Mind Readings: Representation and Ambassadorship

I had a thought today while I was taking a shower. Actually, while I was running and then taking a shower, and that is that representation and ambassadorship are two sides of the same coin. So what does that mean? In the context of content creation and media, representation is all about willfully including people who are minorities in what media you produce so that similar groups of people can see themselves and feel represented in their media. So real simple example on TV shows, you if you have a cast of people who are all one ethnicity or religion or gender, it's very hard for somebody else who is not in that group to see themselves in that place, right?

To see that they are valued by the society they are in, uh, and that they could do that too. I remember one of the things that uh was such a powerful statement back in 2008 uh here in the United States when uh Barack Obama was elected to the presidency, was for black Americans to be able to say there's a person who looks like us, and that automatically tells us that we could do that too. We could reach the highest office in the land too. When you look at television shows uh and you see a cast of characters that is crazy diverse, uh you know, watching uh CW's Legends of Tomorrow, and you see people of radically different sexual orientations and races and religions. You have some Muslim characters, you have some asexual characters and things.

And everybody's a minority at some point in some way. Obviously, some circumstances are more permanent than others. So if you live in a nation where the majority of people are, say, Korean, like in Korea, and you're not Korean, it's going to be you're you're you're gonna feel like the odd one out a lot. On the other time, if you're in a place that's you know wildly diverse, um you will occasionally be in minority positions, but not often. So, for example, if you are from Massachusetts and you go to Texas, while you're in Texas, you are technically in a minority of people who are from Massachusetts, even though you may have the same uh racial background or gender as the majority group.

So, what does this have to do with ambassadorship? What is that? When you are in a minority, temporarily or permanently, you have an implicit obligation to represent it well. Even if you don't want to, right, um, you are automatically representing whatever subgroup you are part of. So for example, when I am out and about, you know, on stage or at conferences, or you know, even just in the workplace.

If you don't have any friends who are ethnically Korean as I am, I will be the first Korean you meet, right? I'll be the first Korean person of Korean heritage that you know. And that in turn means that a big portion of your mental blueprint of whether you like this subgroup or not, is going to be patterned in part on uh the way we interact, right? So if I act like a jerk to you, right or wrong, you're gonna say, gosh, Koreans are kind of must be kind of jerks. Like this guy Chris is a jerk.

Uh maybe all Koreans are like that. And so for me, as somebody who is in a minority uh in in the United States of America, obviously not in Korea, I have an obligation to represent to be an ambassador for my group, right? It's something that I have to be aware of in how I conduct myself, how I talk about my uh my race, my ethnicity, even little things like making sure that I spell the names of recipes correct when I put them on Instagram and stuff, all of that is part of representing my group well. So if you are, say you're gay, right, and you are in a population of people or circle of friends where nobody else is gay except you. People will make assumptions and build mental models based in part on their experiences with you.

Now there's obviously other sources, right? There's YouTube videos and television shows and podcasts and things where somebody else could proactively go out and get a sampling of what is this, what are these people like, you know. But we build impressions most strongly with the people we interact with. Because we all know implicitly that what you see in a TV show, you know that's not reality. I mean, you watch TV show and you know, people shooting lightning out of their hands and stuff like that doesn't happen in real life.

So if that's not real, chances are this the stereotypes in media are not real either. For example, I'm in a a Discord server or a writing group, and three or four of my friends in that group are Mexican, and I've had a chance to chat with them over the years, uh, get to know them as individuals, not just based on their heritage, but as the as individual people, and they have very strongly changed my perceptions of what someone who is of Mexican heritage is about, right? There's a lot of stereotypes, many of them harmful in the United States about uh Mexican people. And these friends of mine, as ambassadors, consciously or not, of Mexico completely broke all those stereotypes. Like, okay, that's none of the stereotypes are correct or even remotely close to correct.

Um, for example, two of them are phenomenal writers. Phenomenal in English, not just in Spanish, but in English. They're fantastic writers. Um, they write really good fiction, and I'm like, huh, that's really cool. I don't I was like, and I dug in, and you know, for example, one of them doesn't have a higher higher education degree, they just are really good at working in in both languages.

And so it's little things like that that broke stereotypes I had in my own head about this minority, this subgroup. So if you are in a minority position, either temporarily or permanently, right, you're representing that group. You are changing or reinforcing the existing opinions that somebody has about that group, whatever that group is, it could be people of a certain age, it could be people of a certain um geographic location, whatever it is that you represent, you have an obligation as an ambassador to represent it well. Now that doesn't mean that you have to be uh you know perfect and and polished all the time, and uh you can't say things uh honestly. You absolutely can do that, but just be aware that what you do controls the perceptions that people have of not only of you, but of everybody in your group that they don't necessarily know, uh, especially if they they live in a community where they're not exposed to uh more diversity.

Right? So something to think about in in today's mind readings. Be aware of who you are an ambassador for and do your best to conduct yourself appropriately. Thanks for watching.