It's TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. There's a lot of talk about race and racism, especially in America. But what do we mean when we say something is racist? Political science researcher Candice Watts-Smith unpacks our main myths about racism in her talk at TEDx PSU from 2021.

She challenges us to rethink our understanding so that we can better work toward a more just society.

When I'm out at the grocery store or maybe a restaurant or the park with my son, he's six and a half, people will stop us and mention that

they think that he's handsome. I agree. They'll use that opportunity to chop it up with him,

and often when they're done talking with him, they'll mention that they think he's smart

and engaging little guy. When those people walk away, the thought that comes to my mind is that I hope they remember meeting him as a child when they see him again as a grown man.

This thought comes to my mind because I've written two books about race and racism in the United States. And this kind of work can produce feelings

of pessimism. One of the things that I've learned is that Americans have an orientation toward

progress. In this context, what that means is that we often celebrate the distance between

where we were and where we are now. But that same orientation can

blind us from the gap between where we are and where we could or should be. The other thing

that I've learned about Americans is that we have a very, very narrow understanding of racism,

mostly in the minds and hearts of people, usually old people,

old people from the South. And this really narrow definition can constrain our opportunities to

produce a more racially egalitarian society. We like to hunt for racists and distance ourselves from people who say mean things about

whole groups of people or who idealize the 1950s.

But the fact of the matter is that we might just need to look in the mirror.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone here is a racist, but what I am saying is that everyone here has the

capacity and perhaps even the propensity to live their life in a way, to make decisions, to rely on

biases that reproduce racial inequality. So people say, well, you do all this work about racism. What's the answer?

And I say that the first thing we might need to do is to come to a shared understanding about what

racism is in the first place. History shows that racists have had the upper hand in deciding who the

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