Situational Awareness and Race

Stephen A. Smith

Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, made this comment last week. "If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street," he said. "And if on that side of the street, there's a guy that has tattoos all over his face -- white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere -- I'm walking back to the other side of the street."

Stephen A. Smith, a commentator for ESPN, supported this statement, then clarified his comments a day later (See the link at the top).

Without addressing any of the underlying race issues, I felt drawn to the comments from both Mark Cuban and Stephen A. Smith in regards to personal safety.  Situational awareness uses, in part, pattern-matching and recognition.  Our lives provide us with the experiential capacity to understand current events in light of past experiences, and can use those past experiences to provide us with a solution to a problem.  Thus, when walking down a street, if we see something that bothers us, we move to the other side of the street to avoid a potential problem.  Gavin de Becker, in his book The Gift of Fear, stresses that people need to pay attention to these warning signs.  He urges people to listen to their inner voice, and play it safe.

Staying Alive delves deeper into this.  The techniques we address are not race contingent, but based upon psychologically-based behaviors. Using the street analogy, if I am walking down the street and I see worrisome behavior, like a man in a hooded sweatshirt waiting in a place that doesn't make sense, it would not be prudent to ignore my experience and training that tells me something's not right, just to satisfy some social more.  My analysis is not based on the person's race, but on their behavior. After all, people of all races wear hooded sweatshirts.  If they do so at night while lurking in the shadows, my analysis is not going to include what race they might be, but on whether their behavior may constitute a threat.

It's not the color of a person's skin, but the behaviors they exhibit that should be used in developing our situational awareness.  Don't let social issues cloud your situational awareness.  If you are basing your safety decisions on the color of someone's skin, then shame on you!  Personal safety is colorblind. 

Look past the color of their skin, and look at how they are acting, and use their behavior to determine if they are a threat to you or not.