> "My "race/culture" is navy submariner, and I always enjoyed watching the few sailors who hadn't had their background racism washed out of them at boot-camp realize that getting the job done well was what mattered, some sailors came in with some bad biases but within a year those issues usually had been resolved by working in a meritocracy, if a very authoritarian and hierarchical one."
+100
I think a lot of submariners can relate to this (I'm also a submariner). I do remember when I was a senior sailor, and one of my division's nubs was this smart and hard-working kid from bumfuck nowhere Georgia (he was from a small town of <500 people)...well, we were sitting on crews mess and getting GMT on gays in the military and this kid was like "there's no way i'm working with some fag"...to which I, and pretty much ever person senior to him were like "shut the fuck up nub, you most certainly will work with someone who is gay, in fact you already do (we had a gay guy in our division but he was pretty hush-hush about it), and that 'fag' as you called him, might be in a position to one day save your life, so you better drop whatever bullshit prejudice you may have...and get quallified"....he dropped some of his outwardly shitty behavior pretty quick...like you said, it didn't matter what your background or sexual orientation was, the only thing that mattered was coming together to get the job done...and you totally saw this during any kind of emergency...sometimes I do miss the "togetherness" we had as a crew...just not the unpaid overtime.
+100
I think a lot of submariners can relate to this (I'm also a submariner). I do remember when I was a senior sailor, and one of my division's nubs was this smart and hard-working kid from bumfuck nowhere Georgia (he was from a small town of <500 people)...well, we were sitting on crews mess and getting GMT on gays in the military and this kid was like "there's no way i'm working with some fag"...to which I, and pretty much ever person senior to him were like "shut the fuck up nub, you most certainly will work with someone who is gay, in fact you already do (we had a gay guy in our division but he was pretty hush-hush about it), and that 'fag' as you called him, might be in a position to one day save your life, so you better drop whatever bullshit prejudice you may have...and get quallified"....he dropped some of his outwardly shitty behavior pretty quick...like you said, it didn't matter what your background or sexual orientation was, the only thing that mattered was coming together to get the job done...and you totally saw this during any kind of emergency...sometimes I do miss the "togetherness" we had as a crew...just not the unpaid overtime.