The Dangerous Power of Examples

 Updated publication date to reflect actual time of writing. Posted much later on 6/24/2022. Also lightly edited to remove a redundant paragraph from the original. Note that as of this posting, the video is still live and accessible.

This video is getting a lot of attention on FB and Twitter and probably other places right now. 

https://twitter.com/shannonsharpe/status/1299783390573465600

I saw it on Facebook (don’t start with me, yes I do keep that window on humanity open). I even broke my usual pattern by taking the bait and commenting on it. 

I’m going to go through my best recollection of how I experienced this and how I reflected on it. Recall and self-reporting being the untrustworthy witnesses they are, take it for what it’s worth.

First, I saw the intro frame and the accompanying headline “Is this noncompliance?” and knew I was going to see a white guy get away with some egregious behavior towards a cop. So now I’m already primed - by the way, my own decidedly liberal worldview has also primed me very specifically on this over the past few months. So I play it - first without the sound because I’m home with the kids and don’t know what it’s going to be. I see the lone white cop, gun out, and the large white man next to the large black pickup. The two are not happy with each other. 

I decide I need to hear what they are saying. “Fuck you, you stupid fucking pig!” repeatedly features pretty prominently, as ultimately does “you point your gun at me in front of my kids, I’ll fucking kill you!” (Yes, he does literally threaten to kill a police officer - to his face, during a heated altercation). The officer  - alone, mind you - stays in control of himself, and repeatedly asks for the man’s ID. The female passenger of the truck gets into it briefly too… Anyway, watch the clip if you want to see it. You don’t need a play-by-play from me. 

Also relevant is what’s not shown:

1. What led to the officer pulling his weapon - The clip starts when it’s already reached that point.
2. The outcome - the clip ends with the officer still at the driver’s door, which is still open (the driver appears to be closing it). 

I can only assume that the most important outcome - nobody got shot - is what actually happened. There is no mention of injury to the officer or the driver of the pickup, or to any of the passengers. Hopefully that is not simply an omission.

Why talk about this? There are countless clips like this, and even more dramatic ones at that. We’ve all seen them.  

Here’s how I felt myself respond, again to the best of my remembering. 

1. If that guy had been black, he’d be dead. I’ve said it a million times when seeing footage of the outrageous behavior of armed white people in public places. 
2. You know that guy has at LEAST one gun in that truck. It was a big dude, with a big attitude, in a HUGE truck, apparently in Washington state (or so said some of the comments). I imagined the bed of that truck was no stranger to deer carcasses - which I'm not against, but again, "weapon visible in the car" is a pretty common determinant of outcome in these situations.
3. How can anyone see this and still dispute white privilege? See points 1 and 2.

Looking at my response above, it is unfair and unfounded in all three points. 

Point 1 is unfair to the officer. Assuming he would have pulled the trigger on a black person in the same situation does him a disservice, when clearly in that situation he seemed, by what was captured in the clip, to handle himself and the situation with admirable self control and emotional maturity - certainly compared to the driver (whose behavior was reprehensible). If there is ever a difference in the maturity level between an officer and someone they are stopping, I would hope that the balance always tips in the direction seen here.

Point 2 is unfair to the driver - who again, was behaving horribly, presumably in front of his kids. But there is no reason to assume he’s a gun-toting vigilante, even if he is a hunter (which we also don’t really know - that truck does look pretty clean, after all). Also having a gun pointed at you can have a pretty strong effect, particularly if say one is a veteran or has some other past trauma coming to bear.

Point 3 is unfair to anyone who is honestly trying to parse through and make up their own mind about things, with nothing but particular incidents and individual anecdotes to work with. If we are asked to have an opinion and make a judgement about individuals in a concrete situation, we should have all the facts - and we don’t.

Now, I DON’T need all of the individual details of each case one by one to tell me that there is a strong pro-white bias operating in our policing, justice, and economic systems. A disparity like we can all see readily in outcomes makes the truth clear. You can either judge that one population - black and brown people - simply tend to make worse life choices inherently than white people, or you can judge that some combination of systemic factors - and they may be many and self-reinforcing at multiple levels - is in operation. The outcome of a function is always due to input conditions (the populations) and the function itself (the operations, however complex, carried out on those inputs). 

 

But again - critical thinking is critical (it's right there in the name, people!) when examining anecdotes, examples, and clips that "go viral" - no matter which opinions we hold. If we feel our opinions being immediately and strongly validated by an example like this, THAT is when we should ask questions.

Stories are way more powerful than data when it comes to influencing people, precisely because they make the abstract concrete and personal - and thus emotional. Emotions aren’t bad - we should all feel happy that nobody gets killed in that clip, and we should all feel outraged when ending a life is the solution chosen to resolve a conflict. 

 

All that said, emotions and confirmation bias should not be the foundation for judgement in any individual case, especially one making the rounds on social media.

It's Time to Tell This Story

Today, my friend Phil shared a very difficult personal story. It was painful to read, and I won't reproduce it here because it isn't mine. But it showed me how important it is to post this, now.

Here’s my story. It isn’t great.

It’s an early summer evening in West Oakland in the mid 1990’s, in an old steel workers’ union building that was converted to living space, across the street from Acme Galvanizing and the Roadway truck yard.  The neighborhood is known for the abandoned and often burned-out cars that lined its streets, and the disused sports field where locals would gather to train pit bulls - to fight. Smash-and-grab theft was common. The house next door had a vicious german shepherd tied up, that would try it’s level best to get over, under, or through the fence to maul anyone who it didn’t know. 7-8 tenants in 3 households, all in their 20s and 30s and all of whom happen to be white, are having a cookout in the shared courtyard and parking lot, encircled by 9-foot cyclone fencing topped with razor wire.

The sun is just about setting, and a young man, same age as the tenants in the building, approaches the gate and rings the doorbell. Everyone looks up, and one guy - punk-rock wannabe kid in a flannel with a mohawk and Doc Maarten boots - turns to look. 

“No man, get lost - we don’t have any bottles, man!” 

The guy at the gate asks “What? what bottles are you talking about?” He looks confused, but somehow not completely surprised. 

“Whoah, Whoah, no…he’s cool! That’s our friend, Maurice!” says one of the other tenants, jumping up to clear up the confusion and let the other guy in. 

The guy at the gate is black. The punk kid…is…well, me. 

I could make a lot of excuses. Some of them would be kind of convincing. 

They Do Not Matter.

I saw a black face at my gate. And my first instinct was to drive them off. 

That Matters.

My bias drove my actions that evening - unconsciously, unthinkingly, and incredibly quickly. 2 seconds would have been enough to see from the guy’s clothes (shabby-but-fashionable for the time, honestly very much like what the rest of us were wearing) that he was not a homeless man looking for recyclables. One word would have been enough to make clear that this was not an intruder, but an invited guest - I think he had even brought a bottle of wine, for pete’s sake! 

“Get lost, we don’t have any bottles for you…”  Welcome to our home.

The fact that I felt like shit immediately doesn’t absolve my actions. The  rest of the evening during which Maurice and I got on fine and had a friendly conversation doesn’t mean it’s all okay. At the end of the night we shook hands, and smiled at each other, and each of us pretended it was no big deal…but yes, it was. It really was. 

Because I know this is the shit that causes racism to continue to hold power in our society. It’s not white-power torch-wavers, or goose-stepping neo-nazis, or idiots in hoods and robes or dicks in suits wearing pins of Pepe the Frog and flashing “WP” signs. Those things are bad - horrifyingly bad.  But they’re also very easy to point to and say “well, see, THAT’S a Racist - not me!” 

This kind of overt hate, in addition to the direct harm it causes, keeps white people like me blind to the harm that we do. It provides an easy piece of cover for the subtle biased attitudes that really do allow racism to flourish in safety. Being just a little more likely to call the cops when a black person is “hanging around the neighborhood,” or being just a little more “careful” when in a “black part of town,” putting up razor wire and bars on our windows, or saying things like “I don’t understand why they tear up their own neighborhoods whenever they get angry…” These are the kinds of things that perpetuate racism in our social systems and governments, and allow us to feel okay about it.  And a lot of us whites have these things in us, even if unconsciously, quietly influencing our actions and decisions. 

 I carry biases - they are mine, as are the actions they cause me to take. What I realize I need to do is to be aware of them, and be mindful and purposeful in choosing how to act, what decisions to make, what judgments to hold, and what actions to condone or condemn in others. Some of my automatic responses are, and always will be, influenced by racist biases. I know it, I own it, and I’m accountable for it.

I have never seen Maurice since. He’ll never see this, and even if he did I don’t imagine he’d feel any better. Because I acted like an asshole, and in my own small way added to whatever the system had been doing to him his whole life. My feeling bad about it is nothing - NOTHING - compared to what I imagine it must have been like for him living in this system his whole life. 

I’m sorry, Maurice. I know it doesn’t make up for it, but I’m trying to do better, and I’m hoping that others like me might see a bit of this story in themselves, and also try to do better. Because you shouldn’t have to put up with this anymore.  

We Need a Path to Ending Human Distancing

It’s not very often that people across the whole world are consciously thinking about the same thing. Right now that thing is the Coronavirus pandemic - specifically, when will "things go back to normal?” 

The context for most of this discussion is economic. When can we “re-open” the country? When can businesses start making money again? When can employees start earning paychecks? When can we get haircuts, and go out to dinner, and go to the beach? I do at least my fair share of lamenting the fact that I can’t go diving or climbing at all (though seriously, how much more socially isolated can you get than 70 feet or so underwater?) Everyone is waiting for the plans and guidelines to come out around when, where, and how quickly or slowly we can let people go out and do stuff - primarily stuff that involves making or spending money. 

It matters - don’t for a second think that I’m minimizing the economic costs of this pandemic. While I do believe that the fact that they ARE so serious is due almost entirely to conditions of our own making, that doesn’t change the fact that they have a huge impact. The system we as a species have made has wrapped itself around people’s lives in ways they were not given a choice to accept, and cannot choose to escape on their own. Poor, black and brown people are more likely to be exposed to, contract, and die from Covid19 than richer and whiter people, and at the same time are less likely to have access to testing and treatment. Shelter in place orders, while inconveniencing to many of us, are seriously damaging to those who don’t have the ability to work from home and order food deliveries. We’re all learning just exactly how subjective and relative the term “essential” can be.  So yes, the economic angle is hugely important.

Here’s what nobody seems to be thinking about in any practical terms - the non-economic costs of social distancing, and what we can do to ease those. The economic impacts are bad enough - but the long-term emotional and human costs of curtailing simple human contact could easily be as bad or worse. Humans evolved to be social animals - this includes gathering together, sharing space as well as just communication, and yes, touch. An admittedly ethically-questionable but well-known study on some really unfortunate baby monkeys conducted by Harry Harlow and published in 1958 showed that, given the choice between a "wire mother” that supplied them with food but no comfort and a "cloth mother” that they could snuggle and cuddle but provided no nourishment, they chose the cloth mother even to the point of starvation - showing just how important physical touch is to at least this study group of primates. Contact, even if illusory, matters.

I mention this study because right now we are all basically being forced to settle for “wire mother.” The more fortunate of us can functionally communicate and get our material needs met - the essentials of food as well as the less essential comforts of entertainment and even acquisition of more stuff - via digital means. Direct contact is off the table. 

• A 19-year-old in their first long-term relationship can’t spend time with their romantic partner.
• Grandparents who are already trying to fit as much attachment into their decreasing stock of remaining years can’t hug their grandkids.
• Toddlers and young children who actually need physical contact for their fundamental development are habituating to a world where closeness and touch are things to be feared and avoided unless you live in the same house…which often does not even include both parents.

These things will have long-term consequences that have little or nothing to do with the economy. Isolation, anxiety, depression, and stunted emotional maturation and development are not small problems. The emotional and mental health of human beings is often harder to treat than a physical illness. 

We are talking about eroding the reasons we have an economy at all.

While governors, administrators, and doctors are busily figuring out which business relationships can resume when, and under what conditions, they must pay equal attention to giving guidance to people on how, when, and under what circumstances we can start reconnecting with our loved ones in a personal social context. When can family members in different homes visit each other again? When can romantic partners who don’t cohabitate see each other? When can kids play together again? All of us need support in making these decisions as individuals, just as urgently as businesses need guidance in making the decision to open their doors to employees and customers.

Let me be clear that I am not suggesting that we do it now - I believe there is just as much danger in rushing into relaxing in this context without clear and scientifically based guidelines. The problem I’m pointing out is that there simply is no guidance on it. Yes this is true across the board - but there is way more visibility and attention being given to resuming business activities than simple social activities. Should the resumption of commingling with strangers and colleagues really come before resuming contact with those we care deeply about? Must we focus on reopening our stores before reopening our homes? Should ability to consume and commute really come before ability to commune?

The economic effects of this pandemic will be deep and far-reaching, and will last a long time. Some things that we used to take for granted and have come to depend on may never return at all. I believe this will also come with some beneficial changes, insofar as some unhealthy consumerist patterns may die in the same dragnet. On the very optimistic end, we may even crush a societal ill or two (not holding my breath, but maybe…?)

We are living through an event that is almost certain to be an inflection point in human history. It could ultimately be on par with a world war, an ice age, or the dark ages. Sometimes these events - dare we to hope - have been followed by periods like the Enlightenment (which by the way came with plenty of unintended consequences of its own). Even if the best of all possible worlds comes about, it’ll hurt for a long time and will involve demolition that demands new creation. If we focus solely on “getting back to work,” we risk losing something far greater - that which makes work worth doing. 

A copy of this has been posted to medium - here's a link to the story there. https://medium.com/@jaeson.paul/we-need-a-path-to-ending-human-distancing-ab12a58f0445?sk=e6bf5ae6eab2738965caddfad59c50ff