Top 15 Vernā Myers Quotes

Privilege: Once you see it, you can use it to help other people. Interrupt bias on behalf of someone else.

Don't allow colleagues to say offensive things without interrupting them. Intervene and be an ally. Don't laugh at offensive jokes. Be responsible for the success of at least one or maybe two people.

It would be nice to be [treated by the majority group like] an individual, and not the spokesperson or cultural resource for your people.

Go somewhere where you're the minority. Go to the 'black gay women with disabilities film festival, because this is where you can confront your biases.

Look at your Facebook feed, look at your Twitter feeds, and consider how diverse they are. Build relationships across differences. Get closer. Get uncomfortable.

To move ahead, you have to go looking for your biases and stay on top of them.

When you look at another person [of the same race or ethnic group], you see your future success in them, but you don't see the same possibilities in those who are different.

We want the straightest gay people, and the whitest black people. We want that first-generation immigrant to act like they've been chilling in this place forever.

We have so many ways to favor those in the "in group" while excluding those who aren't, including keeping them in their place with subtle but often intentional "micro inequities." Regardless of the intention, the pain and the impact is the same.

After musicians started auditioning for orchestras from behind curtains, "the number of women in top U.S. orchestras increased five-fold.

This is quite frankly about people being in denial. The biggest barrier is that we're in denial about our unconscious bias,"This investment in our self-image as good people is preventing us from moving forward. We don't need any more good people; we need real, authentic people.

What we learned after Michael Brown was shot is that police officers are deeply ingrained with erroneous ideas about who's dangerous. Looking at pictures of black kids, they're adding four years to their age, and are told that 'black people are crazy strong and have crazy [levels of] pain tolerance.

Biases are the stories we make up about people before we learn who they are. They are especially apparent when things are high-risk, or you have to make quick decisions.

I have always been drawn to the idea of unconscious biases and blind spots and what happens in our unconscious mind. "Our brains are highly habitual. Our brains start reaching conclusions without immediately telling us that it's doing so," she said. "It's looking for things that go together; 'what have I been habituated to understand goes together?' We're backing up and moving toward people in social situations all the time.

We were all the same, and then you had the nerve to be different.