Overcoming Biases

Diversity consultant Verna Myers shares a moving prejudice keynote that addresses the heavy amount of bias that still exists in the world today. Despite how revolutionary we are in the realm of technology, health and business we've still yet to dispel the harm behind racism.

Myers begins her keynote by sharing the moving story of a road trip she took during which she was listening to a taping on the history of black slavery. Afterwards she turned on the radio for a change in mood only to be greeted by a news broadcasting about Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri. "The same stereotypes and prejudices that fuel those kinds of tragic incidents are in us," Myers says, "we've been schooled in them as well."

These types of tragic events are often tied to biases that can only be broken, according to Myers, if we face them head on. To embrace diversity, Myers encourages us to become aware of our innate biases and to consciously break the associations that form them. This way we can reconfigure our brain to no longer see the association as natural.