Intention

The main intention of Jennifer L. Eberhardt’s TED talk “How racial bias works – and how to disrupt it” is to inform about how unconscious racial bias influences our choices and to persuade the audience to take steps to challenge their biases. 

Informing the audience about racial bias

Throughout the talk, Eberhardt’s intention of informing the audience about how racial bias affects people’s choices is achieved through ethos and logos. 

She builds ethos for herself to show that she is a reliable and knowledgeable speaker who has done extensive research on unconscious bias. She then mentions multiple studies she has carried out to show how racial bias leads to an association between blackness and criminal behavior. 

Moreover, she also shows how racial bias is present in different institutions such as the criminal justice or educational system: 

Bias can infect every aspect of our criminal justice system. ...