 brutal for you. And if you've heard this one before, don't give it away in the chat. If you figure it out, don't say it just yet. Here it is. Three doctors said Pete is their brother. Pete said he has no brothers. Who's lying? Just a few more seconds to think about it. And then we'll come back to the answers later. I want to tell you more about myself. I live in Sterling Heights. When I'm not in Michigan, it's easier to say I'm from Detroit. I previously went to a predominantly white institution in a small town in Indiana of just 5,000 students surrounded by a white community. That was culture shock for me. Sterling Heights is closer to the city. There are more people who look like me and my high school had a larger population of minority students than my undergrad college did. I soon realized my peers weren't experiencing culture shock in the same way as me. Many of them were from the surrounding area or similar environments. In the same way I was experiencing this new community, my classmates were experiencing what it meant to have a black classmate and some of them for the very first time. Maybe you can imagine my peers reaction when I introduced myself as Kirsten from Detroit. I'm going to assume that most of you are from Detroit, from a short drive away from Detroit. And so as a Michigander, you're more familiar with the city than people who live in Indiana. So you know that Detroit is more than just the national headlines or the corrupt, dangerous place it's often portrayed to be in movies. But my classmates did not. I was spending a lot of time with my new friends and they were getting to know my passions, my hobbies, my interests. And when I eventually told them I was from Detroit, for a split second, their face would show me the conflict and confusion happening in their head. Like the Kirsten they were getting to know had disappeared right in that moment. A few of my peers would say things like, you don't seem like you're from Detroit, you don't sound like you're from Detroit, or I wouldn't have guessed that. I was telling my mom about these conversations and she told me, you know, you're not from there, don't tell them that. Simply because she understood any information I shared about myself was open for judgment. She knew how harshly people judge Detroit, and that some of my relationships may change because of my impromptu statement. For some, before they got to know me or understand a new culture, they decided they didn't need to. I was quickly put into a box left to be unknown and not hurt and hurt even more when I realized I do that too. Let's take a moment and return to our riddle. Have any of you figured it out yet? The answer is no one. The doctors are Pete's sisters. Now maybe you got it right away, or maybe you were like me. This riddle had me stopped. I cannot get past the idea that these doctors were his brothers. This riddle invites you to make a judgment using information you already know about doctors. Unconsciously, I thought doctors are men. I'm sure some of you did too. It's one of the reasons why this riddle works. It took no effort for me to jump to this conclusion. We make judgments and decisions with less information often without even realizing it. This is implicit bias. The current Institute at Ohio State University defines implicit bias as the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions and decisions in an unconscious manner. Now when I first discovered this term, I thought this sounds like a setup. You're telling me that stereotypes that can be racist, sexist and discriminatory in other ways subconsciously guide my understanding. And scientists would say that means my brain is working correctly. Our brain process is billions of stimuli a day. And that is too much information to analyze one piece at a time to make decisions. And so the answer is, allow the subconscious mind to make quick calls on things all of the time. So it doesn't take too long to do that. Your brain has to create shortcuts. It uses information from music, TV, experiences, and even stereotypes to create what I'm going to call a box. When it's needed, information is retrieved from that box and decisions are able to be made in a matter of seconds. I imagine if this process was illustrated, it would look like this. This is me. And a list of things you know about me. Let's say this is your brain, in it are boxes that help you understand my identity and characteristics. What do you know about women? What do you know about people who live in Sterling Heights? What about people who wear glasses? When enough of us have boxes that look like this, we understand why 40% of people with perfect vision consider wearing glasses to an interview. Those who wear glasses are perceived as more professional and honest than those who don't. And employers implicit bias may benefit me and the situation. But what if our boxes looked more like this? These are common stereotypes of black women. They're harmful. Where you're not a part of this community, you use what's available to understand. You create shortcuts to make decisions, you trust assumptions, and the thoughts in your box become your beliefs. You subconsciously accept them and allow them to fuel your attitudes, understandings, actions and decisions. Such opinions encourage you to limit your interaction with those outside of your own communities. And all of this happens without an intentional thought. If we don't become aware of the implicit bias in our lives, we risk perpetrating toxic opinions about people and ignoring the impact bias has in our country. Implicit bias is in every area of our lives, including our technology. In 2019, hotel guests discovered a discriminatory soap dispenser that would not recognize dark skin. In 2017, a woman working in China realized that her colleague could unlock her iPhone using the face recognition feature. And in 2015, Google photos mistook a photo of two African American friends as gorillas. Now how can this happen? Trissy Panche says there will probably always be some amount of bias because the inequities that underpin bias are in society already and influence who gets the chance to build algorithms and for what purpose. In other words, we can trace the problem through our technology to their human developers. We can trace any product or outcome to the people who created it. And along that line, we can find bias being transferred from one source to the next. We can't blame our technology. This is a human issue and it requires a human solution. How can we ensure that our bias isn't impacting the people in our lives? Well, it's everywhere. It's in our education, our policy, our health care, implicit bias is built into every thread of America. And it makes it difficult for some people to be successful and live comfortably here. We can stop we can start to stop this by recognizing that we all live with implicit bias. And you shouldn't feel horrible. Most of the time your brain is doing what it needs to function. But that doesn't mean it can't be corrected. Put yourself on what I call bias probation. Be intentional and reflecting on your own thoughts. When you catch bias in your thoughts, admit it and proceed with an appropriate statement. When you catch yourself vocalizing those thoughts, correct yourself out loud. It would take just a few seconds to tell someone, actually, I shouldn't have said that. Or I have no reason to believe that. So that your bias impressions don't end up in someone else's box. Realize when you're counting on bias to draw conclusions. Let people show you who they are instead of deciding for them. In one day, when you empty a box of bias, I encourage you to live a life with an open mind led by generous assumptions, until you fill it with your own experiences shared with people who identify with that box. Each of us can take responsibility in cultivating a country we can be proud of. This process may not be life changing for people who wear glasses, but for a black woman who was in a white town, told what she couldn't be because she didn't fit into a box, it can be life changing. One box at a time, we can begin to rid America of its bias structures and attitudes. I challenge you to do the work. Thank you.