Summary

Jennifer L. Eberhardt begins her “How racial bias works – and how to disrupt it” TED talk by telling the audience a personal anecdote about her young son. Once, when she and her five-year-old son were on a plane, he pointed out a man and said that he looked like his father. Eberhardt saw that the only resemblance was that the man was black. Her son then said he hoped the man would not rob the plane. Eberhardt says that this story shows how the stereotypical view of black people as violent criminals unconsciously influences all people, even blacks themselves. 

Eberhardt then discusses her research which showed that people who were exposed to black faces were more likely to also detect blurry images of guns in the experiment. Her research also found that prompting ...