I Almost Hit Someone — And What Happened Next Changed Me

Welcome to the Beyond the Training "car cast" episode, where our hosts attempt a conversation while on their way to deliver a training.  The audio might not be the best, and the conversation is too good - so many bars for all of us to take back to work and community.  
In this episode, one of our hosts tells a story about the learnings she's been reflecting on since a near-accident incident in the community a while back.  Going beyond the training often means checking into where and when real life provides an intersection of identity and mindset - not to mention, cars and pedestrians.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey y'all, right before you get into the episode, just wanted to let you know. What you're gonna hear is the car cast, not like you know, the old driving and singing karaoke thing. We literally had a conversation that we thought was too dope not to let you all listen to. So you're gonna hear us in the car. If you like it, hit us up, send us a text, or send us an email, let us know. If you didn't like it, if it's too distracting, that's cool too. Let us know that we'll bring you more conversation. In any case, enjoy.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Alright, welcome back to the Beyond the Training Podcast. Hey Jamie, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 0:41

I'm doing great.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

How are you? I'm also doing great. It's almost summertime. I uh this is my good, uh you didn't ask me, but I'm already in it because I'm so excited. We're having some sunny weather. I love the sun, the summer is almost here. I'm working on my uh summer look on the body, everything is great. Um I'm I'm really in a good mood today. What's what's something good for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Uh I'll get to that in a second, but I laugh because every year I'm working on my summer body.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Uh and I don't know that I get to it every ever.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I said for sure, like I knew that. I mean for sure I understand.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

I get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

It's a journey.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Um, let's see, something good. I also have said this before. I'm enjoying the warmer weather, looking forward to the warmer weather. And someone else is good. It's been a busy week. We're not all the way through yet, and um it is supposed to be a little bit colder this weekend, and I'm kind of excited about that because it means it's gonna force me to sit down.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Oh yeah?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

When it's warm outside, I just want to be out and doing stuff. Just kind of take a break, stay in the house, chill out, it'll be alright. You don't have to always be moving.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, one day we should talk about that. You know, there's always the uh badge of honor that comes with being busy and doing stuff. I'm so busy, or the kids are so busy, they could talk about that one day. I'm actually there's a lot of podcast episodes of people, other people talking about that. But it'd be interesting to do that from an equity and inclusion perspective, because you and I have different identities, um personal identities, and then also as parents. And so that badge of honor of busyness might be different for us. It might be interesting to get into.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Agreed, and I will tell you, I'm I'm because you brought it up, I do want to name this. I do try to take at least one nap every weekend. Woo! And my kids are like, you're taking a nap again, mommy. And what I'll say is, and I do think it's actually starting to seep in and having an impact of yes, it's okay to rest. It's okay to rest your body. That's okay, and so not as uh that's so bad, you're being so lazy, but as uh good mommy's taking care of herself.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

I love it for you, and yeah, teaching the the young ones, the your little truth tellers at home about rest being resilience and resistance, I think that's dope. And I can't remember the last time I took a nap that wasn't forced upon me. Uh, and so I like that for you. I'm glad that you have that.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

I do love my good my naps. They're not as long as they used to be because of my body's getting older.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

But I do love a good nap. Alright, so today's topic, I'm gonna share with you a recent experience I had while I was driving. Um and as I was reflecting on this experience, sort of the analogy a bit of my DEI journey.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Can I pause you before you even tell us a story? Sure. I think it's important to know what what you're about to do, I think what you're about to do, is demonstrate how you, even as a DEI practitioner, somebody who's been in this game for decades, has learning to do, has growth to realize, and even on your DEI journey, you're demonstrating how important it is to be vulnerable and transparent with those others of us who are also on our journey so that we know it's it's okay to be human, it's okay to be learning and and fumbling forward. So I think that's what's about to happen, and I think it's important to note that and right off to start with gratitude that you're gonna do that with us today.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Yes. And well, before I'm not even gonna say and let's jump in. So uh a few days ago I was on my way to an event. To your point, that we start how we started this conversation, it was a busy day, a thousand things were happening, I was rushing from one place to the next place, and knew I needed to get to the next place after that. Um, so my brain was already functioning at a very fast, you could even argue, chaotic pace. Okay. First place of vulnerability, I don't want that to be how I show up in places and spaces. And I don't think showing up in chaos of the mind actually contributes to more equity and more inclusion. And I'm just having that abhiffy now as I'm talking about this story. So one learning that I still have to do around myself is take more naps.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Take more naps so that you can stay out of chaos.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Yeah, just rest more. Does a chaos brain contribute to the world I want to exist in? So a lot was happening. I'm in the turning lane to turn left across a busy street. Okay. It is a yellow arrow, meaning I can turn if I can. If there's no oncoming cars, I can turn.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Wasn't a red light, I didn't break any laws and want to be clear around this one.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Right. You were in the right of way to make the left turn on the yellow. Mostly. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

So I'm turning and it's a really it's a busy street, and so I have an opening. Yes. But I can't take my time in this opening. I have to get across the street. Because there's oncoming traffic. Because there's oncoming traffic. Yeah. So as I'm turning, there is a security guard who appears to about to be crossing the street. Hasn't crossed the street yet. Right. Likely, because as they should, in my opinion, perspective, before I use this crosswalk, I need to make sure there's not cars. Look both ways. Right. So they pretend likely looked both ways, saw me and my car about to turn, threw their hands up in disgust. Oh no. I perceived as disgust. Yeah. Like, you know, like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, not the touchdown sign, but something very different. Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Um, my best guess of it is that I was at least 25 feet from the crosswalk at this point.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

That was the same thing. And I stopped. That they would have used or they've Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

So I stopped. I didn't proceed across the crosswalk. I saw them and I stopped.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

As I'm supposed to. Right? Okay. So then I, here's the vulnerability part, get really triggered by their reaction to me, because in my mind, I'm like, I haven't broken, I didn't hit anybody, I wasn't close to hitting you. I'm allowed to cross right now. But I don't what's happening? Why are you angry with me? In my chaotic brain, I didn't respond emotionally how I think I would or not, how I want to respond. Um, and so I think my window was already rolled down. Oh no. And while this is happening, someone else from across the street is yelling at me profanity. Oh my goodness. And says essentially, it's an effing crosswalk, you effing idiot. Wow. Right. So I'm frazzled by that. I'm throttled by this man throwing their hands up in the air in disgust. And my windows rolled down and I'm now yelling back, like I stopped! I don't know what the problem is. I stopped.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

This is all in traffic. Like, this is in traffic.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

This is all in traffic. So I actually don't even know what's happening anywhere else because I'm focused on this. Yeah. Right. So um I end up I the person ends up crossing. Okay. I end up pulling through. I find a parking spot. I can tell I'm frazzled. I intentionally tell myself, okay, just before you go inside, take a moment, take a few deep breaths. It took probably two to three minutes to just sort of get settled again. Take some again deep breaths and get my stuff, get out of the car and start walking. And start walking towards the place I'm going to. And guess who's walking in my direction? Not the security guard. The security guard.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Uh this is not.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

This is getting the towards the climax. I thought we already had that. No. So I approach the security guard in a crosswalk. Oh no. Um, and I reach my hand out to go to shake and I say, I'm the person that was just over there in the crosswalk.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

And I just wanted to say, I apologize. I stopped. I didn't know why everyone was so angry because I did stop, but I do want to recognize that I should have saw you and been more careful and been going more sl going slower. And he proceeded to tell me, thank you. It takes a lot of character. Talk to me about it. You know, I've been in a rush too. It the crosswalks are really bad in this area, we all just need to pay attention more. You know, interesting in this conversation, we've talked about this intent versus impact. I said that wasn't my intent, and I want to, you know, recognize that it had a different impact on you that it might have startled you. Um I talked about how it startled me when this other person who wasn't even in the situation was cussing me out for no reason, and then the interesting end to this story. This is all very interesting. Um, this gentleman said, My name's Jamie. Oh. And I said, You I said, My name's Jamie too. How do you spell it? We spell it the same way. Wow. Um, so we shook hands, we went our separate ways.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

This seems like it could be a D-E-I Hallmark or lifetime episode where Jamie meets Jamie in the crosswalk after a uh intense, tumultuous, chaotic even uh challenge in the middle of the uh the road here.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

For sure. So when I think about parallels to my own journey around diversity, equity, or inclusion, five years ago I would not have been able to walk up to this person and take accountability. Why? Because I hadn't built the amount of empathy that I needed to do that. Um to build the amount of empathy of my actions impacted somebody. Whether or not that was my intention, they impacted somebody. And I wanted to take account for that. Um five years ago, ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to say I'm wrong. And in the DI work, I the one of the top probably five to ten things that I've learned is it's not about being right. If it's not about being right, what's it about? About being in community with people and being able to talk to each other. Wow. I said top ten things, I said it's not the only thing, but I was able to be in community with that person at that given moment. Yeah. Things I haven't brought up in this conversation yet. It was a white, older white male.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

I was just getting ready to ask you how identity and the and the dimensions of difference show up in this conversation. So, okay, you've named race, you've you've named age uh and and gender already. So how do you think those played a role in this in this story?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

So this story was a reminder that um sometimes in my diversity, equity, inclusion work, it's an echo chamber. And that there are people that aren't don't care about being in community with others, as evidenced by the other white male that was cussing me out. Oh perceive what I perceived to be a white male that was cussing me out. Um, I guarantee you, if my husband was in the car, that would not have happened.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

It would be going down.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Right. My husband, well, I I'd be curious if you were in the car and that happened to your wife. And you saw uh somebody else, a white male, cussing her out, what would you do?

SPEAKER_01 12:56

You know, I don't know because uh we generally don't have that situation, and it's been decades since I've had to defend the honor of my partner, and it didn't go well that that last time, too. We we avoided being arrested and having to go uh deal with the authorities. Uh so I'll just say in my journey, I hope it would I would have cooler heads and all that good stuff, but much like your husband, it might go down, and that's not good.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Well, and and and even before that, likely wouldn't have happened.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Maybe to that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Because of how we think we can treat women. Oh, yeah. Um, and so it was a reminder to me that they're still sucky people in the world.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Totally, that's for sure. Hashtag there's still sucky people in the world.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Um, and again, I want to show up with, and I actually haven't shown up in this way in this every time I've talked about this story, and so lesson learned for me right now is I don't know what that person was experiencing as they were seeing that happening. Yeah. Maybe they've had a previous traumatic experience with crosswalks, and it was triggering for them. I don't know, and so I still have this opportunity to show up with empathy with that person.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Um so we talked a little bit about identity. How about this is what I would do in a coaching session. Uh, what we do often in our training sessions is dig even further into what might be going on in that case. So the next question I would ask you is how did bias play a role, or how do you think bias played a role in this story or in this experience that you had with the security government? I do think gender bias played a role. Gender bias. Yes. Your bias? No. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

No. Well, I mean, I I can't. I'm not exempt from gender bias. I don't know that for me it showed up. Um, but I do know that I'm fairly confident had it been a male that did the exact same thing, I don't know that they would have thrown their hands up in the same way. I don't know that they would have cussed the person out in the same way. Yeah. Because we do still have in society people who identify as men and how they think they can demean, diminish women, and there's biases around women in driving. Yeah. So I I think for sure gender bias played in. Um, I would hope, I would like to think that if it was someone who had the same gender as me crossing the crosswalk, I would have done the same thing to approach them and said, hey, I'm sorry. I hope that it's not, I didn't do it just because it was an older white male. This whole experience, I feel proud in some ways because of what I did afterwards. Yeah. I potentially caused harm, but I tried to repair it where I could. And when we think about DI stuff, it wasn't me just saying, I'm so sorry, I was in the wrong, I'm the worst, woe is me. I was able to say, I was kind of confused because I did stop. But I want to, you know, acknowledge that it startled you. I want to acknowledge that I shouldn't have been in such a rush. I should have looked at the crosswalk before. Um and so in DI work, not always, but sometimes, um, it's okay to have intent and impact in the same space.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

So digging even further, then, what what would you do differently? If if you're back at the head, you're headed to uh an event, chaos is ensuing because life is just life sometimes, and you're headed into this yellow light cross situation, and what would you do differently?

SPEAKER_02 16:56

I one want to have better presence of mind while I'm driving. I want to try not to be thinking about necessarily what I just came from or what I'm going to, and just be present so that I can be present for those around me, so I can recognize the car that is trying to get into my lane so that I can recognize the crosswalk. And so, back to this, how do I get out of this chaotic state of mind sometimes when I am back to back to back with stuff? So, one, I want to just be, and I believe that that's a skill that carries into other places to be present in the present is a valuable thing when we think about being inclusive, when we think about being equitable, when we think about honoring diversity. So generally I want to work to be more present. Um uh, two, I want to be better at not reacting in the moment. I do think I have a pretty good emotional intelligence, and there's still times when that gets challenged. Um for sure, an easy one is that I want to look to see if there's anybody at the crosswalk before I actually cross the street.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Um, and I want to continue to be able to have hard conversations. Me walking up to that person, the security guard, is me leaning into a difficult conversation. Again, I wouldn't have been able to do that 10 years ago. And I want to keep leaning into difficult conversations.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, I think I'm gonna honor I want to honor that. I don't know that I've said it out loud. Uh it's pretty brave to go to somebody and be like, hey, I recognize that you thought I was gonna hit you, and that was the kind of pretend situation. That's my bad. Uh given the world that we live in, and you already named somebody on the other side, somebody not even involved in the situation, is already out there trying to cancel you, and yet you still wanted to go in there and make sure that that person understood that you know your uh intent and impact were misaligned. So that's pretty brave of you, if I'm being honest, and probably something that I wouldn't necessarily be thinking of um after pushing on past a uh 25-foot miss, if you would.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Yeah, thanks for naming that. And and I feel really good about where I've come on my own DI journey to lean into those hard conversations and to say I was wrong.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Um in this um moment. And I think if we could do more of that, I would I hope I hope we can do more of that. I hope you and I can continue to model more of that. I know we do it in some of our trainings. Um, but we're so, society, every we're so committed to just proving our point and being right, that we miss each other.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Mmm, that's a bar to you. We're dropping a couple bars in this episode today. Hashtag bars. Hashtag bars, I like that. I wonder though, if there's something that we need to be learning from this conversation, from your story, about pausing in general. You said that you want to have more presence of mind just in general, and there are enough mindfulness podcasts out there that we don't have to just jump into any of that. But I wonder if there's something to be said for pausing so that we cannot be in chaos, and just recognizing that, that that's a part of our work in diversity, equity, and inclusion, that the humanity that we're trying to find by recognizing each other's differences, including each other, even though we sometimes don't understand those differences, and then working to remove obstacles that come up because of the oppression that our different communities experience. Maybe we need to pause first and just get centered around what is the work and what are we trying to do first rather than entering into the space of chaos.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

I do think we need to do that, and I will be the first to raise my hand to say I need to do continue to work in that and do better than that. To your point, had I not taken those few moments in the car to say I just need to reground myself. I wonder if I would have approached the security guard or not. If I would have still been in chaos and I wouldn't have had the state of mind to say, yeah, let me talk to this person. In some places we we should do this, but we've demonized silence and we've demonized quietness. Sometimes quietness. Has been labeled as unintelligent. Sometimes quietness has been labeled as incompetence. We feel like we have to always have the response, be ready for a response, be ready for the answer, instead of being able to just say, I don't know. Can I think about that some more? I want to process through this before I share my reflections. Those are powerful things that we can begin to do and be okay with that. And it means it's decisions are gonna take more time. It means that we can't dive into the argument, disagreement right away.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

That's a point to me, right? Like I I like to argue right out the gate, so that's that's that's pointed for me for sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

And I want to be clear that sometimes silence is really harmful. What is um Martin Luther King's quote? We won't remember what our enemies did to us, but we'll remember the silence of our friends, something like that. Something like that. Um so silence can be incredibly harmful and bad, and so I'm not advocating for silence when we should speak up and when we should advocate, and I'm advocating for silence of the mind sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Silence of the mind for sure. To to get from the chaos of it all. Are there other nuggets now that you've kind of a few moments removed from this happening the other day that you think you'll add to your practice as a diversity, equity, and inclusion leader and practitioner?

SPEAKER_02 23:24

Yeah, building bridges is so, so important. And I I don't I don't know these people, I don't know the person, you know, that I interacted with for a brief moment for a blip in time. I don't know if they did have biases around women in driving, if they did have biases around Mexican-American women, I don't know any of those that. And yet, maybe my literal handshake and outreach impacted their own biases and impacted their own experiences and and how they want to engage in the world, and so I hope that my one attempt to repair harm caused and build a bridge is having a ripple effect for myself and for others.

SPEAKER_01 24:21

That would definitely be the uh the gold of the whole moment, right? That the security guard receives an apology and understands that that's how human connection and community works, and so that they take that into whatever they were securing, or wherever they're going home to, or uh the next time they're in that that that crosswalk, that they they too are pausing to go, all right. Last time this happened, or last time I was here, something happened that I had a moment about, I had some emotions around, and that person who's all whose name is my name too, came up to me and said, you know what, that's my bad. I recognize that this had an impact on you, and I was having such a crappy day that day that they took the time to see my humanity. I need to do that same thing. That's the gold right there. Uh, it may be, you know, wishful thinking, and at the same time, that's why you and I, I would argue, that's why you and I do what we do, is so that there is a ripple effect in learning about and thinking about the differences between our intent and our impact. And when we do that, we reckon with our impact, even when our intent is good, that gives people the space to do the same because they see us demonstrating it time and time again.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Hashtag Ripple Effect, hashtag we're all on our journey. Hashtag security guard. If you're out there and listening to this, hit us up. We'd love to hear about how the experience impacted you. Uh it's been a great opportunity today to talk through some of my own lived experiences and the impact they've had on me. And uh thanks, Robert, for allowing me to share in this space today.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Absolutely. Thank you for sharing in the space. And certainly, those of you who are listening, if you got questions about security guard uh or this story, or even where Jamie or myself are on our DEI journey, we'd love to interact with you. Certainly give us some feedback or comments on this episode or any of them. You can send us an email at impact at seven focus.com or check us out on Beyond the Training on all of our socials. We'd love to hear from you and we'll hit you back for sure. This has been Beyond the Training. Thank you so much for being here. We will see you all next time.