Hi everybody welcome to open to debate. I'm John Don Van

welcoming you to this special debate where we are taking on the question does color

blindness perpetuate racism? It's being co-hosted by my organization open to debate in partnership.

I am delighted to say with the organization we all know and love and that is Ted.

So to kick things off, I would like to invite the head of Ted

Chris Anderson to join me for just a couple of minutes.

Hi Chris, how are you?

Good to see you, John.

We've actually long admired open to debate and your mission.

I think the world needs more discourse around divisive topics.

So that's what you do and it's really very meaningful for us here at TED to get to partner with you on this one.

And I want to say we're also thrilled to have you joining us today.

We share a mission with Ted, where we share the view that hearing ideas

is an important thing, that it matters, that ideas have power, that ideas live, but we also

recognize that very often ideas are going to be in conflict with one another.

Ideas held by people who disagree but in good faith and our goal is to get those people together

and to get them into a forum where they can test their ideas against one another, to do so civilly

and to do so respectfully. let's be open to listening, let's be open to

listening, let's potentially be open to changing our minds, but let's in the

end learn that we can disagree with somebody without having to think that they are our enemy.

And in that way, we hope to advance the cause of civil discourse.

So Chris, I just wanted to ask you, how does this idea of healthy debate kind of live up to

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