When confronted with “Why is there no straight pride?”, how do you respond?
Pride season is among us. And every once in a while, an LGBTQ+ person may come across another individual who doesn’t understand why Pride is needed in the first place. Often, a point they’ll make is that “there is no straight pride.” Recently, one such encounter appeared as I was browsing Facebook’s Memories feature, which shows you your historical Facebook activity on that date for previous years. This was an encounter that happened in 2019, when NYC (which is where I live) was hosting World Pride. …
What influences the formation of an individual’s opinions and behavior? How can you approach the task of changing opinions and behaviors?
Given the current political climate and all the heated debates I see happening on social media, I began to wonder, “Why is it so hard to change someone’s opinions, behavior, or beliefs?” Below, I discuss aspects of human behavior in the context of a society’s culture and what it takes to make change. As a current business school student, I’ve pulled from various concepts from my classes to help aid the discussion.
What is Culture?
In one of my first business school classes (which centered around organizational structure & leadership), we were introduced to a four step process for how culture is created:
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Focus policy and action on the driver of the undesired behavior. Answer the question: “Why does the behavior exist?”
Chances are, you’ve engaged in a conversation with someone who constantly redirects the focus of your conversation around Black Lives Matter protests to the rioting and looting that’s reported in the media. The conversation usually goes something like this:
1.) People Focused on Rioting (FoRs): Some comment about the destruction of property, violence, illegal activity, looting, etc. and that it’s bad
2.) People Understanding of Rioting (UoRs): Some comment pointing out that we need to understand the reason for the anger and the series of events that led to the rioting in the first place.
3.) FoRs: Some comment about…
What worked? What did we learn? How can we apply these answers to the Black Lives Matter movement?
To my LGBTQ+ family:
As Pride month kicks off, I find myself reflecting on the journey of the LGBTQ+ movement set against the backdrop of current events — the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and the subsequent protests that sprung up around the world (which are still happening more than two weeks after Floyd was killed). New York hosted World Pride last year (June 2019), marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the riots that started our movement.
To mark this momentous occasion, during the first half of 2019, social media was flooded with countless…
Bryan Huang
1st gen. Cis male. Gay. Chinese American. New Yorker. MBA graduate. Music lover. Dancer. Musician. Gaymer. Political junkie. Dog fanatic.
