MINDFULNESS AND FERGUSON

One week ago today a community exploded in violence as they reacted to a decision of a Grand Jury. I had just sent out last week’s post on Mindfulness, so I began wondering, How mindful were those who destroyed their own community? Were they mindfully aware of the details of the situation? Were they just reacting along with a mob mentality? Were they mindful of the language that contributed to the problem?

Ferguson Facts Here is what happened. This past August a young man in Ferguson Missouri (part of the greater St. Louis area) was shot. The young man got into a scuffle with a police officer, reached into his patrol car and attempted to take his gun. In the scuffle, he struck the officer, then the gun went off so that the bullet flew threw the windshield. The young man then ran away. But not for long. When the officer recovered and got out of the car, he yelled for the young man to get down on the ground. He did not. Instead, he turned and ran toward him. Charging him. The officer again yelled “get down” and began shooting. When the young man was still coming, and now just 8 feet away, he was shot him in the head. The first bullets hit his arm several times; when the last one hit him in the head, that killed him. This is what the Grand Jury found after weeks and weeks of deliberation.

But that is not what was first reported. Immediately after the event, some witnesses who saw some or parts of the conflict, presented a different narrative and the only narrative which the media carried: The young man was surrendering, raised his arms, and the policeman shot him dead. Then, given that narrative, people began protesting in Ferguson Missouri. Then the protesting turned into rioting and then criminals and thugs took advantage of the situation by breaking into and looting stores, setting buildings and cars on fire, threatening people, and creating night after night of rioting and looting. This is what the international press played over and over.

The case was turned over to a Grand Jury of 12 people who listened to every witness that would come forward. After weeks of deliberation, the Grand Jury released hundreds of pages of the information presented which included the conversations, and the questions and answers which the jurers asked of the witnesses and experts. Even with the very low standard set for a Grand Jury so that they could recommend a full trial, the evidence in this case led the Grand Jury to decide that the evidence did not lead to indicting the officer for a trial. So said nearly all legal experts.

That led last Monday for chaos to break out afresh. Within an hour of the announcement, people were looting stores again, burning them down, setting fire to cars and businesses, destroying property, threatening people, and creating a war-like zone atmosphere.

Of course, none of this violence and destructiveness is the way to resolve differences or to push toward a more equitable society. In fact, these are the very things that not only perpetuate

inequality, injustice, conflict, etc. Instead this is the way to make the problem worse, make it less solvable, and distort it so that the real problem can’t even be recognized.

Languaging the Conflict The facts of a situation is one thing; how we language those facts and how we language our thinking, feeling, and conclusions about the situation is yet another thing. What we know in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Neuro-Semantics is that how we describe things controls how we think, feel, and respond to those things. This includes our linguistic code (words, language), our evaluative frames, the sequence of our thoughts (syntax), and the assumptive frames that we hide in the shadows of our presentation. What follows is an exploration in a bit of the language that makes up the narrative promoted in the media which feds the rioting and violence and which creates mindlessness rather than mindfulness.

First, languaging the person. The way the family and the media has been consistently describing the young man, Michael Brown, who was shot inflames the situation. Sometimes he is called a “teenager,” yet most often as a “child.” A child! Yet the facts are that this “child” is that he was a 280 pound, 6 foot 6 inches man who had just strong-armed an innocent Asia business owner and robbed him in full sight of people in the store as caught on video-tape. So this was no “innocent child.” If anything, he was a bully and a thief. The word “child” creates a false picture that inflames passions. A man who weights nearly 300 pounds and who is 6'6" is a giant of a person. This is no child. Most heavy-weight boxers are not that big! And when a man that big who assaults a policemen, will not stop aggressing, and who charges at you ... that’s a very different situation from the language of “an innocent and unarmed child was shot down in the street.”

Second, languaging the act. In terms of facts—there was a shooting. Calling it “murder” or “shooting an innocent, unarmed young man in cold blood,” these are evaluations, not facts. The Grand Jury decided it was not “murder.” The evidence did not lead those 12 people to think of it in those terms. So to call these things “murder” is prejudicing and imposing a viewpoint. The day after the Grand Jury’s decision, a group of community “leaders” among African Americans held a news conference and called the event the “brutalizing” of a young black teenager. Language it in that way is like gasoline on fire. It does not help or bring calm.

At the same press conference, attorney Benjamin Crush seemed to attempt to re-try the evidence which the Grand Jury heard, accusing them of being “unjust.” Of course, he was not there. Nor did he have time to read the hundreds of pages of evidence from the Grand Jury that was delivered the night before. Yet there he was presenting one side, making accusations, asking no questions, but in outrage denouncing a system that he decided was unjust.

Third, languaging the meaning. Most of the media framed the situation as a racial problem: white policeman mistreating young black men. Yet to frame it these ways, media leaves out that Michael Brown had just robbed a store and man-handled the store owner. What does that make him? A poster-child for civil rights? I hardly think so. Watching someone rob a store, bully an older man, and do so in plain daylight, and then just walk out, I would use such words as: criminal, felon, trouble-maker, etc. A few minutes later he is walking in the middle of the road, back-talking to a policeman, then he assaults the policeman, etc. To associate this person as someone whose civil

rights were being violated does not fit the facts at all. What about the civil rights of those who he was violating? So when civil rights leaders like Al Sharpen hold a press conference and frame this as a case of civil rights violations, he is choosing the wrong person as his poster-person. If anyone was violating the civil rights of people, it was Michael Brown.

Critical Skills for being Mindful What’s the bottom line? Facts and language are two different phenomenon and we cannot escape the power of language. Language sets frames on facts and most of the time this influence is outside- conscious awareness. That’s why we need critical thinking skills.

Without critical thinking about how we and others language things, we can become the victim of mis-information and even worse, dis-information. Then those who wish to recruit you to their position depend on you being uncritical in your thinking. To defeat that kind of mindlessness, start with learning to recognize the list of common cognitive distortions: over-generalizing, awfulizing, emotionalizing, either-or thinking, etc. Then learn to use the Meta-Model questions to ask detailing questions so that you can get back to the facts, to the sensory-based descriptions of what actually happened prior to the labeling and judgment that others put on those facts.

For more about the Meta-Model, see Communication Magic (2001).