Listening to Perspectives That Matter: Session 120

The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

Matt Cicoria

Science, Mental Health, Skinner, Behaviorism, Behaviorconsultant, Aba, Behavioralpsychology, Health & Fitness, Appliedbehavioranalysis, Autism, Acceptanceandcommitmenttherapy, Fba, Social Sciences, Verbalbehavior, Bcba, Functionalassessment, Discretetrial

4.8 • 648 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2020

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since the killing of George Floyd, I’ve had colleagues approach me with suggestions on how to address the issue of police brutality and racism on Behavioral Observations. To be honest, none of the suggestions were entirely satisfying.

As a white guy living in one of the whitest states in America - someone who has not had any mistreatment based on his skin color - other than condemn the actions of those police officers, sharing my thoughts on this event (as well as the broader topic of racism and police brutality) would not only ring hollow, but not be appropriate for the moment. In other words, I realized that I lacked personal perspective with this issue, and while I may have some thoughts on the matter, those thoughts are more or less academic in nature.

So after wracking my brain for a few days on what I could do to leverage the BOP platform for good, I came upon the idea for this show: For Session 120, I want to take myself out of the podcast altogether, and turn it over to a panel of African American men who are also our colleagues in Behavior Analysis. The goal of the show would be for both me and the BOP audience to simply listen rather than talk.

I reached out to Dr. Antonio Harrison to see if he would be interested in facilitating this discussion, and thankfully he agreed. We then recruited Shawn Capell, Pierre Louis, Larry West III, and Kirk Kirby to participate in the panel. From there, I stepped out of the rest of the production process. As of this writing, I haven't even listened to the final product yet because I want to experience this conversation as an audience member would.

As such, I'm ready to learn more about the experience of African American men in our country and I hope you are too. If you find value in this episode, please share it with as many friends and colleagues as possible. I'm hoping this episode is also disseminated beyond the field of Behavior Analysis as well. Lastly, if you have the means to do so, please consider donating to the group, Black Applied Behavior Analysts, (in case you're wondering, I have and will continue to put my money where my mouth is).

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Behavioral Observations podcast. I'm obviously not Matt Secoria. A little bit of
0:07.0	background in response to the current state of affairs in America with respect to protests,
0:12.9	the killing of unarmed black men. Matt felt it necessary to use his platform to share. And I got to be
0:19.3	honest. I kind of want to applaud him for that because a lot of
0:22.4	times people who are in a position of power who want to give voices to the unheard, they'll create a
0:28.7	platform, but they want to start by speaking on that platform, then let voices be heard, and then finish
0:35.2	and wrap up and have the last word when in my opinion if you're
0:39.3	really going to use your power to create a platform for unheard voices you need to set that
0:44.8	platform up and then take several seats and just listen and listen further and listen further
0:50.9	until you are asked to ask some questions and share your opinion and then listen some more.
0:56.2	So thank you, Matt, for this great platform that you've asked us to be a part of.
1:01.1	I was just telling the gentleman on the call that I was kind of surprised once I got a call from Matt saying,
1:06.1	hey, I got this idea, but the moment he said it, I knew what it was.
1:09.6	And I think he reached out to me because I've had a lot of
1:12.6	experience in podcasts, and I'm pretty comfortable with being able to moderate these type of things
1:17.9	and have these discussions and be super real and honest. I also want to make it clear, everyone on this
1:25.6	call is a black male. And this doesn't mean that black women, Latinos,
1:30.3	or any other people of color shouldn't have a voice in this.
1:33.3	What it means is we're sharing this through the black lens of a black male
1:38.3	because death of unarmed black men or death of black people period in America
1:43.3	is a disease that plague
1:44.7	black men more than anybody else. So I think the conversation needs to be started with us
	...

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