It took only two days after a racist terrorist shooting in the suburbs of Paris for far-right politicians and some media to shift the focus away from hateful rhetoric. They're using a move that shows up in organizational DEI, sometimes intentionally but more often unconsciously.

I call it Bad Apple system maintenance.

What Happened in France

On Friday October 23, a 39-year-old man armed with an automatic weapon drove 12 kilometers (about 7.5 miles) shooting at people along his route. He killed a young Black man and wounded four other people, including a 12-year-old girl. Reports and videos indicate he acted with cold deliberation, taking time to change the cartridge on his gun several times.

When police arrested him, he reportedly told them he wanted to kill looters to "avenge shopkeepers" and confessed to targeting victims based on their skin color or presumed religion, i.e., Islam.

To understand his first statement, you need to know that on October 17, less than a week before the shooting, large scale looting occurred across France as groups took advantage of the cover created by hundreds of thousands of peaceful marchers. Far-right politicians linked the looters to immigration, with one presenting as evidence "just look at them."

A look slightly farther back in time reveals rhetoric describing Trappes, one of the two towns where the shooting occured, as "a miniature Islamic republic."

Authorities are investigating the attack as an act of racially-motivated terrorism. The investigation is in its early days. The anti-immigrant, anti-Black climate is long-standing and festering.

The Pscyh Eval

Even as coverage of the Friday shooting was upstaged by new Saturday protests, information about the shooter's mental fragility began to filter out. He had drugs in his system. He had a "confusing" array of books in his home (The Bible, Mein Kampf, the Koran). In his youth, he had Black and brown friends and sometimes wore a djellabah. In other words: "Was he really motivated by racism?"

Then, on Sunday, his custodial interrogation was suspended to allow for a psychological evaluation. (An aside: The pscyh eval concluded custodial interrogation could continue because the mental health disorder was not creating an altered state.)

The shooter suffered from schizophrenia. This development gave just the ammunition the system needed to defend itself. "It wasn't racism; it was madness."

The shooter was a bad apple. The toxic atmosphere and those who created it shared no blame.

Bad Apples in Organizations

In organizations, I often see the same dynamic when acts of exclusion, harrassment, and overt hostility occur. Rather than examining the system, organizations focus on the victim and the perpetrator.

We are perhaps familiar with victim blaming: "This bad thing happened to them because of something they did or did not do (like try harder to fit in)."

We also need to be familiar with blame concentration: "If there is something wrong with the perpetrator, the problem is simply a broken individual and not a broken system. He is nothing like us."

This Bad Apple belief discharges us of collective responsibility for addressing identity-based hostility and inequity, which is often an aspect or a product of systemic factors.

Yes, personal accountability for bad acts is essential. Yes, mental health is a serious and undertreated issue. (Another aside: Mental disorders do not make people racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted. Socialization plants the seeds of hate.)

And systems that tolerate or incite bad acts, implicitly or explicitly, must be transformed or dismantled.

Look out for Bad Apple system maintenance in your organization by considering the following:

• Who are the people in the organization we label as "bad apples"?
• What qualifies them as being "not like us"?
• What message is it sending to keep them around?

The old saying goes "one bad apple spoils the whole bunch," but what if the deeper problem is a tree with rotten roots.

Felicia A. Henderson