Summary : ' The Ted Talk ' By Verna Myers

That “contamination” is sheer narrow-mindedness. In relation to the “Implicit association test,” which “measures unconscious bias,” Myers acknowledges that “Seventy percent of white people taking that test prefer white.” Not only do “white people prefer” someone of their race, but “Fifty percent of black people taking that test prefer white” as well. Informing us of the results from the “IAT (Implicit Association Test)” helps showcase that there is a clear bias among us that “we’ve been schooled in.” Myers provides this data in order to further justify that we all play a role in “the prejudices that fuel those kinds of tragic incidents” that happened to the black men mentioned in the previous paragraph. Conversely with a grandiose tone, the diversity advocate explains that the problem isn’t so much that “we see color” it’s “what we do when we see the color.” Bringing this issue to light is effective in the sense that it makes her audience re-evaluate their standpoint within these specific instances. Are their prejudices a part of the problem?” Yes. Verna Myers is well aware that “we are not shooting people down in the street”; nonetheless, we still contribute to the issue until we are

discusses the results of a Implicit Association Test which measures a persons automatic association between mental representation of objects in the memory. Nearly 88 percent of the white race who took the Implicit Association Test show inherent racial bias. They have found when white people carry a implicit racial bias that they subconsciously prefer white people over black people in areas such as employment and academic. People don't even realize that they have a subconscious biases against a certain race. Which can affect how they interact with them. America still has a problem with race, The Civil War ended many years ago but the war between races still exist . Once we acknowledge the truth behind inherent racial bias we can move towards

Racial prejudice toward minority groups has been a problem throughout all of history. While overt racism and prejudice may be diminished from the days of our dark past, covert racism is very much alive. Society loves to embellish on how far the country has come in the fight against racial prejudice by highlighting significant events such as having the first black president. Yet there are still too many instances of subtle racism. In 2011, there were almost 700,000 incidents of stop and frisk policing in New York. Nine out of ten of these incidents involved blacks or Hispanics, which is ridiculous because blacks make up less than a quarter of the New York Population (Bobo 2013). Prejudice causes unfair treatment to innocent people. Everyone should be treated the same and given the same amount of respect. Continuing the fight towards an unprejudiced world has so many benefits including making sure everyone feels safe and respected in society and the possibility to learn from other ethnic groups. A world without prejudice would be a much more effective world with more time spent on making life better for all instead of violence and hate. Government officials and psychologists are trying to advertise how being in contact with other ethnic groups has reduced prejudice. Many psychologists are already praising contact theory research for its contribution toward world peace and its efforts against prejudice (Dixon, Tropp, Durrheim, and Tredoux 2010). However, the two empirical

People tend to think that they don’t have any biases against minority groups. However, unbeknownst to them, research has shown that many people actually do harbor negative biases, in the form of automatic associations. In a study performed by B. Keith Payne, at the University of North Carolina, he tested to see whether participants have an unintended racial bias towards African-Americans. To test this, he used an Implicit Association Test (IAT). This test uses a matching method to find any hidden biases in the test taker. He found that participants indeed showed racial bias towards African-Americans, even though it was completely unintended (Payne). Last week, we wanted to see whether we have a bias for

In Vernā Myers’ TED Talk “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly towards them,” originally presented at TEDxBeaconStreet, diversity advocate Myers argues that peoples’ subconscious attitudes are affecting the prospering of black people in society. She also proposes three ideas on how to overcome our biases, which will open a world of possibilities where everyone no matters his or her ethnicity or race has equal opportunities to succeed in this constantly changing environment. According to Myers, the first step to overcome our prejudices is to acknowledge the biases that subconsciously influence our attitudes towards black people. According to Myers, “our default is white,” this demonstrates that people are more likely to trust white people

Research centers for the study of racial bias have developed experimental studies to help understand how race can, for instance, influence a police officer to shoot an unarmed suspect. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the most commonly used tests for this study. IAT was developed by three scientists, Tony Greenwald (University of Washington), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), and Brian Nosek (University of Virginia) (“ProjectImplicit”). Their “Project Implicit” program was designed to identify our societal biases through the association of faces (black and white) with words (good and bad). This program uses a scoring algorithm that can identify those who are faking the test with approximately 75% accuracy (Cvencek et al.).

In “Why I keep speaking up, even when people mock my accent,” Safwat Saleem, shows his passion and his courageous side when speaking in his Ted Talk, describing the main idea of there not being such a thing of normalcy, as well as arguing that individuals should be confident and accept who they are from their special qualities. Agreeing with Saleem (2016), however to also consider it has become common in today’s society to want to be normal. Therefore many people would not agree with wanting to be exactly known as quote on quote ‘normal’ but they may want to assimilate to norms because that person is or may be in a unique way socially accepted.

“Everyone should get tested for implicit bias, and if you’re a public official or receiving public dollars — it should be mandatory. It’s just a matter of time before another black person is abused, arrested, or shot dead for flying, golfing, driving, walking

When it comes to choice it always seems to be a love hate relationship: we hate making them, but we can’t live without them. Anyone can all look back to a time in our lives where they wish someone could just pick for us, or times when we wish there were more to choose from. All Americans have many choices, and it is such a part of our daily lives that we don’t even realize it. Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar‘s TED talks bring up interesting ideas about choice, how people deal with them and their affects. They both state that although choice is good, it can also have negative effects. Schwartz explains what most people believe and experience with choice, while Iyengar shows cultural differences in choice making. Both Schwartz and Iyengar

It is rather difficult to come across a good family doctor, who would actually take the time to listen to your problems and do a simple check up. A powerful ted talk by Abraham Verghese is still clearly running through my head. The way he describes his full attendance to the patients and how he takes the time to listen to their problems. For some people we are not so very lucky to have a doctor like Abraham Verghese, like one of those people I truly hated my family doctor. If you can imagine a nine year old child that has just arrived in a new country and not knowing the language that well has already developed a hatred toward doctors. During the consultation, he would not let us talk and just made us listen about his kids and how smart there are and showed us their pictures. I understand you can be proud of your kids, but at least listen to us first then brag about your kids.

The TED Talk video that I watched was Why do we sleep by Russel Foster. This TED talk was about why we need sleep and how getting less than the suggested amount affects the brain. There are three main reasons why we need sleep; restoration, energy conservation, and brain function. Only certain genes are turned on when you sleep so you need to sleep in order for those genes to turn on and allow you other genes to be restored, while sleeping you save about 110 calories, sleep helps enhance creativity, and your brain is less likely to retain information if you’re sleep deprived and trying to cram information. On average a teen needs 9 hours of sleep, in the 1950s the average teen was getting 8 hours of sleep, today on average teens are getting 5 hours of sleep, which is half the amount that we need. If you’re not receiving the amount of sleep that you need your body will uncountable got into micro-sleeping which will happen to at least 31% of drivers in their lifetime.

The Ted Talk by Sherry Turkle, "Alone Together" embraces a strong dependency of modern day technology, and it's power to replace human contact with the "Illusion of companionship". With a respected background, a degree in Psychology and extensive research, Sherry Turkle emphasizes just how much we're letting technology take us to a place we do not want to go. It is one thing to reflect upon a professional, and another thing to adopt imagery in personal lyrical emotion. The two videos that grasped my attention were Gary Turk's "Look up" and Prince EA's "Autocorrect Humanity." Both videos display a lot of similarities, such as rhymes, an emotional connection, and expressing the overall picture of putting down your phone, but Gary Turks "Look Up" has made a larger impact of the two. The video "Look Up" has a significantly powerful, and emotional appeal to it and the message it conveys.

In the TED Talk Video Learning How to Learn by Dr. Barbara Oakley gives out useful tips on becoming an effective learner. She starts by talking about her experience in her high school math & science classes and how she failed it many times. I learned many concepts from watching Dr. Oakley’s presentation and she makes many valid points that I find useful. I have learned to not look or work a problem once and assume that I have a clear understanding, also cramming is not a good suggestion. Lastly when you are confused please seek help and do not avoid the topics you are studying because it is confusing. She ends her presentation, by stating that learning how to learn is the most powerful tool that you can grasp. I really like this statement because

Implicit bias is a concept that originally gained esteem during the 2016 election. It is defined as unconscious assumptions or stereotypes that are race-related. For example, if someone pulled up two pictures, a white female and a black male, and told you that one of them committed a crime, you are likely to choose the black male. You’re not racist, you have just been consuming all this media and images that paint black people or specifically males as being criminals. There are many options to attempt to fix this bias implanted in you. First, one should take a test to see if they even have a bias in the first place. If yes, then they should attempt to overcome it. They can do this by either hanging out with people of another ethnicity to learn who they are or to address that the racial anxiety exists and to work from there. In my opinion, this idea of implicit bias is incredibly important for people to learn about and possibly fix if necessary. Before this video, I had never heard of implicit bias and I always just figured I was stereotyping people whenever I had thoughts like the ones presented in the

A major reason I would love to attend Harvard is their strong belief in analyzing obstacles in unique ways. After watching the TED Talk titled “What is so special about the human brain?” by Suzana Herculano-Houzel, I sparked an interest in the Biological effects cooking played in evolution. When further researching this I was able to come across Richard Wrangham, Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. After finding Wrangham’s email I took the initiative and shot him an email. Wrangham was able to answer questions of mine and also told me to check out his book. Aside from this, Wrangham gave me the contact information of Herculano-Houzel where I was able to ask her more questions about her research. Though