Overcoming Biases By Verna Meyers

The TED Talk I watched was titled “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them” by
Verna Meyers. Verna Meyers is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Barnard College, and Columbia University, magna cum laude. She was the first Executive Director of The Boston Law Firm Group and also the Deputy Chief of Staff for the Attorney General of Massachusetts. She had published a book titled “Beyond Diversity: How to Move from Well-Meaning to Well-Doing,” in 2011. Nationally recognized for her expertise on diversity and inclusion, she is highly sought after speaker for workshops and conferences around the world. She is a very appropriate speak for this topic of how to overcome racial prejudice.
In this talk, Ms. Meyers suggests three ways that we, …show more content…
Ms. Meyers suggests that firstly, we need to stop being in a stage of denial. She says that we need to “Stop trying to be good people” because the world needs more real people. This is because people think that they’re not racist or they don’t prejudge people before knowing them but in reality, we do it every day unconsciously. She mentions the implicit association test, which measures unconscious bias, that people can take online. The results after five million people was that the default race is white. People associate white people with positivity while blacks are perceived more negatively. Ms. Meyers suggests that we should stop being in denial that we are not racist and go look for “disconfirming data that will prove that in fact your old stereotypes are wrong.” The second solution Ms. Meyers suggests for our society is “move toward young black men instead of away