< Return to Video

Implicit Bias how it affects us and how we push through Melanie Funchess TEDxFlourCity HD 108

  • Not Synced
    Implicit Bias -- how it affects us and how we push through | Melanie Funchess | TEDxFlourCity
    https://youtu.be/T5-5HT3kEDo
  • Not Synced
    https://youtu.be/rBKHxCyn7eY
  • Not Synced
    ♪ [music] ♪
  • Not Synced
    [applause from audience]
  • Not Synced
    >[MELANIE FUNCHESS]
    I would like to begin my talk
  • Not Synced
    with an important message.
  • Not Synced
    You know, like the ones for
    the pharmaceutical companies
  • Not Synced
    when they see people walking
    lazily along the beach
  • Not Synced
    or running in slow motion
    through fields of flowers,
  • Not Synced
    where they tell you the side effects of their product?
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughs]
  • Not Synced
    “Nausea, vomiting, heart arrhythmia, constipation,
  • Not Synced
    Ugh! impotence.
  • Not Synced
    [intensely]
    Erections lasting more than 4 hours.”
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughs]
  • Not Synced
    But seriously, I'm going to say
    some things during my talk
  • Not Synced
    that may make you uncomfortable, [with emphasis] and they should.
  • Not Synced
    But what I ask of you in this time
    is to stay present with me through this
  • Not Synced
    and ask yourself some critical questions, to really listen closer
  • Not Synced
    and really question your own thoughts and behaviors
  • Not Synced
    and be open to a new view of yourself.
  • Not Synced
    You may ask, as I start to present this,
  • Not Synced
    you may say, “Oh, Melanie,
    I got that. I know this.
  • Not Synced
    I read the book!
    This doesn't apply to me.”
  • Not Synced
    I would like to challenge that belief.
  • Not Synced
    You may say, “What is this concept that is so controversial
  • Not Synced
    that she feels she needs
    a prefaced statement?”
  • Not Synced
    The concept is implicit bias.
  • Not Synced
    Let me tell you a story.
  • Not Synced
    A young couple, college sweethearts,
    they graduate school,
  • Not Synced
    begin their careers, get married,
    and start a family.
  • Not Synced
    As they start to approach their 30s,
  • Not Synced
    they begin to say that they're closing in on the American dream.
  • Not Synced
    They purchase their first home.
  • Not Synced
    Three weeks after they close on this home,
    the husband becomes violently ill.
  • Not Synced
    This family — husband, wife,
    three children ages 5, 3 and 1,
  • Not Synced
    and a baby on the way —
    go searching for the diagnosis
  • Not Synced
    that has stricken this otherwise healthy and vital 32-year-old man.
  • Not Synced
    Turn to your neighbor,
    and say, “Four weeks later.”
  • Not Synced
    >[AUDIENCE] Four weeks later.
  • Not Synced
    >[FUNCHESS] As this man lays critically ill and dying in the hospital,
  • Not Synced
    doctors are circling
    around a cluster of diseases
  • Not Synced
    that they know must be
    the thing that is killing this man.
  • Not Synced
    Despite the fact that all the tests for these
    diseases have come back negative,
  • Not Synced
    they begin to harass the husband and ask him to tell the truth
  • Not Synced
    and to really open up and let them know
  • Not Synced
    about his IV drug use and his
    secret unprotected sex with men.
  • Not Synced
    You see, they were trying to make
    the case to continue looking for HIV
  • Not Synced
    despite multiple negative tests.
  • Not Synced
    Finally, the wife comes and says, “Why— What are you looking for?”
  • Not Synced
    to which the doctors reply,
  • Not Synced
    “We're looking for HIV
    and sarcoidosis.”
  • Not Synced
    So the wife, kind of perplexed
  • Not Synced
    because [she] thought
    they'd
    already ruled those out,
  • Not Synced
    says, “Well, why are you
    looking at only those diseases?”
  • Not Synced
    to which the doctors say,
    “Well, as a young African-American male—”
  • Not Synced
    She becomes irate
    and says, “Stop right there!
  • Not Synced
    I want you to check my husband
    for things that white people get.”
  • Not Synced
    >[AUDIENCE] Ooh.
  • Not Synced
    >[FUNCHESS] And magically,
    within days, they have a diagnosis.
  • Not Synced
    Stage IV B,
    non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma;
  • Not Synced
    and a prognosis: two weeks to live.
  • Not Synced
    You know, the implicit bias
    that existed within these doctors
  • Not Synced
    Resulted in the behavior
    that showed what diseases
  • Not Synced
    they chose to — and not to — look for.
  • Not Synced
    The implicit bias of these doctors
    said how much they value
  • Not Synced
    they placed — or did not place —
    upon the information
  • Not Synced
    that they received
    from the patient and his wife.
  • Not Synced
    You may say,
    “Melanie, how does this happen?
  • Not Synced
    How do we, as good activists
  • Not Synced
    and hardworking, progressive, open-minded American citizens,
  • Not Synced
    how do we continue to fall into
    the story of these stereotypes?”
  • Not Synced
    Implicit bias, those unconscious things that have been flowing through us since childhood.
  • Not Synced
    you may say to me,
    “Well, what is implicit bias?’
  • Not Synced
    Well, I'm going to give you
    an academic definition.
  • Not Synced
    Implicit bias, otherwise known
    as implicit social cognition,
  • Not Synced
    are those attitudes and stereotypes
    that affect our behaviors, our decisions,
  • Not Synced
    and our attitudes unconsciously.
  • Not Synced
    I relate it to, like, ”The Matrix.”
    Anyone here seen “The Matrix”?
  • Not Synced
    When you're in the matrix,
    you don't know you're in there.
  • Not Synced
    You're just happily walking along
    thinking everything is okay.
  • Not Synced
    Well, I'm here today to yank out the plug
    and disconnect you from the mainframe.
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughter]
  • Not Synced
    Let me share with you another story.
  • Not Synced
    There's a… “Picture it….”
  • Not Synced
    (I feel like Sophia Petrillo
    [from the TV show “Golden Girls”]).
  • Not Synced
    [as Sophia] “Picture it.”
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughter]
  • Not Synced
    >[FUNCHESS] Fourth grade math class,
  • Not Synced
    a teacher asks for volunteers
    to go up to the board
  • Not Synced
    to work on long division.
  • Not Synced
    One young girl and two
    of her friends go up
  • Not Synced
    and they start working on the board.
  • Not Synced
    The little girl is the first one done.
  • Not Synced
    Since she's the first one done,
    she starts checking her answer,
  • Not Synced
    looking it over, and now
    that she's very convinced
  • Not Synced
    that she's got the right answer,
  • Not Synced
    she waves to the teacher
    to check her work,
  • Not Synced
    She hears a sound from the back of the room.
  • Not Synced
    >[in a low voice as the teacher]
    The answer is wrong.
  • Not Synced
    Check it again.
  • Not Synced
    The girl, quite perplexed
    because she checked it twice
  • Not Synced
    and she knew it was right,
  • Not Synced
    she goes back to the board
    and she checks her computations again,
  • Not Synced
    getting the same answer,
  • Not Synced
    so she goes back to the teacher and says, “Teacher! Teacher!
  • Not Synced
    I know it's right.
    I checked it three times.”
  • Not Synced
    Now at this point, the teacher
    being very stern, sharply says,
  • Not Synced
    [in a stern voice]
    “I said it's wrong. Check it again.”
  • Not Synced
    Now, the girl is thoroughly perplexed.
  • Not Synced
    It's math. It's either it's right or it's wrong,
  • Not Synced
    so she goes to her desk
    where she has a calculator.
  • Not Synced
    She starts working on her computation
  • Not Synced
    and it's the same one as is on the board.
  • Not Synced
    Now she's thoroughly convinced.
  • Not Synced
    She says [to herself]
    “The teacher cannot say anything.”
  • Not Synced
    So she holds up her calculator
    and says, “Teacher, Teacher! Look!
  • Not Synced
    I got it right, all the way
    to the thousandth place.”
  • Not Synced
    Now, this teacher, thoroughly upset
  • Not Synced
    at this student continuing
    to challenge her
  • Not Synced
    says, “I said the answer is wrong.
    You niggers can't do anything right.”
  • Not Synced
    >[AUDIENCE] Ooh.
  • Not Synced
    >[FUNCHESS]
    The student is struck dumb
  • Not Synced
    by the words that just hit her like a cannon.
  • Not Synced
    She didn't understand.
  • Not Synced
    Why is the teacher saying
    this to her?
  • Not Synced
    >[STUDENT, to herself]
    I don't understand. Why is this happening?
  • Not Synced
    >[FUNCHESS] Her father
    was a mathematician with a PhD
  • Not Synced
    from a prestigious university.
  • Not Synced
    She had learned long division in first grade
  • Not Synced
    and a different method for doing it.
  • Not Synced
    She didn't understand.
  • Not Synced
    Why was her teacher saying this to her?
  • Not Synced
    This little girl learned the first
    of many valuable lessons that day.
  • Not Synced
    First, she learned that her teacher did not see her as a gifted student.
  • Not Synced
    Two, her teacher didn't see her
    as the child of educated parents.
  • Not Synced
    The teacher did not even see
    a correct math problem on the board.
  • Not Synced
    Some people may say
    this woman was a raging racist
  • Not Synced
    and only saw the child
    as an uppity nigger
  • Not Synced
    who could not conform and do right.
  • Not Synced
    But what I'd like to offer to you today is another frame.
  • Not Synced
    Could it be that this teacher,
    her implicit bias had so ingrained to her
  • Not Synced
    that Blacks were so intellectually
    inferior and unintelligent,
  • Not Synced
    that it was impossible for
    a child in an urban school
  • Not Synced
    to not only get the problem correct,
    but do it in a different method?
  • Not Synced
    Then when faced with something
  • Not Synced
    that all her life, that her biases
    had told her was impossible,
  • Not Synced
    that could not possibly be,
  • Not Synced
    reacted from such a primal place
    to protect that worldview
  • Not Synced
    that she had held sacred
    up until that time?
  • Not Synced
    There's another quote.
  • Not Synced
    Some people are just
    not ready to be unplugged.
  • Not Synced
    They are so [ignorant],
    so dependent on the system as it stands
  • Not Synced
    that they will fight to protect it.
  • Not Synced
    Again, in “The Matrix,” that's Morpheus.
  • Not Synced
    Implicit biases are pervasive.
    We all have them.
  • Not Synced
    Even people with avowed commitment to impartiality,
  • Not Synced
    like let's say judges.
  • Not Synced
    Now, you may say to me,
    “Melanie, these are wild stories.
  • Not Synced
    These are extreme examples.
  • Not Synced
    We are good people.
    Good people don't do these things.
  • Not Synced
    That can't be real.”
  • Not Synced
    Let me tell you today:
    This is very real.
  • Not Synced
    I'm going to share a piece
    of information with you
  • Not Synced
    about these stories that's going
    to tell you how real they are.
  • Not Synced
    These are both stories out of my life.
  • Not Synced
    In the first story, I was the wife,
    Who, big and pregnant —
  • Not Synced
    as my mother said, “big with child”
  • Not Synced
    had to fight to get people to check my husband for things that white people got.
  • Not Synced
    And the implicit biases,
  • Not Synced
    those doctors could have
    left a woman without a husband,
  • Not Synced
    children without a father,
    and a mother without a son.
  • Not Synced
    I was the grifted fourth grade student in the second story.
  • Not Synced
    In that story, in the end,
  • Not Synced
    it led to my first act of
    nonviolent social protest.
  • Not Synced
    I staged a sit-in for 100 days
    in my living room.
  • Not Synced
    [audience applauds]
  • Not Synced
    Now, I'm going to share
    one more story with you
  • Not Synced
    just so you can understand that—
  • Not Synced
    you may say, “Well, Melanie,
    you're kind of old
  • Not Synced
    and these things may have happened long, long ago
  • Not Synced
    in a land far, far away like Tatooine
    [from “Star Wars”], you know?
  • Not Synced
    But I just want to let you know
    that this happens [quoting from “The Music Man”]
  • Not Synced
    “right here in River City.”
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughter]
  • Not Synced
    So, this September, a beautiful, gifted
    African-American
    ninth grade girl enters school.
  • Not Synced
    Because she's been in an honors program,
  • Not Synced
    she entered ninth grade
    with enough credits
  • Not Synced
    to technically be a tenth grader.
  • Not Synced
    Now, this young lady has a goal.
  • Not Synced
    Her goal is to go to Cornell
    and study neuroscience.
  • Not Synced
    She has had this goal for many years,
  • Not Synced
    and all the people in her circles,
    you know, nurture her in this goal
  • Not Synced
    and make opportunities for her
  • Not Synced
    to start to build the building blocks
    to make her goal a reality.
  • Not Synced
    So, she enters ninth grade,
  • Not Synced
    she goes to meet the guidance counselor, as ninth graders do.
  • Not Synced
    And as guidance counselors do,
  • Not Synced
    she sits down with the student
    and says, “Well, what is your goal?”
  • Not Synced
    And this young lady,
    she's very confident,
  • Not Synced
    as 14-year-old girls can be.
  • Not Synced
    You know how that is.
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughs lightly]
  • Not Synced
    She goes and says, “I want to go
    to Cornell and be a neuroscientist,”
  • Not Synced
    to which her guidance counselor reacts,
    “Well, that's a, that’s a big dream,
  • Not Synced
    but let's look at something
    more uhhhhhh realistic, like MCC.”
  • Not Synced
    In that moment,
  • Not Synced
    the student stood stunned
    as she watched her goal crumble.
  • Not Synced
    And people may say,
    “Well, Melanie, he's just one person,”
  • Not Synced
    but he's so much more than that.
  • Not Synced
    He was the guidance counselor.
  • Not Synced
    In the schools, just so you know, the guidance counselor
  • Not Synced
    is the person who was charged
    with setting the academic plan
  • Not Synced
    to help students get
    from point A to point B
  • Not Synced
    to get to their goals.
  • Not Synced
    So, if he didn't believe in her,
    how was he going to help her?
  • Not Synced
    And if he didn't help her,
    how was she going to attain her goal?
  • Not Synced
    This was the match
    that ignited a forest fire
  • Not Synced
    of self-doubt, negative self-talk,
  • Not Synced
    that resulted in depression
    that manifested itself
  • Not Synced
    in school avoidance,
    of decrease in grades,
  • Not Synced
    and eventual lack of ability to engage
    in the everyday life of this child.
  • Not Synced
    You know what the ironic thing
    is about this story?
  • Not Synced
    This is my daughter's story.
  • Not Synced
    Forty years later,
  • Not Synced
    the words may have changed,
    but the bias, the power,
  • Not Synced
    and the potential impact remain the same.
  • Not Synced
    But you know,
    what's even worse about that
  • Not Synced
    is that my daughter's story is not unique.
  • Not Synced
    This story repeats itself
    hundreds of times every year
  • Not Synced
    in the Rochester City School District
  • Not Synced
    for hundreds of students going in
    with dreams and goals.
  • Not Synced
    The thing is, the counselor
    did not look at my child
  • Not Synced
    and did not look at her academic record, did not look at it,
  • Not Synced
    but just because of the way,
    what he saw when she walked in,
  • Not Synced
    crushed her dream.
  • Not Synced
    But I don't want to leave you on a downer,
  • Not Synced
    and I'm going to tell you,
    there is hope,
  • Not Synced
    because what has been done
    can be undone.
  • Not Synced
    Our brains are malleable.
  • Not Synced
    There are these incredible, incredible—
  • Not Synced
    [chuckling] even though
    my brain is farting right now…
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughs]
    …they are incredible.
  • Not Synced
    There are these incredible
    capacity for growth and change.
  • Not Synced
    And so, you might say to me,
    “Melanie, how do I do this?”
  • Not Synced
    First, what I want you to do
    is to call yourself on your own stuff.
  • Not Synced
    When you're walking down the street
    and you see that person coming
  • Not Synced
    and you cross over
    to the other side of the street,
  • Not Synced
    call yourself on it.
  • Not Synced
    Ask yourself, “Why did I do that?
  • Not Synced
    What did that person do
    to facilitate that response from me?”
  • Not Synced
    And then once you've done that,
    and you start looking at yourself —
  • Not Synced
    and I don't want you to think
    I don't understand it —
  • Not Synced
    This takes you being extremely self-aware,
  • Not Synced
    But once you do that,
  • Not Synced
    you start having these conversations
    with your family and friends.
  • Not Synced
    It's very easy to have these conversations
  • Not Synced
    in the nice, warm, fuzzy
    places of a TED Talk,
  • Not Synced
    but it's much different to have it
  • Not Synced
    at your Sunday dinner
    with your mother-in-law, okay?
  • Not Synced
    [audience laughs lightly]
  • Not Synced
    What we're looking for,
    we say we want to be better,
  • Not Synced
    but in order to have this
    better world we're talking about,
  • Not Synced
    we must be better ourselves
    and be better to each other.
  • Not Synced
    We have to move into what I call “transformational activism.”
  • Not Synced
    In order to create a world with equity,
    we must do some things.
  • Not Synced
    First, do your own personal work.
  • Not Synced
    Two, make some connections
    with people that don't look like you.
  • Not Synced
    Three, when you have privilege,
    use your privilege to create equity,
  • Not Synced
    And guess what:
    many of you in this room have it. Use it.
  • Not Synced
    Four, intentionally and deliberately
    engage in non-biasing activities.
  • Not Synced
    That means, get out of homogeneous groups,
  • Not Synced
    get into some heterogeneous groups
    where not everybody's the same
  • Not Synced
    and start learning some stuff.
  • Not Synced
    Take that stuff and share it with others.
  • Not Synced
    I want to leave you with some
    new language: “Ubuntu.”
  • Not Synced
    It's a [unclear] Bantu word
    that translates into the idea of,
  • Not Synced
    “I am who I am
    because of who we all are,
  • Not Synced
    and we are who we are
    because of who I am.”
  • Not Synced
    It talks about the interconnectedness of us all.
  • Not Synced
    It is one step beyond “I am my brother and sister's keeper.”
  • Not Synced
    It is, “I am my brother and sister, and they are me.
  • Not Synced
    I see you, I see myself.
  • Not Synced
    When you look at yourself
    next time, see me.
  • Not Synced
    [audience applauds]
  • Not Synced
    ♪ [music] ♪
  • Not Synced
Title:
Implicit Bias how it affects us and how we push through Melanie Funchess TEDxFlourCity HD 108
Video Language:
English
Duration:
16:13

English subtitles

Revisions Compare revisions