I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. No one, at least not the vast majority of us,

believes we are individually racist. And yet racial bias is real, and we can see the effects of racial

disparities in housing or schooling or criminal justice. Today's archive TED 2020 talk from psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt

unpacks how our brains are vulnerable to unconscious bias

and what we can do to turn down the kind of bias that puts people at risk.

Some years ago, I was on an airplane with my son, who was just five years old at the time.

My son was so excited about being on this airplane with Mommy.

He's looking all around and he's checking things out and he's checking people out.

And he sees this man and he says hey that guy looks like daddy

and i look at the man and he didn't look anything at all like my husband nothing at all

and so then i start looking around on the plane and i noticed this man was the only black guy on the plane.

And I thought, all right, I'm going to have to have a little talk with my son about how not all

black people look alike. My son, he lifts his head up and he says to me i hope he doesn't rob the plane and i said what

what did you say he says well i hope that man doesn't rob the plane and i said well why would you say that

why would you say that?

You know, Daddy wouldn't rob a plane.

And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, I know.

And I said, well, why would you say that?

And he looked at me with this really sad face.

And he says, I don't know why I said that. I don't know why I was thinking that. We are living with such severe racial stratification that even a five-year-old can tell us what's supposed to happen next.

Even with no evildoer, even with no explicit hatred,

this association between blackness and crime made its way into the mind of my five-year-old.

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