WBL experience of Ethics

Using my place of work, the ethical standards and boundaries that are applied are to show equality and respect to every guest and crew member regardless of age, ethnicity, religion or sex. This happens on a daily basis as I go about ship life. We are formally trained with Carnival in equality and respect for both crew and guests, we take training in becoming a 'family' and having to learn to live with our team for our time onboard, this is very important and is compulsory training for all team members. We are told to treat the ship as our home, and the people as our family, we are told to greet and be pleasant to all whom we pass and come across during our day. We are trained on what is going over the top and across the boundaries of what is acceptable with treating male and female crew and guests.

However, during shows and conducting choreography I have to remember and adhere to respects for all cultures and religions, we have to remember to always salute under our hats as a verification of US standards and also make sure we never make crude/distastful/disrespectful moves on stage, its easy to mix up a two finger point to the audience, mistaken with a gesture that would imitate a gun.

Its interesting also to note, the audiences reaction to two of our cast members, as their races are both black, one is south african and the other is from the islands, I notice that the male from south africa which is our Dance Captain, gains a lot of support from the audience when he does a dance where he showcases his cultured roots of dance, he looks fantastic and as a result, the audience really encourage him. I notice however that in some parts during the show, our female singer who is from the Islands seems to lose respect from the audience, as some songs are not originally sung by her race, for me, this doesn't take away from her talent and how she sings the songs, but I feel the audience show some dismay at her, compared to when I watch other singers perform the same songs. However, with that being said, when she sings 'Motown' songs, the audience go wild. Its interesting to see how the audience perceive what may seem right and wrong and how it causes a reaction and a feeling.

The more I perform the shows the more I notice a difference in reaction comparing the white people to the black. A simple and easy observation, it happens almost every show, our audience which consist of the white people do not hoot, holla, cheer or encourage us half as much as what the black audience do. For me, they are our best audience, I love and am grateful for the encouragement and enthusiasm from our black guests, they even dance in the shows whilst were performing, they always applaud us the loudest too. This makes a difference to MY performance, if I know someone is enjoying my performance, I try and strive even more to perform the best for them.