Testing our #equity reflexes
In the original Men in Black movie, Will Smith’s character is undergoing tests to see if he is good enough to join MIB. He and the other men (so #sexism still strongly exists) recruited from the US’s elite military and civilian forces are given guns and put into a room with strange lighting and cutouts of monsters—literal monsters—roaming an urban landscape. While the other men quickly shoot the monsters, Will Smith’s character aims, but holds back. Eventually he shoots a small human girl holding a book. The exercise immediately stops, and he is asked “why poor Tiffany had to die.” What follows is an explanation of seeing a different narrative through the same facts. One creature wasn’t snarling, he was sniffling—his cold revealed through the tissue in his hand. Another wasn’t destroying a light post; he was working out—doing pullups on the cross bar. And “poor Tiffany”? What is a six-year-old doing with and advanced trigonometry textbook? She’s clearly up to no good.
The reflexes that were being tested were not about how quickly the possible recruits could shoot. They were about how quickly they could overcome their instincts and open their mind to another possible narrative.
A brief psychology lesson: The primary job of the human mind is to keep us alive. If I’m walking on a path and on one side is a field of wildflowers and the other is the drop of a cliff, I will focus on the cliff (Thank you to Daniel Kahneman for this image). White people have been taught to see black people as the cliff—fine and sometimes stunningly beautiful but you have to keep an eye on them.
When I was growing up news media never mentioned race if the criminal was white but always did if he was black. (Yup—he. The media was #sexist too and rarely gave women “credit” for being strong or smart enough to be criminals.) Things have improved slightly today but black men are still shown as criminals and the fact that they are imprisoned more “proves” it. Our narratives tell us that the criminal justice system can’t possibly be biased. After all, its symbol is a blind-folded skinny white woman—no bias there.
I used to think everyone sees what they want to see. I now believe everyone sees what we are trained to see. What happens when we learn to see the world the way we are taught? We form the narrative to fit the facts in the way we are taught to see them. It’s when we can see an alternative narrative that we begin to grow.
Why do cops who use excessive force say they felt threatened? Because many did feel threatened—not because they actually were threatened, but because they have absorbed our culture just like everyone else has. Their mind’s immediate reaction is to detect possible harm and protect them from it.
Given the way we have been taught and the human mind’s primary directive of keeping us safe from harm, it will take intentional effort, practice, time, and cultural immersion to learn how to see ‘others’ as equal and human. That is important and necessary work of reshaping our full culture, but we don’t have time to wait for it to be completed. Right now, we must have reflexes to look for a different narrative for the same facts. We must pause in the face of what our mind tells us in imminent danger and look for what we missed at first glance. And still, we must act fast to make the world more just and equal.
In the meantime, people whose reactions are inaccurate should not be issued a gun and a badge. They should be thanked for their time and sent home.