Implicit Bias -- how it effects us and how we push through | Melanie Funchess | TEDxFlourCity

[Music] [Applause] I would like to begin my talk with an important message you know like the ones for the pharmaceutical companies when they see people walking lazily along on the beach or running in slow motion through fields of flowers while they tell you the side effects of their product nausea vomiting heart arhythmia constipation impotence erections lasting more than 4 hours but seriously I'm going to say some things during my talk that may make you uncomfortable and they should but I what I ask of you in the this time to stay present with me through this

and ask yourself some critical questions to really listen closer and ask and really question your thought your own thoughts and behaviors and be open to a new a new view of yourself you may ask as I start to present this you may say oh Melanie I got that I know this I read the book this doesn't apply to me I would like to challenge challenge that belief and you you may say what is this concept that is so controversial that she feels she needs a preface statement the concept is implicit bias let me tell you

a story a young couple College sweethearts they graduate school begin their careers get married and start a family as they start to approach their 30s they begin to say that they can they're closing in on American Dream they purchased their first home 3 weeks after they close on this home the husband becomes violently ill so this family husband wife three children ages 53 and one and a baby on the way go searching for the diagnosis that has stricken this otherwise healthy and vital 32y old man turn to your neighbor and say four weeks later as

this man lays critically ill and dying in a hospital doctor are circling around a cluster of diseases that they that they know must be the thing that is killing this man despite that all that the fact that all the tests for these diseases have come back negative they begin to harass the husband and ask him to tell the truth and to really open up and let them know about his IV drug use and his secret unprotected sex with men you see they were trying to make the case to continue looking for HIV despite multiple negative

tests finally the wife comes and says why what are you looking for to which the doctors reply we're looking for HIV and Sarcoidosis so the wife kind of perplexed because we thought we' already ruled those things they thought they' already ruled those things out says well why are you looking at only those diseases to which the doctors say well as a young African-American male she becomes irate and says stop right there I want you to check my husband for things that white people get and magically within days they have a diagnosis stage 4B Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma

and a d and a prognosis two weeks to live the you know the implicit bias that existed within these doctors meant resulted in behavior that showed what diseases they chose to and not to look for the implicit bias of these doctors said how much value they placed or did not Place upon the information that they received from the patient and his wife you may say Melanie how does this happen how do we as good activists and hardworking Progressive open-minded American citizens how do we continue to fall into these these the story of these stereotypes implicit

bias those unconscious things that have been flowing through us since childhood you may say to me well what is implicit bias well I'm going to give you an academic definition implicit bias otherwise known as implicit social cognition are those attitudes and stereotypes that affect our behaviors our decisions and our attitudes unconsciously I related it to like the Matrix anyone here seen The Matrix when you're in The Matrix you don't know you're in there you're just happily walking along thinking everything is okay well I'm here today to yank out the plug and disconnect you from the

main frame let me share with you another story there's a for picture it I feel like Sophia Petrillo picture it fourth grade math class A teacher ask for volunteers to go up to the board to work on long division one young one young girl and two of her friends go up and they start working on the board the little girl is the first one done since she's the first one done she starts checking her answer and looking over and now that she's very convinced that she's gotten the right answer she waves to the teacher to

check her to check her work that she hears a sound from the back of the room the answer is wrong check it again the girl quite perplexed cuz she she checked it twice and she knew it was right she goes through she goes back to the board and she checks her computations again getting the same answer so she goes back to the teacher says teacher teacher I know it's right I checked it three times now this point the teacher being very Stern sharply says I said it's wrong check it again now the girl is Thoroughly

perplexed it's math it's either it's right or it's wrong so she goes to her desk where she has a calculator so she starts working on her computation and it's the same one as is on the board so now she's thoroughly convinced she said the teacher cannot say anything so she holds up her calculator says teacher teacher look I got it right all the way to the thousand's place now this teacher thoroughly upset that this at the student continuing to challenge her says I said the answer is wrong you can't do anything right the student is

struck dumb by the words that just hit her like a cannon she didn't understand why is the teacher saying this to her I don't understand why is this happening her father was a mathematician with a PhD from a prestigious University she had learned long division in first grade and a different a different method for doing it she didn't understand why was her teacher saying this to her this little girl learned the first of many valuable lessons that day first she learned that her teacher did not see her as a gifted student two her teacher didn't

see her as the child of educated parent the teacher did not even see a correct math problem on the board some people may say this one was a raging racist and only saw their child's an upid who could not conform and do right but what I'd like to offer to you today is another frame could it be that this teacher her implicit bias had so engrain to her that blacks were intellectually so intellectually inferior unintelligent that it was impossible for a child in an urban school to not only get the problem correct but do it

in a different method so then when faced with something that on her life that her her biases had told her was impossible that could not possibly be reacted from a such a primal place to protect that worldview that she had held sacred up until that time there's another quote some people just not ready to be unplugged they are so inured so dependent on the system as it stands that they will fight to protect it again the Matrix that's morus implicit biases are pervasive we all have have them even people with avowed commitments to impartiality like

let's say uh judges now you may say to me Melanie this is this is these are wild stories these are extreme examples we're good people good people don't do these things that can't be real let me tell you today this is very real I'm going to share a piece of information with you about these stories that's going to tell you how real they are these are both stories out of my life in the first story I was the wife who Big W big and pregnant as my mother said big with child had to fight to

get people to check my husband for things that white people got and the implicit bias is those doctors could have left a woman without a husband children without a father and a mother without a son I was the grifted fourth grade student in this Second Story in that story The in the end it led to My First Act of non-violent social protest I stay to sit in for 100 days in my living room now just so I'm going to share One More Story with you just so you can understand that this that you may say

well Melanie you're kind of old and you know these things may have happened long ago on the land land far far away like Tatooine you know but I just want to let you know that this happens right here in River City so this September a beautiful gifted African-American n9th grade girl enters school because she's been in a region um in a honors program she entered ninth grade with enough credits to technically be a 10th grader now this young lady has a goal her goal is to go to Cornell and study Neuroscience she has had this

goal for many years and all the people in her circles you know nurture her in this goal and make opportunities for her to start to build the building block to make her goal a reality so as she enters 9th grade she goes to meet the guidance counselor as nth graders do and as guidance counselors do she she sits down with the student and says well what is your goal and as and this young lady as she's very confident goal as 14-y old girls can be you know how that is you know she goes and says

I want to go to Cornell and be a neuroscientist to which her guidance counter reacts well that's a that's a that's a big dream but let's look at something more uh uh realistic like MCC in that moment the student stood stunned as she watched her goal crumble and people may say well Melanie he's just one person but he's so much more than that he was the guidance counselor in the schools just so you know the guidance counselor is the person who is charged with setting the academic plan to help students get from point A to

point be to get to their goals so if he didn't believe in her how was he going to help her and if he didn't help her how was he going how was she going to attain her goal this was the match that ignited a forest fire of self-doubt negative selft talk that resulted in depression that manifested itself in school avoidance of decrease in grades and eventual lack of ability to engage in the everyday life for this child you know what the ironic thing is about this story this is my daughter's story 40 years later the

words may have changed but the bias the power and the potential impact remain the same but you know what's even worse about that is that my my daughter's story is not unique this story repeats itself hundreds of times every year in the Rochester city school district for hundreds of students going in with with with dreams and goals and the thing is this this the the counselor did not look at my child and did not look at her academic record didn't look at but just because of where the way what he saw when she walked in

crushed her dream but I don't want to leave you on a downer and I want to tell you there is hope because what has been done can be undone our brains are malleable there are these incredible incredible um they even though my brain is farting right now they are incredible there are these incredible capacity for growth and change and so you may say to me mly how do I do this first what I want you to do is to call yourself on your own stuff when you're walking down the street you see that person coming

and you cross over to the other side of the street call yourself on it ask yourself why did I do that what did that person do to facilitate that response from me and then once you've done that you start looking at yourself this and I I I don't want you to think I don't understand that this takes you being extremely self-aware but once you do that you start having these conversations with your family and friends it's very easy to have these conversations in a nice warm fuzzy places of a TED talk but it's much more

and it's much different to have it at your Sunday dinner with your mother-in-law okay what we're looking for we say we want to be better but in order us for this better World we're talking about we must be better ourselves and be better to each other we have to move into what I call transformational activism in order to create a world with Equity we must do some things first do your own personal work two make some connections with people that don't look like you three when you have privilege use your privilege to create equity it

and guess what many of you in this room have it use it and four intentionally and deliberately engage in non-bias activities that means get out of homogeneous groups get into some heterogeneous groups where not everybody's the same and start learning some stuff take that stuff and share it with others I want to leave you with some new language umuntu it's an niri to word that that translates into the idea of I am who I am because of who we all are and we are who we are because of who I am it talks about the

interconnectedness of us all it is One Step Beyond I am my brother Sister's Keeper it is I am my brother and sister and they are me I see you I see myself when you look at yourself next time see me [Applause]