The Elephant in the Gondola

Some of our industry's newest instructors honing their craft with me this past weekend. The future is definitely bright!

I’ve been in countless conversations, presentations, and strategy meetings over the years about demographic groups who are underrepresented in the skiing and riding public and, not coincidentally, our instructor corps. Young new mothers, urban DINK’s (“double income, no kids”), new empty-nesters, and others. Usually the barriers to entry involve cost, travel logistics, competition from other forms of recreation, difficulty of obtaining the right the equipment, bad weather … nothing too difficult to imagine, even for those of us committed to skiing and snowboarding. Never have I been in a serious, official industry or resort conversation about the white-ness of our staff and our guests or, notably, whether the barriers to diversifying our instructor corps and our guest makeup might include institutional racism. Not once.

Generally speaking, those of us who choose to be ski or snowboard instructors are an open-minded, inclusive and welcoming group – ‘lower case L liberal’, so to speak. We talk very specifically here in America about taking our guests as we find them and modifying our teaching, our expectations, our language, activities, pacing, and every other aspect of our work to who our guests are, each one of them. The overwhelming majority of my peers around the industry would be upset to find racial bias in their ranks and it would offend their well-engrained principles as teachers. And then, just as automatically, many of them all across the nation and the world will say something pre-judgmental or worse about “Asian” people. It blows me away, it happens all the time, it’s the ‘elephant in the room’ (or in the gondola), and I've had enough.

Most of the ski people who say racist things about "Asians" think they mean it in non-discriminatory fashion. Chinese, Korean, Indian, Bangladeshi, Vietnamese, Japanese, … immigrants, tourists, native born Americans or Kiwis, it doesn’t matter who they are or where they are from, if they’re ethnically or nationally Asian, they suffer from a very specific type of pre-judgement by ski and snowboard pros who should know better. The comments range from the modest eye-roll to blatant bigotry. I once benched a senior member of my staff for complaining about having to teach a beginner lesson for the “Pakistani air force” when heading outside to teach an American family of Chinese descent, and I had to explain myself to an incredulous instructor corps when I did. I actually once had an otherwise good pro explain to me in pseudo-scientific terms why the diet in certain cultures makes them less likely to succeed on skis; and when confronted with the lunacy of it he went to plan B and explained something about the presence of diphtheria in rural India … and his guests were from Connecticut! Confront these same pros and they’ll insist that their view is based upon empirical experience and they’ll invariably defend themselves by saying something about their experience with Asians’ lack of athletic skill or fitness. Unfortunately, without a complete sociological analysis I have only anecdotal experience to rely on in drawing my conclusions about anti-Asian racism in the ski industry, but please take me at my word: this type of bigotry is remarkably prevalent; I hear it frequently.

When I do encounter this sort of bigotry, I have three tiers of response. First, I ask what sort of "Asians" the pro is describing. I’ll say something about how many billions of people live in or come from Asia and how many thousands of ethnic groups are indigenous to Asia, and I’ll ask them to be specific about which ones he or she is generalizing. Second, if they persist, we can dig deeper into the specific nature of their bias. Are they aware of essential place cricket has in modern India? Of the burgeoning middle class in China and the explosion of skiing there? Of the multiple winter Olympics in Japan and Korea and the very large and well-entrenched recreational ski industries in those countries? Of the Asian descended athletes representing our own country on the world stage in winter sports? Usually they get the hint and clam up, but not always. My third tier and last resort with unrelenting bigots is to say something about how the Asian immigrant citizens here in the USA and in New Zealand who are busy studying their tails off and plotting their swift rise through our merit-based economies will insist that the large conglomerates acquiring major ski resorts by the bucket-load immediately fire all bigots with extreme prejudice. Pun intended.

I am hopeful. Very hopeful. After all, my own ethnic group is widely perceived as being un-athletic. Though our well-worn comeback is that we’ve been too busy studying and working hard, there’s hardly a Jew in America who can’t quickly bring Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg or Sandy Koufax into a conversation quickly when facing such bias. Though we’re pretty good at making fun of ourselves, it’s only partly to be funny when we wonder if any professional athlete with an even remotely Jewish sounding name is in the tribe (“Just imagine, a Jewish quarterback!"). When Jews encounter each other in the ski business, we do quietly enjoy the moment even if we’re just joking about finding a decent sandwich (you know who you are, Wes and Aidan). Although I regularly hear offensive comments about some of the Orthodox Jewish groups of families who vacation in Vermont while the yeshivas are on break and I have myself been on the receiving end of some pretty offensive anti-semitism in my own workplace, I’ve rarely encountered surprise from other pros at my level of skill as an athlete ‘despite’ my being a Jew. My own experience in this regard gives me confidence that as more recent immigrant groups achieve their own American dreams and enter the middle class in increasing numbers, skiing and snowboarding (and vacationing in our mountain resorts) will become a more common activity for our Asian immigrant and Asian descended citizens. The question is whether they will feel welcome when they do, but the practical reality is that economics will rule the day – a dollar is a dollar, regardless of who spends it. Hope for the future indeed.

To be clear: though the focus of my ire here is anti-Asian bigotry, endemic racial bigotry in skiing isn’t limited just to them. Our resorts may not be a perfect miniature reflection of society generally, but we are not immune from the ills of the world around us. Still, I do honestly believe that the snowsports business and those of us who choose to make our careers in it does represent a pretty inspirational, intelligent, welcoming, and open-minded slice of humanity when compared to most of the Western world.

In addition to teaching skiing to the general public, I’ve been busy for the last few weeks running instructor training clinics here in Vermont, to both experienced staff and new instructors as well. As trainers, we always weave through our clinics the bedrock principles of our guest-centered teaching model, and I do often include the idea that this should include an open and welcoming mind to all stripes of people. Turning the lens on ourselves and our own conduct from time to time is one of the things that makes great instructors successful, after all, so even posing the question about whether we’re taking people as we find them without bias has real value. Ultimately, how deeply that analysis and those lessons affect our word view is up to each of us as individuals, but I do hope that I’m having a positive impact.

As a society and as an industry, we have a long way to go and many problems yet to solve. But the mountains where we play do not themselves discriminate, and the joys of sliding on snow are universal. Sometimes, to make progress we just need to talk about the elephant that’s in the gondola with us, and express our gratitude for the strength of the steel cable to can bear its weight, and hope they can offload at the summit.