I two years earlier had been invited, uh, by the city and by a federal monitor to come into help the Oakland Police Department with their reform efforts.

Eso There's some terrible things that happened that had to do with race and racial profiling and, you know, false arrests.

And you name it s O.

They wanted to bring in what they call a subject matter expert to analyze the data and to see, you know, to what extent there were racial disparities there, um, in their enforcement activities, I've been there and we analyzed the data.

I worked with a team of Stanford researchers to do that, and we were about to release a report, um, to the public on our findings.

And so there was, you know, pretty significant racial disparities.

And so I was, um, you know, trying to sort of figure out sort of what the best course of action was in terms of preparing the department, um, for the results.

And So, for example, 28% of the population as a whole in Oakland is African American.

Um, but we found that over 60% of the people who were stopped were African American.

And we found, you know, similar disparities in terms of searches, in terms of handcuffing and arrest and so forth.

So I had a sense of how the department would respond, you know, to this.

And so I was thinking also that I had some sense of how the community would respond and and that was Thio sort of demand the department take, you know, some action.

And that would include, um, training, you know, implicit bias.

And so, because I'm a researcher who studies this, I thought, um, one, um suggestion might be for them to get this training.

And I definitely did not want to give them this training after the report was released because I figured, uh, you know, I had already lost them at that point, and they wouldn't be there and present and listening and so forth.

So I decided I wanted to do the training beforehand.

And so I go in and I'm sort of trying to train the whole department within a couple weeks period before the report's release.

And eso I have my first session and I have 132.

You know, uniformed officers sitting there in the auditorium, sort of waiting for me to take the stage.

So they had on a bulletproof vest, and they had, uh, you taught faces and sort of their eyes were distant.

And I knew I had a problem, right?

My hands and I could feel a chill in the room.

So I started in and it started.

You sort of talking, you know, with the slides.

And I would talk about bias, and I was, you know, sort of trying to connect with them.

But whatever I did, it just couldn't make a connection.

And I, you know, tried jokes that didn't work and, uh, demonstrations that didn't work.

And I tried showing videos, Uh, that, you know, really sort of got people engaged in other settings.

Nothing.

And so I decided to stop and just to tell a story.

And, uh, the story I told was about my son, who was five years old at the time.

And we were on an airplane together and right, So he's looking all around, and he sees a man on the plane, and he says, Hey, that guy looks like daddy.

And so I looked at the guy, and he doesn't look anything at all like Daddy.

I mean, nothing, you know?

And I'm like, What is he talking about?

So then I started looking around on the plane and I noticed he was the only black man on the plane, and I thought, OK, you know, I'm gonna have toe have a talk with my five year old about how not all black people look alike, right?

Something All right, you know, So I'm trying to think, you know, how I'm gonna have this conversation and language that a five year old could understand.

But before I launched into the lecture, I thought, You know, Children see the world differently from adults, and they see people in a way that's different.

You know, they haven't been trained across years to kind of see people in certain ways.

And so maybe there was some resemblance there that I just wasn't seeing.

I decide.

I'm gonna give it a shot.

I'm gonna look at this guy and look for any resemblance.

And so, um, I look at him.

I look at his height and he's about four inches shorter than my husband.

Nothing there.

And so I look at his weight, Nothing there.

I look at his facial features, nothing.

I look at his skin color, you know nothing there.

And then I look at his hair and he has, um, thes long dreadlocks flowing down his back and my husband's bald.

I got help.

I thought, All right, so I'm all ready to give him the talk.

And before I could say anything, he looks up and he says, I hope he doesn't rob the plane And I said, What?

What did you say?

And he said it again.

He says, Well, I hope he doesn't rob the plane.

And I said, You know, Daddy wouldn't rob a plane and he says, Yeah, I know.

And I said, Well, why would you say that?

And he looked at me with this really sad face, and he said, I don't know why I said that.

I don't know why I was thinking that we're living with such severe racial stratification that even ah, five year old can tell us what's supposed to happen next.

So I stood there in this auditorium in the Oakland Police Department, and I I told that story and, you know, hoping again for a connection.

And I want to just read just a little bit from the book of what happened.

When I looked out at the crowd, I took a deep breath, and when I looked back out at the crowd in the auditorium, I saw that the expressions had changed.

Their eyes had soften.

They were no longer uniformed police officers, and I was no longer Ah, university researcher.

We were parents unable to protect our Children from a world that it's often bewildering and frightening.

Ah, world that influences them so profoundly, so insidiously and so unconsciously that they and we don't know why we think the way we do, yeah.