This TED Talk features performer and mentor Tamikia Ms. Lady Smith recorded live at TED 2018.

We live in a world where the collection of data is happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

This data is usually collected by what we call front desk specialists. Now, these are the retail clerks at your favorite department stores,

the cashiers at the grocery stores, the registration specialists at the hospital,

and even the person that sold you your last movie ticket.

They asked discrete questions like,

may I please have your zip code or would you like to use your

savings card today? All of which gives us data. However, the conversation becomes a little bit more

complex when the more difficult questions need to be asked. Let me tell you a story. See,

once upon a time there was a woman named Miss Margaret.

Now, Ms. Margaret had been a front desk specialist for almost 20 years,

and in all that time, she has never, and I do mean never,

had to ask a patient their gender, race, or ethnicity.

Because see, now, Ms. Margaret has the ability to just look at you. Uh-huh. And she can tell

if you are a boy or a girl, black or white, American or non-American, and in her mind, those were the

only categories. So imagine that grave day when her sassy supervisor invited her to this change,

everything meeting, and told her that she would have to ask each and every last one of her patients to self-identify.

She gave her six genders, eight races, and over 100 ethnicities.

Well, now Ms. Farger was appalled.

I mean highly offended, so much so that she marched down to that human

resource department to see if she was eligible for an early retirement. And she ended her

ranked by saying that her sassy supervisor invited her to this change, everything meeting,

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