Why it's worth listening to people we disagree with | Zachary R. Wood

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2019

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

We get stronger, not weaker, by engaging with ideas and people we disagree with, says Zachary R. Wood. In an important talk about finding common ground, Wood makes the case that we can build empathy and gain understanding by engaging tactfully and thoughtfully with controversial ideas and unfamiliar perspectives. "Tuning out opposing viewpoints doesn't make them go away," Wood says. "To achieve progress in the face of adversity, we need a genuine commitment to gaining a deeper understanding of humanity."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily.
0:05.7	This talk features Crusader for Dialogue, Zachary R. Wood, recorded live at TED 2018.
0:14.6	In 1994, Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein co-authored The Bell Curve.
0:22.7	An extremely controversial book,
0:28.1	which claims that on average, some races are smarter and more likely to succeed than others.
0:34.8	Murray and Hernstein also suggest that a lack of critical intelligence explains the prominence of violent crime in poor African-American communities.
0:40.3	But Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein are not the only people who think this.
0:44.3	In 2012, a writer, journalist, and political commentator named John Derbyshire
0:50.3	wrote an article that was supposed to be a non-black version of the talk that many black
0:55.7	parents feel they have to give their kids today.
0:58.4	Advice on how to stay safe.
1:01.4	In it, he offers suggestions such as, do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks,
1:08.0	stay out of heavily black neighborhoods, and do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in distress.
1:13.6	And yet, in 2016, I invited John Derbyshire, as well as Charles Murray,
1:20.6	to speak at my school, knowing full well that I would be giving them a platform
1:25.6	and attention for ideas that I despised and rejected.
1:31.3	But this is just a further evolution of a journey of uncomfortable learning
1:35.3	throughout my life.
1:37.3	When I was 10 years old, my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia,
1:42.3	a mental illness characterized by mood swings and paranoid delusions.
1:49.0	Throughout my life, my mother's rage would turn our small house into a minefield.
1:55.0	Yet though I feared her rage on a daily basis,
	...

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