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

Thank you, I would like to start my talk with an important message. You know, like those from pharmaceutical companies when they see people walking lazily on the beach or running in slow motion through fields of flowers where they tell you about the side

effects

of their product. nausea vomiting arterythria constipation impotence erections left but seriously I'm going to say some things during my talk that may make you uncomfortable and they should, but what I ask of you right now is that you be present with me during this and ask yourself some critical questions to listen to more carefully and really question and question your thoughts and behaviors and be open to a new vision of yourself, you can ask when I start to introduce this, you can say: oh Melanie, I know. read the book this does not apply to me I would like to challenge that belief and you can say what is this concept that is so controversial that she feels it needs a preface the concept is an

implicit

bias

let me tell you a story young couple college sweethearts graduate begin their careers they get married and start a family as they approach 30 they begin to say they can they are getting closer to the American dream they buy their first house three weeks after closing In this house, the husband becomes seriously ill, so this Family husband, his wife, their three children, ages five, three and one, and a baby on the way, go in search of the diagnosis that has affected this 32-year-old man, otherwise healthy and vital, they go to their neighbor and they say four weeks.

Later, when this man lies seriously ill and dying in a hospital, the doctors are circling around a group of illnesses that they know must be what is killing this man, despite all that, the fact that they all testing for these diseases has returned. negative, they begin to harass the husband, asking him to tell the truth and to really open up and let them know about his intravenous drug use and his secret unprotected sexual relations with men. You see they were trying to make the case to continue checking for HIV despite multiple negative tests finally the wife comes and says why what are you looking for to which the doctors respond we are looking for HIV and sarcoidosis so the wife is a little perplexed because we thought we had already ruled those things that they believed they had really ruled those things they say well, why are you just looking at what the doctors say?

Well, as a young African-American man, she gets angry and says, stop there. I want you to check my husband for things that happen to white people and magically in a few days they have a diagnosis of stage four B non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the prognosis of two weeks to live, you know, the

implicit

bias

that existed within these doctors resulted in behavior that showed which diseases they chose and did not look for their implicit bias. The doctors said how much value they did or did not place on the information they received from the patient and his wife, you can say Melanie, how does this happen?

How do we, as good activists and workers, progressive, open-minded American citizens, how do we do it? continues to fall into these, the history of these stereotypes, implicit bias, those unconscious things that have been flowing through us since childhood, can you tell me, well, what is implicit bias, well, I'll give you an academic definition, implicit bias , also known as Implicit social cognition are those attitudes and stereotypes that affect our behaviors, our decisions and our attitudes unconsciously. I identify with the Matrix, anyone here has seen The Matrix when you're in the Matrix you don't know you're there you just are. walking around happily thinking everything is fine, well I'm here today to disconnect you from the Mainframe.

Let me share with you another story. There are four images. I feel like Sophia Petrillo. Imagine it in fourth grade math class. a teacher asked. so that their volunteers go up to the board to work on long division a young man a young woman and two of her friends go up and start working on the board the girl is the first to finish since she is the first to finish she begins to review her answer and looking and now that she is very convinced that she has the correct answer, she greets the teacher to check her and her work, she hears a sound from the back of the room, the answer is wrong, check it again, the girl quite perplexed because he checked it twice and knew it was right, he checks it, goes back to the board and checks his calculations again getting the same answer, then he goes back to the teacher says teacher teacher, I know it's right, I checked it three times now at this point the teacher is very stern she says I said it's wrong check it again now the girl is completely perplexed it's math it's either right or it's wrong so she goes to her desk where she has a calculator and starts working on it calculation and it's the same as it is on the blackboard, so now she's completely convinced, she said the teacher can't say anything, so she picks up her calculator, she says teacher, teacher, look, I got it right, all the ways from the thousand place, now this teacher is completely upset because this other student continues to challenge her says "I said the answer is wrong, you can't do anything right" the student is speechless by the words that just hit her like a cannon, she didn't understand why the teacher is telling her this.

I don't understand why this happens. Her father was a mathematician with a doctorate from a prestigious university. He had learned long division in first grade and with a different method of doing it. She didn't understand why her teacher told her this. this 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 did not see her as the daughter of educated parents the teacher did not even see a correct math problem on the board some people may To say that this was a raging racist, I only saw that the child was a conceited person who couldn't conform and do the right thing, but what I would like to offer you today is another framework, could it be that this teacher had implicit biases?

It was so ingrained in her that black people were intellectually so inferior and unintelligent that it was impossible for a child in an urban school to not only solve the problem correctly but to do it with a different method, so that when faced with something that her entire life Her prejudices had told her that it was impossible not to react from such a primordial place to protect that vision of the world that she had considered sacred until that moment. There is another quote: some people are just not ready to be disconnected, they are so ignored, so dependent on the system as it is, they will fight to protect it again Matrix, which is Morpheus, implicit biases are omnipresent, we all have them, even people with stated commitments to impartiality, like let's say, uh, judges, now you can tell me Melanie, this is, these are crazy 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 with you a little bit of information about these stories that are I'm going to tell you how real they are, they are both stories from my life in the first story.

I was the big pregnant wife, as my mother said, big and pregnant, I had to fight to get people to check my husband for such white things. people had and the implicit prejudices that those doctors could have left a woman without a husband, children without a father and a mother without a child. I was the gifted fourth grader in the second story of that story that ultimately led to My First Act. of nonviolent social protest I organized a sit-in for 100 days in my living room now, so I'm going to share one more story with you so you can understand that this you can say, well, Melanie, you're kind of old and you know that these things They may have happened a long time ago on the landline, far, far away, like Tatooine, you know, but I just want you to know that this happens here in River City, so this September enters a beautiful and talented African American ninth grade girl.

School because she's been in a region, um, in an honors program, she entered the ninth grade with enough credits to technically be a tenth grader, now this young woman 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 your circles that you know nurture you in this goal and give you opportunities to start building the building box to make your goal a reality, so if you enter the 9th grade, you will go to meet with the guidance counselor as 9th graders do it and As guidance counselors, she sits down and says, well, what's your goal and it's a scam, and this young woman is very confident, like 14 year old girls can be, you know what that's like, You know, she goes and says, I want to go to Cornell. and being a neuroscientist that her counselor reacts well to that's a great dream but let's see something more uh uh realistic like MCC at that moment the students were stunned as she watched her goal crumble and people can say well Melanie he's . just a person, but it's much more than that, he was the guidance counselor in the schools, so you know that the guidance counselor is the person in charge of establishing the academic plan to help students get from point A to point B to Reach your destination. 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 to achieve his goal this was the match that lit a forest fire of self doubt negative self talk that resulted in depression that manifested itself in school avoidance of declining grades and an eventual lack of ability to participate in this child's daily life.

You already know what the irony of this story is. This is my daughter's story 40 years later. The words may have changed, but the bias, power, and potential impact remain the same, but what's even worse is that my daughter's story is not unique. This story has been repeated hundreds of times each year in the Rochester City School District for hundreds of years. of students coming in with dreams and goals and the thing is that this god the counselor didn't look at my daughter and didn't look at her academic record, I didn't look but just because the way he saw when she walked in crushed her dream, but I don't want to leave them depressed and I am going to tell you that there is hope because what has been done can be undone our brains are malleable, they are incredible, incredible, even Although my brain is farting right now, they are incredible, they have an incredible capacity for growth and change, so can you tell me Melanie, how do I do this first?

What I want you to do is call yourself out on your own things when As you're walking down the street you see that person coming and you cross to the other side of the street, call yourself out and ask yourself why I did that, what that person did to facilitate that response. from me and then once you've done that and you start looking at yourself this and I don't want you to think I don't understand this requires you to be extremely self-aware, but once you do that you start to have these conversations with your family and friends, it's very easy to have these conversations in the nice, warm and fuzzy places of a TED talk, but it's so much more and it's so different to have them at Sunday dinner with your mother-in-law, okay, which We are looking, we say we want to be better, but to have this better world that we are talking about, we must be better ourselves and be better with each other, we have to move towards what I call transformational activism to create a world with equity, first We must do some things, do your own. personal work two make some connections with people who don't look like you three when you have privilege you use your privilege to create equity and guess what many of you in this room have, use it and four intentionally and deliberately engage in non-biased activities that means getting out of homogeneous groups enter heterogeneous groups where not everyone is the same and start to learn some things take those things and share them with others I want to leave you a new language Ubuntu is a nigiri Bantu word that translates to 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 speaks to the interconnectedness of all of us is a step further I am my brother sister's keeper is I am my brother and sister and they are I see you I see you when you look at you next time you see me