The 49ers locker room is not Comedy Central

Okay. Hubby mentioned something to me that I have somehow overlooked in my daily headline musings. This San Francisco 49ers diversity training video scandal. The former PR guy for the 49ers football team decided to put together a humorous video that was supposedly for diversity training. It was leaked to the press and has caused a stir because it basically made fun of and negatively portrayed the people and city of San Francisco. The video starts with the PR guy pretending to be the mayor of the city. Not so bad in itself. He goes on to say how he plans to take you on a tour of the wonderful diverse city and teach you what to do in certain situations now that you're a professional football player. Let's see here, among other things, we then lay our eyes upon a stereotypical Chinese man making verbal faux pas due to his apparent non-grasp of the English language, two supposed lesbians getting nasty on the floor during a supposed same-sex marriage, a horrible portrayal of the mayor as some sleazy freeloader, and a nice f*** you to a homeless person (although portrayed by one of the players). Oh boy.

Of course, I always attempt to be fair-minded and I always have to see what the opposing view is. I have read a couple of articles that talk about the negative backlash from the training video, like this one, and this one. And I have read commentary (not by anyone "official" though) that says everyone is overreacting, like this one and this one. The one comment I keep seeing in defense of the video is that the jokes made in the video are nothing different than you would see on Leno or on Comedy Central. Okay, the key here is CONTEXT. This is not Southpark. This is not the Chappelle show. This is diversity training. This is "you're new to this diverse area, let me introduce you to the types of things you're going to encounter that you may not be used to and this is a suggested way of dealing with it". I read in one article that this humorous video was shown after a more serious diversity training session or video. Well, guess what? Showing that video just said "hey diversity is serious, be accepting and unprejudiced....but, actually, it's a joke, just do whatever you want when it comes to the different ethnicities, sexual orientations, and homeless people you'll encounter in the city". You know, the brain needs stereotypes. It is a natural subconscious process for your brain to quickly categorize and evaluate all the information it takes in at once. But crap like this video is how stereotypes are spread and used consciously and inappropriately for decision-making purposes. The video doesn't even make it a little bit okay by explaining somehow that it was all just a joking way of showing how not to act.

And another thing, not one of the however many players must have said a damn thing. They apparently thought it was funny and great. I can just see them...jumping up and down, hootin' and hollerin' at the lesbian scene. I guarantee you if it had been men, it would have been the complete opposite. How the hell does that show them they need to be tolerant in any way? All the little skits/scenes were obviously for pure entertainment. That is way too psychologically distracting for them to actually glean some goodness out of whatever message was supposed to be there. What the hell was the PR dude thinking? All in all, I can see how this whole thing might have been a bad idea gone very, very, horribly bad. But, it's still sad.

Random note: according to dictionary.com the plural of faux pas is faux pas...interesting.