How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them | Vernā Myers

TED Talks Daily

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly — as we've seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York. Diversity advocate Vernā Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable. In a funny, impassioned, important talk, she shows us how.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey listeners, it's Elise Hugh with TED Talks Daily. Today, diversity advocate Verna Myers. She's so awesome, so energetic, and is talking on a topic we all need to confront more directly. Our own biases and how they move from generation to generation. In her 2014 archive talk from TEDx Beacon Street, she calls on us to get out of denial
0:24.8	and go looking for our biases.
0:27.2	It will likely prove your old stereotypes are wrong and how to change them so we can
0:32.9	stop racial injustice in our society.
0:37.7	I was on a long road trip this summer, and I was having a wonderful time listening to the
0:44.3	amazing Isabella Wilkerson's warmth of other sons.
0:48.8	It documents six million black folks fleeing the South from 1915 to 1970, looking for a respite from all the
1:01.0	brutality and trying to get to a better opportunity up north. And it was filled with stories of the
1:08.5	resilience and the brilliance of African Americans.
1:12.1	And it was also really hard to hear all the stories of the horrors and the humility
1:17.6	and all of the humiliations.
1:22.0	It was especially hard to hear about the beatings and the burnings and the lynchings of black men.
1:29.4	And I said, you know, this is a little deep. I need a break. I'm going to turn on the radio.
1:36.8	I turned it on and there it was. Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown, 18-year-old black man, unarmed, shot by a white police officer, laid on the ground, dead, blood running for four hours while his grandmother and little children and his neighbors watched in horror,
2:01.5	and I thought,
2:05.0	here it is again.
2:13.0	This violence, this brutality against black men has been going on for centuries.
2:15.4	I mean, it's the same story.
2:17.9	It's just different names. I mean, it could have been story. It's just different, different names.
2:21.1	I mean, it could have been Amadou Diallo.
2:23.6	It could have been Sean Bell.
2:26.7	It could have been Oscar Grant.
	...

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