Stop Speeding: Unraveling Implicit Bias in Our Everyday Lives | Laila Smith | TEDxNewHaven

foreign do you speed be honest now do you ever wonder why you speed why your brain wants to move that fast why you're so eager to pass others on the road let me guess when you see a State Trooper on the side of 95 you slow down well why don't we always slow down and think about the way that our actions influence others now of course going through life thinking about your every single move is extremely tedious but having a mindset that's open to new ideas and perspectives is exactly what we need my mother has rheumatoid arthritis and every night she asked me to open her medicine bottle because her hands can't bear the pain about four months ago my mom found an arthritis friendly Tylenol bottle invented by Pfizer in 2011. so for around 11 years we've had this amazing product that some of you guys might not even know about I surely didn't know about it until four months ago but this drug was invented in the 1960s so people with similar conditions have struggled to open their medicine bottles for decades because in that boardroom no one decided to think about the odd ones out this is a fine example of implicit bias or the way stereotypes attitudes or generalized assumptions affect the way we think and our actions in an unconscious manner it's not straightforward it's almost like weaving a secret message into fabric but that message trickles through the surface and shows within our actions implicit bias results in black women being three times more likely to die during childbirth in the school to present pipeline how is that even possible when these doc when these black women come to their doctors about their pain it's not recognized as a true threat the doctors did not choose to slow down these ideas that Asians should be smart black women should be strong and Latin next people should be Farmers or Maids are extremely dangerous to society and they are and they affect our actions in a terrible way think about this you used to go to the doctor as a kid used to sit on the blue cot and the doctor would walk in with no mask no gloves and you'd have strep though or a ton of or a ton of other different illnesses and you'd be sitting on the cot and the doctor would be right in front of you all up in your space asks you to open your mouth no Mass no gloves now if we think about the if we think about the state that we're currently in it boggles our minds that we were ever so oblivious doctors were just interacting with sick children without any type of protection and even as adults we still show our oblivious ways Jennifer Eberhart is a professor at Stanford University in the psychology department and she conducted research showing how when participants saw images of blurred of Black Faces they saw images of blurred guns that compared to White faces she also found that teachers treat black students as a group and white students as an individual eberhart's research shows that death eligible defendants in court who appear more black have double the likelihood of getting the death sentence so not only is this bias affecting our actions but it could result in taking a life ibraher also teamed up with Nextdoor which is the app so that neighbors could communicate with each other and there was a lot of racial profiling happening on this app so they teamed up and created a racial bias checklist and be and because there was a lot of racial profiling happening where people would just report a person being black and male when that would happen in the app now when that would happen in the app now next door alerted users that racial profiling was strictly prohibited and with this checklist next door was able to curb racial profiling by 75 percent ibraher also conducted research with the Oakland Police Department and by adding one simple check box so the traffic stop form African-American traffic stops dropped by 40 percent in and as young as preschool black boys are continuously targeted by their teachers a Yale University study shows how 42 percent of the time teachers are watching black boys in the in the classroom the highest compared to any other group if this is happening at the preschool level imagine how it could be at the high school level actually I could imagine because I happened to be in high school one of my friends was telling me about an incident that happened between him and the teacher and note my friend wears lots of black hoodies which are the stylish enormous kinds but they're viewed in such a negative way by Society when my friend was telling me about this incident that happened between him and a friend which it was a clear it was a clear friendly interaction between any pair of high schoolers the teacher walks up to him and says oh are you gonna Rob him when I heard this I was shocked but I wasn't surprised phrases like this have become so normalized within my life in the lives of many people this is my friend Iman you probably think he's smart huh imagine how many how many people say oh you're Asian aren't you supposed to be smart imagine how that crushes someone's self-esteem during their academic years Imam was telling me about how everyone surrounding him expected him to get into every top institution he applied to he talked about how that affected his mental health in terrible ways now I'm on will be attending Harvard College next year but that has that has nothing to do with his race or ethnicity it's about his intelligence in No One race should be viewed as a smartest or the dumbest our perception is the problem and regarding mental health and these past catastrophic years there's been a 31 increase in mental health emergencies amongst teenagers in 2020 and the most devastating fact of all those are more than 50 percent increase in suicide attempt emergencies amongst teen girls in 2021 versus 2019. people need help and people need to be seen and I ask you all today to keep doing those double takes keep on speaking up in those board meetings and hey stop speeding [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,461

Keywords: Bias, English, Perception, Social Interaction, Social Sciences, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:38836]

Id: O4Dh4e-X0GU

Length: 6min 48sec (408 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2023