Just curious…
seems to be what you might call one of dem dare oxymoronics…
I’ll tell you one thing which is these here fellows are also very curious too
can’t you just tell…
I just hope they’re not bi-curious!
I’m going to rack my memory. I am sure I will come up with something…
It has been over a decade since I worked in the GoM but I vividly remember having several female, a few homosexual & numerous African American co-workers & supervisors. I left there to go work in New York Harbor with a Staten Island company that was publicly traded and union crewed called K-Sea Transportation. K-Sea had over 60 tugs, zero African American captains, zero female captains & zero gays. If a tug had a black guy on it, chances are he was the dayman(cook). I never figured out how that company managed to be so bigoted. Operations like that haven’t existed in the GoM since the 80’s.
[QUOTE=Sand_Pebble;175557]It has been over a decade since I worked in the GoM but I vividly remember having several female, a few homosexual & numerous African American co-workers & supervisors. I left there to go work in New York Harbor with a Staten Island company that was publicly traded and union crewed called K-Sea Transportation. K-Sea had over 60 tugs, zero African American captains, zero female captains & zero gays. If a tug had a black guy on it, chances are he was the dayman(cook). I never figured out how that company managed to be so bigoted. Operations like that haven’t existed in the GoM since the 80’s.[/QUOTE]
Ahh, good ol’ New York City, birthplace of new and innovative ways to be racist. They’re the kind of people who come up with slurs to call each other because their great great grandfathers lived 10 miles apart in the same country and styled their moustaches differently.
[QUOTE=Glaug-Eldare;175558]Ahh, good ol’ New York City, birthplace of new and innovative ways to be racist. They’re the kind of people who come up with slurs to call each other because their great great grandfathers lived 10 miles apart in the same country and styled their moustaches differently.[/QUOTE]
On the rare occasions when I talk with my former NY co-workers, I never get around to asking if the North East companies ever started hiring African American supervisors yet. Maybe someone who works in that area will chime in & let us know if NY Harbor has started letting African Americans do something else besides cook, change the oil or pump a barge every once in a while.
If I were black and American I would be pissed about being called “African-American”… pretty sure they are just American, unless they are Usian Bolt or something 
Why, I don’t call myself white. I’m Irish-American. I’m sure as hell not Caucasian because my people aren’t from the Caucuses.
I guess there isnt to many black people in leadership roles now that i think of new york and the 10 years I’ve worked here. Plenty of older black gentleman working as utility man/cook/dayman as mentioned above but i can think of only two black mates ive seen. I have never seen an asian person on a boat in any capacity.
Asians are too smart for this line of work. They get computer jobs and the cushy white collar ones. They also get the good grades in school and are able to get priority. Sorry, don’t mind me just doing typical stereotyping…
Maybe it would be frowned upon by their families…
[QUOTE=acesouthcoast;175568]I guess there isnt to many black people in leadership roles now that i think of new york and the 10 years I’ve worked here. Plenty of older black gentleman working as utility man/cook/dayman as mentioned above but i can think of only two black mates ive seen. I have never seen an asian person on a boat in any capacity.[/QUOTE]
Most of the guys I worked with in NY were friendly once you got to know them. Sometimes they would kid me about being from an area south of them. I loved to dish it back and point out the white supremacy/klanish culture of the white-only Staten Island-SUNY mentality. Richmond Terrace boarders the ghetto for several miles, had several tug offices on that street but those companies had very little black employees, none in the office? NYC has hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all over the world but zero immigrants working in the harbor. When I was working in the GoM, there were times when whites were the minority on the boats and that was over 10 years ago! I always thought it was odd that the NY Tug Industry could get away with it for so long.
Yea, you are right. Now that I think of it…the GoM is at pretty diverse after all . Most vessels I would say have at least one token black working the deck and one token female working the galley. There are also plenty of black engineers, although I am not sure that counts because apparently engineers are not really officers.
Also, plenty of captains and engineers bring their wives to work with them as cooks. Women are quite welcome to the place if they want to cook.
I did not witness any animosity towards yankees, though it seemed that yankees, hispanics and non white southerners tended to get segregated into their own clusters, at which point they would exhibit the same type of group mentality that anyone grouped together would…which is generally not so nice.
I dont beleive there are many places in this country that are very inclusive on the management level at all, so that has little to do with geographic region.
I would say the GoM is a pretty diverse place…depending on how you interpret “diverse”.
I suspect Asians are too smart for this line of work, and end up in cushy white collar jobs. More power to them. I for one wish I had never stepped foot into the GoM. I had nice offer on a white hauled vessel that was going to pay 70k a year. I thought I would make significantly make more money in the GoM and that I would get promoted. I was wrong.
Ive bumped into several immigrants from europe over the years on the boats. Ukranian, russian, german, croatian, irish. I can also remember my captain at bouchard trying to teach a black guy how to steer and the guy never really picked it up. So there are exceptions as always but its predominately white.
Way to generalize asians. So with your logic all people that work on boats are to dumb to attain a cushy, “white collar” job. You just insulted and entire industry. Thanks for the input.
[QUOTE=cajaya;175575]Yea, you are right. Now that I think of it…the GoM pretty diverse after all . Most vessels I would say have one token black working the deck and one token female working the galley. There are also plenty of black engineers, although I am not sure that counts because apparently engineers are not really officers.
Also, plenty or captains and engineers bring their wives to work with them as cooks. Women are quite welcome to the place if they want to cook.
I did not witness any anomosity towards yankees, though it seemed that yankees, hispanics and non white southerners tended to get segregated into their own clusters, at which point they would exhibit the same type of group mentality that anyone grouped together would get…which is generally not so nice.
I would say the GoM is a pretty diverse place…within reason, and depending on how you interpret “diverse”.[/QUOTE]
Wow you’re jaded, I didn’t witness any of that…
Granted, I never saw a female licensed engineer or a female Master but I also did not experience every boat in my company, let alone every boat in the gulf.
[QUOTE=acesouthcoast;175576]Ive bumped into several immigrants from europe over the years on the boats. Ukranian, russian, german, croatian, irish. I can also remember my captain at bouchard trying to teach a black guy how to steer and the guy never really picked it up. So there are exceptions as always but its predominately white.[/QUOTE]
I definitely didn’t think the guys on the boats in the harbor were more racists compared to anywhere else. Beats me why its a predominately white clique. I am just surprised the government or media hasn’t stepped in and raised a fuss. Perhaps in the South & the GoM, the media and government are more watchful for good reason and having a predominately white industry with zero minority upper management would never fly. Individually, most people are decent, its a NY Harbor culture thing I guess?
[QUOTE=acesouthcoast;175577]Way to generalize asians. So with your logic all people that work on boats are to dumb to attain a cushy, “white collar” job. You just insulted and entire industry. Thanks for the input.[/QUOTE]
Omg, you dont have to take everything I write so literaly.
[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;175578]
Granted, I never saw a female licensed engineer or a female Master but I also did not experience every boat in my company, let alone every boat in the gulf.[/QUOTE]
I had a brief stint in the gulf few years ago with a little bayou company. I was running mate and the master was female. She could run the hell out of the boat too, and was very patient with me learning the local knowledge.
Coincidentally at this same company, there was a lesbian couple working on one of the other boats. So from my brief experience I would say that things were more diversified than one may think.
On my boat the wheelhouse is all caucasian. There is one African American Master in the company. Deck is predominantly African American and Honduran. Engineering a mix of caucasian, African American, and Puerto Rican. I wouldn’t necessarily call it heartwarming though.