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Politics Of Divisiveness

The origination point is connected to bias awareness and bias deconstruction. The origination point is the notion that all of our biases, implicit or explicit, have a point in time where they started, where we were given a narrative or had an experience with a small group of people that then we extrapolate to a larger group of people.

The reason why the origination point is so important is because that is the point of healing and understanding. As we are deconstructing and making our biases more conscious, the origination point supports us in understanding where they came from and healing any emotional impacts that they are having in our lives. Sit back, open your mind, open your heart, and let’s see if we can find your origination points to bias.

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I created this show to begin to have conversations and dialogue about issues that are impacting our humanity. It has been an interesting ride, not only sharing this show but also working with thousands of people from all across the country over the last few years, especially when we think about how divided we are, how challenging conversations about race, class, bias, and stereotypes have become based on the divisiveness of our country and communities.

The socialized stereotypes that we see here and read about on a daily basis about each other and the fear that we have been socialized to believe about each other, especially in the last few years with COVID. Fear around if somebody is sick. What happens when somebody coughs? Do they have a mask on? Do they not have a mask on? Do they have a vaccine? Do they not believe in vaccines? Am I going to get canceled out because I have a misstep and said something offensive to another person?

All of these things have combined into this perfect storm of social division and a real challenge in people talking to each other. I’m fortunate in that I do development work all over the country with people from all walks of life. I hear stories about how people are afraid to speak their truths, about how people are afraid to be minimized or make a misstep for fear of the retaliation that comes after that happens. What we are doing is we are suppressing any ability for us to have a conversation and discourse that may not be in agreement.

We lost the ability to compromise and create acceptance around differences of opinion. It is not like we have ever fully agreed with each other on everything, and that is part of our humanity. We are never going to get 100% agreement. Maybe I was fantasizing, but I believe in the past. There were times when we could at least accept each other’s perspective and not kick them out of the community or not see them as the other. Nowadays, I see more about how people see their community members, neighbors, colleagues, workmates, friends, and family members as the other, and isolate them or not wanting to talk to them because of a difference of opinion.

It has been interesting, especially in the last couple of years traveling around the country, how more people talk about ideological issues, stereotypes, and biases as another level of identity that other people have. People are even afraid to speak their minds. If they do speak their mind and somebody doesn’t agree with them, it becomes this defensive justify conversation where the argument digresses into who is right and who is wrong versus, “That is an interesting perspective. Let me think about that. I don’t agree with that perspective. You are a member of our community. I’m going to treat you with dignity and respect.” I wonder where all that has gone and how we get it back.

I spent some time at the University of Illinois working with the facilities department there, which was 400 employees who were plumbers, pipefitters, electricians, predominantly White men living in and around Champaign, Illinois, in rural parts of the Midwest. It was interesting to me that a number of them, in dialogue with me privately, would say, “When I first heard that I had to go to this development work, it was all day for eight hours. We condensed three modules into those eight hours, foundational conversations on the bias, conflict transformation, and strategies to deconstruct bias.”

Many of them expressed this concern, “Is this going to be another one of those workshops where I’m going to be called a racist because I’m a White man? I don’t approach this work in that way. Those words never came out of my mouth. Those words were never implied in anything that I said.” For many of them, it was a positive experience. In that, they didn’t feel denigrated, dehumanized, or in any way excluded because of their race or gender.

When we do those types of things, it keeps them engaged in the conversation. They were able to talk about stereotypes they had never heard about before. They were able to understand the historical context around some of our stereotypes and explore their own biases because of the way they were presented in a way that wasn’t threatening or wasn’t demonizing. It was in a way that normalized the idea that every living, breathing human being on the planet has biases. We all stereotype, judge, and categorize because that is how we make sense of each other.

We meet somebody new. We immediately think about, “How do I categorize them? What are the stereotypes that I have heard about these people? What judgments do I have? What are my biases?” I don’t know for many people if it is a conscious thought or something that is unconscious. The idea for me of this approach is to ask you all to think about how you increase your self-awareness about how your own biases, judgments, and stereotypes show up in impact your relationships.

What I found is that when I meet somebody, and I put them into boxes, what I’m doing is I’m putting them into my boxes and seeing where these people make sense to me based on their race, gender, age, how they are dressed, and talk. What I have realized is that my boxes are rooted in my own experiences, and my boxes may not at all be the identity that the people I’m interacting with have. I’m having an inauthentic experience with them because I’m not getting to know them for who they are.

Achieving Authentic Relationships

In this approach, the overarching question I ask myself and others is, “Do my biases, stereotypes, and judgments inhibit or enhance my ability to be in an authentic relationship?” An authentic relationship is defined as getting to know you for who you are versus the story I’m making up about you. What I have learned about my own biases, judgments, and stereotypes is that when I’m using those, I’m not engaged with the other person because biases, judgments, and stereotypes are rooted in my head. They are stories I’m making up about another human being. Stories that make sense to me because they match an experience I had.

An authentic relationship is defined as getting to know who you are versus the story other people are making up about you. Share on X

It is not necessarily stories that define the authenticity of the person that I’m interacting with. When I was younger, I used to justify my stereotypes, judgments, and biases because I had no self-awareness and I didn’t care about what other people thought about me. That negatively impacted a lot of my relationships.

What I found in doing years of my own work, which I continue to do every day, and in working with thousands of people from all walks of life is that many of us are struggling with this conversation about how to come together, how to heal, and how to look at somebody who is my neighbor, family member, colleague, and not see them as the other.

It is this divisive nature that we are being socialized to believe is true. As I have said before, in my experience, there is much more that connects us than divides us. If we can get past the stereotypes, rhetoric, and divisiveness that is happening in all segments of our country, communities, organizations, and workplaces, it has fully permeated all of our communities.

 

As you think about where we are now, it is important to question what each of our roles is in riding this ship and creating a more inclusive environment. Even some of the language we use has become politicized that we don’t use it anymore. I’m going to bring up a couple of focuses I use and give you my definition of them. One is belonging, and the other is inclusion.

Belonging is the idea that I can be a part of this organizational culture, community, church, group, and workplace without having to give up a part of myself to do. What that means is I can bring most of my authentic self to any of those spaces without having to worry that I will be misunderstood, marginalized, or in some way not understood for bringing my full authentic self into those spaces. I don’t mean 100% of ourselves because there are a lot of things we need to leave at home that we don’t need to bring into the workspace or community groups.

I was working with a gentleman a number of years ago. We were talking about a sense of belonging. He said, “I realize I only bring about 40% of myself to the workplace.” I said, “Tell me more. What do you leave at home when you go to work?” He said, “I have a great sense of humor. I’m always joking and laughing. I’m always trying to find humor in stuff, even in things that are serious. I don’t do that at work because we have a serious work culture. I don’t think people would understand that I’m trying to break up the seriousness or lighten the mood.” That was one thing that he said he didn’t bring to the workplace.

I said, “What else?” He said, “I’m a great storyteller. If you talk to my family and friends, they will tell you I have a story for almost everything. I don’t bring that to work because everybody is task-oriented. They want to get through the agenda. They feel like there is no time to tell stories or the stories aren’t relevant.” He said, “Sometimes the stories are out of the left field. It is to break up the seriousness or get people to have a little levity in the workplace.”

He said throughout this conversation in a disappointed way that he couldn’t bring his humor and stories. My role isn’t to fix or change things. The way we left the conversation was I asked him, “What would it be like for you if you could take 50% of yourself to work or 60% of yourself?” He hadn’t thought about it. He didn’t have an answer for it. It is something to think about. We are creating division and exclusiveness even amongst people who used to be friends or family. There’s a higher reason why this is happening.

 

I’m going to go back to my own story of when I served on the school board for several years. In part of my service on the school board, I would go to Denver during the legislative session because I cared about the legislative bills. I wanted to see what was happening in education, who was bringing ideas forward, and how these bills were working through the legislative process. I can’t tell you how many times I saw a bill in the education committee where a Democrat brought it forward and the Republicans all voted against it, and it died, or a Republican brought it forward, and the Democrats all voted against it, and it died.

In many of these bills, there was never even a discussion about the merits and how they would affect students. It was because this particular political perspective brought it forward. The opposite political perspective was going to vote against it. I remember one time I was watching a bill being debated. It was a bill where they were floating to provide more monetary resources to minority and women-owned businesses in the Denver metro area. It was a small amount of money, and yet it was still a start that would have shown that there was some care at the state level for growing these businesses in our community.

I heard these two politicians, both White men. They were talking about the bill. They said, “Let’s throw them a little piece of the pie. They can fight over it between themselves. As long as they are fighting with each other, they won’t ever have enough time or energy to work together to fight against us.” It made me realize that the politics of division are real. The only reason I mention race is that this bill was driven from a racial perspective in helping Black, Brown, and women-owned businesses.

This racial division is a big part of the divisiveness that we are facing in our country and communities to the point where we can’t even talk about race because it creates such a divisive, dehumanizing dialogue that the conversation doesn’t even happen. We go to these extremes and use race as a weapon against each other. We all talk about race as being a social construct and not something that is rooted in scientific research, which is true.

The Politics Of Division

My point in sharing that story is that the politics of division are real. We can see it happening at all levels of the political structure in our country and communities. It doesn’t matter to me what people call themselves. To me, bad behavior is bad behavior. If we are living in a representative government, that means that some of those people should be representing me and my perspective, and I don’t see that. I refuse to play the politics of division regardless of what people look like. My work and approach are rooted in how we bridge conversations regardless of people’s race, identity, and ideology because I believe it is possible to have a discourse.

 

Before I ran for the school board in Colorado, I ran for the city council in my community. At the time, there was a slow growth initiative. It was structured around limiting housing. There were seven of us. I was the only person of color running. I felt like this was a discriminatory effort to keep people out because when you lower the number of housing and you create more open space, it raises housing prices.

I felt like it was something that would eliminate people who serve the community from living there. I’m not talking about service people, house cleaners, and tradespeople. I’m talking about teachers, police officers, firefighters, and folks who created and did good service in our community. I felt like it was discriminatory.

We were doing a debate for most businessmen. When we were done, this older gentleman came over and pulled me over with his finger and said, “Come here. I want to talk to you.” He took me to this back hallway. He looked at me and said to me, “I am a conservative Republican. I never thought about this issue from that perspective until you shared your own logic around it. It made a lot of sense to me.” He gave me $100 for my campaign.”

I lost that city council race, which I’m glad about because I enjoyed being on the school board. What that told me is that when you have a conversation with someone that is rooted in logic and in sharing a perspective that you believe in, logical people can have a shift in their thinking. We had a great conversation. I thanked him, and he thanked me. We both went our merry ways. It made me realize that all of these labels entitled, White, Black, Brown, Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever we call ourselves, are that. They are just labels. They are rooted and filled with stereotypes, biases, and judgments, all the labels we put on each other.

Political and racial labels are just labels. They are rooted and filled with stereotypes, biases, and judgment. If we can get rid of them, we can finally see each other as human beings. Share on X

One of the things that I would love to see in this approach is how we get rid of the labels that we have for each other and start to get to know each other as human beings and as people who are all challenged every day to wake up, to have a good day, to be happy, to have our kids have more than we had, and to come home safe every day. Somehow we lost the ability to do that, except when we were in a crisis.

Coming Together In A Crisis

When we have a crisis, a flood, fire, hurricane, tornado, or something that is devastating, we all come together. It makes me realize that we have the ability to work together, support, love, and care about each other, and provide whatever people need during a crisis. I always wonder why, after the crisis ends, does that stop? It is something to ponder. If we have the skill base to care for and support each other and share whatever we have because somebody else has lost something, why does that always stop after the crisis?

As I look at our country, we have a number of things that are happening that you could call a crisis, from our economic climate to our political climate, to kids not being in school to this supply chain, race conversations, and conversations about systems. There are many things we could focus our energy on for the betterment of each other. We don’t do that on a consistent basis. The level of ownership and responsibility is minimal. It is much easier to point fingers and blame somebody else than to accept that I play a role in what is happening.

Rather than look at somebody else, how do we start to look at our own role? I do a lot of work in education. It is amazing how communities I work with say, “What are the schools going to do about the racial issues in our community?” That is the wrong question because kids aren’t born in school. They go to homes. Kids are born at home and come to school. Whatever kids bring from home, they bring into the school environment.

The reason why it seems like it is such prevalent at school is that it is the place where most young people are. That is the place for them to mature, test the waters, and learn how to engage with each other. Through COVID, our kids have not had that experience. We see things playing out in different ways on the internet, on Facebook, and streets. We all need to take a hard look at what we are doing and how we’re approaching this crisis that we are in. We have a humanity crisis going on right now.

What we need is a revolution of the mind to start to think about, “How am I contributing to this? How are the narratives that I have about other people playing out? How am I socializing my own children?” When I had children who were young, and they are in their 30s now, I was creating biases and stereotypes for my own kids by how I talked about people in my house and how I judged people when I was driving around with them in the car.

It is time for us all to take a deep look at what our roles are because everyone plays a role in where we are. Part of my approach with this show and the title of The Origination Point is for us all to start to think about what is the origination point of where we are now. How am I responsible for it in the things that I do, the ways that I treat people, and how my own biases, judgments, and stereotypes are playing out in my interactions with people who are different from me?

You are the only person responsible for the things you do, the way you treat people, and how you interact with people different from you. Share on X

I was working in a community, and I was having a conversation with about twenty high school students. A young man talked about something other students in the room believed in, and he had no belief in it. He said, “I don’t believe in that. It is not part of my belief system. I will never believe in it. I won’t accept it. You are a part of my high school community. I’m going to treat you with dignity and respect.” This was a senior in high school. He could recognize that he didn’t have the same belief system as other students in the room. He knew that they were part of his community. He was still going to treat them with dignity and respect. It gave me so much hope.

Part of my balance in this work is to recognize where we are. If we don’t recognize where we are, how do we fix or change the things that aren’t working? All the things I shared about being crisis-oriented, the role that race plays, the politics of division, and how our stereotypes, biases, and judgments impact how we see each other. That is all real, especially this idea of being a crisis-oriented society where we care for each other more in a crisis than we do outside of it.

If you don’t recognize where you are, you cannot fix things that are not working. Share on X

I remember a story when I was on the school board where a Latina mom told me, “If statistics were reversed and White kids were achieving at the level of our Latino kids in the county I live in, my boardroom would be a war room. We would deal with it like it is a crisis.” It is a comment that I have never forgotten. It lends credence to what I’m saying in that, even from her perspective. Several years ago, when we had this conversation, she knew that when we deal with things like their crisis, it is much more different in how we see and treat each other.

In traveling around the country, I have noticed a couple of things. Number one, there is way more that connects us than divides us. If we can stop being socialized to believe the opposite, we can see the shared humanity that we all have. I have also seen that there are a lot of people who want to do the work to make things more impactful, caring, and loving in our communities, schools, churches, and community groups. They are willing to do it with the tools. Having the skills to be able to have a responsive conversation versus a reactive conversation, being inquisitive and asking people to tell me your story, and having the time to build relationships with each other.

I was working with a municipality. One of the comments was, “It was great we started with something that let us get to know each other.” We jump into a meeting and don’t take any time to say, “Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you believe in? What music do you like? What books do you read?” Simple things that create connection.

When I was working at the University of Illinois, there were two gentlemen who had worked together for several years. About the middle of the day, one of them said, “I can’t even believe I have known this guy for many years, and I never knew any of the things about him that we talked about now.” He was pleased to have learned about a colleague he had worked with for many years. In the relationships you all have, who are reading, how well do you know the people that you interact with? Is it a role or title? Is it as a real person and a real human being?

Rehumanizing Connections

One of my goals is to rehumanize our connections and think about how we stay more connected, how we see each other more as a belonging person who is a part of my group, no matter what that group is, and stop seeing people as the other. For all of you out there reading, please think about how you rehumanize, how we move out of this socialized division and socialized fear to work together and see each other for the quality of their character.

 

We celebrated MLK Jr’s birthday. It is always amazing to me how a few days after people listened to his speeches, people are talking about moving past these racial stereotypes that we have. A week from now, we will be right back in the place where we were. It is important that whatever lessons you believe in and whatever drives your moral fabric to remember can be a part of your everyday existence. It doesn’t have to be at some point when you are celebrating something that every day and every interaction can be a celebration.

I’m thankful every day I can wake up and have all of these ways to share my thoughts and information, have a show, write a book, and being able to work with people all over the country, in person and on Zoom. It is such a blessing and gift. What I want to leave you with is to think about your role and what is one thing that you can do that is an act of kindness or giving back to somebody you don’t know well.

Think about that crisis-oriented mentality. Think about this because here is the real deal. Everything that we are doing as adults is now affecting all of our children. For nothing else or no other reason, think about the impact on young people now in the models of behavior, language, and discourse they see from adults across this country. What they see at meetings, what they hear, and how those behaviors are not only seen, they are seen as acceptable because there is little accountability. Our children are watching. Not only are they watching, but they are also emulating our behaviors.

I hope that what I’m sharing with you gives you something to think about and talk about. If something gets you emotionally charged, think about what it is about your emotional charge that is causing that because what I’m doing is sharing a perspective and sharing my stories. If you get emotionally charged, there is a story behind that. Find somebody to talk to. Find somebody that you can share it with, and know that regardless of our race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, or political ideology, we are connected to each other in many ways.

I want to thank you. I want to ask you to please think about this, to think about your role. Think about one act of kindness that you can take to rehumanize our connections. I want to thank you for being a part of this. If this message resonates with you, share it with others, spread the word, have a conversation, and take an active kindness. I appreciate you. I look forward to being on this journey with you to rehumanize our connections.

 

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