داستان انگلیسی قد بلند٫ تاریک و خوشتیپ

ACTIVE LISTENING MAIN STORY

Tall, Dark and Handsome

Warren Harding’s passions were fishing, poker, drinking and

womanizing. He didn’t seem to be a man of great ambition, but

somehow he became the 29th president of the United States.

His rise to the highest office in US politics began one day in 1899 in an Ohio hotel lobby. Harding was a small town newspaper editor, who

was running for a position in the Ohio state senate. On that fateful day, he sat down in the lobby to have his shoes shined. Sitting next to him was a man who would become one of the most powerful

backroom fixers in US politics. Harry Daugherty was an Ohio lobbyist and shrewd power broker. He took one look at Warren Harding, and

he saw an opportunity. While Harding was a man of unremarkable

intellect and ambition, he looked like a man of power and influence.

He was classically tall, dark and handsome. He spoke with a deep, warm voice; his skin was tan; his shoulders were broad, and he was tall.

Despite Harding’s lack of ambition, Daugherty pushed him from local politics to national politics. Harding’s career as a US senator in Washington D.C was equally unremarkable. He was absent during

votes on two of the most important issues of his time: the ban on alcohol and women’s right to vote. Despite this, as he grew older and his hair greyed, he started to look more and more the image of a

distinguished politician. One of his supporters once yelled, “Why, the son of a bitch looks like a senator.”

Not only did he look like a senator, but he also looked like a president.

Not unlike today, backroom fixers like Daugherty controlled much of US politics. While Harding was an unremarkable politician, Daugherty and the other Republican party bosses saw an opportunity in Harding.

Here was a man who was mild enough to be easily manipulated and

good looking enough to become president.

Despite Harding’s reputation as a womanizer, he was very popular with women, who had just recently received the right to vote. Harding won by a landslide.

Harding was president for just two years until he died of a stroke.

Those two years were a time marked by corruption. After his death, the corruption came to light. Many of the men Harding placed in

power were arrested for bribes, kickbacks and even illegal drug and alcohol distribution. Many historians consider him the worst president in US history.

In addition to Harding’s natural good looks, another factor that probably helped him become president was his height. Harding was

about 183 cm tall. The average height of a US male today is 177 cm. In Harding’s time, the average height was only 167 cm, so he really was a physically impressive man.

Research has shown that tall people receive all kinds of advantages in life. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, the average height of US CEOs is 183 cm. In the US, only 14.5% of men are 183 cm or

higher, but among the 500 biggest companies in the US, 58% are 183 cm or higher. Even more startling is that only 3% of US males are 188 cm or taller, but about 30% of these CEOs are that tall.

So what’s going on here? Are we really that shallow? Do we promote people to CEO or vote them to President based on trivial things like height? Well, the short answer is yes, but it isn’t a conscious thing. We unconsciously associate height with power and ability, and this clearly gives tall people an advantage.

Of course, we have all kinds of conscious and unconscious biases that sometimes cause less qualified people to rise to the top. Certainly, many women face an uphill battle in the business world. We often use the idiom ‘glass ceiling’ to describe a barrier to promotion for women and minorities. They can see the higher positions above them, but they can’t cross the barrier because of the hidden discrimination of their bosses.

Perhaps the times are changing. In 1947, only 33 percent of Americans said they would vote for a qualified woman to be president. In 2007, 90% said they would. But yet, there never has been a female president of the United States. What people say and what they do are often very different, perhaps because many of our biases are hidden even from ourselves.

The Harvard Implicit Association Test is a test that tries to measure these hidden biases. You can try it for free online. According to the results over 70% of people are slower when they have to associate women with work and men with family. And strangely, even among women there is a bias against associating women with work.

It doesn’t take a Harvard bias test to know that the classical music world was biased against women until fairly recently. People think that music is something that can be judged purely on talent, but the way someone looks can change the way their music is heard.

In 1980, Abbie Conant, a professional musician with the Royal Opera of Turin was applying to orchestras around Europe. She sent out 11 applications and received only one reply. It was from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and it was addressed to Mr. Abbie Conant.

Abbie was told to audition against 32 other applicants in a blind audition. The applicants played behind a screen so the judges couldn’t see who was auditioning. One of the applicants was the son of another professional musician, so they decided that a blind audition was the fair thing to do.

This wasn’t done to prevent discrimination against women, but that’s exactly what happened. After the judges had heard Abbie’s playing, the director stopped the audition and said, “This is who we want.” The rest of the applicants were sent home, and the curtain was raised. To their shock, Abbie was a woman.

They begrudgingly hired her, but quickly began to discriminate against her. After a year, she was demoted to a lower position with no explanation. Abbie took the case to court. The orchestra said that because she was a woman, she lacked the physical power to play the trombone at the highest level. Blood tests and lung tests were performed, and Abbie’s results were excellent. One nurse even thought she was an athlete. Independent music experts were brought in and they also said her musical ability was excellent.

After eight years, Abby won her case and was promoted back to her previous position in the orchestra. Her fight was not over though. She returned to court again to demand equal pay with the men in the orchestra. After another five years of court, she again won. Today auditions behind screens for classical music are the norm in the US. And because of that, the number of women has increased 500%.

Of course, hidden bias and discrimination against other races is also a huge problem in the US and other countries. Take the story of Mexican-American Jose Zamora. He had been unemployed for a month, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was extremely motivated to find a job. He was sending out between 50 and 100 applications each day, but he wasn’t getting any responses.

Suspecting it was his name that was tipping off racist bosses, he decided to get creative. He simply changed his name from Jose to Joe. Suddenly the job offers were filling up his inbox. It seems pretty clear that this was an open and shut case of discrimination. In the US, discriminating against someone because of their race is illegal, but it would be hard to prove in court.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens quite a bit. In 2002, there was a research study into the effects of race on hiring. The researchers sent out lots of resumes with black sounding names and white sounding names. You probably know where this is going. No big surprise, but the resumes with white sounding names got 50% higher replies.

Jose doesn’t believe these employers intended to discriminate against Latinos. “Sometimes I don’t even think people know or are conscious or aware that they’re judging – even if it’s by name,”

Zamora said. “But I think we all do it all the time.” Do you have any unconscious hidden biases?