Dallas has been my home for 32 years. Currently, I live and work downtown. The murders of the five Dallas police officers took place just a few blocks from my home. Neighbors in my building heard the firefight as it unfolded. I am a law professor, and three of my students are police officers. I have thought of them a lot lately. 
The public-policy issues on race, guns, and violence are being debated and discussed everywhere from the dinner table to the classroom to legislative arenas. Those issues permeate our workplaces as well. Like the Venn diagrams we learned in high school, which use overlapping circles to show relations between different items, the issues overlap—not by a little, but by a lot. Here are some questions HR, company leaders, and anyone else who is grappling with these issues should ask.
Does discrimination exist in the workplace?
Yes, it does. Sometimes it’s explicit. Good ol’ boys’ clubs exclude anyone not already in their network. Companies recruit only at schools with nonminority demographics. Sometimes it’s even more overt. To cite just a few of many examples:
- In Pennsylvania, three employees were fired after they modified their uniforms to look like Ku Klux Klan members.
- In New York, employees routinely used anti-Semitic comments and offensive and derogatory remarks about Judaism to mock the religious beliefs of a coworker’s spouse.
- In Illinois, after returning to work from serving in the Army, a Lebanon-born employee’s new supervisor mistakenly thought he was an “Arab,” forced him to take segregated smoke breaks, asked if his relatives were involved in the 9/11 attacks, and physically assaulted him.
Sometimes discrimination is implicit. While a company might say that it believes in equal rights, it can nevertheless have hiring managers who harbor an implicit belief that black employees don’t measure up or that a woman’s place is at the center of the family. Check out Harvard University’s Project Implicit. There is a test on its website to determine your level of implicit bias (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html).
The results may surprise you. They surprised me. I point the finger at my profession. Lawyers are overwhelmingly white. Just this year, the Texas Bar obtained 20 percent total minority membership. That 20 percent includes all minorities, including African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans.
The first step to wisdom is to understand that none of us are as good as we think we are. Trust me. Every morning, I look in the mirror and see someone who is skinnier than he really is, has more hair on his head than is really there, and is better looking than reality allows. A little self-awareness goes a long way to understanding.
First comes awareness, but what comes next?
In the first days after the bloodshed, there was a vigil in our city. Later, by happenstance, I ran into a Dallas police officer and a friend of hers at a bar. We talked over a beer, and she made an interesting observation (echoed by one of my students): Training at the Dallas Police Academy lasts eight months and continues after the rookie goes into the field. We saw that on display that terrible Thursday night as officers followed training protocol in helping their fallen comrades, professionally located and interviewed possible suspects, and gave updates to the press and public.
That’s the value of training. It’s the same in your workplace. You can’t change people, but you can help them understand the value of diversity, give them the tools to be fair and equitable at work, and teach them how to give appropriate criticism and praise proper conduct.
Are we powerless against violence?
Yes, we are powerless to the extent that we can’t stop or eradicate it. But we aren’t powerless from managing it when it happens. To address that issue, I’ll go back to my encounter with the police officer over a beer (as well as my experience representing police departments in employment lawsuits). In large metro areas, police officers are trained in the art of defusing volatile situations, moving them away from confrontation and toward resolution. The officer I met after the vigil mentioned that she receives five or so person-with-a-gun calls a week—calls that are resolved without violence.
To resolve conflicts in the workplace without violence, I suggest using supportive separations. I learned that method from working with consultants who helped me guide clients through workplace situations that were potentially violent. Here’s a story to illustrate my point: An employee who was recently divorced and had a chronic illness didn’t receive a promotion at work. He told a coworker that he was going to shoot his supervisor. The facts checked out, and we told him, “Joe, we cannot tolerate violence in the workplace. But we do care about you and your situation. We want to help design a way for you to receive health benefits and a severance, but those benefits come with the condition that you can’t come back to the facility.”
People resort to violence when they lose all hope. The supportive separation method is designed to preclude that feeling. It works.
Am I my brother’s keeper?
In the Bible, Cain killed his brother, Abel, a shepherd, over an imagined slight. The Lord said to Cain, “Where is Able thy brother?” Cain said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” I contend that yes, we are. We must be in order to have a civil and orderly society and workplace.
In a case in Kansas, an in-house attorney started acting oddly and took food from the company cafeteria without paying for it. The company installed cameras to catch him in the act, and once he was caught, it required him to report himself to the Kansas Bar Association. The lawyer was publicly reprimanded. To what end? After going through the expense and effort of earning a law degree and passing the bar exam, the attorney has a black mark over his whole career for what would seem like a minor infraction.
But what if the company had taken a different approach, digging a little deeper to find the cause of the problem instead of jumping to persecute the attorney? Instead of asking someone the vague, open-ended “How’s it going?” and settling for a rote “OK,” ask the person, “What’s on your mind?” Cognitive researchers point to that question as one that truly invites an honest response.
Bottom line
Try to be a role model for others. In a commencement speech several years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke of the grandparents who raised him and explained how they were his heroes. He said the greatest gift we can give our heroes is to be a hero for someone else.
That is close to the idea of being a role model—not a paragon of virtue, but someone whom a younger, less experienced person can model himself after. I am acutely aware of that whenever I stand in front of a class of first-year law students. No matter our age, we all need someone to show us the way and demonstrate that we are “our brother’s keeper.”
One of my law school colleagues participated in the Black Lives Matter march that preceded the violence. Television stations were filming the march as the firefight erupted. I saw my colleague and others running from the shooting. As I watched, a person fell. My colleague turned around, ran back toward the woman, and helped her get up, being a hero for someone else in a terrible moment.
It is hard to make sense of the senseless and find meaning in what seems like a meaningless enterprise. But I have found myself trying to do just that this past week. More than anything, this tragedy has been a reminder of our shared humanity.
Michael Maslanka is an assistant professor of law at the UNT Dallas College of Law, a partner with FisherBroyles, LLP, and managing editor of Texas Employment Law Letter. He can be reached at Michael.Maslanka@untdallas.edu.
Mike – Great article! Insightful and very practical. Hope all is well. I miss you but you sure seem to have found your perfect spot.
Mark
Mike,
These are very insightful comments for the most trying of times. Thank you for your instructive observations.
Excellent insight for human resources professionals and their role, not only in their company, but as a role model for the community. Very thought provoking article with some tough questions we all need to face. We have practiced the “supportive separation method” here at my organization and believe it does preclude the feelings of hopelessness, possible actions of violence, and can move people toward meaningful and peaceful resolutions.
Thank you for sharing this, Michael.
I most appreciate your encouraging all of us to continue to “find meaning,” even in tremendously challenging and hard times. And from that new found meaning no matter how small, to move to respond as we need to – for each other.
Much like the response to Joe and to the Kansas in-house attorney in your narrative here, I keep thinking we must persist to find different solutions – ones that in many cases require digging deeper and reaching farther to truly address our human needs.