Title and Duration of the TED Talk
The title of the chosen TED Talk online video is “How we can make racism a solvable problem – and improve policing.” As one can see, the video’s title is very descriptive regarding its major and specific topics. The speaker shares his professional and academic insights into statistics related to racism in the police force and talks about his organization’s work to finally resolve racist behavior among police officers (Goff, 2019). More specifically, the topic is the current ineffective approach to resolving racism in the police system and how changing the conventional understanding of this will make the problem solvable. The speech lasts a little over 12 minutes, 12 minutes and 4 seconds.
Speaker of the TED Talk
The speech on how American society can improve policing by changing society’s analytical perspective on racism from attitudes to behaviors was delivered by Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff. He prefers to present himself as a justice scientist or researcher of justice in the online space (Goff, 2019). He is concerned about the racism in the police institution and their manner of execution of job duties as a psychologist and a Black person.
For Goff, as a member of the Black community, racism towards racial minorities that manifests itself in policing is an equally personal and professional issue. It is clearly seen in the everyday observations that he shares with the audience. His expertise is also rich, and one can notice it in his very descriptive mentions of dialogues with police chiefs after an act of racism occurs between officers and ethnic minorities. He leads the Center for Policing Equity, which is “an organization that helps police departments diagnose and track racial gaps in policing in order to eliminate them” (Goff, 2019, para. 1). It is noteworthy that he has a Ph.D. in social psychology (Goff, 2019). It dramatically amplifies this person’s credibility, trustworthiness, and factuality of his argument.
Main Idea or Argument of the Talk
Historically, people in America have been trying to eradicate racism in justice and policing for a very long time and have only partially succeeded. Goff provides an explanation (2019) for this; the central idea for which his whole speech serves is that anti-racist efforts are ineffective because of people’s perception of the issue. The speaker argues that “racism as behaviors instead of feelings” is the correct viewpoint on the racial crisis in the police (Goff, 2019, para. 1). It is the right way, and probably the only possible one, to address racially motivated institutional discrimination, neglect, and violence.
Key Takeaways and Their Importance
Goff’s short but informative, actionable, emotional speech made a few revelations for me. For example, I did not know before that police officers often fail to identify the age of Black teenagers. According to the speaker, there are numerous instances where they perceived non-adult Black persons as being older than they are, leading to police violence (Goff, 2019).
Another new knowledge for me was that one of the big obstacles to resolving racism in the United States lies in the current conventional scholarly definition of this negative phenomenon. Goff (2019) argues that it is inefficient and unscientific when the conceptual focus is on racists, not their victims. It is the root of why the complete elimination of racism in the police force has been unsuccessful in America.
Reference
Goff, P. A. (2019). How we can make racism a solvable problem – and improve policing [Video]. TED. Web.
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