racial bias

Presidential party caucus day has arrived for many of us, and it brings with it a sobering reflection on how the media chooses to exercise its power to persuade. Even more sobering is the related reflection on how we choose to exercise our power to think.

My city's less-than-intellectual newspaper has been distracted through much of the pre-election season by our governor's bid for the Democratic nomination. Not that he was ever a viable candidate, but he was ours and we were treated to interminably long months of evaluating his every expression and calorie. Since he dropped out of the race, the newspaper's ability to shift gears and focus on the larger, more relevant contest has been notably impaired. If our fair citizens know anything about the other candidates, it is due to our own resourcefulness, and not because the newspaper has done an adequate job of reporting on them.

So this morning it was with some surprise that I saw pictures of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama splashed across the front of one of the sections of the paper. What an interesting choice -- no, what an interesting series of choices -- were made in the construction of that section cover. Think of the questions that were asked and answered. Should we show the two candidates? Should we show the two spouses? Should we just show the two women? Which pictures (of the many dozens they likely have access to) should we show? Should we make them look smart? Angry? Animated? Peaceful? Should we show them with similar expressions, or different? The foundation for all of the answers to these questions is the underlying rationalization of why.

So here is my question. Why did the Albuquerque Journal choose to show Hillary and Michelle instead of Hillary and Barack? Why did the Journal show Hillary as a bit removed, composed, peaceful, hands folded in front, but Michelle as directly in your face, eyes alight, mouth wide open? What was the purpose?

The average reader may not stop to reflect that Michelle Obama has a B.A. in Sociology from Princeton, and a Harvard Law Degree. They probably don't know that she worked for a number of years in corporate law at a major Chicago intellectual property firm, and that in 1991 she embarked upon a life of public service. She was an assistant to the mayor of Chicago, and the City of Chicago's assistant commissioner for planning and development. In 1993 she became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago, a leadership training institute that helps young adults develop skills for careers in the public sector. In 1996 she joined the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, and she developed the University's first community service program. Michelle also served as executive director of community and external affairs until 2005, when she was appointed vice president of community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She also managed the business diversity program, and fostered the University of Chicago's relationship with the surrounding community and developed the diversity program, making them both integral parts of the Medical Center's mission. Michelle Obama has been a tireless and passionate organizing force for public good in one of our nation's largest cities for nearly 20 years.

I don't expect that the Albuquerque Journal expects most of their readers to know this information or to stop and reflect on it. The reaction they likely anticipated -- indeed, counted on -- is the emotional reaction of the simple majority of white people who do not have a black female friend or colleague. Americans are not only considering the prospect of a black president, but of a black first lady. What knowledge, experience, and sensibility do we have to give this consideration its due?

Ultimately, the responsibility for our impressions lies with us -- not the newspaper, not Fox or CNN, not our spouse, or some blog. Just us. Only us. But thinking is not the same as perceiving. Thinking is powerful, evaluative, fundamentally creative. Perceiving is shackled by our emotions, our baggage, our fears and our wants. When we think with our perceptions we are not thinking at all – we're just feeling.

I hope this nation can pull it together in time. I imagine a world where a critical mass of people are amassing critical thought. If we don't take responsibility for our thinking -- soon -- we will have to take responsibility for the mess that ensues.

Today I voted for Obama. I believe that both Obama and Hillary (interesting, isn't it, that as a society we've selected the first name for one and the last name for the other? What does that mean?) can handle the presidency and do a good job, so once the caucuses are over I will support the winner with time and resources. But today I was shaken. I like to think that I am a more rational, more careful thinker than most. But perhaps today I simply benefited from a lifelong influence of strong black women. If the trigger had been something different, would I have responded with perception rather than thinking?

A reality based on thinking is bound to be better than a reality based on perception. It's time for us to think our way to a new reality, by dismantling one perception at a time.

I am alarmed by recent attempts to ignore the ugly aspects of our shared history. Skipping select parts of the constitution? Removing the n-word from Twain? How do we become a better society if we choose to ignore how we got here? We should be engaging in difficult conversations with one another, not mutually engineered denial.

"Mom, are you working? Can you do something with me, like, now?"

"What's up son?"

"I got kicked out of the mall again. I really want you to help me do something about it."

So began our sojourn into the perception and actions of private corporate security guards. An exploration of the mindsets that look on most teenagers as potentially dangerous unless they fit a very narrow range of physical description and demeanor.

The backstory: My son's friend Richard was wearing a baseball cap with a word written across the back. By the guard's admission, the cap was not gang related. But (again, by his admission) he decided to continue to follow and sweat the boys anyway. After being subjected to the unusually long scrutiny, Richard (16-years-old, 185 pounds of hormone in a 5'10" frame, easily frustrated) blurts out "why the hell do you keep following us? We're not doing anything!"

I surmise the security guard had achieved what he set out to achieve. With what my son described as grim satisfaction the guard began to berate Richard, calling him belittling names and swearing at him. My son must have looked disgusted, because the guard then began to lecture him about the importance of respecting his elders. To which my son replied, in an even tone, "How can you expect us to respect you when you aren't respectable?" (important questionable objectivity disclaimer here – all of these details were confirmed by one of the security guards who witnessed the exchange).

At this point my son was also ejected. Last week he was ejected for loitering, which meant that he didn't have a shopping bag in his hand after being observed in the mall for more than half an hour (he was collecting job applications). Last month he and two friends were ejected immediately upon entry for wearing baggy sweatshirts.

I do understand that there are troublemakers in the world, that our city has a gang problem, and that people carry concealed weapons and go off in malls with alarming frequency. I suspect mall security guards are somewhat on edge these days. But the picture that was painted, as we sat in the mall general manager's office and talked through the situation, was one in which men in their 30s and 40s were exercising unnecessary personal power over teenage boys. What purpose does this serve?

?

The mall manager explained that the mall policy was one of "zero tolerance for gangs," and he went on to talk – at some length – about their extreme concern for preventing any more mall shootings and for protecting the citizens who enter their mall. Who is suspected of gang activity or considered worthy of scrutiny? The answer, at first, was vague. But eventually, as we asked for specific examples, that the profile of a gang member is any brown-skinned teenage male who wears baggy clothes, baseball caps, and walks with a slouch. If white-skinned teenage males dress like the brown-skinned teenage males, they are also suspects. My son is a brown-skinned teenage male who dresses in jeans and t-shirts but does not wear baseball caps. His friend Richard is a white-skinned teenage male who wears very baggy jeans and baseball caps. Neither are involved in gangs (yes, I'm quite sure).

The mall shooter in the most recent event in the Chicago suburbs was an African-American man dressed like any other man in the midst of a bad winter storm– dark jeans, winter coat, black knit cap. The mall shooter in Omaha was a waifish, nerdy looking young white man that couldn't possibly be mistaken for a gang-banger. The mall shooter in Utah was a young white male wearing tan jeans, an overcoat, and a mullet haircut. The shooter in the December incident in a Delaware mall was wearing ordinary jeans and a windbreaker, no cap. I don't see a pattern here.

Maybe the real concern is shoplifting? Probably not, because according to the National Shoplifting Prevention Coalition, shoplifters are equally divided between males and females, and only 25% are juveniles. Most notably, the coalition reports that a common profile for a shoplifter does not exist, so it can't be targeted.

I must admit to a lot of curiosity on this issue. Does this profile fit for preventing mall fights involving teenagers? Research indicates that mall fights occur in all demographics with all types of teens. Juveniles (Americans under the age of 18) account for 25% of the population, and they account for 17% of all arrests, and 15%-25% of all violent crime (which the statistics indicate is generally not happening in malls). Juvenile males account for a disproportionate amount of violent crime, but misdemeanors demonstrate a much higher participation rate by females. Of great interest is that juvenile violent crime dropped 30% between 1994 and 1998, and has continued to improve (though I couldn't find good recent statistics).

Is it possible that media-induced irrational fear of teenagers has turned our treatment of the future into a guilty-until-proven-innocent experience? A Public Agenda Online (http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/stats.html) survey indicates a disheartening lack of faith in our kids, with 71% of the general public reporting a negative attitude toward teenagers, including expressing the idea that they do not believe kids today will make the world a better place. Actual statistics of juvenile crime over a 20-year-timeframe indicate that juvenile crime has been misleadingly analyzed and reported (http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/myth/myth.html).

I don't think my son and I changed the world during our one-hour meeting with the mall manager. But we both learned a lot, and I hope the mall manager did too. My son was able to practice the art of constructive conflict and exercise the ability to listen to someone with an opposing viewpoint before presenting his own ideas. The mall manager, once he stopped defending the mall's position and really began to listen, started taking notes and promised to have a meeting with security to discuss improvements to their process. My son is no longer banned from the mall.

But the larger issue concerns me greatly. I have been acutely aware as my peers, all of us teenagers roughly a quarter of a century ago, begin to judge teenagers for their clothing, their speech habits, and their music. I don't have the best memory, but I sure do remember my dad bemoaning my wardrobe, my parents telling me to turn down my music and what-was-I-listening-to-anyway, and being constantly corrected and chided for using teen slang. As an adult I have had very entertaining conversations with my parents about how their own parents were convinced that they (my parents) represented the end of society as they knew it. And while we didn't turn out so bad, I also have a sinking feeling every time I see an adult behave poorly in public, act disrespectfully to other adults in front of their children, and show up regularly on the evening news as perpetrators of a broad range of crimes. If we are going to ask "what is the world coming to," shouldn't we be asking it of ourselves?

I believe we should be vigilant against the presence of gangs in public life. It freaks me out that I live in a state where anyone can carry a concealed weapon. I, too, want to feel safe when I enter a mall. But the real answer doesn't lie in antagonizing teenage boys in the process of figuring out who they are, how they want to look, and what they want to do with their lives. None of the statistics I researched demonstrated that there is any benefit in the type of profiling that is occurring in this mall (and I assume, other malls). If we could just turn our attention to poverty, public schools, adult training, fair housing, mental health, drug abuse, and nutrition, we could reduce crime statistics overnight. So who might we look to as a perpetrator of these ambitious acts of public salvation? The profile probably looks just . . . . like . . . us.

There are few things I have been more disastrously bad at than dating. I was the poster child for dating the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, and then continuing to date them for more of the wrong reasons. Not only was I bad at it … I was bad at it for more than a decade. It was so bad that I caused my friends considerable discomfort. So bad that there was finally an intervention.

The intervention went something like this:

BFF 1: “What are you even doing? What is it you’re looking for when you go on a date?

Me: “What do you mean what am I looking for? I’m looking for a date. How is this even a question?”

BFF 2: “No you’re not. We know you. You want to have kids. You want a family. You’re the nesty-est nester of all of us. You’re not looking for a date. You’re looking for a relationship.

Me: “Well that’s why I go on dates! How am I supposed to be finding a relationship if I don’t go on dates?”

BFF 1: “Yes, but you’re doing the dates all wrong.”

Me: “Well I’m not going home with them on the first date if that’s what you mean.”

BFF 1: “That’s not what we mean. You’re not asking the right questions. You’re not even putting them in the right setting.”

Raised by Wolves

There is an ongoing joke between my siblings and me that we were essentially raised by wolves. Case in point: How had nobody ever bothered to explain to me that there was a point to dating, and that the point was relative to what it was you were trying to accomplish? My friends went on to illustrate how each of our dating approaches were different because we each wanted something different. Who knew there was a science to dating?  (apparently, everyone but me)

The intervention landed me in dating rehab for a few months while I stopped to evaluate how I should approach dating to achieve my desired life goals. And it wasn’t long before I started applying this new lesson to everything I did.

As it turns out, most job interviewers were also raised by wolves; trained to do job interviews by people who had no training themselves in job interviews. Or, worse yet, never trained by anyone at all. And the result is a lot of disastrous dates hires, many of which go on to be relationships that are disappointing, psychologically and monetarily expensive, and hard to get out of.

There Is a Science to Interviewing

Interviewing is used in a lot of roles: Journalists conduct news interviews, scientists conduct research interviews, criminologists conduct case interviews, law enforcement officers conduct interviews of people adjacent to crimes, health care professionals conduct patient interviews … and all these professionals are trained in something called interview science. Yet when it comes to job interviews, most managers just start firing questions at candidates about whatever pops into their heads.

It's no surprise that so many hires are just another bad first date followed by a U-Haul rental.

One of my companies is a strategic HR advisory consulting firm, and it has become somewhat of a mission for me to help our clients do a better job of dating hiring, and that means doing a better job in the interview process.

The Science of Interviewing

You could spend (as I have) months of coursework and years of practice to learn the science of interviewing, but some basic knowledge goes a long way.

Interviewing is an interdisciplinary field, which means that it draws upon principles from psychology, communication studies, sociology, and data analytics to create a process that is intentional, structured, capable of delivering a specific result, and fair. Science is required  because interviewing is about understanding human motivation and how that motivation influences behavior. While we cannot perfectly predict future performance for anyone based on an understanding of their past actions, a well-structured and conducted interview can get us closer to understanding than a random collection of questions without any strategy behind them can.

And if you think you can depend on your gut for this, you’re destined for many bad marriages hires. I won’t even try to explain in this already longish blog why that’s a bad idea, but you could read this book if you want to know more. In it, Malcolm Gladwell does a fantastic job of laying out the risks of trusting one’s gut too much when it comes to assessing people.

The principle we lean on most in interview science is Behavioral Psychology. Behavioral psychology is the branch of psychology that focuses on how past behavior influences future actions. Social Psychology also plays a strong role, helping us understand group dynamics, communication patterns and — of grave importance — understanding how biases influence interview outcomes. The Communications discipline, including active listening and attending to non-verbal cues, is crucial to creating a productive interview environment.

Like most scientific disciplines, there are many theories about the best ways to use all these principles to do interviews. Some theories are more suited to some professions than others. For example, the Reid Technique is a police interrogation theory that would not be at all suitable for job interviews. Likewise, Cognitive Interviewtheory as used in forensic psychology would be deeply intrusive and inappropriate for a job interview. But there are several interview theories and practices that are applicable to the hiring process.

One of them is Competency Based Interviewing Theory, which focuses on assessing the specific skills and competencies relevant to a job. Most people who have never studied interview science would say, “Yes! That’s the theory I’m using!” But there’s way more to it than simply asking about skills and experiences. Competency Based Interviewing Theory uses structured behavioral questions to elicit detailed examples of past experiences. It provides a framework for getting past superficial knowledge and into deeper understanding of a candidate’s abilities and suitability for a given job. Competency Based Interviewing also provides the necessary framework for ensuring a fair and objective assessment across all the candidates for a given job.

Another theory used in a good hiring process is Cognitive Ability Theory, which assesses a person’s problem-solving abilities. Again, if you’ve ever asked “how would you solve such-and-such problem,” this does not mean you were using Cognitive Ability Theory. Unlike simply asking about past problem-solving experiences, this theory involves tailored assessments that delve into a candidate's innate abilities, providing a more direct evaluation of their cognitive aptitude and analytical reasoning skills. To do this, you need suitable assessment tools to provide the data necessary to analyze each candidate and formulate the right questions.

We also use Situational Judgment Theory in the hiring process, which involves presenting candidates with hypothetical scenarios to evaluate their responses and test their judgment and decision-making skills. Again, this isn’t as simple as asking “how might you …” questions. Using Situational Judgment theory, the professional interviewer studies the role thoroughly, identifies the critical competencies and scenarios relevant to the position, and then creates a set of situational questions designed to specifically assess these competencies. The questions are designed right down to the way the questions are asked, because if the questions themselves are vague, or are asked differently from candidate to candidate, the results will not be fair or reliable.

A well-structured interview process involves all these practices and sometimes a few more, depending on the professional requirements of the role. All candidates should be asked the same set of questions to ensure fairness, though the questions asked during the probing of cognitive ability are likely to be different from candidate to candidate based on their differing attributes, qualifications, skills and experiences. The key is to strike a balance between consistency and customization to gain insight into each candidate’s qualifications and potential.

Since all humans have biases, it is also essential to provide bias awareness training, to include diverse interview panels, and to make use of good data for the assessment, interviewing and decision-making process. Efforts to mitigate the effects of bias will produce more equitable — and higher quality! — hiring outcomes (see new section on the use of AI in hiring, added on 10/30/2023 as an addendum at the end of this article)

If you are getting the impression that you must interview someone 32 times to understand if they are the right candidate, that would be wrong. In fact, the majority of good hiring decisions can be made with just two interviews … as long as those two interviews are well-structured.

What Skills and Experience Won’t Tell You

Of course, a candidate can have all the skills and experience in the world, and still be a douchecanoe that gives you a chronic headache and makes all your other employees want to quit. Most skills can be trained on the job, but you cannot train someone to have character, to be kind, to care about others’ needs and opinions, or to be disciplined. These are all attributes that each interviewee has already been born with, raised to, or chosen, and nothing you do in onboarding or training will change those fundamental characteristics.

There are simply some personality and behavioral traits that make candidates a better employee, and you must uncover those in the interview as well. You can use a combination of Behavioral and Situational Judgment interviewing techniques to uncover these issues. But again, I  caution: Simply asking the question “You discover a colleague engaging in unethical behavior. What steps would you take, and how would you balance your loyalty to your colleague with your commitment to the company’s ethical standards?” will not give you the insight you need, because everyone knows how to answer that question “correctly.” You must also employ Depth Interviewing skills to ask the right follow-up questions in the right way to encourage candidates to provide more detailed, specific,and … eventually … genuine responses.

The Interview Sequence

I prefer a two-interview strategy for most hires. I say for most, because for leadership positions and other roles with great strategic impact, two interviews are rarely sufficient. But the majority of hiring activity is for the rest of the roles, and two interviews can work very well if you structure them properly.

In my experience interviews are best done with more than one interviewer, which helps balance out preconceptions and biases and allows you to take advantage of differences in perception and interpretation. But if there will be multiple interviewers, it is important to have the whole group follow the same script and to train the group on how to interview together.

The first interview is to get at the questions of character, personal discipline, and orientation to others. This can be a short interview (20-30 minutes). In the first interview, I only probe skills and experiences as a mechanism for exploring character, discipline, and behavioral or communication issues. No matter how smart or experienced a candidate is, if I see warning bells on issues of character and behavior, there’s no second interview. Why bother? A less skilled candidate with better behavioral attributes will serve the company better in the long term, so there’s no risk when it comes to passing on people that come with a behavioral warning label.

Besides, most of what you need to know in the first interview should have been visible from the resume and/or your job application. Where they worked, what they did, skills required to do the job … these are all things you should review before the first interview is even scheduled. If you don’t receive sufficient insight on the resume, send them your job application (which should ask for sufficient insight) before scheduling the first interview.

For those candidates we deem interesting enough to do a second interview, we schedule them for a pre-employment assessment first. We administer the 16 Personality Factors Comprehensive Insights assessment by Talogy, because it gives us the greatest insight for developing further interview questions, and it benefits from greater peer review and anti-bias development than any other assessment we’ve researched (which is not to say there’s any such thing as a personality or performance assessment that is completely without bias, but that’s another article).

The second interview typically lasts an hour and includes a selection of questions designed to deliver insight into all the candidates’ skills, experience, abilities, behaviors, and motivations, plus individual questions derived from our analysis of the pre-employment assessment.

It is important to group the first and second interviews together as much as possible. This helps to remember candidates more clearly relative to one another and can also help to reduce personal biases and filters from interfering with good hiring decisions. In most cases we have enough insight to choose from among the candidates after second interviews are complete.

Conclusion

The science of interviewing integrates psychology, communications, social sciences, and ethical considerations to deliver a systematic approach for evaluating candidates. Does that sound like a lot of work? Well, it’s not so much a lot of work as it is a lot of learning and study. These days I can prepare for a good interview process in an hour or two, but it’s taken me 30 years of study and practice to get to this point. Is it worth it? Most definitely. Understanding human behavior and using best practices improves the accuracy and the fairness of hiring, which leads to making better choices and, ultimately, to running better companies.

Which brings us back to dating. After what I lovingly refer to as the “Big BFF Intervention, or BBI” my dating took a turn for the better, and it wasn’t long after that I found the relationship that would turn into the love of my life and (at the time I write this) nearly 25 years of commitment. Though I do appreciate the mistakes I made before the BBI, I’m also quite relieved that I was able to stop making them. After all, dating is fun … for a while. But what you really want to do is get on with your life, and when it comes to the quality of life … and business! … the decisions we make really matter.

Addendum: AI in the Interview Process

The following addendum added on 10/30/2023 to reflect accelerating use of AI in the hiring process.

The fact that HR departments — and companies that have no formal HR process at all — are increasingly integrating AI tools into the hiring process is concerning on many levels. It is hard enough to get human beings past their biases, poor listening skills, and vague communications; though producing structured interviews and providing training can at least help with that. But the algorithms powering AI tools are opaque, and we have no idea if they have been meticulously designed to avoid biases.

AI systems learn from historical data, and if that data contains biases, AI will perpetuate those biases and cause discriminatory outcomes. To date there is very little transparency regarding the data used for AI decision-making. You need to understand and be able to explain how AI systems make recommendations (download our e-book to understand the evaluation process you should use when implementing AI in any business process).

Of equal concern, the lack of human empathy and understanding in AI systems could lead to misinterpretation of candidate responses. Human emotions and contextual cues are vital for successful interviewing, and AI cannot respond to them the way a trained human interviewer would. If an initial video interview is conducted using AI, only to be skimmed watched by a hiring manager after-the-fact, there’s no opportunity to further probe candidate responses. This can lead to failure to understand a candidate’s suitability for a role. Additionally, reliance on AI hiring tools might result in a loss of the personal touch needed to effectively evaluate a candidate’s soft skills, emotional intelligence, and cultural fit within an organization.

AI is being used to increase hiring efficiency, but it should be used sparingly. Concerns about fairness, unbiased evaluation, and privacy protection are important, but perhaps most important is that AI still does not have the ability to use psychology, sociology, and communication sciences sufficiently to improve HR outcomes. The result for most companies will likely be making all the same hiring mistakes they make now … only faster.

It's time for all lawmakers and wanna-be lawmakers to denounce Michelle Bachman's Muslim witch-hunt. After six people were murdered for being perceived to be Islamists in Wisconsin yesterday, and a mosque in Joplin burned to the ground today, it's time that our leaders take responsibility for their part in even tacitly supporting this most UnAmerican of behaviors. Any insanity in the name of "God" and "country" is still insanity - and we are no better for behaving violently for those reasons here than those we denounce for behaving violently for those reasons elsewhere.

Dear White People,

I’m glad we’re discussing race. As the heirs & beneficiaries of the systems that limit people of color, it’s our job to end institutional racism. We must examine our attitudes, prejudices, behaviors, and fears, and understand how they contribute to stereotyping, exclusion, and violence. Yes, we need to talk.

Honestly, it should be largely a white conversation. We’re not talking to Black people – they already know more about racism than any of us could ever handle. We’re not talking for Black people. They speak eloquently and profoundly for themselves. In fact, there are several things that are happening that really, really, need to stop.

Don’t use Black icons to defend your fears and opinions. Saying, “I can’t imagine what Martin Luther King would think about this rioting;” and posting Black leaders’ or celebrities’ quotes to support your anti-BLM or anti-protesting position is wrong. And you're right - you really can't imagine.

What you're actually saying when you do this is, “See! Black people agree with me on this!” But they don’t. They really don’t. Using Black voices to promote a white perspective is a form of appropriation and an act of privilege. If you don’t understand this, read this paragraph over and over again until you do.

Don’t say, “I’m (gay, female, fat, short, etc.), so I understand.” Not the same. All discrimination is bad, and we must eliminate all of it. But it’s not all the same. The sooner we realize we don’t understand, the sooner we will begin to.

Get over the “I have Black friends/I’m not racist” false equivalence. If you do have Black friends – as in, the kind of friends who would lean on you in a crisis like family – then you wouldn’t even use this defense. Most likely, you have Black acquaintances. One can certainly be a racist while playing nice in a meeting room or at the gym.

“I don’t see color” is not a thing. Of course you do. We all see color. Our ability, as white people, to ignore color is part of our privilege. Those arrogant, angry, white McCloskeys pointing a pistol and semiautomatic at peaceful protestors in St. Louis last week are alive now because they are white. Everyone sees color.

When you defend confederate monuments, you’re not defending history. What you’re really saying is, “I don’t know why they have to be offended about glorifying racists and why I have to care.” Here is a parallel for you to consider: The devil is an important part of Christian teaching. The lessons are regularly taught, and remembered. But you won’t find monuments to Satan in Christian churches. We can teach about evil without aggrandizing it.

Don’t use any Black person — ever — to make your point. If you’re offended by looting and rioting, don’t use looted Black store owner to suggest that “his Black life didn’t matter.” You don’t get to speak for — or assume to understand — Black people who suffered losses during the riots.

We don't get to point out conflict between Black liberals and Black conservatives and say, "I guess Black conservatives' lives don't matter." This is just a cynical, appropriating way of using Black people to support being offended by Black Lives Matter. 

We don't get to suggest Black cops are hurt by Black Lives Matter. Do you even KNOW any Black cops? People in the Black Lives Matter movement (including cops — Black and white) don’t see it as “Black vs. Blue.” That’s a white construct. Stop it. It’s not real.

We don’t get to complain about how tired we are of all the stress and confusion and angst. You know who’s tired? Talk to any Black mother. She’s fucking tired. Of asking, and praying, and giving the talk, and kneeling, and watching her loved ones suffer. And go to jail. And die. All the dying. Black moms are all so tired.

If you mean well and you’re committed to change, but you've just made some rookie white ally mistakes, then OK. You can learn and do better. We all can. If I’ve offended you so far, then I have news for you. You’re not a white ally. You’re just posing as a white ally. Does this surprise or hurt your feelings? Then do better! We have lifetimes of deprogramming to do. Let's start now.

Now let’s talk about what we should do. First, we should listen to Black voices, even when it’s uncomfortable, even though it hurts. If you feel defensive, that’s human, but not useful. So let’s do the hard work, open our hearts, and hear and try to feel the pain.

We can be accountable for our reactions and feelings. Why did the protests scare you if you didn’t live anywhere near them? Why does the phrase Black Lives Matter make you squirm? What impulse makes you insist All Lives Matter when you hear Black Lives Matter? Why do you feel tense when you approach a group of young black men? Why do you wonder to yourself if the Black mom in the supermarket checkout line is about to use a WIC card (pro tip here — white families account for the vast majority of food stamps dollars in the US)? What assumptions and biases and beliefs are you clinging to that perpetuate the problem? Dig deep.

We can be brave and say something. Don’t let any small or large racist comment or action go without challenging it. If white people object to racism and racial stereotyping every time we see it or hear it, we can end it. Silence in the face of tyranny is . . . tyranny.

We can rethink what we’ve been taught and study what we don’t know. Study the Black Panthers, read the New York Times “1619 Project,” “White Fragility” by Robin Diangelo, or “Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White.” Watch “13th,” “Teach Us All,” or “Malcolm X.” There's more! Explore the websites Racial Equity Tools, or Not in Our Town. Yes, do this even if you already have Black friends . . .

There’s so much more. Vote. Organize. Support. Join. Make change happen. Yes, let’s talk about racism. Let’s have a big old white conversation, informed by Black history, perspectives and voices. Let’s take responsibility for a 500-year-old problem. Let’s fix what’s broken. Let’s own it.