America's Son

File this one under "Our Workplaces Do Not Exist in a Vacuum."

One foggy evening, I'm leaving a West End meeting with a client and in the darkness at a stop light, a hooded figure — a black guy — starts running towards my car. I glance at my doors — and he winds up running past me because he's trying to catch the bus on the other side of my car. 

Does this make me racist?

A black mom advises her two teenaged sons not to wear hoodies, nor to walk around with their hands in their pockets. 

Post-Trayvon, does this make her over-reactive? 

Post-Trayvon, journalist Charles Blow recalled telling his sons to watch how they run, because a black man in motion usually makes people nervous and suspicious — not what is he running to (like a bus), but what is he running from (like a crime)? 

I've been in a handful of race relations workshops, at least one of which turned emotionally violent because the issues quickly polarized. One observer, a Canadian mayor from a city of at least 14 ethnic groups, shook his head and asked me, 

Michael Brown at age 16:
He wanted to attend college and
one day run his own business

"Is it only about black and white here in America?" 

Is my adopted hometown of Atlanta — this city symbolized by a phoenix rising out of the ashes — is this a city "too busy to hate," or just busy enough to sidestep a crucial conversation that's never been properly discussed, not anywhere in this nation, but especially not in places like Ferguson, MO? 

Is Mrs. Brown just another grieving low-income black mother (one of those social elements identified as "tearing apart the fabric of society"), or is she my neighbor, another mother who struggled to keep her child in school? If we buy into the notion that the fabric of our society is supposedly being torn apart by black men without work ethic, or black women bearing children without husbands, does it then make it okay to shrug off Michael Brown's death (or the death of any other youth from those presumed circumstances)? 

By criminalizing and dehumanizing both the youth and his circumstances, are we who are not black thus morally absolved of what happened last Saturday in Ferguson? 

Or is the hifalutin sacred fabric of our society even more threatened by what happened — because America's sons can die so violently in their hometowns, their bodies left on our streets for hours, while authorities scramble to understand how such things could've erupted in the first place?

Is the death of Michael Brown a social justice problem for just the black community, or is this one that belongs to all of us? 

I'm not asking you to give an answer. Just trying to round up the questions.

"It must've been my evil twin!"

I deliver a class on (workplace) civility and we talk a lot about cultural influences behind the incivilities we experience today. Reality TV shows, for example, are loosely scripted around escalating conflicts.

The rudeness people experience on social media is an odd phenom: everyone agrees it's deplorable, but nobody's responsible for those acts of incivility. I've concluded we each have evil twins running around, indulging in low-brow conduct.

Anyway, here's a rundown of what I'm talking about:

• Willfully misunderstanding the other person to position them in the wrong (and to put yourself in the right). If you don't understand their point, ask for clarification.

• Willfully (mis)characterizing the other person's motives. Before you make an accusation of their moral or intellectual inferiority, get an accurate picture of their motives first — from them.

• Name calling, insulting, baiting, goading, profanity, sarcasm. If you normally wouldn't say it face-to-face, then best not to launch the salvos from behind the medium. Remember that their loved ones may be following the thread. I've had to keep my 20something daughter from entering the fray when she felt I was being unfairly attacked. 

• "If you don't think the same way I do, you must be evil/moronic." Well, let the witch hunts begin.... Your moral indignation and their public shaming will not reverse any opinions. About the only thing that changes attitude and value judgment is careful listening: if you listen, you'll have earned your right to be listened to.

• Discounting someone else's personal experience as irrelevant or petty. Personal experiences lead us to our most closely held opinions! The more profound the experience, the more deeply set the opinion will be. (As a single mother, I might disagree with notions that "single mothers are tearing apart the fabric of society.")

• Understand that you can't fix the world's problems on social media, you can only try to understand the issues better via access to assorted viewpoints. At best, agree to disagree (so many of my Facebook threads have ended this way).

• If you post the topic, you're the host or "curator." It's the equivalent of having friends, acquaintances, and colleagues in your living room. Do you favor only the ones with whom you agree? Are you going to stand by, grinning, while others "gang up" on an individual? You need to be sure everyone behaves to your terms of conduct. You need to have terms of conduct.

• Always end the discussion as positively as possible. Wish everyone a good evening. Thank them for bringing their viewpoints to the table. Remember their spouses and families. It may be a cranky, begrudging finish, but try to leave it as friendly as possible. If you're a "guest" leaving the thread, thank the "host" for posing the discussion.

Engaging in debates, arguments, and discussions is not the problem. The problem is the way people choose to behave once emotions run high. This country was built on public discourse, even when volatile and polarized, but social media has provided us a screen to hide behind. And I don't mean to be holier-than-thou, because I remind myself of these points each and every day, and I don't often measure up. #dietrying

About the illustration: Pawel Kuczynski, a Polish artist, has worked in satirical illustration specialising in thought-provoking images that make his audience question their everyday lives. His subjects deal with everything from poverty to social media and politics.

Here's one for the Curiosity Book

How long does the American public care to follow a news story before it loses emotional heat?

I've watched this in an informal way and — with the exception of stories like the OJ Simpson trial, 9/11, the disappearances of Laci Peterson and Elizabeth Smart, or Kate Middleton's evolving wardrobe — it appears to average about two to three weeks. And then we move on to the next crisis, the  next controversy.

The Georgia "hot car death" story began trending within hours after the father was arrested (around 6/20/14), with reactions and opinions voiced on Facebook threads, but faded shortly after his bond hearing and his wife's hire of her own attorney (after the July 4 holiday weekend).

Even though the case itself has gone quiet for now, it's spawned flash-in-the-pan stories in the news: with the nation now hyper-alerted to children and animals left in hot cars, last week a Georgia woman was arrested after she left four kids, all under the age of six, in hers when she ran into Kroger's for about 20 minutes. An Asian couple in Brea, CA, was arrested after leaving their 3-year-old alone in the car.