Fighting for equality in the 1990s in Phoenix, Arizona


People who know me know that I'm a believer in equality. I am a follower of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that we should judge someone based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. And interesting enough, I fell into a category that a lot of people didn't consider worthy of that equality, a male Anglo-Saxon straight man. And it's how people have treated me that I have judged the content of their character. Because there are things you can't change, the color of your skin, your gender, your sexual orientation. And if those things are held against you, especially in your career, it's horrible.

My career started in the 1980s in Los Angeles, in the era of quotas. A "quota" meant that a manager had to hire people based on race, and gender. As a white guy, I knew that I wasn't going to fill any quotas, and it made me nervous. Yes, things have gotten better, but back then this was a road being built with best intentions that had unintended results. Instead of creating equality, it polarized. Nowadays, of course, managers can't say things like "I've filled my quota, so now I can hire you", but that's what I heard when I got the job in LA. And then there were the memos that the managers would get that said that they couldn't hire, or promote, anyone of my gender or race. Yes, I know that's not what was intended, but that was the effect.

When I lost the job in Los Angeles, and returned to Phoenix, I brought my "non-quota filling self" to job interviews. I heard of people who were digging up information about their family so they could include some type of minority on their resume. I had none - I was a white guy, and besides, I didn't believe in that kind of stuff.

I brought my intolerance of degradation of people based on race and gender to the workplace. As a Graphic Designer I resented working on things that were gender-and-race specific. If someone decided that my race and gender were things to be made fun of, I politely asked for them to stop. I got the same reactions over and over - "Come on, lighten up."

When new brochures for the company I worked for needed to be designed after 1992, my boss asked me to look through the stock photos to see if I could find something that corporate would approve. What they wanted was diversity, and the stock photos didn't have that. It seemed to puzzle the people I worked for, and I volunteered to art-direct photos for the brochures. The models were all fellow-employees that I knew, and I selected all kinds of people - white people, black people, Hispanic people, Asian people, Indian people. The brochures often needed to show couples, and I would match people up. I wasn't allowed to do mixed-race couples (I did ask), but I did as much as I could. Looking back now, it doesn't seem like much, but back then it was very progressive, especially for Arizona.

I still fight for equality, and I still judge people based on the content of their character. And I'm afraid that some people are just stinkers, I know. But many people just don't realize what equality means, and I have hope for the future.

Image at the top of this post: A representative of a white male in a brochure that I did in the 1990s, Phoenix, Arizona. That's me.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more