The Ted Talk by Nita M. Tyler was about injustice and standing up to it. She made the point that injustice is most easily eradicated when people unrelated to that injustice sympathize with those who are and work alongside them. She calls these allies against certain injustices “unlikely allies” and explains how powerful their presence can be in a movement, like if heterosexual people supported LGBTQ rights or if men supported women in achieving equal pay. The podcast “The Air We Breathe,” informs us about studies done on people’s hidden biases. It mainly focuses on the issue of race and how a subconscious bias of a police officer towards a black suspect could lead them to take a certain action they otherwise wouldn’t have taken if the suspect’s skin color was different. The IAT test developed by Professor Mahzarin of Harvard University was a major source of testing for implicit bias, and these tests have revealed that though people can’t change their bias unless society itself changes, people, especially police officers, can control their bias. The connection between these two sources is that our implicit bias towards a certain people might hinder us from becoming the “unlikely ally” in a movement involving those people. Because whites often subconsciously see blacks as dangerous and suspects based on what our minds soak up from society, whites could have a hard time justifying supporting black movements.

Since my first year in high school, I have been involved in many efforts to support movements like LGBTQ and inclusion. Listening to these sources have helped me to realize why I help others and what I am not doing that I could be doing. These sources have solidified my belief that we should all become an “unlikely ally” in some way and shake up our biases by associating ourselves with the great movements of our time.