Continuing with our #CheckTheBox theme for this season, special guest Karith Foster joins us to discuss two boxes we tend to put people in when it comes to the race conversation: Victim or villain. In reality, those labels aren't so cut and dried, especially when you introduce intersectional identities into the mix. Karith Foster is a comic turned …

What are barriers to men living conscious, compassionate, connected lives in their homes and communities? How does this apply to the race conversation? Guest: Addison Brasil, VP of branding for tethr, an online peer-to-peer support community for men. Follow us on Instagram Behind the Seen: @behindtheseenpod Mark Bauer: @BarkMauer Branden Polk: @Bra…

In this episode, we discuss policing behavior (behavior of police) and the act of policing other people's behavior in our day-to-day lives. Recent civil unrest around the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has shined light on inconsistencies in what we view as acceptable policing. More often, policing of any kind is a preservation of powe…

In this episode we discuss the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. A lot of white people are being confronted for the first time with the injustice of racism and unsure how to process it. Others are perplexed why race has to be dragged into the equation at all. In this conversation, Branden turns the questions on Mark to discuss how the unexamined identities…

Before the Tiger King, the quarantine binge was the reality show Love is Blind, which puts strangers in neighboring cubes and allows them to get to know one another without the benefit of seeing each other. Then, they fall in love. Or at least that's the idea. But is love REALLY blind? How do subtle ways we talk even give away things about how we w…

Has coronavirus altered how you view racial disparity? Has it amplified it? Who are the populations most affected by coronavirus disruptions? Disruptions of this magnitude always allow for a shift in the landscape. When all of this lifts, how can we rebuild more equitably? Follow us on Instagram Behind the Seen: @behindtheseenpod Mark Bauer: @BarkM…

This is actually a replay of one of our favorite episodes from last season. I've experienced a lot of fear the last few weeks around quitting my job and moving to Los Angeles for the summer, and in conversations with friends there seems to be a widespread season of fear that a lot of folks are walking in. So, in this episode we go a little deeper i…

In this episode, we review the Emanuel documentary, which covers the history of the black church in Charleston leading up to the church shooting in 2015 by Dylan Roof that killed nine congregants, including the pastor. The movie's primary emphasis is on the expressions of forgiveness by family members toward Dylan Roof, less than 48 hours after he …

In the last episode on racism in dating, Todrick Hall briefly touched on something that a lot of listeners picked up on: Colorism—the idea that whiteness has defined some skin tones and features in people of color as more beautiful and acceptable in society. This twisted idea has resulted in a sort of prejudice and resentment from some blacks towar…

In a freewheeling conversation about dating, singer/songwriter/producer Todrick Hall joins Behind the Seen to discuss our racial “preferences,” how we acquire those preferences in the first place, and why we are OK completely disregarding a different group of people as potential partners based on such inconsequential factors as race. References For…

In today's episode, we're talking about code violations. We have our own personal codes, informed by religious texts or some other source, that we violate every day. And we have societal codes, laws and regulations that are in place to help guide, control and keep order in society. We discuss how easy it is to slip into a cycle of guilt and shame w…

Welcome back to Season 2 of Behind the Seen! We kick off season 2 with an episode on what it means to be human. A lot of our experience as humans involves stumbling through life trying to figure out what, exactly, makes us tick. What makes us happy. And we have to do this while simultaneously fighting off identities that the world wants to put on u…

The Oscars never fails to provide good fodder for race discussions and this year proved no different. Despite the diverse representation of presenters throughout the program and several firsts for black honorees and other people of color, the show wasn’t without its detractors. Even the Best Picture winner, Green Book, was widely panned for histori…

In this episode, we take the audio from our first Facebook Live that included special guest Bill Riedel, pastor of Redemption Hill Church in Washington DC. We brought pastor Bill on to discuss the race and the gospel series he preached earlier this summer. He discusses what compelled him to teach on this subject and what he learned in the process.…

In this episode, we discuss Justification, a really strong word used both in a legal context and a theological context. Justification is the act of showing something to be right or reasonable. In the theological context, the action of declaring or making righteous in the sight of God. And in the race conversation, what we’ve done historically is ju…

In this episode, we take a different approach to those articles you see all over the place this time of year that tell you how to talk to your relatives about politics. Our culture is so polarized that even a holiday about solidarity and gratitude can be hijacked to create division rather than unity. And so we will talk through what it looks like t…

In this episode, we discuss Dehumanization, which is a pretty strong word but one that we all engage in in some degree or another. Dehumanization occurs when we don’t fully see other people for their inherent worth or value. We don’t see the hardships they might be enduring, the joy as well as their sorrows.You might argue that dehumanization is am…

In this episode, we discuss the importance of safe spaces. They are certainly important for minority or marginalized people to associate to freely air grievances without feeling a need to defend themselves. Less often we hear about safe spaces in regards to white people. Steve Park, executive director and founder of Little Lights in Washington DC, …

In today's episode, we discuss how identity politics--the associating of people around social groups by which they identify--is often necessary to advancing equity where these groups have been typically marginalized. Politics of identity flips that and is more of a manipulative device that seeks control rather than justice, and uses identity as a w…

In this episode we discuss the ego, and how the ego creates stories about ourselves and the world in a way to understand reality. Think of it as a sort of programming. And this programming that tells us how to see the world becomes integral to our identity. And any new information that is introduced that conflicts with what we know literally become…

Today we’re going to talk about expectations, and how our expectations guide so many of our daily actions and how we see and interact with the world. So what are expectations? And what happens when we forfeit parts of ourselves to conform to unhealthy expectations put on us by others?

Today's episode coincides with Columbus Day, a day dedicated to honoring a man for his contributions to history, but who also committed horrific atrocities in the name of colonization. How should history judge such unsavory characters? We'll discuss how we form ideas about people's reputations, and how too often we take snapshots of people's lives—…

We all know that we inherit physical characteristics from our parents, but new understandings around a relatively new field called epigenetics, meaning “outside of genetics," shows how we can also inherit our parents fears, stress, and anxieties that even they themselves inherited from their own parents. In this episode, co-hosts Mark Bauer and Bra…

Privilege is a word given to an idea that says there are certain advantages that some people have access to based solely on their race, gender or economic status. These advantages are wholly unearned because we were born into them. We inherited opportunities from decisions that other people made. The most obvious ones are those our parents made, bu…

In this episode, we delve a little deeper into what it means to actually listen. It’s one thing to hear someone, but it’s another thing to actually understand what they are trying to communicate. Assuming that you two are speaking the same language, a variety of factors can get in the way of listening. You have the speaker, who is trying to communi…

We’ve talked a lot about discomfort and tension when we encounter things that are different than us. This episode will go a little deeper into the actual psychology of that fear. Practicing getting over that fear is like building and stretching any muscle—it requires repetition. And continually pushing the boundaries of what you can overcome unlock…

For this episode, it’s important that we talk about justification—or the excuses we make—when we’re confronted with our biases. If the last three episodes have caused you any kind of shame, guilt or anxiety, our typical reaction when we experience that kind of discomfort is to put it on somebody else, usually the person who pointed out our wrongnes…

In this episode, we try to de-stigmatize the stereotype of the "angry black person." We have this idea that civil discourse means we can’t be passionate and angry, and so when dialogue rises to that level, white people use it as an excuse to disengage.But political dialogue can often get heated, and we rarely shy away from it when we're emphatic ab…

In the first episode, we talked about what is at the root of misunderstandings and the snap judgements we make about people based entirely on the information we’re provided about their outward identities. Those outward identities never tell the full story about who that person is behind the seen, and when we’re confronted with those misunderstandin…

For this first episode, we introduce who we are, discuss what we’re trying to accomplish and lay some ground rules for the rest of the series. Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is contribute to dialogue that will help produce racial harmony. We know that there are still terribly, dark, hateful and racist people in the world, but our goal isn’t ne…