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How racial bias works -- and how to disrupt it

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    Some years ago,
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    I was on an airplane with my son
    who was just five years old at the time.
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    My son was so excited
    about being on this airplane with Mommy.
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    He's looking all around
    and he's checking things out
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    and he's checking people out.
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    And he sees this man, and he says,
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    "Hey! That guy looks like Daddy!"
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    And I look at the man,
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    and he didn't look anything
    at all like my husband,
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    nothing at all.
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    And so then I start
    looking around on the plane,
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    and I notice this man was
    the only black guy on the plane.
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    And I thought,
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    "Alright.
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    I'm going to have to have
    a little talk with my son
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    about how not all
    black people look alike."
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    My son, he lifts his head up,
    and he says to me,
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    "I hope he doesn't rob the plane."
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    And I said, "What? What did you say?"
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    And he says, "Well, I hope that man
    doesn't rob the plane."
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    And I said, "Well, why would you say that?
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    You know Daddy wouldn't rob a plane."
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    And he says, "Yeah, yeah,
    yeah, well, I know."
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    And I said, "Well,
    why would you say that?"
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    And he looked at me
    with this really sad face,
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    and he says,
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    "I don't know why I said that.
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    I don't know why I was thinking that."
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    We are living with such severe
    racial stratification
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    that even a five-year-old can tell us
    what's supposed to happen next,
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    even with no evildoer,
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    even with no explicit hatred.
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    This association between
    blackness and crime
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    made its way into the mind
    of my five-year-old.
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    It makes its way into all of our children,
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    into all of us.
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    Our minds are shaped by
    the racial disparities
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    we see out in the world
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    and the narratives that help us
    to make sense of the disparities we see:
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    "Those people are criminals."
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    "Those people are violent."
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    "Those people are to be feared."
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    When my research team
    brought people into our lab
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    and exposed them to faces,
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    we found that exposure to black faces
    led them to see blurry images of guns
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    with greater clarity and speed.
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    Bias cannot only control what we see,
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    but where we look.
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    We found that prompting people
    to think of violent crime
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    can lead them to direct their eyes
    onto a black face
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    and away from a white face.
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    Prompting police officers
    to think of capturing and shooting
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    and arresting
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    leads their eyes to settle
    on black faces, too.
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    Bias can infect every aspect
    of our criminal justice system.
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    In a large data set
    of death-eligible defendants,
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    we found that looking more black
    more than doubled their chances
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    of receiving a death sentence --
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    at least when their victims were white.
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    This effect is significant,
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    even though we controlled
    for the severity of the crime
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    and the defendant's attractiveness.
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    And no matter what we controlled for,
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    we found that black
    people were punished
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    in proportion to the blackness
    of their physical features:
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    the more black,
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    the more death-worthy.
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    Bias can also influence
    how teachers discipline students.
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    My colleagues and I have found
    that teachers express a desire
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    to discipline a black
    middle school student more harshly
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    than a white student
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    for the same repeated infractions.
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    In a recent study,
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    we're finding that teachers
    treat black students as a group
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    but white students as individuals.
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    If, for example,
    one black student misbehaves
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    and then a different black student
    misbehaves a few days later,
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    the teacher responds
    to that second black student
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    as if he had misbehaved twice.
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    It's as though the sins of one child
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    get piled onto the other.
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    We create categories
    to make sense of the world,
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    to assert some control and coherence
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    to the stimuli that we're constantly
    being bombarded with.
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    Categorization and the bias that it seeds
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    allow our brains to make judgments
    more quickly and efficiently,
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    and we do this by instinctively
    relying on patterns
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    that seem predictable.
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    Yet, just as the categories we create
    allow us to make quick decisions,
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    they also reinforce bias.
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    So the very things that help us
    to see the world
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    also can blind us to it.
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    They render our choices effortless,
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    friction-free.
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    Yet they exact a heavy toll.
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    So what can we do?
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    We are all vulnerable to bias,
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    but we don't act on bias all the time.
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    There are certain conditions
    that can bring bias alive
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    and other conditions that can muffle it.
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    Let me give you an example.
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    Many people are familiar
    with the tech company Nextdoor.
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    So, their whole purpose is to create
    stronger, healthier, safer neighborhoods.
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    And so they offer this online space
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    where neighbors can gather
    and share information.
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    Yet, Nextdoor soon found
    that they had a problem
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    with racial profiling.
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    In the typical case,
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    people would look outside their window
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    and see a black man
    in their otherwise white neighborhood
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    and make the snap judgment
    that he was up to no good,
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    even when there was no evidence
    of criminal wrongdoing.
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    In many ways, how we behave online
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    is a reflection of how
    we behave in the world.
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    But what we don't want to do
    is create an easy-to-use system
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    that can amplify bias
    and deepen racial disparities,
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    rather than dismantling them.
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    So the cofounder of Nextdoor
    reached out to me and to others
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    to try to figure out what to do.
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    And they realized that
    to curb racial profiling on the platform,
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    they were going to have to add friction;
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    that is, they were going
    to have to slow people down.
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    So Nextdoor had a choice to make,
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    and against every impulse,
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    they decided to add friction.
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    And they did this by adding
    a simple checklist.
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    There were three items on it.
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    First, they asked users to pause
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    and think, "What was this person doing
    that made him suspicious?"
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    The category "black man"
    is not grounds for suspicion.
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    Second, they asked users to describe
    the person's physical features,
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    not simply their race and gender.
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    Third, they realized that a lot of people
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    didn't seem to know
    what racial profiling was,
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    nor that they were engaging in it.
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    So Nextdoor provided them
    with a definition
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    and told them that it was
    strictly prohibited.
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    Most of you have seen
    those signs in airports
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    and in metro stations,
    "If you see something, say something."
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    Nextdoor tried modifying this.
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    "If you see something suspicious,
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    say something specific."
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    And using this strategy,
    by simply slowing people down,
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    Nextdoor was able to curb
    racial profiling by 75 percent.
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    Now, people often will say to me,
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    "You can't add friction
    in every situation, in every context,
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    and especially for people who make
    split-second decisions all the time."
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    But it turns out we can add friction
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    to more situations than we think.
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    Working with the Oakland Police Department
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    in California,
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    I and a number of my colleagues
    were able to help the Department
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    to reduce the number of stops they made
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    of people who were not
    committing any serious crimes.
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    And we did this by pushing officers
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    to ask themselves a question
    before each and every stop they made:
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    "Is this stop intelligence-led,
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    yes or no?
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    In other words,
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    do I have prior information
    to tie this particular person
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    to a specific crime?"
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    By adding that question
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    to the form officers complete
    during a stop,
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    they slow down, they pause,
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    they think, "Why am I considering
    pulling this person over?"
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    In 2017, before we added that
    intelligence-led question to the form,
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    officers made about 32,000 stops
    across the city.
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    In that next year,
    with the addition of this question,
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    that fell to 19,000 stops.
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    African-American stops alone
    fell by 43 percent.
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    And stopping fewer black people
    did not make the city any more dangerous.
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    In fact, the crime rate continued to fall,
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    and the city became safer for everybody.
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    So one solution can come from reducing
    the number of unnecessary stops.
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    Another can come from improving
    the quality of the stops
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    officers do make.
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    And technology can help us here.
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    We all know about George Floyd's death
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    because those who tried to come to his aid
    held cell phone cameras
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    to record that horrific, fatal
    encounter with the police.
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    But we have all sorts of technology
    that we're not putting to good use.
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    Police departments across the country
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    are now required to wear body-worn cameras
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    so we have recordings of not only
    the most extreme and horrific encounters
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    but of everyday interactions.
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    With an interdisciplinary
    team at Stanford,
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    we've begun to use
    machine learning techniques
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    to analyze large numbers of encounters.
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    This is to better understand
    what happens in routine traffic stops.
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    What we found was that
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    even when police officers
    are behaving professionally,
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    they speak to black drivers
    less respectfully than white drivers.
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    In fact, from the words
    officers use alone,
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    we could predict whether they were talking
    to a black driver or a white driver.
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    The problem is that the vast majority
    of the footage from these cameras
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    is not used by police departments
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    to understand what's
    going on on the street
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    or to train officers.
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    And that's a shame.
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    How does a routine stop
    turn into a deadly encounter?
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    How did this happen
    in George Floyd's case?
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    How did it happen in others?
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    When my eldest son was 16 years old,
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    he discovered that
    when white people look at him,
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    they feel fear.
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    Elevators are the worst, he said.
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    When those doors close,
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    people are trapped in this tiny space
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    with someone they have been taught
    to associate with danger.
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    My son senses their discomfort,
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    and he smiles to put them at ease,
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    to calm their fears.
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    When he speaks,
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    their bodies relax.
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    They breathe easier.
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    They take pleasure in his cadence,
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    his diction, his word choice.
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    He sounds like one of them.
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    I used to think that my son
    was a natural extrovert like his father.
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    But I realized at that moment,
    in that conversation,
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    that his smile was not a sign
    that he wanted to connect
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    with would-be strangers.
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    It was a talisman he'd used
    to protect himself,
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    a survival skill he had honed
    over thousands of elevator rides.
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    He was learning to accommodate the tension
    that his skin color generated
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    and that put his own life at risk.
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    We know that the brain is wired for bias,
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    and one way to interrupt that bias
    is to pause and to reflect
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    on the evidence of our assumptions.
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    So we need to ask ourselves:
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    What assumptions do we bring
    when we step onto an elevator?
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    Or an airplane?
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    How do we make ourselves aware
    of our own unconscious bias?
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    Who do those assumptions keep safe?
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    Who do they put at risk?
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    Until we ask these questions
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    and insist that our schools
    and our courts and our police departments
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    and every institution do the same,
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    we will continue to allow bias
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    to blind us.
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    And if we do,
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    none of us are truly safe.
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    Thank you.
Title:
How racial bias works -- and how to disrupt it
Speaker:
Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
14:17

English subtitles

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