Why Is It So Hard to See Each Other as Human?

Call it what you want (DEI, JEDI, etc.), our world, our societies, just need to treat each other better.  Like human beings.  With so much hurt and harm, so much loss of life, it seems like the most logical answer to it all would be to humanize each other so we can see the value of people we know and strangers in other places.  
In this episode, our hosts discuss why it's so hard to humanize each other, and while one tragic loss of life is a catalyst of this conversation, we recognize there are so many more names to be said and stories to be told.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Beyond the Training podcast. Hey Jamie, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I am good. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Quite well. Quite well. Tell me something good. Let's get this podcast started.

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Something good. I have a garden and my garden. This year I had to have a new garden pot. And so the dirt wasn't great, but I do think, oddly enough, with not great dirt, I might get a watermelon or two. So I'm excited about that. And I also planted a grape plant in my backyard and it is flourishing. I still won't get any grapes likely this year, but I uh it's just it's looking very green and healthy, and I'm excited for years to come.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I am not much of a gardener, but I think if you can get a watermelon, definitely if you can get grapefruit, that's a good thing. So you must be doing something correctly.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yeah, I'm excited. I didn't say grapefruit, I said grapes.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Oh, I heard grapefruit.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Okay, yeah. Tell me something good, Robert.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Something good. Um you know what? I I've got some PTO coming up, some pay time off that I'm really excited about. Uh, can get some things done. You know, you put a list together of the if I just had some time, I'd do this thing. That's that's what I've got coming up. And so I'm really excited about uh being able to get some stuff done. Uh hopefully that's gonna impact our podcast and get some uh some stuff out there for our listeners. So that I'm really excited about as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Cool. Thanks for PTO.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Uh yes, uh hashtag PTO. You know, Jamie, even though you and I have really, I think, cool lives, we have full lives for sure, personally and professionally. We have this uh this world that seems to be on fire and and the news doesn't happen to be positive, and that other people's lives aren't all that full. And and so we also are paying attention to how things are happening in our world and that aren't always necessarily connected to what is diversity, what is equity, what is inclusion, and the conversation around humanity continues to be something that I think needs even more conversation, that that needs even more focus. And maybe even in our trainings, we should be thinking about how to engage in humanizing conversation, because to date, uh our society continues to not do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah, for sure. And I have been thinking a lot about this, and um we likely can get into it, but I do think our work helps us get closer to humanizing everybody when we think about why people how people react to difference sometimes with fear and sometimes with disgust. And um so I do think talking to people about difference, the value of difference, the importance of difference, why difference is good, um, gets us closer to um humanization, hum humanizing all people, regardless of skin tone, regardless of gender, regardless. And then I know you like to say with regard to um skin tone and with regard to um and I think it can be both. I don't think it has to be either or.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

So I I'm so glad that you brought this up, and I know this is not what we're trying to get into, and I have been meaning to tell you. So I was talking to uh newly placed chief of human resources at uh uh one of the organizations we work with, and he said, regardless, he he said, I want people to be able to move regardless of their race, creed, color, I want them to get a great have a great experience regardless of who they are. And I, because he's new to his job, I was like, okay, I'll explain this to him later. And I did later on, I was like, okay, so because of the way the English language is set up, if you are creating spaces where people are being treated in one way regardless of how they show up, regardless of their differences, then that regard can be harmful. And I know that when we say some words here in the English language, we say, regardless of what we're really meaning, our intention is that we mean so that uh your skin color, your sexual orientation, your mental capacity isn't something that is negatively inflicting the situation. And if we look strictly at the way that the English language is set up, that means that we're not even taking into account that you are black, male, gay, uh neurodistinct, those things. And I want us to be paying attention to those, which is why we talk about differences. So if talking about differences is important, Jamie, I'm curious as to how you think we're going to get to humanizing people in our trainings, especially, because we can talk about how race matters, we can talk about how gender matters, and we can even talk about how, you know, a lot of people like to talk about the backgrounds and experiences that, you know, we think differently, therefore we're diverse. And that may be true, but how does that keep people from killing other people? How does that keep people from being okay with loss of life or even the the um dehumanization of people that allows folks to not be alive anymore?

SPEAKER_01 5:33

I don't know that there's that there's a straight line. Um I would like, I would hope that it was that easy to go to this DEI training and stop killing people. Um so I don't know that it's a straight line. And um I as we've watched what's unfolds here recently um with the murder, the tragic murder of Sonia Massey, I the the thing that keeps coming to mind right now with all of the loss of life that's happening across the country, across the globe, that continues to happen for black women, black men, brown men and women. Um the the thing I keep coming back to is we just think it's okay to dehumanize people in this way, to murder them, and that that's because we're not seeing people as human. And and that's existed for centuries, as we know that um not all humans are seen as equal, um, and can have been humanized for centuries. I just I don't know. I guess my mind's trying to make sense of why we're still in this place.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I I think part of the thing that's missing is that it's not even it's it's more than human. I think we have to move to, we have to convince our society that human life is valuable. Let's just start there. Human life is valuable. Because if we can get to that point, then the way we interact with human beings changes. And I think that's part of the problem. Now, there are those of us who uh been listening to this podcast for a long time, somebody in the background is probably screaming, capitalism, capitalism. And I think they're right. That because of the systems that we live in and and that we make possible, so we're a part of the problem too, you and I, Jamie, make it easy for us to go, yeah, well, it's okay. That's kind of part of the part of the game. In order for me to get what it is that I want and need, somebody's gonna get less. That's that's really the capitalistic game that we're we're all wrapped up in. And so human life isn't as valuable. Other human lives aren't as valuable as as my own. And so it makes it okay for me to go, well, that's sad. And uh that kind of thing happens. And and and I'm not a I'm not a police officer, I'm not a government official, so I don't have as many controls, uh, for lack of a better word, over human life uh outside of the ones that are in my, you know, in my home. Uh but even as you as you're thinking about human life that we know gets extinguished, I think the person who's responsible of that is not the only person who though there's not only one person responsible. That's what I want to say. That it's state-sanctioned this murder, this loss of life. Uh, when uh when a woman is tragically killed in her home, that's by the police officers who are there to protect and serve, if you will, the community. Their training isn't, they don't start on day one saying, okay, everybody, we're gonna do everything we can not to hurt people. That's not that's not in the in the training manual. In fact, there's the the police officer manuals across the nation are set up so that there's a whole section on lethal force because we don't value life that well that much. So we'd have to start all over, I think, if we want to try to get to that.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Yeah, I I you know a lot of people have a similar sentiment that we gotta run it all down and rebuild. Um, and I don't know what's in the police handbook. Uh what I do know is what we see is coming out um more about um the the murder um of Sonia Massey is that um it sounds like I'm making some assumptions that it's a white male and his privilege has afforded him to I'm trying to think of another word that's not a cuss word, um, mess up over and over and over again and still continue to get jobs and still continue to get so to your point around state state sanctions. Um I believe two D D UIs, I believe was dishonorably discharged from the army. Did you read that anywhere?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

No, I didn't that detail I did not get to. There's some other things that I I'm thinking about, but no, not that one.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

And so just that it's state sanctioned that we knew all of this about this person and still gave them a gun. Yeah, I mean it we could have a whole conversation then on the justice system.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

And other people who have maybe similar backgrounds are in jail for life. I'm I'm listening right now to um just mercy, but uh that's what I've been thinking about as it relates to state sanction that we we did allow this to happen.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

For sure. And so the other on the one hand we need community safety, right? We we need to feel safe in our community. So so Sonia is uh reportedly called the police because she was afraid that someone was outside of her home uh trying to get in. So she called the police. We we need people who can come and help us secure our our our lives. And currently our system is set up that those are police or in this case county deputies. And you hope that they're gonna be there to take care of you uh and and protect and serve. But very quickly, in an interaction with the police or with the deputies who are trained to your point who have been around for a while. So it's not like this was the first day, although we have seen that actually on the first day of someone's uh working in the police department that they actually fatally shoot somebody. That has actually happened. But anyway, in this case, in this interaction, in an experience, two experienced officers can't de de-escalate a situation. They go into a situation. You earlier said um interacting with difference. It's there are multiple dimensions of difference that Sonia presented in this interaction that by all accounts would say to the officers, if they have been trained correctly, if they have been given the right experience, if they were in a system that valued human life, that they should keep their guns in their holsters, that they should be thinking about, well, how do I de-escalate this situation? Clearly, the scene is safe, and so I'm safe, and so I don't I'm not threatened in this situation. And and watching the body cam, although, you know, for folks who are activated by uh violence and horrible horrible scenes, that I don't recommend it for them. But if you watch the body cam video, you can sell if you've ever been in anyone else's apartment, you don't have to be all up on somebody to know if you're safe or not. And at the same time, you walked into that situation, so you could very well walk yourself out. And so there are so many things that point to being allowed to do whatever you want because you have a badge on your chest. Namely, this is the trip for me that we've we've thought as a society, well, body cam or body worn um cameras uh is going to be so much better for accountability of our law enforcement. And it hasn't actually fixed, well, I guess we could argue a hundred, you know, um not a hundred percent, but so much of the percentage of bad acting has has gone away because we haven't seen it on body cam footage. Uh and then the fact that we keep seeing it on body worn cameras uh tells me that it's not the deterrent that we thought it was would be. It's helpful because now we can say by a large uh majority, but without a shadow of a doubt, you didn't have to kill that woman. And you didn't do what the book, the handbook supposedly says, and rather with regard to de-escalation. And she's still unalived, she's still not here with us, and and her family is still stricken because or at the hands of the the folks that are supposed to protect and serve. So we we gotta, I'm not sure. I don't want to burn it down, Jamie. I know you hear I heard you say that earlier. I don't want to burn it down, but uh a reset button would be nice.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

I feel like we ask for a reset button every time this happens. You said trained in de-escalation, and this didn't even, I don't what was there to de-escalate? Um, so just trained in not being an murderer. I don't, I mean Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Uh so that's a good you're making a good point. So a black woman all by herself is not someone who needs to be des de-escalated. Um, a person, a human individual demonstrating that they may be in a mental having a mental health challenge or a mental health crisis, not uh on its own, something to be de-escalated. But all put together, the conversation between Sonia and this officer, uh it was classified as a situation where he felt like he needed to protect himself, that he was in imminent danger, especially because the detail that everyone is talking about is the hot pot of water that she had in her hands. And so the part of the reason that this keeps happening is because the rules, the rule of law is set up so that the person with the gun and the badge can do just about anything that they want and say because they can indicate they can use their lethal force to keep themselves safe. And so, this in this case, that's what's going to happen is that the defense is going to present all this information saying uh Miss Massey had a pot of hot water, she wasn't following directions, that the deputy felt like uh he was in danger, and that he was uh legitimate in using lethal force because he was trying to keep himself and his partner safe. And that's we see that time and time and time and time again, that it's in the rules. That's why these officers get don't get dismissed, uh, or are many of them don't lose the lose their jobs, they don't go to jail. So it's gonna be a really interesting thing to see uh because he was he can, he has a claim to de-escalating because she had a weapon uh or she had something that could have harmed him and uh the other partner.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

I I wanted to fact check the U.S. Army and um according to ABC News, um, and to your point around uh people are not being held accountable, he was discharged from the U.S. Army for misconduct, serious offense. Then he was charged with two DI offenses in Illinois in 2016 and 2015. He pleaded guilty to both charges and paid fines. Doesn't look like he faced jail time for that. He was hired for his first police job, first known police job in 2020 and was fired from his most recent job as a sheriff's deputy deputy. I I hope people across the country, police counties, departments, districts across the country are looking into their hiring practices. I hope that that this particular county is looking into their hiring practices and being really critical of who are we hiring um to protect and serve. Yeah, I'm just curious about the how that how he got hired.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

So I can give a little bit of insight. I don't know this particular Illinois County's policies and practices, but I can give a little bit of some background to the hiring practices for law enforcement. Um even before the year 2020, the pipeline for cadets, uh for people who are interested in participating in law enforcement, becoming law enforcement officers of a number of different kinds. And this includes actually, if you want to add um the military, has been waning. Uh there's been a sharp decline since the the since really the last uh 20 years, so 2000, uh 2001, 2002. And so because the this particular generation, those born, let's say, after 1999, uh after 2020, uh 2000 rather, um, in the last 20 years, aren't as interested in law enforcement or uh uh going into the military, the pool is more shallow. There aren't as many candidates. And the need, because of our population and because of the the way the world is, we and the way our system is, since we say we need police officers, we have to have a police um force, then the requirements have to fit the pipeline in order or the pool uh that's in the pipeline. And so when you're talking about someone who has a record that might make us go, he might not be able to make great decisions, especially in a pressure situation. He's had multiple opportunities to be the upstanding citizen or the person who gets it right after maybe messing it up once or twice. Um that may not have been afforded to this particular uh department because they needed it to fill a space. And getting away from today's conversation just for a moment, you and I have worked with countless hiring managers who are under pressure to fill a role because until the role is filled, everybody else is pitching in to fill that person, that particular role's um uh responsibilities. And so it's more costly, it's harder on everybody. It might be even harder on the person who's in charge of hiring this person because they're the one doing that particular job. And so, if we're thinking about police officers, there's so much incentive to hurry up and get that filled, especially because the job is supposed to be protecting and serving. So, you as the taxpayer, you want the police officer there. The system is set up to hire whoever we can get, and sometimes uh looking beyond uh the past of a particular person so that we can fulfill that very pressure situation and hiring. So this it's not too unfathomable to think about how someone who has a record like what you named gets to hold a gun and a badge. There aren't enough people who who who are on the straight and narrow, if you will, or have no nothing in their records and and have no um examples of high aggression or um uh criminal records. Like it's it's hard to find those people who want to actually be peacekeepers.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

Yeah, and and I want to also name that it's it's not to uh you named this earlier on capital capitalism and that it's not just one bad apple here. If we could have just kept him out of the police force, that it's um multiple systems that are allowing this to continue to happen, inclusive of who we're hiring, inclusive of we're not talking about become be a peacekeeper, how are we communicating what policing is through our media? Um, inclusive of our privilege ego, society tells me that as a man, it's important to have power and power over people. Um, I want to go into this police academy, I want to be a police officer because I get the power, because I get that um ability to do what I want without regard. Um and then all of my training uh that's another system that says um you have the power. Um and so it's a variety of things. And and I do believe that in a very, very small way, again, I it's Sure, not a straight line. Learning about, let's take out the word diversity, equity, and inclusion, but learning about difference and how to navigate and engage with difference is incredibly valuable. Learning about empathy for everybody, for yourself and for others, is incredibly valuable. Learning about power and privilege and where you yield power and what you can do about and with that power is incredibly powerful. So I do think that I do think I know that we've moved away from being a learning society and we all think we have the answers. And how can we get back to a learning society? And I don't I get back, I don't know if we've been there before, a learning society where we're constantly in pursuit of learning about each other and each other's experiences, humanizing that um so we can see human life um as we should be seeing it as precious for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

So I know that you are familiar with this uh video. It's called Implicit Bias. Uh it's actually called Who Me Biased Peanut Butter and Jelly and Racism. And you and I have uh used that video in trainings from time to time. And in it, I forget the name of the woman uh because I can see her, but I can't remember what her name is. But she says, you know, in reality, we never really had a chance. And when you were talking about the learning that has to be done in our community, in our society, we human beings aren't really all that great at learning to change the society, learning for the better part of changing society. Like there are parts, and and I know all of my anthropology and sociology majors are yelling at the at the uh radio right now. There have been advances in society, yes. And we've gotten better in terms of what we call civilization. So you and I right now are on computers across the town talking into this microphone so that people can hear us for into perpetuity. Like that's an advancement. And we still haven't figured out how not to harm people who may be uh having a mental health crisis. We still haven't figured out how to take care of people who may be having a mental health crisis. We still haven't figured out that some brains see uh blackness or dark skin as dangerous. We still haven't figured out how to do that. And and we can send people to the moon, uh, we can build uh cars that drive themselves. We've been really advanced with regard to technology and how we work out our our needs. And one of the needs that we have not figured out is how to not hurt people. And I don't know that it means we need to be a learning society to fix that. I think it's something else. And because we I wasn't around when we were living in we human beings, caves and uh shelters and things like that, and and we're a more nomadic uh agrarian type of people uh or or civilization. So I don't know what the value of human life was thousands of years ago. What I can see in our brief history in on this continent and uh in as a civilization called the United States of America, it hasn't been great. Like we started, we got here killing people as as a as a people. Uh we brought folks, we brought human bodies here to this continent in shackles, and that reverberates. That same concept of some human lives are more valuable than others has reverberated for the thousands of years we've been, we have been on this continent. And I don't think it's about learning. I think it might be something else that it's going to take to undo it. So change your police practices all you want. Um or you know, make set up the rules. I mean, if you kill somebody, well, so here's the remember we talked about how like if you mess up at work, it might be really hard. If you if you know that the worst possible mistake that you might make can get you fired, then you probably won't either do that job or um uh you'll be afraid of doing that job all the time. You remember how we talked about that? That adjust culture. Okay, the adjust culture helps you to learn. If you've if you need training, if you need education, because you've made a mistake and you don't you didn't know that you needed to not do that, then it would be be fine. But this is one of those jobs uh in policing is one of those jobs where you might actually kill somebody if you make a mistake. So I think it's more than a learning society, because even if we just punished people all the time for killing people, all we'd end up having is an unbalanced system where we thus, us, the rest of us, don't feel like we're safe because we don't have enough police officers. We're police officers. Oh, I maybe should not have had that cup of coffee because I am hyped thinking about the solutions, and the and the solutions are varied and and complex. And Jamie, I don't know that we, the people, really want to solve it.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

And that brings us back to capitalism. And I agree, I I wanna learning is not the only solution, but I do think it's part of, and I'm not saying like everybody needs to go into a four-hour training and sit down and learning. I'm just saying more maybe philosophically that we don't show up as learners in society, we don't show up with new people. What can I learn about this person? I'm not necessarily saying that out loud, but you know, just wanting to know people versus wanting to control people. It's been a hard last few weeks for a variety of different reasons, and um I keep asking myself, am I am I doing enough to contribute um to a better existence and society for everyone? And um so I I know we like to end with what what do we want our listeners to know and or or be thinking about, and and maybe two things and and the the thing similar to the things that I'm thinking about is how am I contributing to humanizing everybody? Um, or how am I contributing to dehumanizing some people who don't look like me, who don't have the same values and beliefs that I do. Um so one, where am I contributing to humanization or not? Um, of all people. Maybe that's just all I have. Anything you have, Robert?

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Absolutely. Um, and I'll I'll take that. I think one thing is is enough sometimes for a tangible takeaway. And so I think the thing that I want to offer is when you're reading a story or hearing um about something that's happened, seek out three references for said story. So if you happen to like, I think you quoted earlier, uh ABC uh news. So go find two other places uh that might either corroborate or have some information on that particular topic because it'd be very easy because of our own confirmation and affinity biases that all of us have, that we'll just take that first source of information and call it truth, that the channel, uh the TV channel, the news channel that I watch or that I listen to is the one that has all the truth on it. And and those other guys don't talk about uh life the way that I like, and therefore they're not accurate. So be sure, just like way back in the day when you had to find a whole bunch of resources and put them in your bibliography, make sure you get three at least three sources um that you can use to reference your material so that you're getting a more full picture of who it is that we are and what it is that we are going through. Does that make sense? This has been the Beyond the Training podcast, uh, where we are really trying to move from great intentions to great impact and realizing that. And so we hope that you are able to do that uh with us every week. And we appreciate you being here. Definitely send us feedback by sending us a text or sending us an email at impact at seven-focus.com. Check us out on all of our social medias. And if you want us to come out and help you have this conversation or conversations like this one, also send us an email at impact at seven-focus.com. We can come out in keynote or uh do a session in your uh training or your conference. Thank you so much for being here. Please take care of one another, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Uh yeah, I want to end the podcast by just saying Sonia Massey should be here today.