Now, we are seeing all sorts of hashtags, and facebook groups and even petitions about misogyny and racism in our field.  It is good to talk about these things; however, we are afraid that this advocacy movement—  one that we are behind 100% could be on the verge of going off the rails.  We worry that if it continues in the current direction and trajectory, it will lead to the short-term satiation of a fleeting condition at the expense of long lasting solutions.  Without sustained solutions, our field will not improve for women and minorities.  So, we want to provide what we believe will keep the movement on track and focused on the end game: equality among all. 

 

First off, we want to point out that as behaviorists, we should be focusing on contingencies of behavior and not agency within a person.  The latter is a construct we discarded as one of our initial assumptions of the science.  As such, there is no racist and no sexist, only racist behavior and sexist behavior.  When a person engages in such behavior, they don’t become a racist, they don’t become a sexist, they simply engage in behavior we should no longer tolerate.  We don’t subscribe to personality traits — we subscribe to extended patterns of behavior due to reinforcement histories.  To change those, we add onto the histories.  This is a trap we must always work hard to avoid.  This becomes doubly important in situations like this – it becomes very easy to blame the person.  While that may yield momentary satisfaction it will not bring us any closer to a solution to the actual problem – the contingencies. 

 

Secondly, in this case, when someone says that the verbal behavior is “not who they are” this does not mean they are describing some innate themness that the verbal behavior does not match.  Rather, they are indicating that the verbal behavior holds a minority position in their extended patterns of behavior.  In other words, there isn’t a strong say-do correlation between that verbal behavior and related behavior.  In the case of the recent Dick Malott episode, we have a perfect example.  Dick is known for using juvenile language as a provocateur.  It’s his shtick (like a vulgar comedian).  It isn’t new, and it shouldn’t be surprising.  He selects words to use much like a middle-schooler might try on newly discovered profanity.  It’s juvenile, and gets a reaction.  We must be careful not to mistake it for some bubbling up of latent racism or sexism.  It is operant verbal behavior which is reinforced by its comedic effect.  And the dude has a long history of receiving a lot of attention (and invites, and published articles, etc.) for engaging in it.  But before we start to sign petitions demanding that awards be revoked, and Dick be banned from stages, we may want to investigate what is the totality of his behavior towards those populations.  We urge you to check out his tribute to Ellie Pinkston, or his autobiographical work where he describes how he came to develop the  first class exploring behavior analysis and race (of which I’m aware);  how many other courses like this exist?  Dick has trained and supported so many female graduate students, and while his use of juvenile language may have normalized some hurtful language to and around them [and we agree – that must stop now], we have not heard of any student describing discriminatory practices based on race or gender from Dick.  In fact, we have heard the opposite.  So we agree – it is high time that we say,  “That language will no longer fly.  We need you to stop it right now.  We no longer tolerate it.”  This language is intolerable, and unacceptable, but let us not fall into the trap of suggesting it is an indicator of his “racism” or “sexism”.  Look at the functionof this behavior – it grabs attention and brings an audience to hear his point.  Almost every single one of his talks which begins with provocative language makes a point that is the opposite of what such language might suggest.  Frankly, given his experience (he has lived through a lot of history) we should welcome those points, so long as they are no longer accompanied by offensive denigrating language.  But we should go further! This intolerance of language that normalizes such stuff should be across the board (not just keynotes).  It will require that everyone involved be willing to hold folks accountable.  We might even get Dick to include it in one of his famous self management systems. 

 

So how can we make this happen?  What do we think would be the next appropriate steps?  We have already begun the first one — having a dialogue.  CalABA BoD took this first step by having a follow-up dialogue session.  However, we can’t simply stop by focusing this dialogue on a single man or single event, but rather what kinds of things we can do to be changing the culture.  It should focus on what contingencies can be changed so that when people find themselves confronted with such situations they can assert themselves in a way that stops it. 

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Finally, we need to focus on the bigger issues within this context, those which we see playing out in society at large – we are seeing people mention physical & sexual harassment, quid pro quo sexual favors for job hires or promotions, discriminatory hiring/firing practices, and “lists of predatory behavior analysts”.  Warning fellow behavior analysts allows the offender to keep on going – it creates a system that moves victims out of the way instead of stopping the behavior.  Let’s focus on how to stop that!

These are the kinds of issues we need to be tackling as a field.  If we are not careful, we will allow our reaction to the inappropriate verbal behavior of one person who offended us increase signs of damage as the reinforcer.  That will be a short-lived victory and will not generate extended behavior towards the goal.  Rather, we should extend our focus beyond any single person and onto the contingencies that create and allow these problems to exist.  We need to be dialoguing and acting towards what kinds of new contingencies we can create.  Contingencies that allow victims to feel safe engaging in behavior that will stop it.

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We believe it is really important that we do not create a false equivalence between the selection of juvenile language and true discrimination and harassment.  We are afraid that what we’re witnessing is focusing too heavily on the former to the exclusion of the latter.  This worries us as members of a field that is on the verge of a movement of which we so desperately want to be proud.