits of a raised standard of living. Meanwhile, a great percentage of the descendants who came in shackles are still struggling to raise the standard of living for themselves and their families.

This has nothing to do with skin tone and everything to do with perception. Your feet follow your eyes.

Exactly. The moment we stop looking at "men" and "women" or "black" and "white" and start looking at "people" is when these things are truly sorted out.

This is never going to happen, and IMHO should not. Equality is not equivalency and none of us are colour blind. The key is accepting differences when they ARE there. That said, class is a way bigger difference than race. :P

EDIT: I'm definitely not saying that the subjective perceived differences in gender and race are real, or that bigotry and ignorance are cool.

We are all different, but that doesn't mean we must be treated different at all times.

At work we are all workers. We may be treated differently depending on our position within the company, because that is relevant to our job and duties. But how is it relevant and useful to treat employees or colleagues differently because they are this or that? Does it bring any more profit, productivity or anything positive at all?

We can't be looking at these differences all the time, because most of the time they do not matter at all within the context. This is what people don't get.

Where I disagree with you on "colour blindness" is that your statement assumes that gender and race are reasonable and obvious ways of categorizing people. How often do you group people by whether or not their earlobes are attached? Or by the curliness of their hair? We have made gender, race, etc important constructs. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to make them unimportant.

Accepting differences is a good thing. However the magnitude of the perceived difference can make accepting it either easier or harder

Let me add some more. People here being called "african-american", "asian-american", "japanese-american", "indian-american" (different from the "Indians" who are the original (native) Americans) and so on. This shows the inherent racist bigotry prevalent and the sense of entitlement felt by the WASPy americans. Why not call all Americans (whether by birth or naturalized) as Americans instead of differentiating? On the same lines, I'd suggest calling white americans from Europe as "white caucasian americans", "italian-americans", "irish-americans", "british-americans" etc. Oh, and one more, China != Asia. Asia consists of a LOT many countries, not just China. A very relevant editorial cartoon last year by Steve Kelly of the Times-Picayune on the immigrant issue, too.