A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar

Understanding Unconscious Bias: Interview with Jessica Nordell

June 03, 2022 Randy Knie & Kyle Whitaker Season 2 Episode 23
A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar
Understanding Unconscious Bias: Interview with Jessica Nordell
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In this episode, we speak with science writer and award-winning journalist Jessica Nordell about her book The End of Bias: A Beginning. It's an extraordinarily well-researched and compellingly written explanation of the science of implicit bias, covering its manifestations in many areas, including sexism, racism, policing, and more. Our conversation tackles how to understand implicit bias, as well as evidence-based methods of attempting to solve the problems it creates. Along the way, we discuss practical police reforms, the benefits of mindfulness, the difficulty of judging past actors, and recognizing the bias and judgmentalism in ourselves. It's probably one of the most important conversations we've had on the show.

The beverages we sample in the episode are Strawberry Hibiscus and SRV from Manic Meadery.

The beverage tasting is at 3:20. To skip to the interview, go to 10:44.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

Content note: this episode contains discussion of violence and some mild profanity.

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Cheers!

Kyle:

Well welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. On this episode...

Randy:

You did it again. Why do you say it like that?

Kyle:

I don't know, it sounds normal to me.

Randy:

He goes "Welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar."

Kyle:

He's not wrong.

Randy:

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle:

We also invite experts to join us, making public space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy:

Thanks for joining us and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.

Kyle:

On this episode, we are talking with Jessica Nordell, who is a science writer, a journalist, she I think is in some ways kind of a scientist in her own right. She's definitely got an academic science background. And she wrote this fantastic book. I was, it was hard to believe that it was her first book, honestly. Now she's like, she's, she's a serious writer. She publishes in the Atlantic, New York Times, you name it, she's, she's got pieces in like large scale national publications. So she's no slouch, she knows what she's doing. But this book is, one, really well written, just compellingly and engagingly written, but also so well researched. So like there's, it's a longish book, it's nearing on 300 pages, but then there's like at least another 50 pages of endnotes of just reference after reference after reference after reference, she seriously did her homework in this book. And the book is called The End of Bias: A Beginning, The Science and Future of Overcoming Unconscious Bias. If you've been a listener of our show for a while, you know that this is pretty close to some of the major themes on our podcast. We often come back to how to navigate serious disagreements across ideological divides, how we can achieve a kind of intellectual humility, and bias is a huge aspect of that. And it's not something we've directly tackled on the podcast. And it's something about which there is a huge amount of empirical psychological research. And she does such a good job of distilling literally decades of that research into a compelling and easily digestible form. So I honestly can't recommend this book highly enough. And it's been nominated for all kinds of awards. It's a finalist for the J Anthony Lucas prize for excellence in nonfiction... bunch of others. Go to her website to see all these awards that she's nominated for. So we were honestly kind of lucky to get her on the show.

Randy:

Yeah, no, it's fun, and I really enjoy that she's not a Christian writer, she's not even a Christian. And, but she's an, she's an expert, her journalism chops make her and her research so robust and, and really credible. And it's, it's, it's an important book, we say important every once in a while on this podcast, and this is an important book, whether you're in the business world, whether you're in the church world, whether you're in the nonprofit world, whether you're, you know, stay at home parents, this is an important book and an important thing for us all to reckon with in our cultural moment that we find ourselves in. So I'm excited to talk to her, excited to share this conversation with you friends. So if there's any new listeners, which geez I hope there are a few of you new listeners, thank you for stopping in, we are A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar and that "bar" word actually means something. We start every episode with a tasting, we taste a tasty alcoholic beverage. Usually it's bourbon or beer. But if you're a listener, and you remember the "Two Philosophers and Two Pastors Walk into a Bar" or whatever we called it, we tasted a mead, and I pretty much lost my brain. I lost my mind. And we, friends, drumroll please... we are tasting two meads today.

Kyle:

Two meads. Yeah.

Randy:

Oh baby.

Kyle:

Two meads. So I'm a member of a meadery called Manic in Crown Point, Indiana so...

Randy:

Brilliant stuff.

Kyle:

...at least once a quarter I'm getting new Manic mead and it's always amazing. And so they've just branched out into what are called session meads. So just lower ABV and kind of fizzy, you know, carbonated canned meads. Session just generally means it's kind of, you can drink more of it.

Randy:

Which when I was introduced to mead, it was carbonated. It was more like beer.

Kyle:

Okay, yeah, yeah, so the last mead we had from them was still mead, so no carbonation. So these are going to be a little fizzier. And I've got a couple of them because they made two and I think they kind of go together. They both, both got strawberry in them. So we'll see what you think, this first one we're going to try is called Strawberry Hibiscus. Is it "strawberry... high-biscous" or "strawberry hibiscus"? I've literally never heard anyone say "hibiscus."

Elliot:

It's, yeah, "hibiscus."

Randy:

You're from Kentucky.

Kyle:

Is that really what you say? "Hibiscus"?

Elliot:

Well, not "hi-biscus," just "hibiscus."

Kyle:

No, it's a long "i," it's gotta be.

Randy:

How about we taste this?

Kyle:

Smell, smell it first.

Randy:

It smells like strawberry jam. Holy cow. Smells like candy, like Jolly Ranchers.

Elliot:

Oh, it tastes like Jolly Ranchers too.

Kyle:

Yeah. So I'm a lover of strawberry anything. Strawberry shortcake, one of my favorite things in the world. And this has that, I don't know, that tart sweetness of any good ripe strawberry. But then also this herbal thing. Tastes a little gardeny but in a really good way.

Randy:

Less herbal, more strawberry for me.

Kyle:

Yeah, it is candy-like. I'm regretting saying it tastes like Jolly Ranchers as well, because there is something that's such real strawberry here that no Jolly Rancher comes close to.

Randy:

Yep, this is delicious. This is what I would want, if I didn't have a smoothie, fruit smoothie beer from Eagle Park, I would want this on my patio on a hot summer day. Good lord this is good.

Kyle:

Yeah. And if you're not really familiar with mead, you might not know, you'd just think this is a delicious fizzy sweet beverage.

Randy:

This is what I imagine all those doofusy, you know, what are the little canned fruity drinks that people... White Claw! So this is what I imagine all the White Claws and terrible things should taste like. You know what I mean?

Kyle:

Oh, yeah. Like, this is the form that those try to

Randy:

Yeah. But this is kind of, it's like a rose almost, a approximate. carbonated rose.

Kyle:

It kind of has the color of a rose as well.

Randy:

Yeah, it's really good.

Kyle:

It's got the viscosity of a, like the strawberry reduction syrup, though. It's thick stuff.

Randy:

Kind of, I mean...

Kyle:

Well, yeah, compared to most, like, still melomels, it's not thick at all, right? If you're kind of used to that then really almost syrupy like texture. This is really easy drinking compared to that. But if you're used to White Claw, yeah, absolutely.

Randy:

I mean, I don't want to tell Manic Meadery how to do their meads, but I would say I would like just a little bit more subtlety because it's major.

Kyle:

Well, we'll see what you think about the next one. Okay. So this next one is called SRV. Little, little bit Wisconsin going on here even though it's from Indiana: strawberry rhubarb, with some, with some vanilla. We'll see what you think about this one.

Randy:

If you're a Wisconsinite, you know strawberry rhubarb equals magic. It doesn't smell nearly as sweet. Oh, it's, that's weird.

Elliot:

It's vanilla.

Randy:

Yes. Yes.

Elliot:

I like it a lot. But I, it's not at all what I was expecting with...

Randy:

It tastes like, it reminds me so much of cream soda.

Kyle:

Yeah, like a vanilla ice cream soda.

Randy:

Super interesting. I would not expect that out of a strawberry rhubarb.

Kyle:

I don't think I'd even call out the rhubarb in that if I was tasting it blind.

Randy:

It's a totally different thing.

Kyle:

It doesn't taste at all like it looks.

Elliot:

It would be the most delicious cream soda.

Randy:

Yeah, it's really good.

Kyle:

And it's not like sickly sweet. I mean, it's pretty sweet. But I don't feel like I can, you know, have a couple sips and that's it.

Randy:

No. Yeah. I mean, it is, like you said, I could have a glass, glass and a half of this and then be done.

Kyle:

Best think about these is they're 6%, so you can, if it was a hot summer day, slam a few of these.

Randy:

Patio pounders baby.

Elliot:

If you can handle that much sugar. It's not the alcohol that gets you first with these.

Kyle:

No, no, no, you'll quit because of the sugar.

Randy:

I just want to say if you are, if you're passionate at all about delicious beverages, delicious alcoholic beverages, and mead, meads are something that you haven't branched into, look for em, because it's, it's a whole different ballgame. And it's really, really fun.

Kyle:

And they're proliferating. There's new, new meaderies popping up all over the place.

Elliot:

Do you think, is mead the next big cult following beverage?

Kyle:

Oh yea, it already has been for a few years now. Like every serious beer geek is... yeah.

Elliot:

Yeah. Yeah. You don't have any perspective on what's actually going mainstream though.

Kyle:

No, as far as like, no, no, as far as mass culture...

Elliot:

Like, you're in the dark web of...

Kyle:

..like, are Miller drinkers ever gonna gravitate to mead, I doubt it. But the popularity that, like, bourbon spiked and like it wasn't always like that.

Randy:

But like, you can, I can go to our liquor store five blocks away and find a fruit slushy beer in the cooler. Right, like, so that's actually made it somewhat mainstream. I think mead will be like that.

Kyle:

Yeah. Especially these sessions that they're getting into now, because they're shelf stable.

Randy:

It's just a world that you owe yourself to dive into.

Elliot:

Yeah.

Randy:

Like, it's, it's fantastic.

Kyle:

I will say this is a delicious summer drink, but I would prefer the still mead.

Randy:

Yes.

Kyle:

Oh, absolutely.

Randy:

100%.

Kyle:

Yeah. Yeah, no question.

Elliot:

Yeah.

Randy:

All right. Well, Manic Meadery, we love you.

Kyle:

Cheers!

Randy:

Friends, you've heard us talk about Patreon and our Patreon supporters and how grateful we are for them. And we want to invite you to become a Patreon supporter by June 4, because we're doing some special things on June 4. The first thing we're doing is we're having a live Q&A for every Patreon supporter level. It's gonna be great. You're gonna be able to ask us any question you want, philosophical, theological, spiritual, booze.

Kyle:

Yeah man.

Randy:

All of it is on the table. It's going to be live and we get to see each other's faces on Zoom. It's going to be good time.

Kyle:

Yeah, and that'll cost you at most $3 a month if you want to subscribe at the lowest level but that'll be for everybody.

Randy:

Absolutely. Then, into the evening on June 4, at six o'clock, we will be hosting an in person tasting for our Top Shelf supporters. This will be a fun night, our second annual in person Top Shelf tasting.

Kyle:

Yeah, we, we have usually bourbon and maybe some, some things to snack on and we talk about whatever it is you wanna

Randy:

We have a great time together, eating, drinking, talk about. talking about things that we want to talk about on the podcast, reflecting on things in the last year. It's a really beautiful time, and we'd love for you to be there. And the way to be there is to become a Top Shelf supporter.

Kyle:

So to get signed up for this, just head to patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher. Select your tier level, and we'll see you there.

Randy:

Cheers.

Kyle:

Jessica Nordell, thanks so much for being on A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar.

Jessica:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Kyle:

So just to get us rolling here, you wrote this book called

The End of Bias:

A Beginning. And it was, you were actually recommended to us from a sort of, a mutual acquaintance who listened to our shows and found some common themes. We talk a lot about disagreement and having difficult conversations and, you know, how to do that well. And this person was like, you have to read this book and consider having this person on your show. And I'm really, really glad she did. I want to say this may be my favorite book we've done on the podcast, which listeners will know that's high praise. So I'm really excited to talk about it. So can you tell us just a little bit of your background and what made you want to write this.

Jessica:

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a science writer, journalist, and I have been writing about bias and discrimination for a really long time, I think I wrote my first story about gender bias in like 2006. And I got interested in it because of some of my own experiences in the workplace. And that just started kind of a I mean, at this point, you know, a 15 year fascination with how our minds work, how people can believe one thing, but act in another way, or believe themselves to be a certain kind of person, but then behave in a way that conflicts with those values. And I wrote about this issue for a really long time, but eventually got a little bit tired of just talking about the problem, I really wanted to talk about what we do about it, how we actually move forward to acting in a way that's more fair and more aligned with our values, those of us who value you know, fairness and egalitarianism. So at first I thought, well, I'll just, I'll just do some research. And I'll find a book about this. And I'll, you know, dig in and figure out what, what there is to, to know about how people change and overcome biases. And I couldn't really, I couldn't find that book. I mean, I assumed it had already been written. And so I, perhaps in a foolhardy way thought, well, I'll do this book. And so that was really the genesis of the book, I really wanted to answer this question that I had, personally, which is how do we act in a way that's more consistent with our values? And what approaches have actually changed people? You know, what, what does the data say about how change happens?

Randy:

Jessica, you mentioned your personal experiences influencing and kind of bringing about why you looked into it. In the beginning of your book, you mention two things that I'd love for you to tell our listeners about. The first is your experience in trying to get just any feedback or emails in response to articles that you wrote. And, super fascinating story. And then also the experience of a trans person who you tell the story of, and their experience with bias in their history, in their personhood. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about that because that's, really got me right away.

Jessica:

Yeah, absolutely. The story you're referring to is that of Ben Barres, who's a, who was a renowned neurobiologist at Stanford, and transitioned and became known to the world as Ben, when he was in his 40s. Up to that point, he had been working as a biologist and had not really encountered much of what he thought was gender bias, you know, not, not much that he would have categorized as gender bias. He, you know, would occasionally experience things that seemed a little off, but mostly he just thought he was being treated like everybody else. And then he transitioned. And he began presenting to the world as Ben, and he was shocked and how differently he was treated. So he was the same scientist, he had the same position, the same professorship, you know, same publication record, same everything. But what he noticed was that he started being treated with more respect by scientific colleagues, he was interrupted less in meetings, committee meetings, he started being given the benefit of the doubt more often. And he was really surprised because he had not noticed the absence of all of these things before because he hadn't had anything to compare it to. So it was this sort of before and after, you know, A-B test that illuminated to him the ways that he had been treated differently as a woman, you know, when he was presenting to the world as a woman.

Randy:

Fascinating.

Jessica:

So I found, yeah, I find his story really fascinating and illuminating. And yeah, really powerful also.

Randy:

And then your experience with bias in trying to get articles even looked at?

Jessica:

Yeah, so this was, you know, one of the kind of key moments that started my personal quest to understand this issue. I was starting out as a journalist in my 20s. And I was living in Minneapolis, where I live now. And I was writing for local and regional publications, and doing fine, but I wanted to try pitching national publications. And I had this particular essay I was really excited about, it was really topical at that particular moment. And I pitched it to all these editors, and I didn't hear anything back. And the clock was ticking, I knew that I only had a short window where this piece would be relevant. So I kind of had this like desperate moment where I thought, well, I'll just try pitching it under a different name. And I don't, I don't remember exactly why I just had that idea. But I think it was just like, necessity is the mother of invention. I just thought, well, I gotta try something else, what I'm doing isn't working. So I sent it out under a different name, I sent it out under the initials JD Nordell instead of Jessica. And I made a new email address, and, you know, new signature line and everything. And the piece was accepted by an editor the same day that I pitched it. I was really surprised. I didn't actually expect this was going to work. But for a while after that I used JD when I was pitching national magazines and newspapers, and I placed a lot of stories that way.

Randy:

But I'm sure the people that you were emailing and reaching out to trying to get your, your essay noticed and published, would never say that they, I don't prefer men over women, of course not. But you didn't, you, the facts of the matter are you couldn't get a response until you came off as a potential man. And that's incredible. I wouldn't guess that in a million years.

Jessica:

Yeah, I was really surprised also. And you know, but it's consistent with Ben Barres's experience, which was that when he presented to the world as Ben, even though he was the same scientist, he was treated really differently by scientists who pride themselves on objectivity, you know, and don't see themselves necessarily as affected by some of these....

Kyle:

Yeah, and so do, yeah, so do editors of national publications I would imagine. So this is a good example of unconscious bias, which is what the topic of your book is. So can you just define that for listeners that might not be

Jessica:

So unconscious bias, you know, as opposed to, like, familiar with it? overt racism or overt sexism is, is what happens when people react spontaneously and automatically to a situation or a person in a way that conflicts with their professed values. And what we think happens, or sort of the, the idea of unconscious bias is that we live in a culture that is constantly showering us with cultural knowledge, stereotypes, associations, about different categories of people. And all of that information gets stored in memory. And when we encounter a person who we categorize, instantly categorize as belonging to a social group that our culture says is important, all of that information that we've stored in memory starts to influence the way that we interact. So, you know, I'm interacting with you, I'm categorizing you as, as a man, as you know, of a certain age, all of these different kinds of social identifiers. And that, with the idea of unconscious bias, is that all of that social information is now influencing how I'm interacting with you.

Kyle:

Yeah.

Randy:

And I like the point that you make in the book several times, Jessica, it's, it's almost like you kind of take the edges off of it, because to be told that I have bias and I make decisions based on my biases, that can be a little insulting, little insecure about that. What you make clear in the book is that it doesn't mean that you're a bad person that you have unconscious bias, it means that you live in a culture, right?

Jessica:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think most of, most of us, Yep. We'll get to that in a bit. most of us see ourselves as, as not being influenced by bias. I mean, I think even, you know, I going into this project, thought, wrongly, that I'm probably a little less biased than everybody else. And I am going to gather all of this information, I'm going to synthesize it, I'm going to like really understand it, and I'm going to present it and it's not really going to change me personally that much. But I was, I was totally wrong about that.

Kyle:

Yeah, yeah. That's some interesting stuff there. Like I, I still feel that way, having read your book. When you, when you said that I thought, but I am less biased.

Randy:

I'm not surprised.

Kyle:

Like I'm quite sure, even right now. So I want to quote something you say, because I thought it was really beautiful and I actually tweeted it. You say, "Bias is woven through culture like a silver thread woven through cloth. In some lights, it's brightly visible. In others, it's hard to distinguish. And your position relative to that flashing thread determines whether you see it at all." Really nice, I think, image of what unconscious bias is. So it also implies though, that you can be made to see it, right, by changing perspective. So do you think that's always true?

Jessica:

Well, always is kind of, is a difficult, is a difficult word. But I, I do think that is possible to move from a state of less awareness to more awareness. And one of the reasons I think that's possible is that that was a transformation that I went through, personally. You know, I think, for that reason, I actually prefer to use the term unexamined bias, than unconscious bias, because unconscious sort of implies, this is like, beyond the realm of conscious awareness. And unexamined to me means it's, it's living there somewhere in our heads. But if we take the initiative, and we have the motivation, and we have the commitment to examining it, to looking inside ourselves, then we can actually open up a whole, like world of growth and change.

Kyle:

Yeah, and your book is really hopeful in that way. And we're gonna get to some of this, you tell lots and lots of examples of where that's happened effectively, and people really have reduced their bias in measurable ways. So if people are listening and thinking, gosh, this sounds like a depressing book, it's really not, like, most of it is taken up with hopeful solutions that are actually actionable. So we're gonna come to that. I have a longish question. So apologies for that. And I hope it's not too tangential. If it ends up being too tangential, we'll cut it out. But just curious what you think. So something you say towards the end of chapter one, I'm gonna just quote a little bit of it here. You say, "The prejudice paradox"--and maybe, maybe it'd be good to start with saying what that is, but--"The prejudice paradox may not be a sign that people are lying, but simply that they haven't fully scrutinized the interior of their own minds. In this case, the conflict may not be between people's true egalitarian beliefs on one hand, and their habitual associations on the other, but between people's unexamined beliefs and their moral values." So first, could you maybe just describe a little bit about what you were getting at in that quote, and then I'll have a follow up.

Jessica:

Yeah, well, so there's kind of this, some debate among the researchers about the nature of unconscious bias. There's a camp that really sees these reactions as separate from our beliefs. So we believe, like, like, so in this case, I could say I fully believe that, that women are just as competent and capable as men. But because I live in a patriarchal culture that showers me with images of women that are not equal to men, I just spontaneously react that way. But it doesn't have anything to do with my belief system, my core belief system. That's one view. But there is another view among researchers that if I express, like a, some gender bias, or a sexist, you know, idea, toward a woman, that that is an expression of some kind of belief that I have. But perhaps it's a belief that I haven't really thought about that much, or I haven't really investigated. Maybe I just haven't really examined my own beliefs very carefully. And so it's kind of a subtle distinction. But, you know, I think it's an important distinction in some ways, because if what we're dealing with is actually our beliefs, and not just these kind of associations floating around in our head, but our real beliefs, then I think what's required to change it is kind of an investigation of our belief system, ya know, as well.

Kyle:

Yeah. So I guess I'm just curious where you come down on that. So I've had, like long, long term disagreements with some philosophy friends about this. I tend to think it's more of a philosophical question than an empirical one, frankly, I don't think psychology has the tools to settle this. And I kind of come down on the side that, you know, I take a pretty typical epistemologist's view of belief where it, you know, comes in degrees, it's complex, it's not fully under voluntary control, it can be justified even if it's false. And so this tends to make me think implicit bias and studying that psychologically, empirically, is a useful way to illuminate what, you know, belief is, and I tend to therefore be looking for charitable interpretations of people's behaviors. I have another friend, though, who's like no, if you, if you did it, that's what you believe. Full stop. You're, you're just a liar. So I'm curious, where do you fall?

Jessica:

I, that's an interesting question. I think that if this, if this book has taught me anything, it's that there are rarely easy either/or answers to these questions. And I think that in the case of unconscious bias, or if you might want to call it unexamined bias or unintentional bias, I think that it is a spectrum. And I think it can be, there can be a spectrum of reasons that anyone is reacting in a particular way at a particular time. Like we do know from psychology that any particular behavior we have has a whole constellation of possible causes and motivations. It's not like a uni-causal thing if I react in a particular way; there could be like 10 different reasons that I'm reacting that way. So I don't necessarily think people are lying if they say they believe one thing but they act another way. I think I come down more on the side of people just not necessarily examining their, their belief system. And that could be for a whole host of reasons. I mean, it could be that they are afraid to really look very closely, because it's threatening to see things that you don't like about yourself. It could be that they just haven't been motivated to do it. So the cause is a little bit muddy. I don't know if I have a perfect answer for you. But I don't I mean, I don't think it's as simple as people are just lying. And I don't think it's necessarily as simple as people are just spontaneously reacting to a stimulus because of absorbed cultural messages. I think it's somewhere between those two.

Kyle:

Yeah. That confirms my biases, so I'm totally in favor of your answer.

Randy:

Good, good. Personally, I think the important part isn't where it comes from--and this is me not as a philosopher or psychologist--it's what we do with it. It's, do we, do we live in denial and say, no, I would never favor a man over a woman or favor a white person over a black person or a straight person over LGBTQ, and so therefore you're wrong about what I, like, my actions. That I've seen over and over again, and that, to me is lying. That, to me, is disingenuous and problematic. That's the important thing, how we respond to the way we act, even if it's incongruous with what we believe.

Kyle:

Yeah.

Jessica:

Yeah, I agree.

Kyle:

So another thing that you do in the book, which I really liked, is you document that bias is contingent, both historically and neurobiologically, thank God. Right, we can, it's not necessary, we can do something about it. But you also say that it's pretty stable once it's formed. So for example, you say at one point, "While children's stereotypes and beliefs and prejudices are often more rigid and crude than those of the adults they become, there is evidence that the biases formed in childhood linger as traces, even if just below the surface." So I'm curious, you don't tackle this directly, but it just made me think of this. I'm curious what you think that might imply for judging past actors. So this is something that's come up on our podcast a couple of times, I think, and certainly related to stuff we talk about a lot. So for example, various people from the past being venerated in terms of having a statue to them or having, you know, buildings or streets named after them or whatever, slave owners, for example, and then there's a public push to stop doing that, stop venerating that. And the kind of pushback that you get is, well, you don't want to be anachronistic, that person was a product of their time, which kind of implies that, you know, they did the best they could with what they knew, we can't really hold them to current standards, even if it had occurred to them to liberate their slaves, they wouldn't have understood why they should. And so it's kind of wrong to judge them by contemporary standards. And then in response to that, people will point out, well, no, there have always been people who bucked the trend. There were abolitionist, you know. They knew. So, so because they did know, the other person could have and therefore ought to have. So I'm curious, what is your view of the role of bias in that? Do you think it sheds any light on how confidently we should judge people from past eras?

Jessica:

That's a really interesting question. I've thought about this a lot as well. And I continue to think about this a lot as well, like, how do you ingest some cultural product from the past, whether it's art or music or a political philosophy, when the person who created it has some aspect of their being that is abhorrent? You know, that is totally antithetical to, to what we believe to be moral and just today? You know, when I think about this question, I guess I think about it in a couple of ways. One is, in terms of like the statues question, you know, I think about what is the, what is the impact on people today? So, if you think about, you know, statues or street names venerating people who committed what we see as, like, atrocious acts, and then we ask, well, what is the impact on people walking around today, like, African American people who are living and working and trying to make a life in a culture that is filled with these sorts of images and statues and street names. I think that, you know, in that case, I come down on the side of seeing the negative impact and wanting to, wanting to minimize and reduce the harm to people who are living today. When I think about things like art and what we should do with art that comes from people who have troubling or, you know, horrific pasts or ideologies, I think about something that the poet Adrienne Rich said once, she was talking about Amiri Baraka, very famous African American poet whose work has quite a bit of homophobia in it. And Adrienne Rich was a lesbian feminist poet. And so she was asked about Amiri Baraka's work, you know, and the homophobia in his poetry. And she said something that really moved me and that I go back to a lot. She said, "His genius was disfigured by his homophobia." And I think that, that way of looking at it recognizes and honors the beauty in his work and the, the genius of his work, while simultaneously recognizing the harm done by those gaps in his awareness, you know, in his capacity.

Randy:

I like that. Yep.

Kyle:

Given, given, just one quick follow up, given what you know about bias, do you think it's fair to expect him to have

Jessica:

Um, is it fair to have expected him... overcome it?

Kyle:

Or maybe to phrase it differently, should the standards for expecting people to overcome it now be the same as they would be for him? Because there's all sorts of resources, right, somebody that's biased in that way today can turn on the television and see many examples of healthy gay relationships. That wasn't the case for him. So like, given what you know about how bias pervades and is stabilized as a certain kind of view, should we change our standards?

Jessica:

To me, I don't know if like, the question for me is like, is it fair to judge him by today's standards? I think in general, we hope that our artists are a little bit ahead of everybody else, you know, are visionaries, and we, we can see in like the great art over the centuries, that a lot of artists are. I mean, if I read like George Eliot, like 19th century Victorian novelist, her feminist consciousness is so highly, you know, sophisticated that it, you know, she was able to see things that I think her peers weren't able to see. Now, would it be fair to expect everyone to be able to do that? I don't know if, I guess I have a hard time with that question. It's sort of, it is what it is, you know, they, everyone is wherever they are on their own journey. And I, I guess I, I look more at, at trying to understand what to do with their work, rather than trying to figure out how to how to judge them as a person.

Kyle:

Sure. Fair.

Randy:

Yep.

Jessica:

But I'm curious what you think.

Kyle:

Well, I mean, you know, I'm speaking as more as an ethicist than as a scientist. If I had been interested in the descriptive question, I guess I would have gone a different direction.

Jessica:

I mean, what do you think? Do you think it's fair to judge people by the standards of today, if they were, you know, writing homophobic poetry 40 years ago, 50 years ago?

Kyle:

Well, I guess I would say there's a distinction I would want to draw between making a judgment of rightness or wrongness, and making a judgment of culpability. So I think it's probably fair to say that their culpability might be somewhat different. If we were to put them in a time machine, we'd probably punish them harder today than we might have back then. But yeah, I guess the moral judgment, I want to say is, is the same. Yeah. And I guess I am persuaded by you know, there were people in their contexts who did see it. And some of them weren't disposed to see it, and came to learn it in a hard way. So yeah, I tend to have a pretty high bar I guess.

Randy:

Yeah you do. Yeah. I tend to, to see that on, just, I'm doing better than my dad did. And mom did. And they're doing better than their parents did. And I'm super excited for what my kids are going to be talking about and dreaming about in 20, 30 years, because it's going to be way better and farther along than I am. And at the same time, the people like William Wilberforce or fill in the blank with the virtuous person who actually...

Kyle:

John Brown...

Randy:

Yeah, who just got it on this really incredible level. Holy shit I want to be like that person. You know, like I want to be in our time look back on and say, wow, everybody would, most people just lost their brains about what humanity, what human beings were, that person got it, and I want to be like that. But yeah. Jessica, in chapter 4, you called it "Breaking the Habit"--I love your your chapter names, by the way--you get a bit personal and go into your own biases and your process of growing in awareness and mindfulness. And that word mindfulness is something that we'll get to, you know, more in depth in a couple of questions. But can you articulate just how this process, you know, take, take all the case studies and the research that you did out of it, and how this just kind of exposed your own biases and made you confront things in yourself and what you did about them? Like, how did this, how was writing this book and researching for this book a transformative journey for you?

Jessica:

Well, I can remember the sort of first moment of real reckoning, which happened on a research trip, it was actually researching that chapter that you're describing, and I, I spent a couple of days with researchers just completely immersed in this material. And, you know, thinking about it, talking about it, interviewing people, looking at research, reading about it. And I had this sort of, like, I don't know, like, almost like psychedelic kind of like, insight into my own mind. And I remember, like, one particular moment, like, I saw these people at this, in this hotel lobby, and then I could sort of see in real time the story that I was telling about them that happened in like, you know, an eighth of a second. And then, you know, then I started questioning, like, why why am I telling that story about them? Why am I making these assumptions? Where are these judgments coming from? And it was kind of like a, it was alarming to see how quickly and automatically and spontaneously I was making judgments about everyone I saw, like all the time. So that was, that sort of like, opened, you know, opened my mind to or opened, I guess my own, I don't know, consciousness to seeing what was happening in myself. And that process just kind of kept happening over various, you know, ups and downs. It wasn't like a continual explosion every single day. I don't know if I would have survived writing the book if that had been the case, but frequently, you know, I would have these moments of, you know, confronting my own judgments, or, in some cases it came about because I made a mistake, because I screwed up in some way. And because I screwed up, I had to go back and ask myself, why did I make that assumption? Like, why did I, why did I assume this person was x instead of y? And, yeah so it was very humbling. But it was also so freeing. Because, you know, like, James Baldwin has this quote, it's a wonderful quote, you know, "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it is faced."

Randy:

I just saw that on the walls of the museum in Greenbush, Tulsa where white people burned down this whole neighborhood in Tulsa, where Black Wall Street was burned down, and they have a museum with that quote emboldened on the wall of the exterior of this museum. So, man.

Jessica:

It's, it's so important. And I think, really, it's sitting with that, sitting with the ways that I had been conditioned, that I have been conditioned by society, by culture, to react to different groups in certain ways, was like the first step in agency for me. It was what allowed me to move forward in a different way.

Randy:

Yep. I had a moment like that. This is like, I'm the pastor, so this is confession and repentance, is, you know, how we'll do that. But I had a moment a couple of years ago at the pool, which is, we live in a suburban neighborhood, and it's a gorgeous, perfect pool for our kids. And I'm sitting there and there's this African American teenager, young, young man sitting behind me. And I'm kind of aware of his presence. And I put my phone down, go in the pool, come back, and the phone's gone. And I immediately went to this guy stole my phone. And I started looking around for it. And I was so close to being like, bro, where's the phone, it had my cards in the case and the whole deal, it was important. And I was getting upset, and internally, I was getting hot. And all of a sudden, I reached down in the bag a little further and there it was. But I had this, I had to sit there for 10, 15 minutes afterwards and just realize that I just did that. Like, he probably could sense my discomfort. He could probably sense where I was going with my body language and all that. But I knew damn well that I just considered him guilty of stealing my phone because he's black, because he's a young black man. And I, I've lost people from our church because I talk about racism and equality and all this stuff. You know, like I consider myself a champion of civil rights, if I could, you know, if I could say that. And yet, I'm confronted by this bias that just went totally without my thinking, without my conscious choice, I felt like. And I was appalled by myself. And I think that's what you're getting at it. For me, it wasn't psychedelic, it was terrifying. But like you're saying, it was humbling, and it was a doorway into reckoning with the truth of what's in me.

Jessica:

That's so powerful, such a powerful story. Thank you for sharing it. Yeah. And I think that once, when you, when you can see it and you recognize it, now you're, now you're dealing with reality.

Randy:

Yes.

Elliot:

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Randy:

So in chapters five and six--"The Mind, The Heart, The Moment" is chapter five, and"The Watts Jigsaw" is chapter six--those just absolutely floored me, blew me away. The book could have been just about those two chapters, and I would, I would recommend it to everyone. And it's about policing. It's about bias in policing. But you do it in such a, a level headed, even handed way that just blew me away. You speak to empirical data that shows, just, it's just a fact that black men are exponentially more likely to be victims of police brutality. You bring this empirical data that's just, you can't argue with it. But then you also kind of bring us into the reality of what it means to be a cop in America, what it means to be a police officer, the daily, multiple times per day trauma that police officers experience. And you, you outline it in particulars, you know that, just being the first to respond to a crash where a four year old girl is killed, or having to tell parents that that four year old girl is dead, or having to hold space with a domestic violence thing that's gone, I mean, you can just go on down the line. And what that does to police officers' minds and psyches and bodies and how they carry that trauma and bury it. It made me have so much more compassion for police officers, I'll just admit this, than I've had in a long time. But then you outline what happens when biases are acknowledged by police officers and by police departments. You know, you highlight psychologists talking to police officers in Los Angeles saying, I'm just, I'm not comfortable with black, I've never grew up around black people, I'm afraid of black men, to be honest with you. Like, officers getting really honest with a psychologist and going into what's going on beneath the surface, and then how to actually, what departments have done, whether it's in Oregon, or in Watts, or you know, you name it, to actually police in a different way that brings about empirically different results in neighborhoods and in relationships between police officers and the community, and police departments and the community, and what happens when some different training and equipping and mindfulness is introduced into the, into the equation. And you show that there's, you know, Watts, Los Angeles, where transformation in that neighborhood happened because of changes in policing. Can you bring our listeners into that world? Because it just, it excited so much hope in me, I can't even tell you, Jessica.

Jessica:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yes, the work that's been done in Watts is, is really interesting to me, because I think it, it shows that there are structural changes that can be made that have downstream effects and actually change the way police interact with citizens. And so this is, this is a program that was developed by a civil rights attorney who was frustrated after spending decades suing LAPD, seeing that the lawsuits weren't actually changing the institution. And, you know, one of her insights was that you can't court order a person to feel a particular way about another person, you can't, like, legislation only goes so far. It can limit abuses, it can limit the very worst abuses, but it can't cause an officer to love or respect or care for a person. And that's what she identified was really what needed to change. And so in that particular approach, what was so interesting is, I mean, there's a whole, it's a very long story, but briefly, the way they did it was by changing the incentives of the police. So for this very small cohort that was this sort of pilot program, instead of being rewarded for making arrests, they were rewarded for demonstrating that they had built relationships, so that the officers were actually like, rewarded for completely different behavior.

Randy:

Amazing.

Jessica:

And the officers that I spoke to who had been in this program for 5 years, 10 years, said it completely changed the way that they saw the community that they were serving, because when they actually started developing real relationships and started developing care and even love for for the people that they were serving, they began to just interact with them in completely different ways. You know, and then the community recognized that respect and that care and responded in kind. One of the officers I spoke with said, I would never go back to the old way of policing.

Kyle:

And the results were, like, significant, right, like, demonstrably?

Jessica:

The results were significant. Yeah, I mean, there were a couple of independent research groups that evaluated this particular program. And they found that, yeah, arrests went down significantly. So police weren't off arresting people for low level crimes, but violence also went down. So it shows that you don't need to arrest your way out of violent crime, you can actually decrease both of them at the same time if you create structural change to the way police are interacting with the community. I mean, another thing it did was it increased the clearance rates, because when there was a violent crime, like, there was actual trust and respect between officers and the community. And so the community would tell them, you know, in one case, one of the deputy chiefs I talked to said in one case, there was a homicide, and someone just called him on his cell phone and told him who did it.

Randy:

Never would have happened the old way.

Jessica:

Right. I mean, there's, I mean, if the community doesn't believe that the police are going to protect them from retaliation, why should they risk anything? You know, there was, there was no trust at all before.

Randy:

Yeah, I mean, just even little highlights, things that stuck out to me were police officers on duty playing basketball with kids with their guns in their cars, stories about COVID graduations happening and these police officers staging backyard celebrations for these kids that they've grown to know and love. Profound, transformative stories of what can happen when we just reflect a little bit. We don't have to have crazy, stupid buzzwords, like "defund the police." But we can actually think in creative ways about how to partner with police departments and communities and just new ways of doing things. It made me so hopeful because as we were demonstrating and protesting and marching in summer of 2020, with hopes that maybe some accountability for police officers will actually affect some change, I think you and your book and the research that you've done, Jessica, whether it's here in Watts, or whether it's in Oregon and police using mindfulness as a method to experience inner healing but also to let, check their biases as they're walking through neighborhoods, it shows that there actually is a different way forward for policing in America that gets really brilliant outcomes that we're all looking for, Democrats or Republicans, conservatives, liberals, police, and you know, social workers, right?

Jessica:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really, I mean, I think what you know, I try to do in, in all of these stories, and all of this research is to try to under, like, try to really see the humanity inside everyone in this situation. We're in a disastrous situation with public safety in this country. I mean, I live in Minneapolis, we are broken, the city's police institution is broken. And I also think that if we think creatively and strategically, and we really think about what we really want, what is the behavior that we want? And then how can we reward that behavior? We can, we can change the way we do public safety.

Randy:

Yeah.

Kyle:

So Randy mentioned mindfulness. And this was, I mean, the bulk of one of the chapters. So can you tell us a little bit about what that is? A lot of listeners might think of it as just Buddhism or something. So like, yeah, or, you know, that thing that white people do on their apps or whatever. So, like, what is mindfulness?

Jessica:

That's a pretty good definition.

Kyle:

So like, what is it? And how is it relevant to policing? And how has it been used and actually shown to be effective in some of those cases?

Jessica:

Yeah, well, you know, one of, one of the, one of the risk factors for expressing bias is being depleted cognitively and emotionally, being fatigued, being taxed, being under time pressure, feeling stressed, like all of these things make us more likely to express bias, and more likely to use shortcuts and stereotypes to judge people. And so the idea behind using mindfulness meditation is that if you can start to kind of calm down some of those stressors and create more space, internally, and interpersonally, then it creates room for people to use more deliberative thinking to make decisions. And in the case of police, it gives police or any first responder a chance to slow down and take in all the information available. So there's a program, I think there are a few programs now, but the one, the one that I highlighted in Oregon is an attempt to bring some of these tools of mindfulness to first responders. And what officers who really practice this expressed to me when I talked to a lot of them, they said that it gave them the ability to slow down before any kind of encounter with a citizen, to slow down and kind of remind themselves what they were really there for, what they were really meant to be doing. If they were angry, they could observe, sort-of, anger and start to work with it, rather than respond out of anger. One of the lieutenants that I spoke with said, every police officer brings to their encounters a combination of ego, fear, and anger. And he was described as a pot stirrer by some of his colleagues. But the idea behind mindfulness is that it allows for people to work, work with those mental formations and respond to citizens from a place of more equanimity, you know, and kindness and compassion.

Kyle:

Yeah, which is so crucial for, I mean, hopefully obvious reasons, but also for legal reasons, because as anyone that's looked into the reasons behind why police officers involved in shooting deaths are so rarely convicted, prosecuted, much less convicted, it's because the way the law is structured, the whole thing hinges on the perspective of the officer at the moment of pulling the trigger. That's all that matters, like juries are directly instructed to ignore everything else about the context. That's in the law. Which, we could have a whole separate conversation about why that is, and how structurally unfair it is. But imagine what could happen if a police officer had been trained, just as a matter of course, to slow down, to take account of their own breathing patterns, to take account of the stress in their body, and that this was like a multiple times a day practice, so that they wouldn't jump to the conclusion of oh, that's a gun, so that they'd be aware of their own perceptions. There would still be shootings. But can we deny that there'd be fewer?

Randy:

No.

Kyle:

I mean, imagine the difference that could make.

Randy:

Yep.

Jessica:

Yeah. And I think also, just from the, the sort-of perspective of, like, maintaining one's humanity, you know, mindfulness meditation, compassion meditation, these things are powerful antidotes to the kind of dehumanizing experiences that police have. I mean, when we see, you know, when, whenever, you know, we see footage of an officer hurting a person, I feel like you can't help but think, my gosh, that person has lost their humanity. There's, they have lost something crucial about being a person. And so that is, you know, a way to kind of combat that erosion of humanity that happens in police also.

Randy:

Yeah, I mean, I think you cite in the book that in 2019, more police officers died from suicide than they did from being shot in the line of duty. That should cause us to pause and think about the way we're training and policing our police officers, because we care about our police officers, we care about our public servants who are going out there every night. So yeah, that's super, super important. Moving on a bit. So in chapter nine, "The Architecture of Inclusion," Jessica, you make a strong point, you talk about diversity within workplaces and organizations and the importance of it, but you make a strong point that just valuing diversity as an organization, and even including and hiring people of color, women, or LGBTQ people, probably isn't going far enough, even though that is groundbreaking for a lot of organizations and institutions. What is it that brings about real transformation and goes beyond changing our hiring processes or image management, you know, if you will, for an organization or for a church or for any structure? What is it that we're looking for besides just a seat at the table?

Jessica:

So there are so many things we could talk about, we could have a whole conversation just about this. You know, one important question is not just who is included or who is at the table, but who has influence?

Randy:

There you go.

Jessica:

Because one thing that came up, you know, that comes up repeatedly in research and came up repeatedly in a lot of the interviews I did with people from traditionally marginalized or excluded groups, is that hiring is one thing, you know, bringing people into an organization, but real inclusion means that those people have influence and that they actually have a say in how things get done. And what causes that to be possible in an organization, I've come to believe, is the mindset of the leaders. The, you know, the question for leaders is, do you believe that having a heterogeneous group of perspectives is, like, essential to the functioning of this organization? If you do, then, then you're going to be, you know, then you're going to understand that influence needs to be distributed among different kinds of people. You know, I see, like, if, if we look at, like, Twitter, for example. You know, Twitter was created by a very homogenous group of people, four or five guys, and as a result of that homogeneity, they didn't anticipate a lot of problems that were going to happen on the platform that we all are living with today, like harassment, abuse, you know, toxic behavior, because they themselves had not experienced that when they were on bulletin boards in the 80s and 90s. So that's just an example of how essential it is to have like different viewpoints and different perspectives and different people making important influential decisions in an organization. So, so I think, you know, if you ask what it is that brings about that transformation, it's, it's a mindset, it's a mindset about why diversity is important.

Kyle:

Yeah, it reminds me of, I just watched this documentary on Discovery Plus about Hillsong Church, I don't know if you're familiar with this... Yeah. And that's, I think that's a question you can ask in a lot

Jessica:

A little bit, tell me.

Kyle:

... global mega church. So they did this mini series called Hillsong Exposed, and at one part of it, they're, they're showing clips of an interview with this celebrity pastor who, a guy named Carl Lentz, who was a famous New York City pastor, pastor to Justin Bieber and a bunch of other celebrities, and they, they show a clip of an interview with him where he's like, you know, a lot of people think we're a cult, they accuse us of being a cult, but we do exactly the opposite of what cults do; I tell people from the pulpit, go check this out, right, on your own, don't take my word for it, check it out--I've always thought if somebody like goes out of their way to tell you they're not a cult, it's probably a cult--but he's like, you know, this can't possibly be. But of course, if you look at their leadership teams, it's just clones. It's just people like him, right? The, all the people with decision making power are white dudes of a very kind of narrow of organizations, right, that might have, you know, might sort set of religious assumptions who are totally unwilling to relinquish any of that power to anybody else. So there's a nice of project an image of wanting to really, you know, promote facade of you know, free thinking and autonomy. But if you drill into the bedrock of, okay, where's the power here? diversity, but yeah, if you look at the decision makers, like who's actually, who's actually controlling the resources, who's actually making the decisions? I think that's a really valuable question to ask.

Randy:

Yep.

Jessica:

And yeah, if someone tells you that a lot of people think they're a cult but they're not a cult, that's probably another good sign.

Kyle:

Something you might want to look into, small, small red flag. Yeah. So earlier, we were really optimistic. I'm gonna like, kind of throw a wrench in that here really quick, because I, yeah, philosophers are not optimistic, usually. So, you, several times, I didn't count instances, but at least three times, you tell these really encouraging stories of initiatives they get going, and then actually get, you know, empirical research behind them, it's shown to be effective, like the thing in Watts or the stuff in Oregon or whatever, and then over time, they fizzle. The funding gets taken away, people just lose interest, something, some big upheaval socially happens, like a pandemic, and then it just never comes back. And that happened quite a few times. It was like, oh, this is so encouraging, this is going to work, we can universalize this, we can scale this, and then it stops. So frustrating. Why do you think that happens? And does it leave you hopeless?

Jessica:

Why? Oh, my gosh, that's a tough question. Why does it happen? There's so many different ways to answer that question. You know, I'll go back to the the mindset point. I think that if, if people in positions of leadership who are making the decisions and who have access to the resources, if they don't see this as fundamentally important, then, then it's going to be a short lived initiative. I mean, like in Watts, one of the, it was interesting, like with the Watts initiative, a lot of the people in the community were really used to short term projects that would come in and then fizzle. And so they were very skeptical of this new project. And in fact, there were a couple of former gang members who are now gang intervention workers who didn't really want to get involved at first, were really skeptical because they had seen so many, like, kind of Mickey Mouse programs in the past, and they ended up becoming persuaded because there was like a lot of work done around making sure it was going to be a long term project, the officers were required to make a five year commitment, there was going to be funding over a long period of time. So I think that it can be kind of cynicism-driving to see, you know, promising programs disappear. So it's a, it's a mindset question. I think it's, it's honestly, it's a spiritual question. It's like, what are we really trying to do here? You know, if, if the people who are making decisions about how resources are allocated and which policies are enforced and which institutions are given funding, if those people don't necessarily have like a strong belief that this is really important for, for deep reasons, then it can be hard to sustain. What do you think? Why do you think it keeps happening?

Kyle:

Gosh, you keep, you have a habit of turning my questions back on me. I'm not used to this.

Randy:

I love it.

Kyle:

I've never...

Jessica:

I'm an aggressive interviewee, I guess.

Kyle:

No, it's good. It's good. Yeah, gosh, I don't know. I mean, it's got to be a top down thing. I think you're, you've got to be right about that. I haven't talked to these people directly, but it seems like the ones who had been in the work and seen the concrete results would want to keep it going. And yet so many times, you know, it just runs out. I think a lot of it, this is just speculation, but I think we, it's hard to underestimate people's attention span, right? Like we, we're so used to a giant, enormous thing happening every day, especially in the last six or seven years, that even when something really important happens, and you know, it's positive, and there's a lot of promising things to it that like, we can actually maybe do something about one of these crazy things, ten minutes later our attention is directed to something else, you know? I've been sort of obsessed with the war in Ukraine for a few weeks. And then I watched the Oscars, and now I'm not obsessed about the war in Ukraine anymore. And like, those are not on the same level. And yet, one takes up my attention just as easily as the other. And I just get fatigued, and I just can't pay attention to it anymore. And initiatives like that, seems like they need a lot of people to pay attention to them for a long time to get the kind of funding you need to keep it going. And I'm not sure humans are capable of that in this kind of context. And so I'm pretty pessimistic about like, really scalable solutions to those large institutional things. Like, I have some hope for structural changes, that, you know, we can change some laws and that will, as you say, like, kind of cut off the bottom, like, most terrible things that can happen. But am I hopeful that we'll, in a systematic way, get police officers to fundamentally see their job differently outside of a couple of isolated communities? No, because I don't think enough people are interested in it. And I don't think they even can be interested in it for long enough to sustain that kind of institutional change. Does that answer your question?

Randy:

I think, I think it comes down, in many times, to motivation and to personal honesty. I think we've seen too many things like affirmative action, and I'm not making a judgment on affirmative action, I'm just, there's a lot of emotions around that. Some people who think...

Kyle:

And it's a thing that you talk about a lot in your book, so this is not a out of place...

Randy:

Right. I mean, and I know plenty of people who think it's essential, and really, really needs to be tweaked and changed, but also continued. And I know plenty people who think it's absolutely evil, and they were, they're a white person who was, you know, a victim of racism because of affirmative action and quotas and this, that, and the other. And I think, I think personally, when you see these things working is when a person is confronted by, like you articulate many times in your book, Jessica, and what we've been talking about, when you're confronted by your own bias, when, when you're confronted by what's inside of you without, you know, I didn't, I didn't want to prejudge this young black man, none of us want to do those things, you didn't want to look at some people who looked like they maybe didn't belong in your hotel, you know, and judge them, but when you're confronted by it, you say, oh, okay, like, I want to actually change that. I think that's, that's part of it. And then I think the other part of it is, if we continue to add in mindfulness training to police departments for, for example, in the middle of a police officer's career, I'll bet a good majority of those police officers are going to think this is bullshit. You know, they're gonna think, no, thanks. I'm doing okay on my own. I'm just fine. You're gonna have some who think yeah, this is amazing and life changing and I want it. But when you can actually get to the training the police academies and say this is just part of what it means to be a police officer in Minneapolis or Milwaukee or fill in the blank, is to yes, we're going to teach you how to shoot a gun, but we're gonna teach you how to not have to use your gun, how to be able to leave it in your car, we're gonna teach you how to slow down, think through things, how to name the trauma that you're carrying, and we're gonna give you counselors for that trauma that you're, you're embodying right now. I think if we get it at those levels, if we get into the universities, business schools, where we can talk to people who are interested in making money and saying your corporation, your business is going to be better if you have more different, a diverse amount of viewpoints and perspectives, you're actually going to be able to, A. make more money, and B. be a better organization, blah, blah, blah. I think restructuring how our schooling and our training and our society, it's on, it's on a societal level, I think maybe then we could actually do something. But like you say, and you said, Kyle, as well, we have program fatigue in our culture, almost. Nonprofit, you know, our city, the city that we're in, Milwaukee, I think has the highest level of nonprofits of any city in the country, per capita. That just means that we're all really inundated by this next great organization or this next great strategy that's going to fix the world. And we're all skeptical and cynical of it.

Kyle:

Just as a silly example that you mention in your book, like I don't know any academic that I've talked to about it, regardless of how liberal, regardless of how socially progressive, regardless of how, you know, pro-structural change, I don't know any of them who aren't annoyed by those diversity trainings that we have to do.

Randy:

Yeah.

Kyle:

Like we all breeze through those things. Nobody cares. And it comes up at departmental meetings, and then people pretend to care when they don't. But, like, in unguarded moments, they'll tell you the truth.

Jessica:

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the problems with those trainings--well, as you know, like, I talk about the problems with those trainings a lot in the book--I mean, I think one of the problems is that they can sort of sap energy away from more fundamental change that needs to happen in universities.

Kyle:

Exactly.

Randy:

Yep. So speaking of sapping energy out of things, let's, I want to just land it with one last question, Jessica. Your book is super, super important. And like Kyle and I have said, it's super hopeful. Can you just kind of send us on our way with just like, why you're hopeful our society, our culture has potential to overcome some of the stuff that we're talking about? Like, what's next for us and what do you see when you look at the landscape of our American culture the way it is?

Jessica:

You know, what gives me hope is the understanding that the biases that we express in our culture, and the patterns of prejudice that we've inherited, are human inventions. And because they're human inventions, they can be intervened on by humans. And when I look at times and places and cultures where there weren't the patterns of prejudice that we have, that gives me a lot of hope, because I can see that there was a time before these patterns of prejudice. And if there was a time before, then I think there can be a time after. I, talking to young people gives me a lot of hope, you know. I do think that there is growing awareness of these issues in places where there wasn't before. I mean, I was just talking to a university earlier today that is really looking to make serious changes for the first time and put real resources into making those changes. So, so that gives me hope, you know, the fact that these are human inventions, this is not like, from God, this is from humans. That makes me know that it's worth continuing to work on this.

Randy:

Yep. Well, sure is. The book is The End of Bias: A Beginning by Jessica Nordell. It's so good. And I hope it wins all the awards it's nominated for, and I really hope you write a follow up, Jessica, because you shouldn't be done with this yet.

Jessica:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Kyle:

Where can people find out more about you if they want to keep track of your work?

Jessica:

Sure. So I have a website, jessicanordell.com, where you can contact me, there's a contact button, and I read all my emails from readers or from folks who write in, so that's a way to be in touch. You can sign up for my newsletter, which I send out very rarely, but when I do send it out, it gives information about where I'll be and you know, what sort of events I'll be doing. Yeah, and I'm on, you know, I'm on Twitter, and I'm sort of an inactive Twitter person, but I'm on Twitter also. So those are some of the ways people can find me.

Randy:

Awesome. Thank you so much for spending time with us, Jessica. It's been a pleasure.

Jessica:

Thank you so much. It's really been fun.

Kyle:

Well, that's it for this episode of A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. We hope you're enjoying the show as much as we are. Help us continue to create compelling content and reach a wider audience by supporting us patreon.com/apastorandaphilosopher, where you can get bonus content, extra perks, and a general feeling of being a good person.

Randy:

Also, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, and Spotify. These help new people discover the show and we may even read your review in a future episode. If it's good enough.

Kyle:

If anything we said really pissed you off or if you just have a question you'd like us to answer, or if you'd just like to send us booze, send us an email at pastorandphilosopher@gmail.com.

Randy:

Catch all of our hot takes on Twitter at@PPWBPodcast, @RandyKnie, and@robertkwhitaker, and find transcripts and links to all of our episodes at pastorandphilosopher.buzzsprout.com. See you next time.

Kyle:

Cheers!

Beverage Tasting
Interview