She thinks back to her ruthlessly pragmatic mother (who told her at 4-years-old, “Mommy is Santa!”). She thinks all of this is vital, because the next generation needs role models. If you’re doing a brainstorming session at work or at school, you can be color brave.” You can purposefully invite diverse people into your life, and hopefully they will challenge you, and give you new insights into life.

If you are trying to solve a really hard problem, you can speak up and be color brave. If you’re part of a hiring process or admissions process, you can be color brave. “Even if you don’t run a company,” she says, “you can be color brave. From that, they were able to develop the smallpox vaccine from cowpox. They brought lots of people together, but the key idea was given by a dairy farmer, who noticed that milkmaids didn’t get sick. In Hobson’s own world of investing, they believe that “sound investments are best made when you have a diverse group of people.” The best example was in the early days of the effort to cure smallpox. The senior staff would come to him and ask, “Do you want to have me hire the minority or the best person for the job?” To which he would reply, “Yes.” She says ESPN always had a diverse culture, but he took it up a notch - he demanded that every open position have a diverse slate of applicants. Why should we be color brave, raising the question instead of ducking it? “Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s the smart thing to do.” Her favorite example of color bravery is John Skipper, who runs ESPN. We can’t be color blind, we have to be color brave.” If we truly believe in equal rights and equal opportunity in America, we need to have real conversations about this issue. “It’s time,” says Hobson, “for us to be comfortable with the uncomfortable conversation about race. The goal is to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Color blindness is very dangerous because it means we’re ignoring the problem.” This subject matter can be hard, awkward and uncomfortable. But, says Hobson, “In my view, that doesn’t mean there’s fairness. There is a tendency toward something researchers call color-blindness, which describes a learned behavior where we pretend to not notice race.

I tell the race stats because they are real.” And furthermore, those continuing problems threaten to rob future generations of their opportunities. I tell the uniform story because it happened. I have succeeded in my life more than my wildest expectations. I’ve been treated well by people of all races more often than not. Hobson wants to make clear, “I’m not here to complain. There are only 7 minority CEOs in the Fortune 250, and of thousands of publicly traded companies, only two are chaired by black women. As just one example, white men are 30% of the US population, and have 70% of all corporate board seats. But she says, “I work in the investment business, and we have a saying - the numbers don’t lie.” And the numbers show clearly that there are significant disparities in household wealth, income, job opportunity, and much more. She has heard it said that the election of Obama ended racism in our time. So she decided to talk about race, and to share her experience so we could all be a little less nervous. The first step to any form of action is awareness.”

“Bringing it up is like the conversational equivalent of touching the third rail.” Friends had even warned her about talking about the topic here at TED, that it would make her a ‘militant black woman’ and hurt her career. But she realized, “The first step of solving any problem is not to hide from it. “Race in America makes people completely uncomfortable,” says Hobson.

Because, as her mother said, “They will not always treat you well.” For example, after a birthday party where she was the only black person, her mother asked, “How did they treat you?” Hobson says that she and Ford still laugh about that incident, but also that “deep deep down inside, I wasn’t surprised.” Her mother was ruthlessly realistic, and had prepared her for such things. Then they were asked: “Where are your uniforms?” But when Hobson and Ford arrived at the lunch, they were taken to a back room. Hobson, an investor, in turn called a friend at a major media organization and organized a lunch. In 2006, Harold Ford called his friend Mellody Hobson, to tell her that he was running for US Senate in Tennessee and that he needed some national press.

Color brave definition