Andrea Hudy is KU's secret weapon - "Jeff Withey" - Wall Street Journal
-
I’m a lawyer. I’m also black. Because of the way business works these days, I often do business either by phone or email with people that I have never met. As I relayed in a comment last summer that was unfortunately lost in the reboot, I have had a situation where a guy I worked with for over three years (but had never met in person) walked past me and shook hands with another person in our office, assuming that person was me (even going so far as to address that person by my name). The person he shook hands with - a white male. In his mind he had an image of a business lawyer and that image was not a young, black man. He had seen my work. He had talked to me on the phone. And yet the image in his mind was not me - it was of a 40ish year old white man.
That doesn’t make him mean. It doesn’t make my colleague that he went to mean. But the implication is clear. He expected and assumed that he had been dealing with a white male the entire time and was surprised to discover that wasn’t the case. I had proven my talent by then - we had successfully negotiated two major deals by that point - but in proving that he assumed that I was white.
That’s not an excuse for failure. I’ve succeeded professionally by any measure you can generate - I’ve made good money, I’ve done things that were ground breaking, I’ve trained proteges that have gone and had their own success, I’ve been invited to speak at various events, etc. - but it speaks volume that my level of success suggests to some that I must be white, as if being black should be some sort of impediment.
And that is the bias that I am talking about. It’s simply assumed that I can’t be the same person that is this good at my job because I don’t look like I can be this good. Andrea Hudy faces that same challenge because people automatically associate her job (strength coach) with a big, strong guy. And that’s not just white men - that’s all people. If you asked a group of people to pick out the strength coach and put head shots of these people, I doubt many would pick Hudy as the strength coach:
That’s not because anybody is evil. It’s just that society assigns certain jobs to genders (nurses and elementary school teachers as women, police officers and firefighters as men, etc.) Pointing that out doesn’t make white men evil. It doesn’t make anyone evil. It means that society has established certain arbitrary roles and subconsciously we all place people in those roles based on appearance, etc.
That’s why lots of people doubt that Jeremy Lin is an NBA player even though he’s 6-5. That’s why many people doubted David Eckstein was a pro athlete when he wasn’t in uniform.
There’s a thing called implicit bias, where we associate certain stereotypes to appearances and other factors. It’s why people with southern accents are considered less intelligent, while people wearing glasses are considered more intelligent, even though your accent or sight has no correlation to intelligence.
Denying implicit bias does not make it untrue. It just makes you blind to it.
Oh, and those pictures - Try to guess the professions (or you could just do a Google photo lookup and see).
-
@justanotherfan
Your patience is a marvel.To your own experience, I would add the numerous studies of hiring practices that revealed, despite presenting identical resumes, people with “black-sounding” names were offered interviews dramatically less often than “white-sounding” or “neutral” names. The same has occurred with online loan applications. Similarly, Consumer Reports’ current issue reports that “redlining” is still practiced in auto insurance: people living in heavily minority communities are charged higher rates than drivers in nearby white-majority communities even when the risks are demonstrably higher in the latter.
I don’t ascribe to the theory that is ranted about by HEM (white males are the source of all evil), but one undeniable fact stands out to me: the system wasn’t created by women or minorities, and it wasn’t minorities closing schools in the 50’s to avoid other races, or trying to prevent other people from voting from the 60’s through today, or lynching Emmitt Till and thousands of others, or framing the Scotsboro kids, or any of a zillion other examples of violent or legal efforts to preserve a racial hierarchy.
But now we are hearing the sobs of anguish over the plight of the alleged victims of efforts to guarantee equal rights. Oh, brother… How many whites would trade their kids’ race?
Keep up the good fight.
-
@justanotherfan Another Award for Hudy:
-
@KUSTEVE same award?
-
Bump
-
Look, all of the above aside, while undoubtedly helping our teams she was the strength and conditioning coach - can and will be replaced. Isn’t America great? So many qualified people.
-
I think it will be tough to replace Andrea with someone of a similar caliber. I’ve seen very few (if any) other schools capable of building basketball players to the level she does. She has completely transformed players before our eyes.
I think her exclamation point will be Doke this year. Someone needs to take video footage from his first days in Lawrence and mesh it with video taken this year.
I am still in shock that we are losing Andrea.
-
@drgnslayr I’m sure she has an assistant. The beauty of having someone wonderful like Hudy is that all the hard work has already been done. Now they probably won’t be as cute or as personable at Andrea, but I’m sure they’ll do a good job.
-
KUSTEVE said:
@drgnslayr I’m sure she has an assistant. The beauty of having someone wonderful like Hudy is that all the hard work has already been done. Now they probably won’t be as cute or as personable at Andrea, but I’m sure they’ll do a good job.
@KUSTEVE Ok, in another thread you questioned Marilu Henner and you just called Hudy “cute”?
I don’t know what to say to that …
-
@HighEliteMajor I don’t think he was questioning Henners cuteness…
I know I was confused and disoriented when the word cute was used for Andrea. Shes not unattractive. I might more expect words like “Strong”, “sharp-looking”, “female”? You might say that “we are unlikely to get another conditioning coach that is as female as Andrea”. It is a spectrum these days
I’m trolling.
-
@approxinfinity I’ve now made the choice to abstain from further commenting now that the term “spectrum” and “Hudy” have been used in the same comment.
@KUSTEVE Cool that my other four were acceptable. You’ve made a strong, strong suggestion … zero disagreement. Comin’ back at you with Heather Locklear and Jayne Seymour.
-
@HighEliteMajor When it comes down to politics, I avoid the subject, not because I fear to offend, it’s simply because it is a waste of time and there are better formats elsewhere.
That being said, you are right on target. Hudy has earned her rep, not because of any bias but maybe in spite of being a woman.
-
@jhawk7782 I was kind of kidding around with @approxinfinity on the “spectrum” thing. He knows I was likely to jump both feet into offending …
-
@HighEliteMajor haha
in fairness, as my wife has observed, it seems Hudy has softened her image the last few years. I was just giving @KUSTEVE a hard time.In some pics I could see how some might use a descriptor of “pretty”, or if handsome weren’t construed as an insult, definitely handsome.
This is probably all terribly unfair; I’d readily admit that I’m applying a celebrity scale here. And I have no basis of daily interactions with Andrea to assess a potential cuteness in her personality. I come from a place of joking ignorance. I am assuming by her badass, ripped, highly-successful grown-ass woman professional gymrat aura that there is very little room for cuteness in her personality.
Cute is soft. Hudy is hard.
-
@KUSTEVE Angie Dickinson
-
@KUSTEVE Jaclyn Smith, Erin Gray, Catherine Bach … you cannot top this.
-
@HighEliteMajor @KUSTEVE Carrie Underwood Faith Hill? Top that
-
Sophia Loren… She still looks awesome! She’s 84!
-
My wife
-
wissox said:
My wife
Smart man.
-
@wissox But here’s a problem, no one can really agree with you because we don’t know her!
-
@mayjay Just say it out loud, “my wife” now you win too.
-
@mayjay You don’t trust my judgment?
-
@dylans Good point!
@wissox I trust you enough that I will put her in my top 10. Anyone who would move to Louisiana so you can teach is a heckuva wife indeed.
-
bump
