Attention Towards Racism

How Racism Hasn't Had Our Attention 
A look at how our attention spans are causing us to still miss the point.



Have you ever been in a scenario where something out of the ordinary happens seemingly right in front of you, and your friend beside you says, "Did you see that?!", and you have to respond with a perplexed, "No, what happened?!". You were both staring in the exact same direction, but somehow your friend witnessed the dog walking on its hind legs and you are sitting there baffled at how you missed it. Now I know you're thinking that there could have been many factors that could pull one's attention away from seeing such a sight, and that our attention couldn't possibly be that bad. Well I'll let you be the judge of that for yourself. (Disclaimer: this is a well known video so you may have already seen this) Here's a way to test your attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Hopefully you took that short test for reference, but if you didn't there are some spoilers up ahead. The creator of this test was Chris Chabris and Daniel Simons, and what that test is proving is something psychologists call "inattentional blindness". Inattentional blindness is when you are paying attention to one thing that you become blind to other things that are not the focus of your attention, even if they happen right in front of you. According to Chris in his TED Talk, on average people will look at the gorilla in the linked video for at least 1 second and still miss "seeing" it. As he mentions, this wasn't just something that flashed across your screen. The gorilla was a very noticeable object that lasted for many seconds before disappearing, yet somehow we still seem to miss it. 

As Chris also notes in his TED Talk, it is one thing to be aware of our limitations but it is another thing to be completely disillusioned by how much you think you are actually paying attention to. The expectations the we place on our attention span can be incredibly misleading, because we don't seem to grasp how much we are actually missing but we then the rely on that information to make decisions. 

When it comes to the video with the two teams passing the ball, we think that we should see the the gorilla walking across our screens and then we're surprised when we don't. Once again our minds are creating another illusion in our lives. Because of this we assume that our lack of attention skills must be due to a lack of intelligence, but it just goes along with being human. 

As I have begun to try and refocus my attention towards better understanding and being a better ally towards our Black community members over the past couple of weeks, I couldn't help but notice how our society has suffered immensely from inattentional blindness. By missing these very obvious and apparent situations, it has caused many of us to act ignorantly even when it is not our intent to do so. However, sometimes these racist or ignorant actions are a result of our attention being focused on the wrong things. This was made very clear to me when I was listening to the story of Michael Cox in Chris Chabris' TED Talk.


Michael Cox's Story

Michael Cox was a member of the Boston Police Department in 1995. He was a plain clothes officer, which is a tactic that the police force uses to disguise their officers to earn the trust of suspects. There was a call late one night over the police radio that there had been a shooting at a hamburger restaurant. Four suspects had reportedly fled the scene. The police radio erroneously reported that an officer had been shot and was down, so instead of one cop reporting to the scene about 20 police cruisers did. 

A car chase ended in a cul-de-sac, where Cox was the first to arrive. Cox then began to pursue the suspects on foot and witnessed them just jump over the fence. As Cox was climbing the fence he was struck on the back of the head with a baton or the bottom of a gun by the other officers that had arrived on the scene thinking he was one of the suspects, since like them, Cox was also black and wasn't in uniform. Cox was then brutally beaten by these three other officers. 

Kenny Conley, another officer who is white, also arrived on the scene around the same time. While sitting in his car, he too saw the suspects jump over the fence, and decided to pursue the suspects on foot for a mile before catching an arresting them, running directly in front of Cox being beaten. 

Shortly after seeing Conley rush past them, the officers beating Cox realized they had made a mistake and dispersed. The morning after this incident became a huge controversy. Especially since none of the officers would admit to beating Cox, nor did any say that they saw him being beaten, not even Conley who ran directly past him.

After denying that he had seen Cox be beaten that night, Conley ended up being the sole officer convicted of the brutal beating of Cox. The jury decided that he was lying under oath to protect his fellow officers.

When Chris Chabris and Daniel Simons heard about this story, they began to run simulations to see if there was any way that Conley could have missed such a thing that happened right in front of him. In their findings they discovered that 40% of people missed their staged fights even in broad daylight. 

The psychologists began to use Conley as an example of inattentional blindness as a result, but what I took away from this story is much more in line with racism and other stories about police brutality than someone that simply "couldn't" see a beating right in front of them. Do I think that Conley honestly didn't see the beating? Perhaps he didn't, but I believe it was due to the fact that a black man being beaten by police was normal, so the only other "threat" that he had to pay attention to were the other "suspects" fleeing the seen. The Black community has faced this kind racism and brutality for far two long, and the worst part is that it hasn't been "seen" by the majority of our society until it started getting filmed on our cellphones. 



Looking at something doesn't always guarantee seeing it...

Photo posted by INSIDER: In April 2018, an eye-care practice in Horsham, Pennsylvania, tweeted an optical illusion that left some people in disbelief. The image, posted by Dr. David McPhillips of Primary Eye Care Associates, disappears after approximately 30 seconds, when you focus on just one fixed point in the graphic.
Photo posted by INSIDER: In April 2018, an eye-care practice in Horsham, Pennsylvania, tweeted an optical illusion that left some people in disbelief. The image, posted by Dr. David McPhillips of Primary Eye Care Associates, disappears after approximately 30 seconds, when you focus on just one fixed point in the graphic.


You've Got My Attention

What we pay attention to is often dictated by our goals and interests. Things that require a great deal of our attention are often the things that challenge us the most and create flow. We become so engrossed in those activities that we don't seem to notice anything else. Often times though, we are distracted and aren't fully invested in what we're doing, which leads us to believe that we can multi task during activities that we believe don't require that much attention. Take driving for example, when we are learning to drive we are intently watching for any hazard or prompt that may come our way. Over time however, that need for attention begins to dwindle as we find driving to become almost instinctual. So much so that the next thing we know we're listening to our favorite podcast or calling our friends during our commute, all while listening to directions. Truth of the matter is though, humans aren't great at multi-tasking, and anyone who has ever been in an accident can attest to this.

What does garner our attention however becomes a sort of map for our identity. It unveils our interests, values, and even the goals we may be pursuing. What we pay attention to tells a great deal about what is most important to us. What if I were to tell you though that some people don't even get to do that most of the time?

Something I didn't realize a couple of weeks ago was that, being privileged means that you are able to take a walk with your dog while fully enjoying your surroundings. I have now heard the same story over and over again from many of the Black members of my community, that they don't feel comfortable going on a run in their neighborhoods because they are afraid of being perceived as a "threat". And if they are perceived as a threat then the cops will be called, which could potentially be the end of their lives. These stories really made me pause and realize how incredibly fortunate I am that I never once have had to fear for my safety when I walked around my neighborhood or while enjoying my surroundings. The only thing I had to been taught as a small child was to pay attention to the people around me (don't get kidnapped) and make sure to look both ways before I crossed the street. A Black child growing up in America however has had to be taught how to pay attention to how they could be perceived as a threat, and if they are confronted by police that it is imperative that they stay calm and follow instructions, and even then they may not be treated fairly which could result in their lives being in danger. 

If you're wondering how we could have gone this long without seeing some of these injustices that have played out right in front of our eyes, it's because we haven't been paying attention to the right things. Now is the time to create real and long lasting change in our world, and I strongly believe that something that we can and should do to begin to create that is to address all of our bad habits and patterns.


How We Can Strengthen our Attention Skills?

If you are stuck and don't know how to begin to change your mindset to be more accepting and kind. Here are some things you can try:
  1. Be fully present - Those that have high media use are statistically proven to not be able to filter out distractions as well. Like I mentioned before, we're not as good at multi-tasking as we think we are. So creating better environments will help tremendously when we are trying to give something our full attention. You can do this by:
    • Removing your phone from the room when you're educating yourself or having a conversation with someone.
    • Practice active listening by asking someone in the Black community how they are feeling. Get to know and understand a fraction of what they are going through so you can see things from a different perspective. 
  2. Practice mindfulness in what you do - Those that practice mindfulness are statistically proven to be able to accomplish their goals more than people who don't. 
    • What for? Why now? What else? - Is a strategy created by Catherine Price in response to her all too frequent attention suck...her cellphone. You begin by asking yourself why you're using your device; then question what was the impetus or trigger for you needing to use it in that moment; and last but not least, what else could you be doing that is more productive and create more change than being on your phone could. This strategy can also be applied to creating more mindfulness in everything you're doing. If we focus our attention on ending racism then our actions will follow suit.
    • Pause and question your mind - What I've emphatically learned is that our minds play a lot of tricks on us. So before you jump to a conclusion make sure you pause and ask yourself if you have all of the information. Do you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are right? This could mean life or death for someone, and know that a majority of the time our memory and minds have it wrong.
  3. Create better habits using situational support - What you expose yourself to and what you "subscribe" to on social media create reference points for us whether we like it or not. 
    • Be aware of who you follow on social media - Follow Black leaders in your community. Listen to what they have to say.
    • Surround yourself with more Black culture - By exposing yourself to different music, art, and literature that you may not usually be exposed to.
    • Remove people from your feed that don't support a positive reference point - They will only cause you to be unhappy and draw your attention away from what really matters. If you don't give them a voice or a platform then no one can listen, and the people that truly matter will be heard.

I in no way have done everything perfectly when it comes to understanding and standing up for the members of the Black community like I should have. But what I want them to know now is that they have my full attention...





References:





Catherine Price's website with information on technology and our attention: https://screenlifebalance.com

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