Which statement describes you?
"I strongly prefer white people
to black people." "I moderately prefer white
people to black people." "I slightly prefer
white people to--" I want to have a job again. I feel nervous about
sections of this show in which we're going to
have to talk about our own personal experience. It's nice to have the thing that you've been experiencing
your whole life actually get attention, right? When I first heard that this
was what we were tackling, I think a lot of us questioned
whether we were the right
storytellers for this. Honestly, we could have
totally done this show with
five non-white hosts. I think there's a fine line
between taking up space
in a conversation where someone else's
experience is maybe more
important than mine, versus wanting to model this
behavior for other white people. Diversity of thought,
it matters. Perspective matters. I wouldn't honestly watch this-- if it was like bring in a bunch
of black people racism tests, I probably wouldn't
watch that video. But when I hear, like,
we're gonna give all your white colleagues
racism tests, I'm definitely watching
that video. <i> ( music playing )</i> Over the past two years,
more and more research has shown how racial bias
impacts our world, from how teachers
discipline students to how engineers create
new technologies to how doctors
diagnose patients. So, this season,
across five episodes, we're gonna explore
how racial injustice impacts everything from
education to housing. But first, in order
to understand those systems, we need to start by
understanding our own biases and the role that they play. So, how do you measure
your own biases? How do those biases fit in
to racism as a whole? And most importantly,
what can we do about it? Good boy. Stay. <i> I'm on my way
to the Vox office</i> <i> to talk to the director
of research</i> <i> for one of the most famous
and controversial tests
for implicit bias.</i> - Hello.
- Hi. Thanks so much for doing this. How do researchers
like yourself approach measuring
individual racial bias? A lot of times,
you can't simply just ask
people directly, "Hey, how biased are you?" Because most people will
probably tell you, "I don't think I have
any bias at all." And so, instead
what we have to do is we have to
indirectly measure how people perform or act
in different situations to capture implicit biases. And one of the most popular
ways of doing so is a test known as the implicit
association test. <i> Okay,
time to take those tests,</i> <i> and I've asked my fellow
co-hosts to take them with me.</i> So, what we're looking at here
are a bunch of different
implicit association tests. And what I want you to do
is just choose one
that interests you. I'm gonna try Arab Muslim IAT. I'm gonna go
with the skin tone one. White Americans
black Americans. Asian American,
European American IAT. And I see some images of, like, this much of peoples' faces,
basically, - some black, some white.
- What we do is we have people sort words and images
to two sides of the screen <i> as quickly or as accurately
as they can.</i> <i> And on one side of the screen,</i> <i> it might be black people
and bad things.</i> <i> And then after you do
a bunch of that,</i> <i> we'll then flip it so now
black people are paired
with good things</i> <i> and white people are paired
with bad things.</i> And how quickly you sort on
this implicit association test tells us something about
how concepts are linked
together in memory. During the IAT you just
completed, your responses
suggested a strong automatic preference for
black people over white people. A moderate automatic
association for American
with Asian American and foreign with
European American. A moderate automatic preference for Arab Muslims
over other people. Little or no
automatic association between weapons
and harmless objects with white Americans
and black Americans. A strong automatic preference for light skin
over dark skin people. In the United States,
we live in a pretty racially
segregated society, <i> and so the life experiences
of white folks and black folks</i> <i> are often going to be
quite different.</i> Cleo:<i> According to data
collected by researchers
behind the IAT,</i> <i> white Americans demonstrate
higher pro-white bias</i> <i> as measured by this test
than black Americans,</i> <i> whose results
are more spread out, but...</i> Unfortunately, as a tool
for learning about yourself, it's a little bit noisy.
It's pretty unreliable. So just because you score
high or low on one day, still could mean that you
might score a different way
on a different day. Its best use is for,
one, research, and second, just as a way to kind of
peel back the layers and seeing what might be kind of going on
behind the scenes. - Can I curse?
- Cleo: Go for it. - I'm like, this is bullshit.
- I just don't think
a five-minute test is gonna, like,
tell me how racist I am. I feel like if
I were a police officer
and I took this, and I got this result,
I'd be like, "I am not a racist cop. I have zero
implicit associations." It's pretty easy to cheat
once you know how it works. There's just no way
this test measures what
it's saying it's measuring. I just don't buy it.
I don't buy it. Cleo: What do you think
is a better way to
get at implicit bias? I think probably,
like, detailed interviews
with people maybe, which I imagine
we'll be doing next. Okay, so now,
grab those cards
and just read them off. Can you tell me about the first
conversation you remember having
with your family about race? I can't because we did not
talk about race. We are a black family.
That's just, like, what you
talk about at dinner. My dad, the angle that
we always had around race was within you there's power,
within you there's beauty, and don't let anyone
take that away from you. There was no specific time that I formulated a strong
racial identity to this day. It's still not a very big part
of who I think I am. Is having racial preferences
in dating racist? Yes. - Yeah.
- I would say no to this. I think people are allowed
to like who they like. - I think that's problematic.
- Can you describe a time
you felt embarrassed by something you did
or said that seemed racist? Just a few weeks ago
I was shopping at a vintage
store in Brooklyn. Being pulled over by
the cops with a black
friend in the car. This was like an older
black man and he, like, ran up on the car way too quick,
took me by surprise. And he was like,
"Oh, I don't work here, but I get that a lot,"
and he was black. And I was like, ( bleep ). I definitely told an Asian kid
at lunch that, you know, their lunch from home
smelled funny. I would say it
was definitely a bias. I would say
it's a learned bias. And I was not really worried
about that interaction. And I think that to my friend,
that must have demonstrated a lot of white privilege. Because when you turn on TV
or you play a video game or you watch a movie,
the bad guys are always bald
and typically always black. So, to get a little bit
more context here, we're gonna go talk
to an expert who can help. She's in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I've also asked
my co-host Fabiola to join me because Fabiola is Vox's
lead reporter on race. The implicit attitudes
we show are a reflection of what we see
in our immediate environment. The people we see,
the media we watch, the friends we have,
the neighborhood we live in, and that is the culture
that leaves a thumbprint
on the mind. So Fabiola and I collected
some clips that are examples of where we feel like
this cultural thumbprint
came from for us. Lisa, let me buy you a soda
to make up for my ancestors. No thanks.
I'm not thirsty. I can't help it.
I feel guilty. There are two kinds of roles
in this film. There's race
and then there's class. <i> These are roles which
the speaking character roles
are mostly white.</i> Something just arrived
from New York for you. It sucked you in
and it made it easy to forget that these other characters,
the indigenous character... ( singing indistinctly ) - ...the black character...
- This is a black thing. <i> ...were in these
stereotypic roles.</i> Because that's not what
you were paying attention to. And in some ways I think
that's what media often does. You get caught up
in the storyline and your
guard just dissolves. And in the meantime,
you're registering all
of these stereotypes, which then become iconic
characters and narratives, <i> like the romanticized
"Pocahontas."</i> Woman:
♪ You will understand ♪ A slight preference
or a slight bias is like a few milliseconds
where you can decide if you're gonna
shoot someone or not. A slight preference
or a slight bias affects whether you're
going to call someone
for a job interview or if they go into
the no pile. A small preference
or a bias might mean whether a doctor or a nurse spends an extra few minutes
with a patient. Implicit bias doesn't mean
we don't have responsibility. We have control
over the media we watch, who we hang out with,
where we live,
who we work with. We have all kinds of choices. And those choices we make
or passively don't make then affect who's in
our social network. That affects implicit bias. I've always assumed
that implicit bias is just a softer way
to say racism. What is your reaction to that? I think racism is more complex.
Racism is structural bias. Racism is residential
segregation. Racism are policies that oftentimes intentionally try to create
and then justify inequality. So implicit bias,
if you built it out from the individual mind
to that environment, to the institution,
to the society, the end result is racism. Answering a question
like "How racist am I?"
is complicated. Not just because of
the introspection required, but also because our definition
of racism continues to evolve. Take just the definitions
in the Merriam-Webster
Dictionary. They've changed a lot
over the years. The term "racism" wasn't
actually in the dictionary
as late as the 1930s. But then on November 1st, 1938,
an editor at Merriam-Webster passed this note
to her colleague. It reads, "'Racism.'
Has this term been entered?" At the time,
the word was often being used as a synonym
for anti-Semitism. Man:<i> Hitler made his great bid
for the domination of Europe.</i> Man 2:<i> It says the camp was
founded when the Nazi party
first came into power.</i> You can see by the late 1930s,
the term "racism" was added, but it was focused on overt
individual prejudice. The decades that followed showed
why the definition falls short. Man 3:<i> In 1954,
the court rendered a verdict</i> <i> of segregation
in tax-supported schools
is unconstitutional.</i> So, here in the 1960s,
they're beginning to add more and structural racism
and institutional forces
into the definition, not just individual prejudice. But the passage of
the Civil Rights Bill
does not mean that we have reached
the promised land
in civil rights. Cleo: And events since then
demonstrate why that was needed. Shirley:<i> All discrimination,
whether it's anti-woman</i> <i> or anti-black,
all discrimination
is anti-human.</i> - What's his name?
- George Floyd! - Scream his name.
- George Floyd! - Scream his name.
- George Floyd! In 2020, Kennedy Mitchum
went to Merriam-Webster and encouraged them
to better clarify the realities
of systemic racism. Here she is describing
the need for a new definition
in a TV interview. It should be defined
as not only prejudice, but as well
as systemic oppression upon a group of people. That's what it should
be defined as, and I think that once
that change is made, that we all can come
to a better understanding and see its role in society
as it is now. What we see in this conversation
about the modern definition is that it's not enough
to just reckon with
your own implicit bias. To answer "How racist am I?", you and I have to deal with our participation
in racist systems, too. ( Skype chiming ) - Hello.
- Anthony: Hi, Cleo,
how are you? Cleo: You wrote this book
the I just finished reading,
"A Perilous Path." And this is a book that
you wrote with Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson,
and Sherrilyn Iffil. So, the four of you together
are some of the leading thinkers on the intersection between
race and criminal justice
in the United States right now and you all wrote
a book together. I think people need direction in how to have
these conversations. I think the hardest thing
is facilitating conversations in a multiracial group
and have everyone feel like they have something
to contribute and that they can be
vulnerable. The reality that we are making
a show about race with a multiracial team
in a remote environment-- and so one of the suggestions
that we talked about together is to have a facilitated
conversation about that
inside our team. Do you have any interest
in doing that process with us? If everyone is as committed
to this process as you are,
I would love to do it. Cleo:<i>
My fellow co-hosts and I</i> <i> are headed to Newark,
New Jersey,</i> <i> to meet with
Professor Thompson.</i> <i> He's facilitating
an honest conversation,</i> <i>something that you can do, too,
with the people in your life,</i> <i> and helping us find a better
framework for how to think
about implicit bias.</i> Bias can be conscious
or unconscious, and it has to do with
how we're influenced by, growing up,
the conversations at
the dinner table, who our friends were,
what we see on television,
what we read. When you connect bias
to action-- so I cross the street
when I see a group of young African American men
coming down the street, or I call 911 when I see an
African American doing something that is perfectly legal
but in my orbit,
that becomes racism. Talk to me about
what your definition is
for white privilege. White privilege
is the set of advantages that you are born into
by being white. And that's not to say
that every white person has the same kind of privilege,
the same level of privilege. But they all have some
certain amount of privilege that people of other races,
in this country at least,
do not have. So, for me as a black person,
it's about just constantly
thinking about race, thinking about how my race
factors into certain things. But I think white privilege
is about being able to just get by and be
carefree in that sense. This is a personal
and professional conversation. So, personally,
you would want to see people who you had
some affinity towards. - Mm-hmm.
- Right? But professionally, how do you access
more diverse points of view? In professional context,
it's about who's being hired. You know, a lot of us work
in an industry where you can
recommend people to work with, thinking about what names
am I pointing forward when I need a DP
to come with me on a shoot or we have an opening
at a producer role. Who would I want to bring over
to work with me? I think personal choices.
Like, a big thing for me
is where you live. Like, if you're choosing
to live in the hottest
neighborhood of whatever city, I'm sure that neighborhood
is gonna be white. This is where the potential
conflict between the personal
and the structural comes in because you have
a progressive person saying, "I want to diversify
my neighborhood." They move into a neighborhood
that's been more mixed, and maybe they are then
putting upward pressure
on the rents there. And so you have to
think about my role
in that system as well. You have to get comfortable
with being uncomfortable. If we do nothing,
then we live in a society
that remains segregated. I'm a little stuck
on this problem of, like, I don't want to be
identifying people and sort of making them
my friends because I think
they're gonna, like, - teach me something
through their--
- Had a different view? - Right? Like, that's
not equal friendship.
- I would not like knowing if someone was befriending me
for that reason. So one approach
to this is to say, "I would never
choose my friends by
their race or ethnicity." Why don't you think
that you can give
them something? I think it applies
to every single kind of
relationship you're in. It's a two-way street.
I feel like this whole
argument of, like, "I don't want to
pinpoint people," for me,
it's like a denial. Because, like,
the first time you saw me,
you knew I was black. When you saw me, you were like,
"Fabiola's black." And so I think
it really sets us back. - That's really-- like,
that was really helpful.
- Go ahead. It's also a question
of whether Cleo personally having a more diverse
friend group and broadening
her perspective does anything to change
structural inequalities - or segregation
in this country.
- Oh, gosh. You gotta decide
how you change the world. What I'm here to say is
if we're going to have
this conversation, and if we're going to model
this conversation, then that conversation
has to happen all over
the country. Everywhere. I don't want your question
to be "How racist am I?" I want your question to be
as I go forward after this season,
what can I do affirmatively? And so I'd like to ask you
three questions today as we end. First, given what you've heard
and what you've done and what you've said today,
what are you gonna do
differently, what are you gonna
continue doing, and what are you gonna
stop doing? Executive Producer: What is the
point of the exercise, Tony,
to look in the mirror? Why did you say,
"look in the mirror"? The purpose of the mirror
is at the end of the day we've done all this work,
it's for her to be reflecting. It's the kind of metaphor
of her reflecting on
all this, right? That's, I think,
the value of the shot. Otherwise, the mirror's just--
you know, it's a prop. Oh, wow. It's so awkward
to look at myself. I'm, like, losing it.
I'm sorry. Um... I'm really not gonna do
too much differently. I think the work that I do, specifically the work that
I've kind of fallen into, I value and I'm really
excited to do it. If I was gonna say
I would do anything, it would be being
more proactive about not just being Ed Bradley,
but being Mike Wallace
at the same time. - I want to cover everything.
- I'm going to stop feeling like I'm not qualified
to talk about race. I think I've for a long time
had this feeling that-- that the best thing
that I could do was to shut up and listen, But I'm kind of more
and more understanding every day
that that is not enough. That we have to speak up.
That we have to, um, be ready to bring more
to the table than that. I think I'm gonna stop being
so guarded with my knowledge and just be more willing to
share it and put it out there.
'Cause I think it's important. I think it's important
for me to share and
put myself out there. I think that what we did here
today was just the beginning, so I'm going to do my best to
continue doing what we started. I think that I got
so caught up in concerns about my role or my place as a white woman
in this conversation and whether or not I would be
taking up space or unwanted that I forgot about
the importance of just doing the work myself
and doing the best that I can. - Thank you.
- Thanks. You know, I wish that
I could end this episode and say I've learned that
I have this specific bias against this group of people and I can be
more mindful of that. That might be easier. But what I've come to realize is that the privilege
with which I was raised and the way that the world
treats me now as a white woman
impacts my behavior. Of course it does,
and in ways that I might not
always be aware of. And if left unchecked,
that can harm other people. As long as we live
in a societal structure <i> where we benefit from racism,</i> <i> we are complicit in some way.</i> <i> We may not want to be,
but we are.</i> <i> Does that mean that
we are individually racist?</i> <i> Not necessarily.
But are we complicit in racism?</i> - Yes.
- And there are signals that I can learn
to pay attention to. Like when I feel defensive and when I feel frustrated and when there's only one type
of voice in the room. <i> These issues
are really personal,</i> <i> and they also go
way beyond that.</i> <i> In our next four episodes,
we're going to be</i> <i> exploring them in housing,</i> <i> education, technology,
and health.</i> <i>But just because this is bigger
than any of us individually,</i> <i> that doesn't let us
as individuals off the hook.</i> Calvin:<i> You can maybe try to do
what our brain often does,</i> which is to justify it away as,
"Ah, but I have an excuse." But at least in some
of those cases, you might be pushed to think, "I'm not gonna let myself
off the hook for this." And what not letting myself
off the hook really means is that it's not enough
to just say, "Oh, I'm sure I have
implicit bias," right? You have to learn to pay
attention to those signals, and then actually
change your behavior. I want to hold myself
more accountable and I hope that you do, too. Uh-oh. I said brass knuckles
were harmless. Woman: Just keep going.
We are not done. - Oh, we're not done.
Let's do it.
- No, we're not done. - More.
- What do I do with my hands?
I never know. Boom.
