There is a basic truism that every salesperson knows: "People like people who are like themselves." In "Sales Training 101," we are taught that rapport is 40% of a sale, so if you just have rapport with a prospect, you are almost half-way there.
Rapport, in sales terminology, is things in common, feeling like you are on the same page with the other person, that you know where they are coming from, you have similar points of view, you share common beliefs and ideas -- that the other person is like you, and you are like the other person. The more that is true, the more rapportthere is between two people.
Conversely, without rapport, there is distrust, and, often fear.
I mention this because this is not just true for sales. It's true for life.
Another scenario:
If any of you are teachers, or have children, or were children at one time, you may remember being in school, and having experiences/interactions with teachers. You may have noticed something:
Teachers tend to like the students who appear interested in what they are teaching, and understand what they are learning. Teachers tend to get frustrated with students who appear bored, disinterested, and do not appear to understand what they are learning. Why? Because the students who "get it" are in rapport with the teachers, and the students who are disinterested are not.
In some sales seminars, and even in some psychology seminars, there is an exercice where people are paired up, and each pair has a person "A" and a person "B." The people "B" are sent out of the room, and told to think of a really compelling story about something important to them, that has profound meaning for them.
People "A" are instructed to be appear to be really interested in every word of the story, with eye contact, nodding appropriately in agreement, sitting in a way that shows full attention. Then, when prompted out of "B's" vision, they are to suddenly slouch, avoid eye contact, yawn, and do everything they can to demonstrate that they have absolutely no interest in what "B" is saying at all. Then, when prompted again, they switch back to full attention. And then, when prompted, back again.
During the debriefing, the "B's" will generally express frustration. They feel that they are really connecting with "A," and then suddenly, there is no connection at all, and "B" will find him or herself talking louder, attempting to get in the line of vision of "A" who keeps avoiding eye contact.
"B" tends to feel disrespect from "A" while this occurs.
Then, suddenly, whatever it is that they are doing suddenly starts to work again, and they are happy, and feel connected once more. And then not.
I share this not because I'm teaching you all about sales techniques. There are technical ways to gain rapport with a prospect, mechanical even, but the best way, we are taught, is to actually care about the other person. And that's the point.
What we have in these situations that we see time and again, is that police officers are people, and people like people who are like themselves, with whom they have rapport, and people distrust and fear people who are not like them, with whom they do not have rapport.
The reason there is a #BlackLivesMatter movement at all, and the reason there is #WhitePrivilege, is, in fact, rapport, or lack thereof, that causes some white police officers to respond differently to those who are like them from those who are NOT like them.
We see, time and again, fear; we hear, as Shaun shared with us last week, and have seen, heard and read so far too many times recently: that the police officer feared for his life when the alleged perpetrator had a wallet that looked like a gun; or had picked a toy gun off of a shelf at Walmart while talking on his cellphone; or was 12 years-old with a toy gun; or supposedly reared up like the Incredible Hulk in the eyes of the officer who was scared witless.
And we see, time and again, white people responded to, and talked with, by white police officers, quite differently.
We can call these cops "racist," if we want; or, to be more technically correct, because we can never know what is in their hearts, that they "acted" in a racist manner. We can demonize these people in blue. We can scream at them. We can demand change, which is necessary.
And, it's all about rapport. It's that people like people who are like themselves, and - especially when in a stressful situation when one's own life may be at state - fear those who are NOT like them, who come from a different culture, an alien culture, if you will, who look differently, and act differently. That fear -- that irrational yet understandable-but-not-excusable fear of the "other" -- has led to the death of probably more people than we know of right now.
So what can we do?
When municipalities start training officers to understand and appreciate cultures, to stop the de-humanization of the other; and when the officers stop dressing like other-than-human Robocops in armor that covers up whatever humanity they may otherwise have exposed at that moment; when we can find some common ground (come to think of it, not that much unlike when Bernie Sanders spoke at Liberty University the other day); then, perhaps, police officers, in the moment, might not revert to that fear -- the fear that grips them because they are, really and truly, scared witless, that causes them to shoot first.
Because many of them will continue to be scared witless, as long as there is no rapport; as long as black lives are those of the mysterious, fearful, "other."
And this is because people like and trust people who are like them (and this is true for better and worse. Remember that grifters and con artists also succeed because they figure out how to gain rapport).
#Whiteprivilege exists because there is rapport among white people. We have to scream out the painfully obvious message that #BlackLivesMatter because rapport is painfully, tragically, and often fatally absent.
The solution, though, is not to point fingers and say, "See?" I'm not making this up!" The solution is to somehow work -- yes, somehow -- municipality by municipality, precinct by precinct, to humanize the "other," to hire officers who have the ability and desire to find the common ground, and who have the desire to use their ingrained empathy and humanity to build rapport long before the "fight-or-flight" moment occurs where they fear for their lives, and yet are the only ones armed.
Which means, of course, to create, or continue, the political movement necessary to bring this into being.