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

♪ [gentle digitized music] ♪

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[applause from audience]

>[MELANIE FUNCHESS]
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 the beach

or running in slow motion
through fields of flowers,

where they tell you the
side effects of their product?

[audience laughs]

“Nausea, vomiting,
heart arrhythmia, constipation,

Ugh! impotence.

[intensely]
Erections lasting more than 4 hours.”

[audience laughs]

But seriously, I'm going to say
some things during my talk

that may make you uncomfortable,
[with emphasis] and they should.

But what I ask of you in this time
is to stay present with me through this

and ask yourself some critical questions,
to really listen closer

and really question your
own thoughts and behaviors

and be open to 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 that belief.

You may say, “What is this concept
that is so controversial that she feels

she needs a prefaced 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're closing in
on the American dream.

They purchase their first home.

Three weeks after
they close on this home,

the husband becomes violently ill.

This family — husband, wife,
three children ages 5, 3 and 1,

and a baby on the way —
go searching for the diagnosis

that has stricken this otherwise
healthy and vital 32-year-old man.

Turn to your neighbor,
and say, “Four weeks later.”

>[AUDIENCE] Four weeks later...

>[FUNCHESS] ...as this man lays
critically ill and dying in the hospital,

doctors are circling
around a cluster of diseases

that they know must be
the thing that is killing this man,

despite 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 [she] thought
they'd already ruled those 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.”

>[AUDIENCE] Ooh.

>[FUNCHESS] And magically,
within days, they have a diagnosis.

Stage IV B,
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma;

and a prognosis: two weeks to live.

You know, the implicit bias
that existed within these doctors

resulted in the behavior
that showed what diseases

they chose to — and not to — look for.

The implicit bias of these doctors
said how much they 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
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 relate 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 mainframe.

[audience laughter]

Let me share with you another story.

There's a fourth-- “Picture it….”

(I feel like Sophia Petrillo
[from the TV show “Golden Girls”]).

[as Sophia] “Picture it.”
[audience laughter]

Fourth grade math class,

a teacher asks for volunteers
to go up to the board

to work on long division.

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 it,

and now that she's very convinced
that she's got the right answer,

she waves to the teacher
to check her work,

but she hears a sound
from the back of the room.

>[in a deep voice as the teacher]
"The answer is wrong.

Check it again."

The girl, quite perplexed
because she checked it twice

and she knew it was right,

she goes back to the board
and she checks her computations again,

getting the same answer,

so she goes back to the teacher and says,
“Teacher! Teacher! I know it's right.

I checked it three times.”

Now at this point, the teacher
being very stern, sharply says,

[in a deep voice]
“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.

Now she's thoroughly convinced.

She says [to herself]
“The teacher cannot say anything.”

So she holds up her calculator
and says, “Teacher, Teacher! Look!

I got it right, all the way
to the thousandth place.”

Now, this teacher, thoroughly upset

at this student continuing
to challenge her,

says, “I said the answer is wrong.
You niggers can't do anything right.”

>[AUDIENCE] Ooh.

>[FUNCHESS]
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?

>[STUDENT, to herself] I don't understand.
Why is this happening?

>[FUNCHESS] Her father
was a mathematician with a PhD

from a prestigious university.

She had learned long
division in first grade

and 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 parents.

The teacher did not even see
a correct math problem on the board.

Some people may say
this woman was a raging racist

that only saw the child
as an uppity nigger

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 ingrained to her

that Blacks were so intellectually
inferior and 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?

Then when faced with something

that all her life, that her biases
had told her was impossible,

that could not possibly be,

reacted from such a primal place
to protect that worldview

that she had held sacred
up until that time?

There's another quote [from "The Matrix"]:

[paraphrasing] "Some people are
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, in “The Matrix,” that's Morpheus.

Implicit biases are pervasive.
We all have them.

Even people with avowed
commitment to impartiality,

like let's say judges.

Now, you may say to me,
“Melanie, these are wild stories.

These are extreme examples.

We are 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 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 biases,

those doctors could have
left a woman without a husband,

children without a father,
and a mother without a son.

I was the gifted fourth grade
student in the second story.

In that story, in the end,

it led to my first act of
nonviolent social protest.

I staged a sit-in for 100 days
in my living room.

[audience applauds]

Now, I'm going to share
one more story with you

just so you can understand that—

you may say, “Well, Melanie,
you're kind of old

and these things may have
happened long, long ago

in a land far away like Tatooine
[from “Star Wars”], you know?

But I just want to let you know
that this happens

[quotes “The Music Man”]
“right here in River City.”

So, this September,

a beautiful, gifted African-American
ninth grade girl enters school.

Because she's been in an honors program,

she entered ninth grade
with enough credits

to technically be a tenth 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
nurture her in this goal

and make opportunities for her

to start to build the building blocks
to make her goal a reality.

So, she enters ninth grade,

she goes to meet the guidance counselor,
as ninth graders do.

And as guidance counselors do,

she sits down with the student
and says, “Well, what is your goal?”

And this young lady,
she's very confident,

as 14-year-old girls can be
(You know how that is.)

[audience laughs lightly]

She goes and says, “I want to go
to Cornell and be a neuroscientist,”

to which her guidance counselor reacts,
“Well, that's a, that’s a big dream,

but let's look at something
more uhhhhhh 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 was charged
with setting the academic plan

to help students get
from point A to point B

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 she going to attain her goal?

This was the match
that ignited a forest fire

of self-doubt, negative self-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 of this child.

You know what the ironic thing
is about this story?

This is my daughter's story.

Forty 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 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 dreams and goals.

The thing is, the counselor
did not look at my child

and did not look at
her academic record,

did not look at it,

but just because of 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'm going to tell you,
there is hope,

because what has been done
can be undone.

Our brains are malleable.

They're these incredible, incredible—

[chuckling] even though
my brain is farting right now…

[audience laughs]
…they are incredible.

There [have] these incredible
capacity for growth and change.

And so, you might say to me,
“Melanie, 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
and 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,
and you start looking at yourself —

and I don't want you to think
I don't understand it —

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 the nice, warm, fuzzy
places of a TED Talk,

but it's much different to have it

at your Sunday dinner
with your mother-in-law, okay?

[audience laughs lightly]

What we're looking for,
we say we want to be better,

but in order to have 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,

And guess what:
many of you in this room have it. Use it.

Four, intentionally and deliberately
engage in non-biasing 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: “Ubuntu.”

It's a [unclear] Bantu word
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 or 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.

[audience cheers and applauds]