Basic Interpersonal Relationship Soft Skills 101

Compassionate rational people meet upset and traumatized people where they are to help them. They don't go on about how this other person's trauma isn't valid or not important or that your intent is more important than their trauma. Whatever happened, is important - to them. And that is what matters to them in the moment.

Now, let's apply these same skills to discussions about racism and sexism and whatever else -ism.

I recently responded to a post by Heterodox Academy. Heterodox Academy is a group of 5,000+ professors, administrators, K-12 educators, staff & students who believe diverse viewpoints & open inquiry are critical to research & learning. https://heterodoxacademy.org/ 

They posted this essay in newsweek from one of their members. https://www.newsweek.com/when-it-comes-fighting-racism-intentions-context-matter-opinion-1582459

It's a good essay and nuanced. I responded to the pull out quote out of context which was, ""A major tenet of anti-racist activism is that intentions don't matter. When an individual speaks a word or asks a question, whether he or she meant to hurt listeners' feelings or to enact a racial microaggression—or to engage in good-faith dialogue—is irrelevant. The impact on listeners is all that should be addressed..."    

I disagree as I don't think that intentions don't matter to anti-racist activists. I think the statement itself is a flawed assumption. Intentions do matter, but may be irrelevant as what is being said may be a factual matter. 

Here is my response.

I'm not sure the first sentence is true. It may be how people who are told - something they said or did is racist - experience it. But that's not necessarily the intent of the person pointing it out. I think it's a communication problem and it stems from being too defensive to listen and understand. What if we reframe this into - this is constructive criticism and not an attack? 

I know from my own personal experience that the first time I experienced this, I was a complete idiot. At the time, some really nice people tried to explain to me why the way I understood what was being said wasn't what they were actually saying at all. And I still didn't get it and couldn't hear it properly. The problem was I was translating what they were saying into an attack on me and that wasn't what they were saying at all. At the time, I didn't get it though I appreciated their obvious intent to help me understand. The problem was that I was too busy defending myself to listen to what they were actually saying. And my defensiveness was TOTALLY unnecessary and counter productive. 

What I understand now is that they were assuming was that I was a good person and that I wanted to be an ally to them and that I would want to know that I was accidentally saying something racist that I had no idea was racist because I didn't know the history of whatever it was. They were providing me constructive feedback. I experienced it as - they don't care that I'm a good person and my intent wasn't' racist at all. What I didn't understand is that they already knew about my context and intent. This wasn't the first time they experienced this sort of thing. It was my first time experience it. Not theirs. 

Now for some loving truth. You simply don't give constructive feedback to people who have bad intentions. I think the overwhelming majority of anti-racist activists understand intentions matter and are assuming the people they are talking to would want to know they are saying something - racist and would want to know more. The problem is, keeping the person you are giving constructive feedback to, from getting defensive.  If you have an image of yourself as a good person and someone says, whoa, that wasn't good, it's natural to get defensive. And when it comes to matters of racism, we should all acknowledge that there is simply no good way to tell a family member or friend that they are sharing Lost Cause propaganda without them feeling attacked.  And yet, it wouldn't be kind to let them continue without correction.

You know they are not racist. You know them to be a good loving person. Someone who would never knowingly share KKK originated propaganda that's been used by white supremacists for over a century. And yet, they just did. Their intent is totally irrelevant at this point because they did just shared well known and historically documented racist KKK propaganda. Good intentions don't mean racist propaganda isn't racist propaganda. That's just a statement of fact. But ... people respond to being told that what they just shared was KKK propaganda as if they are being attacked. That is how they experience receiving this factual information.

The reality is, they aren't being attacked. They are being treated as well intentioned allies who made a mistake and are being given constructive factual and historical feedback. 

So - to answer the question - why doesn't intent matter when we are talking about racism, sexism or other forms of oppression? Because it's irrelevant when we are talking about a factual historical matter. To deny the historical facts, is to deny history and reality. 

The correct way to respond to being told you made a mistake in this area, is to apologize and correct it. This goes for all sides. It's about listening and not centering your anxiety or dignity violations in the conversation, but instead, learning about the dignity violations the other person experienced as a way to understand where they are coming from.

At this point, someone responded and asked a question that was centered on their own sense that their dignity had been violated by someone telling them, they had caused harm.

Here is what they wrote to me:

Granted, racist propaganda is racist propaganda regardless of the speaker's intent. But are all alleged "microaggressions" necessarily racist/sexist...etc. regardless of the speaker's intent? I don't think so. Usually, those sorts of speech acts admit of perfectly innocuous interpretations, which activists are dismissing out of hand.

ex. One time at trivia night, I noticed that one of my female teammates was reading, comprehending, and answering the trivia questions faster than I could even read them. Which struck me as pretty damned impressive (for anybody), so I asked "Wow, how do you read so fast?" She interpreted my question as "Wow how do you [a mere woman] read so fast?" and got pretty indignant.

Do I owe her an apology for my sexism regardless of the fact that that was not what I was asking?

My response:

First, there is no such thing as a micro-aggression. http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2019/08/lets-abandon-term-micro-aggression.html

Second - that was a good question and a good example. If I was coaching someone for this - I'd recommend not being offended that she responded this way. Because her response isn't actually about you. It's about her and all her experiences that led up to that point. You don't know how many times she has been intentionally dismissed by sexists in a very overtly sexist and demeaning manner. If she is a working professional, she absolutely has. You don't know if she was raped by a guy who demeaned her intelligence while doing it. You don't know what sort of household she grew up in and what she has had to overcome in her life. You don't know what her experiences are, or aren't. Her experiences, aren't about you. They are about her. All you need to know is there is a reason she is responding this way - and you getting upset that she doesn't have the mental space to acknowledge your good intent doesn't fix the situation. Her response isn't about you. it's about her and her hurt. 

You know your intent. Don't assume the other person can read minds. She only have her experience to go on. So, you can either choose to be present for her and acknowledge her hurt, which should be easy because you didn't intent to cause harm. Or you can try to make her acknowledge that YOU weren't intending to hurt her and make it all about YOU even though it wasn't about you at all. It's about her and how she was hurt in the past which is impacting how she experiences things in the present. 

Seriously, this is basic interpersonal relationship soft skills 101.

So much of this could just go away if well intentioned people stopped getting in fights over whose dignity violations are worse. But if you really need to keep score: people who have suffered systemic oppression for centuries - have had worse dignity violations than people whose good intentions are called into question.

This is about personal responsibility and stepping aside from your own hurt to be present for others. 

Compassionate rational people meet upset and traumatized people where they are to help them. They don't go on about how this other person's trauma isn't valid or not important or that your intent is more important than their trauma. Whatever happened, is important - to them. And that is what matters to them in the moment. It obviously takes a LOT of self awareness to step back like this. Donna Hicks calls these things dignity violations and says that in order to get past the conflict, we have to not get in pissing matches about whose dignity violations are worse than the other. And the best way to do this is to understand that when someone tells you about their past dignity violations, they aren't demeaning you or violating your dignity. They are trusting you with basically sacred information. They are expecting you to treat that information with compassion and care.

 Everyone has had dignity violations. It is entirely possible to be present to listen to people tell their stories and accept their reality for what it is. So, to answer your question - do you owe her an apology? Technically, no. But should you acknowledge her hurt response is valid? Absolutely yes. Obviously, sexism is a real thing. People really experience it. It's really effing traumatizing when it happens. Her hurt is valid. You don't get to decide for her whether her hurt is valid or not. She's experiencing hurt. That is all you need to know. Acknowledge that. Feel compassion for her. That's all that is required.

On the topic of micro-aggressions

Never assume a micro-aggression is harmless. Some of them are inherently sexist/racist. If the trope is so stereotypical to the lived experience of a marginalized group as a group, then yes, it's racist/sexist regardless of your intent. 

An example would be white people not being able to tell the difference between various black individuals. Or trying to give a compliment by saying - oh, you look just like - some person they know they don't look anything like, but just share skin color maybe with. 

Telling a black person that they are articulate is another example of this. The person saying this may genuinely be giving a compliment, but the person experiencing it as a microaggression KNOWS this history of that phrase and has most likely heard it way more times then you can possibly imagine and specifically in situations that are physically dangerous or that involve - policing. 

Let me give you an example. I had a friend who owned a bar. Every night, he would get pulled over the by same cop outside his house in a nice rich neighborhood. The cop would ask him what he was doing and where he was going and he would answer. And the cop would hear his British accent and apologize and let him go in his house without any further hassle. This happened every .... single ... night. Right in front of his house. Same effing cop. 

What was going on? 1) the cop didn't seem to be able to tell black people apart, and not even by their cars. 2) the fact my friend has a British accent meant - he was 'articulate' and not like the local regular - insert the racist term here. And he was fully aware that that was the case. He was fully aware his accent, was saving him from worse dignity violations and perhaps police violence. This happened to him, every. Single. Night! 

Now - imagine you try to compliment him on his British accent by telling him he is articulate. Your intent to compliment him doesn't matter to him. He already knows that. But it is intersecting with his lived experience that involves active discrimination and oppression that revolves around his speech specifically. 

Your good intent doesn't erase his lived experience. His willingness to tell you - that is a micro-aggression - means he trusts you enough, to listen and learn. If you respond to him telling you - his truth, and you go on about how your intent is all that should matter, you are missing HIS point entirely. He was telling you about his lived reality dealing with overt forms of racism. The proper response to that is to acknowledge his experience and then be grateful he trusted you enough to tell you WHY what should be a compliment is experienced as an aggression.

Fixing anti-racism training and improving diversity training

 I am on a mission. A mission to end bullying and harassment by teaching people science based approaches to stop bullying behavior. This ties into diversity and inclusion initiatives because one of the many variables that impact successful inclusion programs is the fact that when people who have traditionally been marginalized are finally included, they are often harassed by people who don't want them there. It's time we fix that. 

First, let's talk about what's not working.

1) Harassment training programs don't work. Why? Because they are based on a really bad assumption. That assumption is: if we just tell bullies to stop, they will.  They won't.

2) Bias elimination trainings don't work. Why?  While they do a good job of raising awareness of biases, but they don't actually teach people how to overcome their own biases let alone what to do if they encounter someone with really toxic biases. 

3) Diversity & Inclusion trainings don't work. Why? Same reason the harassment trainings don't work. Just explaining to people that exclusion to the victims, won't change anyone's behavior. It may raise awareness, but that's about it. Asking people who are horrible to be less horrible, isn't going to get them to change.

4) Certain sorts of training are actually pretty toxic.  I'm specific specifically about critical race theory training.  First, disclaimer, I love critical race theory. I think it's an excellent lens through which to understand historical problems and to understand the systemic nature of those problems and to understand what ALL needs to be fixed - and there is a lot that needs to be fixed.  My son is a budding historian and he will tell you, if you don't understand everyone's perspective of what happened, you don't understand what happened.  That being said, if my goal was to create a diverse yet cohesive work group, I would not give them a critical race theory training. Why? Because it would be counter productive.

We need to acknowledge that certain individuals are really really really hostile to inclusion. Hopefully, no one on your team is, but until you push them to change, you won't really know. While the critical race theory trainings are excellent at pushing people's buttons, that isn't necessarily a good way to create cohesion and inclusion.

Step back and think about what you really want to accomplish

The best way to create a training program that will work is to think about what you REALLY want to change.  What skills do you want people to learn. Raising awareness is great - but it's not positive pro-social skill. 

It's also helpful to think about what your staff really want to learn. 

If we want to create diverse yet cohesive work groups, we need to teach well meaning people how to get along with people different from them. We also need to teach well meaning people how to shut down bullies and others who are anti-inclusion. In other words, how do we make sure that our attempts at inclusion aren't sabotaged by bad actors within our organization.

Let's change our training assumptions

It's time we jettison training programs that don't work and the assumptions that are behind those training programs. Let's start teaching people what they really want to learn, which is how to stop bullying and harassment and how to be pro-active in creating diverse yet cohesive workgroups. 

Check out my website https://humanistlearning.com for more information

Humanism, anti-racism and the problem with bad training programs.

 Last month I published an article about dealing with a racist in the workplace. One of my readers wrote and we had a lovely exchange. They wondered why, as a Humanist, I was talking about white supremacy.

I'm not going to include my entire discussion with them here, but I do want to make something clear.

If Humanism is to mean anything, it must be about ensuring all humans are treated with dignity. If there are people who violate the dignity of others, regardless of the reason, it is the proper place of a Humanist to stand in opposition to the dehumanization of others.

I am not straying from Humanist topics when I talk about the problem of racism. I am asserting and advocating for a core humanist value, dignity for all.   All Humanists oppose supremacy and any ideology that dehumanizes our fellow humans. White supremacy is such an ideology. This isn’t controversial and I did not stray from the topic of humanism. This is literally central to the philosophy. 

Discussing what to do when someone does NOT treat other people with dignity is a valid and necessary conversation to have. I talked about white supremacy as that is the form of supremacy I encounter most often and the topic I’m most asked about when confronting racism in the workplace. 

I live in the south in a community that was literally the capital of the confederacy in Florida. We have 3 known active white supremacists groups. People in the local Facebook group actively talk about shooting black people who come into white neighborhoods and until this past Nov, we had members of the confederacy re-enactment group on our county commission. Things are getting better though, so I don't want you to think it's all bad.

My point is that, for me, white supremacy is a real threat to my real neighbors and any suggestion that it is not a problem is going to be met, by me, with disbelief, anger and frustration.

To deny white supremacy is a problem is to deny the reality I live and work in. Talking about white supremacy is a valid topic as it really exists and really is a problem.   I singled it out because not only is it the dominant form of supremacy I personally encounter.  It is the dominant form of supremacy that my clients ask me about help addressing when they ask about how to deal with racism in the workplace.  

To be fair to the person who wrote me, their company had subjected them to a diversity or harassment training that told them they were racists just for being white.  As a trainer, I am horrified that anyone would conduct such a training. I view that sort of approach as not only counter productive, but harmful and it results in exactly the sort of anger and frustration and refusal to engage that this person first approached me with.

My point. Racism is real. White supremacy is a real threat to real people. AND, some training programs and interventions designed to fix the problem are horrible and counter productive. 

The way through this is to not assume ill intent, but to listen. If you find yourself in a training that feels abusive, it may very well be. But don't let that experience shut you down to talking about race entirely.

We need to fix this problem we have. And we can only do that by staying engaged despite how difficult it is. 

And, if you are in a position to hire someone to do a diversity or harassment training, please contact me. So much of what we do starts with a false assumption and that is, if we just tell people it's a problem, the bad behavior we don't want will stop. Never in the entire history of humanity have evil people, like white supremacists, stopped being evil just because we point out the harm they are causing. Instead, we should be providing training programs that teach people who to get unwanted behavior, directed against them, to stop. That is what people want to learn, including the people who are not behaving - ideally. 

Anyway, rant over. 

De-Conditioning Racial Bias

One of the reasons we still have problems with race isn't necessarily because people are racist, though, there are out and proud racists. It's more that well intentioned people are unaware that many of their impulses and thoughts are conditioned responses, meaning, we don't think about them, we just feel them and it makes us uncomfortable.

Deconditioning unwanted behaviors is something I specialize in. I have a background in behavioral conditioning. I know the science of how to make unwanted behaviors (including thoughts), stop and I also have the practical experience to know why exactly it is so hard to change, even when we want to.  And yes, I have a course/book on that (Why is Change so Hard?) 

First, I want you to read this thread by Claire Willet on Twitter. https://twitter.com/clairewillett/status/1266894029498675200 

This thread is super important for white people to read. It's about the history of our conditioned responses to black protests.  Specifically, how we have been conditioned, intentionally, to feel uncomfortable with black people protesting.  And yes, we were and are being conditioned to respond to protests by people seeking to not be shot for no reason, with discomfort. And there is a super long history in the USA of this happening. And yes, it was done intentionally. And yes, our government did it intentionally. Read the twitter thread! 

That uncomfortable feeling you have been having about how black people are protesting? It's there for a reason. You have been conditioned to feel that discomfort. And that was done intentionally to help people in power, stay in power by denying social justice movements support by other moral people, by making them, uncomfortable and afraid. 

I have a background in behavioral conditioning. I can attest that what Ms. Willet describes in her thread, is true. What she is saying, about how even when we find out we've been lied to,  we still believe things that aren't true, because it feels true even when it isn't - is absolutely spot on. 

That is the power of conditioned responses. Conditioned responses bypass your normal thinking. It's your gut reaction. You don't know why you have this gut reaction, you just do. And yes, your thoughts can be conditioned and ARE conditioned. All the time.  

If I start a commercial jingle, chances are you will sing the rest and would have a really hard time, stopping yourself.  Let's give it a try ... "plop, plop, fizz, fizz." 

There are people who want the rest of us to be afraid of black people asking for help. And they have spent, literally centuries convincing people to be afraid and uncomfortable around black people and about discussing discrimination against black people and minorities. And all this discomfort and our inability to deal with it, is preventing us from finally, creating a society where everyone is given the same opportunity and where people can actually be judged on their character and not on the color of their skin.

Deconditioning Ourselves

But in order to get there, we have to start deconditioning ourselves of these habits of thoughts that cause us to have negative thoughts when confronted by race. We have to decondition the habits that cause us to look away or deflect. 

The good news is that these various deflection responses, are a normal part of the deconditioning process. The bad news is that, unless you force yourself to challenge your own brain, you won't get past them, which is why collectively, we haven't gotten past it.

The other good news is that once you understand your own resistance response, you can help yourself decondition the uncomfortable responses you have whenever the subject of race comes up.  

So if you want to support black people but keep finding reasons why you don't actually support black people, then I have a few suggestions for you. And yes, I mean even well meaning liberal people who think they are beyond this but are afraid to go to the 'black' part of town because they are worried about crime - you too. Especially you.

What I want you to learn is first, why change is so hard (https://humanistlearning.com/book-and-program-why-is-change-so-hard/)  I want you to understand the resistance ideas that pop into your head for what they are, resistance to change. Then, you can calmly encourage your brain to calm down and think explicitly about whether the assumptions you have about a given situation are true.

Think Humanistically

The next thing I want you to do is think humanistically about yourself and about the situation you are concerned about.  Think explicitly about the values you think are most important. Then, apply those values to the situation at hand. Keeping in mind that what you think, may be incorrect because of your implicit conditioned biases to think negatively about black people doing anything other than being subservient to white people.  Try to understand why black people are upset and think, if this happened to you, would you be upset? Yes, then the black community is protesting for good reason and you should support them. 

Finally, you will make mistakes. That is ok. You will stumble. That is ok too. If you are worried about black people judging you because you are not a perfect ally, well yeah, that will happen. But how you handle learning that you made a mistake is key. Accept you made a mistake and learn from it, and your efforts will be appreciated.

The problem with centering yourself. 

If you have started to become aware you may have had someone say, stop centering yourself. Here is what that means and why you should NOT center yourself. First. you don't need anyone's approval or acknowledgement to do the right thing. The right thing is to say plainly that an injustice is in fact, an injustice. For instance, cops killing unarmed people who have broken no laws, is an injustice. 

Second: If your willingness to support people who are being abused is based on whether you get credit and props for doing the bare minimum of what a moral person should do, which is to say, what happened is wrong, then something is wrong with you. And you should check yourself. Because when an injustice is occurring, the focus should be on the injustice. Not on whether or not your allyship is being appreciated by people who are literally fighting for their lives. 

If someone tells you, you are centering yourself, you are. Don't argue. Focus on the person who needs help. Not on your need for approval. 

Stick with it

Undoing and unlearning conditioned thoughts is a time consuming process. Every time you manage to identify one of your triggered conditioned responses, don't get upset you thought the thought.  You were conditioned to think it. The goal is to recognize WHEN you've had a conditioned thought and to consciously and explicitly challenge that thought. 

And you can do this for anything. My son is convinced math is hard and he has some fairly extreme deflection responses anytime he is asked to do math. I won't go into the details of why he has these responses except to say that he came by his aversion to math the hard way.  As I am working with him to get past his aversion, which is a conditioned response, I have been encouraging him to challenge his negative thoughts and replace them with other thoughts. Even if they are sarcastically positive, it is still a better response than the extremely negative thoughts he has when math is presented to him.  As we practice turning the negatives into positive, it gets harder for a bit. Crying has been involved in it. But, the resistance eventually gets less hard and his ability to pivot improves. 

Positively reward success:

Every time you successfully challenge one of your conditioned responses, reward yourself. Recognize how hard that was to do for yourself and congratulate yourself. Treat yourself to something. 

The only real way to get rid of a learned response/thought is to replace it with a different learned response/thought. And whenever you succeed in doing that, reward yourself. Positively reward the behavior you want. Don't beat yourself up for continuing to have the thoughts/responses you want to decondition. Just focus on converting them to something positive and eventually, you will get through this. 

For a full list of my programs and books check out this list. https://humanistlearning.com/jennifer-hancock/  Pretty much everything on it, includes some of this behavioral learning. And the best part is, the more you learn how to do this, the easier it becomes and the less you resist it.  

Even if you start small, with just one identified response, like, the discomfort you feel about black people protesting the wrong way, start there and work through it and past it. Your response, that discomfort was conditioned by people with an agenda. Don't let them control you. 

PS - we need to do the same thing for sexism.