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The first in a series of unscripted, (largely) unedited chats conducted by members of Prejudice & Pride. Today's talk features Zora Wills, Olivia Altidor, Mel Quesada, and Izzy Volpe talking about intersectionality, religion, code-switching and more.

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P&P Unfiltered Chat #1 (S1E4) by Prejudice and Pride

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P&P Unfiltered Chat #1 (S1E4) by Prejudice and Pride

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The first in a series of unscripted, (largely) unedited chats conducted by members of Prejudice & Pride. Today's talk features Zora Wills, Olivia Altidor, Mel Quesada, and Izzy Volpe talking about intersectionality, religion, code-switching and more.

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Ghosted by Allies: Why BIPOC Still Can’t Trust White People With Social Justice

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Ghosted by Allies: Why BIPOC Still Can’t Trust White People With Social Justice

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Angie Franklin

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This is not a feel-good inspirational post to reignite your passion for allyship. No, this is reality, as daunting and ugly as it may be.

We all knew it was coming. I'd venture to say every single Black person in America not only knew it was coming but was actively waiting for it to happen. After the black square badge of anti-racism, the allyship die-off was not surprising, nor was it a new experience for us. What was new was Black Lives Matter and social justice going viral. All of a sudden people gave a fuck about us - or acted like they did - because it was trending and the perception of white people teetered on whether they showed public support for Black lives.

Businesses scrambled to photograph Black models to "diversify" their feeds and commercials. White people moved out of the way on the street to let us pass and expressed their condolences.

During this tumultuous time for Black folks in America, it was as if we were supposed to relish in the fact that the whole world was expressing love for us, but the truth was we knew it wouldn't last. And it didn't.

Genuine as the Black Lives Matter murals painted on major streets and millions of people protesting around the world may have been, the die-off since then is pure evidence that we are a society that functions on groupthink. That we're programmed only to do things when other people are doing them or when we perceive it as worthy by the masses. Few people are willing to consistently rub against the grain, bring up conversations about race with family, speak up for co-workers, step back or resign when a BIPOC person is more qualified, or question the status quo. Maybe they could do it for a week, or a few weeks, but six months later? Apparently not.

The ghosted allies are those who spoke out against police brutality and murder, posted videos protesting in the streets, shed tears in their stories, followed as many Black accounts as they could find. This group was, for a moment, utterly shook by the reality of racism. But what they didn't realize was their bewilderment - their shock - in waking up to what Black people go through every day in this country and have for hundreds of years was what added a real insult to injury. It displayed that they had either not been paying attention, listening to us, or frankly hadn't given a fuck about us.

In the midst of what was incredibly traumatic and painful, we experienced something we have always wanted, but we knew it would be fleeting if it ever came. That people express love and advocate for us. That they stand on the front lines to protect us. That they speak up and use their privilege to center us. All we've ever wanted is to be seen and treated as equal and to have the same access to opportunities as everyone else. That's it.

We didn't ask for all of the emotional labor that came our way. The endless DMs asking us to participate in a campaign - for free. Text messages asking us what was okay and not okay to say, to post, to share. Diversity training requests at the workplace. The list goes on. Not to mention the unsolicited Venmo and CashApp donations to "support" Black businesses and creatives felt like money falling from the sky - these guilt-ridden payments ghosted, too.

White folks have an uncanny way of centering themselves even when they aim to decenter. We saw this in the week of "amplify Black voices" on social media when, instead of white voices being silent, they posted to express their stance of silence. Instead of Black voices taking center stage, which was the supposed intent, we spent our time, labor, and energy creating content to explain all the points white people kept missing.

As allies, I get that reality can be daunting, and in a moment of uncertainty and wanting to do something, mistakes are made. I get that you feel like you joined a powerful movement that had all this momentum behind it. The real allies who've been around for so long waiting for other white people to "get it" were hopeful. I get that once that boiling water turned to steam and that steam evaporated, there was nothing left in the pot. But instead of finding more water to pour in and start the boil from scratch, people simply turned off the stove and walked away.

The hardest thing to do is the hardest thing to do. To be the odd one out, to have to explain to people why anti-racism matters, to sacrifice something for the good of other people with no intentions of personal gain. I get it.

That's why the truth is it will be a long time before Black people trust white folks with social justice - if they ever do. It's too convenient to back out when it gets hard for them. For Black people, too much has been lost, too much pain has been experienced, too much trust has been broken, and too much is at stake. The tight margin in the 2020 election revealed to us yet again how racist this country is and how far we have to go - but it also showed us power in numbers and that Black women and BIPOC will always lead this movement.

You see, we don't expect white people to come to our rescue, nor do we look for it. We take the lemons we've been given and make lemonade like we've always done. It's in our DNA to survive, to make a way out of no way, and to make something out of nothing. We live and breathe that - the creativity it requires of us to do this is why Black culture is the culture.

Our music, our hair, our style, our language, our dances, our athleticism, our curves, our lips, our food. Hip-hop culture informs popular culture worldwide in pretty much every way. People pay to lay in tanning beds, braid their hair, inject their lips and ass, all while denying and erasing their origins in the process.

Everywhere you look, you will see a glimmer of Black culture. What you hear on the radio, the sports your partner watches, the hoop earrings, cool sneakers, the yasssss, the tap in, the everything. Imagine what it's like to watch people use and profit off your culture and then treat you like a second-class citizen everywhere you go. When you walk into a restaurant and get seated after people who just walked in, when you get pulled over and harassed for no reason, when they drop microaggressions at work, but can rap every lyric of "Bodak Yellow" in the car on the way home.

If only they loved us as much as they love our culture.

If only the time, money, and energy spent co-opting our culture was spent defending us. If only the actions followed the words. If only people unapologetically stood up for Black lives not as a trend but as a way of living.

BIPOC will never leave the work of social justice in the hands of white people, ever. We have and always will be all we got. Yes, we will collaborate. We will join forces for common goals. We will model for brands. Speak on panels. Post on social media. Correct white folks even when we know it's not our responsibility. And keep fighting the fight. Not because we have superhuman strength, but because our lives and the lives that come after us depend on it. We can't afford to give up.

So, when white folks say it's hard, that they're tired, that they're feeling anti-racism burnout, I don't deny that. This shit is exhausting as all hell. The only difference is they haven't built the resilience that comes with being Black in America. They didn't grow up hearing stories from their grandmother of white school teachers beating them with switches until they were bloody. They don't experience the fear of having their fathers, brothers, husbands, or boyfriends getting harassed by police. They don't spend their days on alert to determine if it's safe or not to be where they are. They don't get challenged to move off the sidewalk when they meet a white person on the path. They don't have to advocate for their well-being in a hospital because the racist staff doesn't care whether they live or die.

So, when I say BIPOC still can't trust white people with social justice, this is what I mean.

For allies who keep showing up. For the ones who read this and still feel compelled to keep going, keep going. We don't need anyone to save the world from racism; we need people to save the world from themselves. Be accountable - practice humility. Build resilience. Take action. Commit to a weekly or monthly anti-racism action. Have conversations at work. Replace as many products as you can with BIPOC owned ones. Notice when you co-opt culture and pivot. Call people in when they're wrong. Start applying the knowledge from what you've been reading, watching, and listening to. It will challenge you. Your resolve will be tested. You will want to go back to what is comfortable and familiar. You'll want to "take a break," but just know that adversity is what makes people who they are.

What you're becoming begins in your actions, and every step reacts. When you understand that fighting racism is an internal job, a series of consistent and unwavering efforts, your transformation can truly begin. You have a role in this movement. Show up even when no one is looking, and no praise is being given. That's how you earn our trust.

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Ghosted by Allies: Why BIPOC Still Can't Trust White People With Social Justice

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This is not a feel-good inspirational post to reignite your passion for allyship. No, this is reality, as daunting and ugly as it may be. We all knew it was coming. I'd venture to say every single Black person in America not only knew it was coming but was actively waiting for it to happen.

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Windows and Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors: Ensuring Students See Themselves and Others in Literature

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Windows and Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors: Ensuring Students See Themselves and Others in Literature

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Institute for Humane Education

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In 1990, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop published an essay about the importance of providing young readers with diverse books that reflect the "multicultural nature of the world" in which we live.

In the essay, Dr. Bishop coined the phrase "Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors" to explain how children see themselves in books and how they can also learn about the lives of others through literature.

Dr. Bishop makes the point that it's crucial for children from marginalized groups to view themselves in the books they read.

When books don't serve as mirrors to children, Bishop says, "They learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in society."

In addition to acting as mirrors, books can also serve as windows that give readers a glimpse into the lives and experiences of others.

Educators have the critical task of making sure our students have access to books in our classrooms and libraries that serve as both windows and mirrors.

Ensuring Library Books Reflect the World

As a school librarian in a predominantly white school district, I strive to make the library collection reflect the world outside of our small, suburban community.

Students in my school have access to books that feature characters from different cultures, races, and experiences. The books in the library expose readers to other points of view, perspectives, and issues they may not have faced.

It is important to include books about history in our collections; however, we need to make sure we are purchasing books from a variety of genres covering myriad issues and events - not just slavery or the Civil Rights Movement.

In addition to purchasing books featuring multicultural characters and settings, our classrooms and libraries should include books about socio-economic struggles, LGBTQ issues, and characters with disabilities and mental health issues.

Some of the most popular books in my middle school library right now describe immigrant experiences, examine issues of race and identity, depict transgender characters, and highlight issues of poverty and food insecurity.

Enticing Students to Read Diverse Books

In addition to purchasing diverse books for the library, I try make sure the books are checked out and read by my students.

I do this by prominently displaying books by diverse authors. I also include diverse titles in summer reading lists and recommended book lists.

Another way I generate excitement with our students is to booktalk new titles and include diverse titles in our March Madness book competition. Book trailers and videos of author interviews are also effective in generating buzz about books.

If you are looking for new titles to add your school or library, begin with awards lists. January is usually the time of year when organizations announce award winners for children's literature.

Most educators are familiar with the Caldecott and Newbery Medals, but there are many other awards for children's literature, including:

American Indian Youth Literature Award
Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature
Coretta Scott King Book Awards
Pura Belpré Award
Schneider Family Book Award
Stonewall Book Award
The Walter Award

Literature is a powerful tool for building empathy, understanding, and compassion in our students.

As Dr. Bishop explains, "When there are enough books available that can act as both mirrors and windows for all our children, they will see we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities."

Resources for Educators

We Need Diverse Books is a nonprofit organization that promotes "literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people." WNDB provides books to classrooms, sponsors The Walter Award, recommends books, and mentors writers. Be sure to download the Booktalking Kit.

We Are Kidlit Collective publishes a summer reading list for children and teens each year that features indigenous people and people of color.

Lee and Low Books examines issues of race and diversity in children's books. Take the time to read through the blog archives; there are a lot of valuable posts on this site.

Project Lit is a "grassroots literacy movement" that you can follow on Twitter. The Project Lit Community encourages schools to form book clubs and have students read books from their lists.

The Institute for Humane Education has an online Resource Center with numerous recommended titles on diverse issues.

Recommended Titles:

Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed (realistic fiction)
Amina's Voice by Hena Khan (realistic fiction)
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton (fantasy)
The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden (realistic fiction)
Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut by Derrick Barnes and Gordon C. James (poetry/picture book)
A Different Pond by Bao Phi and Thi Bui (memoir/picture book)
Dreamers by Yuyi Morales (memoir/picture book)
Forget Me Not by Ellie Terry (realistic fiction/poetry)
Front Desk by Kelly Yang (realistic fiction)
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes (fantasy)
Give Me Some Truth by Eric Gansworth (historical fiction)
Hello, Universe by Erin Entrada Kelly (realistic fiction)
Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson (realistic fiction)
Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leitich Smith (realistic fiction)
Hope in the Holler by Lisa Lewis Tyre (realistic fiction)
Ivy Aberdeen's Letter the the World by Ashley Herring Blake (realistic fiction)
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (realistic fiction/poetry)
Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds (fantasy/superhero)
The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson (mystery)
Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (realistic fiction)
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (realistic fiction/poetry)
The Serpent's Secret by Sayantani DasGupta (fantasy)
Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh (horror)
Sunny by Jason Reynolds (sports fiction)
Rebound by Kwame Alexander (sports fiction/poetry)
We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell (informational picture book)
Be sure to forward this to at least ONE person who would benefit from these resources. Guest blogger Cathy Potter is a school librarian at Falmouth Middle School in Falmouth, Maine.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Windows and Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors: Ensuring Students See Themselves and Others in Literature - Institute for Humane Education

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by Cathy Potter In 1990, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop published an essay about the importance of providing young readers with diverse books that reflect the "multicultural nature of the world" in which we live. In the essay, Dr. Bishop coined the phrase "Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors" to explain how children see themselves in...

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AMA recognizes racism as a public health issue

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AMA recognizes racism as a public health issue

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American Medial Association

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CHICAGO - New policy adopted by physicians at the American Medical Association's (AMA) Special Meeting of its House of Delegates (HOD) recognizes racism as a public health threat and commits to actively work on dismantling racist policies and practices across all of health care.

In June 2020, the AMA Board of Trustees acknowledged the health consequences of violent police interactions and denounced racism as an urgent threat to public health, pledging action to confront systemic racism, racial injustice and police brutality.

The new policy approved by the AMA, representing physicians and medical students from every state and medical specialty, opposes all forms of racism as a threat to public health and calls on AMA to take prescribed steps to combat racism, including: (1) acknowledging the harm caused by racism and unconscious bias within medical research and health care; (2) identifying tactics to counter racism and mitigate its health effects; (3) encouraging medical education curricula to promote a greater understanding of the topic; (4) supporting external policy development and funding for researching racism's health risks and damages; and (5) working to prevent influences of racism and bias in health technology innovation.

"The AMA recognizes that racism negatively impacts and exacerbates health inequities among historically marginalized communities. Without systemic and structural-level change, health inequities will continue to exist, and the overall health of the nation will suffer," said AMA Board Member Willarda V. Edwards, M.D., M.B.A. "As physicians and leaders in medicine, we are committed to optimal health for all, and are working to ensure all people and communities reach their full health potential. Declaring racism as an urgent public health threat is a step in the right direction toward advancing equity in medicine and public health, while creating pathways for truth, healing, and reconciliation."

Though previous AMA policies and principles have emphasized the need to eliminate health disparities and called on physicians to prevent violence of all kinds, the new policy explicitly acknowledges racism's role in perpetuating health inequities and inciting harm against historically marginalized communities and society as a whole.

Specifically, the new policy recognizes racism in its systemic, cultural, interpersonal, and other forms as a serious threat to public health, to the advancement of health equity, and a barrier to appropriate medical care. It makes clear that a proactive approach to prevent, or identify and eliminate, racism is crucial-particularly considering that studies show historically marginalized populations in the U.S. have shorter lifespans, greater physical and mental illness burden, earlier onset and aggressive progression of disease, higher maternal and infant mortality, and less access to health care.

The policy describes the various forms of racism as follows:

Systemic racism: structural and legalized system that results in differential access to goods and services, including health care services.

Cultural racism: negative and harmful racial stereotypes portrayed in culturally shared media and experiences.

Interpersonal racism: implicit and explicit racial prejudice, including explicitly expressed racist beliefs and implicitly held racist attitudes and actions based upon or resulting from these prejudices.

In addition, the new policy requests AMA to identify a set of best practices for health care institutions, physician practices, and academic medical centers to address and mitigate the effects of racism on patients, providers, international medical graduates, and populations. It also guides the AMA's position on developing and implementing medical education programs that generate a deeper understanding of the causes, influences and effects of all forms of racism-and how to prevent and improve the health effects of racism.

Further, the policy asks that AMA support the creation of external policy to combat racism and its effects and encourage federal agencies and other organizations to expand research funding into the epidemiology of risks and damages related to racism. Additionally, the policy asserts that the AMA will work to prevent, and protect against the influences of racism and bias in innovative health technologies.

The AMA has been leading an aggressive effort to embed equity in thoughts, actions, and processes so as not to perpetuate inequities and instead help people live healthier lives. In 2018, the AMA adopted policy to define health equity and outline a strategic framework toward achieving optimal health for all. To help navigate these challenges, in 2019 the AMA hired its first chief health equity officer to establish the AMA's Center for Health Equity to elevate and sustain efforts to address systemic level changes that can improve health.

Fully understanding that there is tremendous work still to be done to ensure that everyone has the opportunity, conditions, resources, and power to achieve optimal health, the AMA is committed to collaborating with stakeholders to confront the issue of racism within our society. The AMA continues to urge other leading health organizations to also take up the mantle of intolerance for racism as it pushes upstream to dismantle racism across all of health care - driving the future of medicine toward anti-racism.

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New AMA policy recognizes racism as a public health threat

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CHICAGO - New policy adopted by physicians at the American Medical Association's (AMA) Special Meeting of its House of Delegates (HOD) recognizes racism as a public health threat and commits to actively work on dismantling racist policies and practices across all of health care.

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chescaleigh

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Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the U.S. and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public.

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How Students Experience and Cope with Racist Stereotypes

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How Students Experience and Cope with Racist Stereotypes

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Eli Kintisch

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"Racism is still deeply rooted all over America," said Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1967 speech. "It is still deeply rooted in the North, and it's still deeply rooted in the South."

Fifty-three years after King said those words, American students say they still encounter racial stereotypes in their daily lives. To mark today's anniversary of King's birth, PBS NewsHour's Student Reporting Labs collected testimonies about racism from our recent No Labels Attached project on misconceptions and stereotypes.

In interviews with their peers, student journalists found teenagers grappling with a variety of racial misconceptions, ranging from annoying attitudes to deeply hurtful views.

"I'm African American and Native American. I receive racial slurs from students, racial slurs from teachers," said Angie of Clinton Township, Michigan. "I've been stared at, regularly, on the street from normal pedestrians...It's things like that I've dealt with in this generation."

"My brother was pulled over by the police," said Khia of Greenville, South Carolina. "It was just some stereotypes." She said the officer thought her brother "had drugs, he checked his record - my brother has a clean record."

Several Asian American students told SRL student reporters that they encountered racist misconceptions at school.

"Whenever people look at me they're like, 'Oh, she's Asian, like, she constantly studies," said Tera, a student in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Stereotypes regarding students' personalities or hobbies can be frustrating or alienating. Karlene, a student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said that when people learn that she has Jamaican parents, they "expect me to be more outgoing and loud."

For Austin of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, people misjudge the music he likes. "People will think that I'm sitting there, blasting trap music and just like being crazy with it," he said. He prefers to "relax in [my] room and plug in a nice Metallica or Fleetwood Mac" album. Cellist Ethan in Zachary, Louisiana, said he feels like an outsider at classical music events where he's often the only black participant. "I can just walk in a room and I'm already being perceived as lower," he said. "I feel like I don't belong in places at certain times."

While students say America has yet to fulfill King's vision for a just and fair society, they suggest that personal confidence and kindness towards others can help overcome pervasive racial misconceptions. "I don't think my skin color's what defines me," said Raj, a student in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"I think it's important to get to know a person under their skin. Everyone deserves equality and to be a part of something and to be respected," said Angie of Clinton Township

"I break the stereotypes that I've encountered by laughing at them, and walking off," said Khia in Greenville. She added, "A stereotype doesn't make you. You make you."

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How students experience and cope with racist stereotypes

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"Racism is still deeply rooted all over America," said Martin Luther King Jr. in a 1967 speech. "It is still deeply rooted in the North, and it's still deeply rooted in the South." Fifty-three years after King said those words, American students say they still encounter racial stereotypes in their daily lives.

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Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward

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Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward

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Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston, & Crystal Chen Lee

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Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward

by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston , and Crystal Chen Lee of North Carolina State University

The senseless police-initiated murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, amongst hundreds of other murders of Black women, men, and children in the United States over the past 400 years due to systemic racism and anti-blackness, has become a much-needed call to action for all. This is particularly true and needed in our schools and in our classrooms, as we look to affirm, celebrate, and advocate for all students in our classes, but especially our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students.

In his book, How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi (2019) writes, "The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' ... One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist'" (p. 9). No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Becoming anti-racist is different for different racial groups, but all racial groups struggle under white supremacy. For white people, being anti-racist involves acknowledging and understanding one's privilege, working to change one's internalized racism, and disrupting racism when one sees it. Developing antiracist identities as people of color starts with recognizing how race and racism have also been internalized. As Dr. Anneliese A. Singh says in her book The Racial Healing Handbook,(2019), "It means recognizing that people of color groups are not always united in solidarity under a larger umbrella of people of color. Misinformation, prejudice, and harm can exist between people of color groups, and these need to be confronted just as White racism must be challenged" (p. 92).

Teaching for an anti-racist future starts with educators. This is work that is needed for all teachers and all students, whether your school has a predominantly white population or is quite diverse. We also acknowledge that this work looks different for white teachers than it does for BIPOC teachers. An anti-racist educator must actively work to dismantle the structures, policies, institutions, and systems that create barriers and perpetuate race-based inequities for people of color. But how does a middle and high school ELA teacher work towards becoming an anti-racist educator?

As current English language arts teacher educators and former middle and high school English teachers, this document represents a collaborative effort to compile a list of resources, suggestions, and recommended actions for English teachers grades 6-12 to help us all do the work we must do to support students in our schools. We acknowledge that our positionalities as a White female, a Black female, and an Asian American female influence the ways in which we have curated these resources. We also hope that our collaborative background gives breadth and diversity to the work here and inspires others to talk and work across difference. We recognize there are many perspectives and resources on becoming anti-racist teachers, and are grateful for the many scholars, teachers, and activists we list here who have theorized, analyzed, and done the anti-racist work detailed in this document. We hope you will learn from them as we have, and continue to cite and read their original works. We are listening, self-reflecting, and self-examining as we also work alongside you towards becoming anti-racist teachers ourselves through the curation of this document.

In our White paper, we offer five steps for actively moving forward towards anti-racist ELA teaching. We suggest beginning with listening and reflection. As Kendi (2019) writes, "....being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination" (p. 23).

Here is an outline/preview of the contents:

1. Listen and Reflect

Positioning

Listening

Reflecting

2. Read

Culturally and Historically Responsive/Social Justice Frameworks and Methods

Conversations and Discussion Approaches

Writing and Language Study

Literature Study

Intersections of Gender, Race, and Literacy

White Anti-Racist Educator Narratives

3. Interrogate

1. Interrogate Your Curriculum and Instruction

2. Interrogate Your Texts

3. Interrogate Your Approaches to Text Analysis

Part One: Critical Literacy

Part Two: Extending the Critical Literacy Lens

Part Three: Bring Your Lenses to Action

4. Interrogate Your Approaches to Writing

4. Act

1. School Culture

2. Standards

3. Students

Part One: Amplifying Student Voices

Part Two: Five Steps for Centering and Publishing Youth Voices

4. Texts

Middle School Recommendations

High School Recommendations

5. Actions to Stop

5. Repeat

To cite the White paper: Falter, M. M., Alston, C. L., & Lee, C. C. (2020). Becoming anti-racist English teachers: Ways to actively move forward [White paper]. North Carolina State University. https://go.ncsu.edu/antiracist-ela

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Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston, & Crystal Chen Lee - Ethical ELA

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Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston , and Crystal Chen Lee of North Carolina State University The senseless police-initiated murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, amongst hundreds of other murders of Black ...

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Talks to help you understand racism in America | TED Talks

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From passionate pleas for reform to poetic turns of phrase, these talks take an honest look at everyday realities of Black Americans and illuminate the way forward.

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Ibram X. Kendi

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Debby Irving

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Available at:

"Debby Irving's powerful Waking Up White opens a rare window on how white Americans are socialized. Irving's focus on the mechanics of racism operating in just one life - her own - may lead white readers to reconsider the roots of their own perspectives - and their role in dismantling old myths. Readers of color will no doubt find the view through Irving's window fascinating, and telling." - Van Jones, author, Rebuild The Dream, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems; President, Rebuild The Dream; Co-host, CNN Crossfire

"I read Waking Up White in one sitting. To say I loved it is an understatement. It's such a raw, honest portrait .... Irving's experience on display - warts and all - will help white people, who haven't noticed the role systemic privilege has played in their lives, start to see the world in a new way." - Jodi Picoult, author, The Storyteller, My Sister's Keeper, The Pact

"Deborah Irving bravely describes her jolting and continuing journey from white oblivion to white awareness in an honest way that may inspire others to do such transformational work on themselves. She has courage in tracing many cultural and class assumptions that kept her for decades in a fog of racial denial and white dominance. This empathetic book can help white readers to dissipate the imprisoning white ignorance that we did not ask for but that has damaged our world and ourselves." - Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D., Associate Director, Wellesley Centers for Women; Founder and Senior Associate, National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity)

" Waking up White is a brutally honest, unflinching exploration of race and personal identity, told with heart by a truly gifted storyteller. Much as Irving's family sought to shield her from the contours of the nation's racial drama, so too do far too many white Americans continue to do the same. For their sakes, and ours, let's hope Irving's words spark even more truth-telling. They certainly have the power to do so." - Tim Wise, author, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

"Irving's personal and moving tale takes us on an adventure to a world utterly new to her as she wakes up to the reality of how, without her knowledge or active pursuit, she lives in a society which is set up to reward her at the expense of people of color. I cannot imagine a more understandable and compelling invitation to learn about how racism lives on in our homes, communities, and nation." - Bishop Gene Robinson, Retired Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC

"A beautiful, powerful, achingly honest book ... even just reading the foreword, I was touched and had an aha moment of realizing my own inbred racism. This is a very brave book to have written. I hope and believe that it will be a meaningful step forward in healing race relations. Thank you for stepping out so bravely and compassionately." - Rivvy Neshama, author, Recipes for a Sacred Life: True Stories and a Few Miracles

"Deborah Irving's Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Raceis a courageous, insightful, and critical contribution to awareness of race in the United States. A virtual one-woman Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Deborah's journey from an 'ah-ha' instant to consciousness is a journey for all Americans." - uthor, Director, Thomas Shapiro, a The Hidden Cost of Being African American; Institute on Assets and Social Policy

"Waking Up White is a wake-up call for white people who want to consciously contribute to racial justice rather than unconsciously perpetuate patterns of racism. With honesty and humility, Debby Irving shares her own story of transformation-a journey of opening herself to learning about the realities of racism and the unintended impacts of white privilege. By confronting her own fears and mistakes, she gleans many useful lessons and tips that can help move others from confusion and avoidance to constructive engagement, authentic connection and courageous action." - Terry Keleher, Thought Leadership and Practice Specialist, Race Forward

" Waking Up White is engaging, challenging, and action-oriented! It's a must read for anyone exploring issues of racism, power, privilege, and leadership." - Eddie Moore, Jr., PhD, Founder, White Privilege Conference

" Waking Up White is the only book I've ever read that weaves together one person's experience of class and race in this society in a way that is engaging and thought-provoking, yet at the same time challenging and accessible. Irving's book is a unique contribution to the emerging dialogue around the intersection of class and race in our society. It shines a light on how privilege is not only unseen, but is actively hidden away by the conventions and patterns of so-called "middle-class respectability." - Brian Corr, Executive Director, City of Cambridge Peace Commission

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"One of the most important books on race in recent memory." ~ Readers + Writers Journal Available at: Your Local BookstoreAmazon.comBarnesandnoble.comAudiobooks.com Waking Up White is the book I wish someone had handed me decades ago. My hope is that by sharing my sometimes ...

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White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism

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White Fragility: Why It's so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism

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Robin DiAngelo

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Dr. DiAngelo is Affiliate Associate Professor of Education at the University of Washington. Her area of research is in Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis. She is a two-time winner of the Student’s Choice Award for Educator of the Year at the University of Washington’s School of Social…

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Layla F. Saad

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The New York Times and USA Today bestseller! This eye-opening book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.

"Layla Saad is one of the most important and valuable teachers we have right now on the subject of white supremacy and racial injustice."?New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert

Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations.

Updated and expanded from the original workbook (downloaded by nearly 100,000 people), this critical text helps you take the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources, giving you the language to understand racism, and to dismantle your own biases, whether you are using the book on your own, with a book club, or looking to start family activism in your own home.
This book will walk you step-by-step through the work of examining:

Examining your own white privilege

What allyship really means

Anti-blackness, racial stereotypes, and cultural appropriation

Changing the way that you view and respond to race

How to continue the work to create social change

Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. For readers of White Fragility, White Rage, So You Want To Talk About Race, The New Jim Crow, How to Be an Anti-Racist and more who are ready to closely examine their own beliefs and biases and do the work it will take to create social change.

"Layla Saad moves her readers from their heads into their hearts, and ultimately, into their practice. We won't end white supremacy through an intellectual understanding alone; we must put that understanding into action." ?Robin DiAngelo, author of New York Times bestseller White Fragility

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The New York Times and USA Today bestseller!

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Ijeoma Oluo

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In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America
Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of African Americans--have made it impossible to ignore the issue of race. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.
"Oluo gives us--both white people and people of color--that language to engage in clear, constructive, and confident dialogue with each other about how to deal with racial prejudices and biases."--National Book Review "Generous and empathetic, yet usefully blunt . . . it's for anyone who wants to be smarter and more empathetic about matters of race and engage in more productive anti-racist action."-- Salon (Required Reading)

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In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in AmericaWidespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of African Americans--have made it impossible to ignore the issue of race. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about.

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Teaching Tolerance

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Educators play a crucial role in helping students talk openly about the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of social inequality and discrimination. Learning how to communicate about such topics as white privilege, police violence, economic inequality and mass incarceration requires practice, and facilitating critical conversations with students demands courage and skill.

This guide offers classroom-ready strategies you can use to plan discussions and to facilitate these conversations with your students. We hope you find this guide useful and that you'll share it with colleagues. And don't forget to check out our related resources.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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97 Things White People Can to for Racial Justice

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97 Things White People Can to for Racial Justice

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Corinne Shutack

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106 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice

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Note 1: This article was last updated on February 5, 2022.
Note 2: Our work is to fix what we broke and left broken. The work isn’t done…

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The Research on White Privilege Blindness

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The Research on White Privilege Blindness

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Sharon Begley

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Back when my daily commute was a two-mile power walk through Manhattan, my idea of "fighting traffic" didn't mean dodging cars or dashing across intersections seconds before a red light. It was more literal. When drivers sped through a yellow light and blocked my crosswalk, I'd pound on their trunk as I edged behind their bumper: "Nice going, idiot!"

And if they looked around for the culprit, they never suspected it was me. Female, white, middle-aged me.

Getting away with pedestrian road rage is the least of the privileges that age, sex, race, accent, or wealth bring. Being born into one racial or economic group or another-what group is privileged depends on the society, but most of the research focuses on the discrepancies between white and Black people in North America-offers you greater or lesser access to influential networks that can give you that all-important leg up. Accidents of birth can improve or worsen the odds of growing up in a safe, clean neighborhood with good schools and cultural opportunities.

These "accidents" also determine your risk of someone calling the cops on you for driving while Black, barbecuing while Black, shopping while Black, or sitting in a college common room while Black, to mention a few recent news-making incidents.

Unearned advantages go a long way toward explaining why white people in the US have greater life expectancies than Black people (79 years vs. 75.6), higher lifetime earnings, higher average wealth ($919,000 vs. $140,000), and higher median weekly earnings ($935 vs. $737). And is it really too much to wonder whether the taken-for-granted, rules-are-for-little-people sense of entitlement that white people enjoy might have been a factor in the 2019 college admissions scandal, where it came to light that wealthy, privileged, mostly white parents had bought their kids' way into Yale, the University of Southern California, and other selective colleges?

If you insist those real-world advantages have nothing to do with racial privileges starting at birth, but instead reflect your personal merit and hard work, keep reading and see what you think.

Born to Privilege

"Most whites are blind to the existence of racial privilege," says psychologist Taylor Phillips of New York University. "They deny it exists." In fact, 55% of white people in the US claim they suffer racial discrimination and that racial minorities enjoy privileges, according to a 2018 analysis by researchers at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.

Of course, racial preference and affirmative action programs, aimed at improving minority access to education and jobs, exist. But countless studies have connected accidents of birth, especially race but also sex, to life's outcomes. Some factors are measurable-think parental education and income (both of which usually favor white people) and neighborhood quality. Others are less so-for example, the ability to tap into networks of people (mom and dad's friends, neighbors, parents of schoolmates) who can offer an edge and an in.

Phillips is one of the leading researchers trying to explain the causes of "privilege blindness." This is a form of something psychologists call motivated reasoning, in which we perceive the world in ways that mesh with our personal beliefs about what is right and what we want to be true. A series of surveys has found that Americans of all races misperceive the wealth and income gaps between Black and white people: The average white family has twenty times the wealth of the average Black family, but participants guessed it was 80% smaller than reality, according to the work of psychologist Jennifer Richeson of Yale University. The least accurate guesses came from wealthy white people: They are motivated to believe society is fair, Richeson explains, since acknowledging the opposite would be to cast doubt on the fairness of their wealth.

Privilege blindness seems to spring from two deeply human urges: to maintain a belief in one's innocence and to feel meritorious.

Privilege blindness seems to spring from two deeply human urges: to maintain a belief in one's innocence and to feel meritorious.

In Western societies, particularly those that believe hard work brings success, people want to feel that their accomplishments are earned. "Meritocracy is how we justify unequal outcomes," says Phillips. "We want to explain them as the result of hard work and talent." That's a difficult position to maintain if being white gives people a leg up. But class is another source of privilege that its recipients prefer not to acknowledge: The child who gets into Princeton because her father gave $5 million for a building is certain her success reflects merit, and the teens who got prestigious internships thanks to the intercession of their wealthy, powerful parents' friends are sure they were the best candidates for the position.

In one experiment by Phillips and Brian Lowery of Stanford University, white participants completed a survey and read essays about racial inequality in America (specifically, white people's advantages) and about childhood memories. They remembered many more "personal life hardships" compared to white volunteers who did not read the essays, including agreeing with such statements as, "There have been many struggles I have suffered," and "My life has had many obstacles."

"Whites respond to evidence of racial privilege by claiming their life was filled with hardships," Phillips says. "We want to feel like we're good people, which presents a conundrum when we're faced with the existence of white privilege: It can make us feel that we didn't earn what we have. So we say, 'Privilege? What privilege?'"

In another study, Phillips and Lowery found that white participants who read about racial privilege and possible unearned advantage claimed to work harder than those who read a completely unrelated essay. "We're all motivated by a desire to attribute our achievements to personal merit," Phillips says.

Real-life experiments, not only laboratory ones, bear this out. People who win a job through contacts rather than hard work or merit "nevertheless claim that their personal effort was responsible for their success," Phillips and Lowery wrote in a 2019 paper analyzing privilege blindness.

White Fragility

Research on blindness to white privilege coincides with the recognition of what author Robin DiAngelo calls "white fragility." It means that white people "freak out" at the slightest reminders of racism, she argued in her 2018 book White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.

DiAngelo reached that conclusion over the course of two decades running diversity-training workshops for US businesses, finding that white participants almost universally insist they are "color-blind," talk about their minority friends, and boast of all their anti- discrimination activism. Challenged by unpleasant reminders of racism, they react with "anger, fear and guilt," DiAngelo writes, as well as "argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation."

That, too, might drive privilege blindness, but while DiAngelo is nearly despairing about white fragility, Phillips is more sanguine. People can cast off their blinders and be mindful of the existence of white privilege, but mindfulness extends past merely correctly perceiving reality: It can facilitate introspection, causing us to question why recognizing racial privilege is so threatening to those who benefit from it, Phillips says.

Especially when a little introspection will likely reveal what some of us can get away with, due to our race and gender-well beyond pounding scofflaw cars.

Try This Practice

Recognizing our own privilege starts with being dispassionately, mindfully open to the possibility that it exists. Some simple steps:

1. Ask yourself if you belong to a privileged group. Societies differ as to their privileged groups, but in general, Western societies privilege those who are white and wealthy.

2. In daily life, when you get away with something or get treated to a perk, ask if someone who looks different from you would have gotten the same treatment. For example, if you're white, you probably won't be hassled for loitering in an upscale store, complaining loudly in a restaurant, jaywalking, or committing some other social infraction.

3. Now think about whether privilege has brought you something more valuable than a store clerk's tolerance. If you have benefitted from networking, academic or professional recommendations from influential people, or even good schools, ask whether you got them, at least in part, because of an accident of birth rather than because you labored hard for them. Not everyone who winds up on third base hit a triple.

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The Research On White Privilege Blindness - Mindful

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Back when my daily commute was a two-mile power walk through Manhattan, my idea of "fighting traffic" didn't mean dodging cars or dashing across intersections seconds before a red light. It was more literal. When drivers sped through a yellow light and blocked my crosswalk, I'd pound on their trunk as I edged behind their bumper: "Nice going, idiot!"

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How to Set Boundaries with your Racist Relatives

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How to Set Boundaries with your Racist Relatives

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Hailey Magee

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As the Black Lives Matter movement gains traction across the nation and the world, many of us are being called to use the skills we've learned to improve ourselves ⁠-such as speaking our truth, setting boundaries, and breaking the people-pleasing pattern⁠-to improve our communities, our countries, and our world.

Those of us who are allies are conveniently positioned to have conversations about racial justice with our family members, friends, and coworkers. However, historically, many of us have balked at these conversations out of fear of our own awkwardness, others' anger, or the possibility of creating rifts in relationships.

In the past, I've done a subpar job of asserting my boundaries with racist relatives. Instead of saying, "Hey, that thing you just said was really racist," I usually opted to stay silent. I justified my silence with one or all of the following excuses:

"I can't change their mind."

"They won't listen to me anyway."

"It'll just start an argument."

"If this becomes a debate, I don't know enough facts to justify my side."

Now, I've come to understand that silence is violence⁠-and that complicity in racism is racism.
Some activists assert that allies are most useful when we advocate for racial justice with our racist relatives. Others caution that getting into embittered arguments with racist relatives is a waste of energy⁠-energy that could be better-devoted to creating real change for black folks.

Whether you choose to take an offensive stance (proactively engaging your racist relatives in conversations about race) or defensive stance (speaking out against racist relatives who make racist comments), knowing how to set boundaries with racist family members is critically important. When conversations become ineffective or toxic, we need to know how to stand in our power and create safety for ourselves.

These four tools can help you set empowered boundaries with your racist relatives and maintain the emotional energy you need to avoid burnout and continue engaging in anti-racist work.

1. Clarify the values that empower you to speak up.

When planning to have a difficult conversation, we can find motivation and strength in our values. Our values are our basic, fundamental beliefs that help us determine what is important to us.

For example, my core values include integrity and authenticity. I'm passionate about speaking from the heart, being honest, and acting in a moral manner.

When it comes to having difficult conversations with family members about race, I ask myself: What would it look like to act in integrity here? What would it mean to be fully authentic in this conversation? For me, this means not going silent in difficult conversations, addressing racist jokes and comments the moment they're spoken, and holding firm to my beliefs, even in the face of others' anger.

What are your core values? Honesty? Loyalty? Generosity? Compassion? Consider how those values align with your intention to speak out against racial injustice. When those conversations get difficult, find solace in the truth that you're living in alignment with your fundamental beliefs.

(If you want to discover your most deeply-held values but aren't sure where to begin, Scott Jeffrey's Core Value List of over 200 personal values is a great place to start.)

2. Come prepared with specific language.

Boundary-setting discussions, especially with relatives, are among the most challenging conversations we can have. To reduce the pressure we may feel to summon the perfect words at the perfect time, it's helpful to come prepared with a few key phrases we can use to set, and re-assert, our boundaries.

In a recent Instagram post, trauma and relationship therapist Jordan Pickell offered some excellent suggestions for how to tell someone you love that they're being racist. It included suggestions like:

In the moment, you can say "That is really racist/offensive/ignorant."

Set a boundary that you will not accept racist comments: "Don't make racist jokes around me. If you do, I'm leaving."

Focus on the feelings/impact of their words: "When you say that, it makes me feel angry/disgusted/confused."

You can also go back to it after the fact: "What you said the other day isn't sitting well with me."

Remember that boundaries are statements of what we will or will not accept. The goal of a boundary isn't necessarily to change another's behavior, but to create safety and integrity for ourselves. The most perfectly crafted boundary might not stop Uncle Joe from making racist jokes, but it can protect you, your children, your mental energy, or your home.Examples of simple boundaries in this vein include:

"I will not speak to you when you make racist comments."

"If you make racist comments, I will hang up the phone."

"If you continue to make racist comments, I will not bring my children to your home."

"I cannot tolerate your racism and I no longer want to be in touch with you."

3. Use the broken record technique.

When our boundaries are met with defensiveness, we may find ourselves drawn into circular and long-winded arguments. Your relatives may say,

"You can't tell me what to do!"

"You're taking this too seriously. Lighten up."

"Show me the numbers. Prove it."

Remember: you don't need to justify your boundary. You don't need to explain yourself, to recite the most recent statistics on police brutality, or to appeal to this person's heart of hearts that racism is actually really, really bad. Instead, try the broken record technique.

Created by Richard Lavoie, a national expert on classroom management, the broken record technique is a simple yet effective way to reassert your boundary without getting mired in distracting arguments. To deploy this technique, simply repeat the same message three times, calmly yet assertively-regardless of how the recipient responds.

Here's an example:

You: "Bob, I will not participate in conversations with you when you're being racist."

Bob: "Oh come on, lighten up! You're taking this too seriously."

You: "I will not participate in conversations with you when you're being racist."

Bob: "Racist? That's ridiculous. You know what's really racist? Affirmative action."

You: "I will not participate in conversations with you when you're being racist."

Bob: "Alright, whatever. I'm outta here."

As you can see, when you repeat the same message calmly and assertively, you simultaneously limit Bob's power while preserving your own mental and emotional energy.

4. Practice post-boundary self-care.

Especially if this is your first time addressing racism in your family, setting these boundaries may feel particularly difficult. It may feel like an enormous emotional upheaval⁠-and it is! You're breaking a silence that you've held for months, years, or even decades, and that is serious emotional work.

After setting your boundary, you may feel fear, guilt, or shame, even though, intellectually, you know that setting this boundary was important and righteous. If you grew up in an environment where you were punished, harmed, or neglected when you disagreed with a family member, learning the art of honest expression in the family is a radical act.

Post-boundary self-care helps you avoid burnout and replenish your resources so that you can continue engaging in anti-racist activism in your family and community.

Personally, I really need rest after a conversation like this. My nervous system gets overloaded and frayed, and a nap or cozy evening at home is an important way to come home to myself. If I'm feeling guilty, I contact a trusted friend who can reaffirm the righteousness of my boundary and keep me on the course.

When we set boundaries with our racist relatives, we create personal, zero-tolerance zones where we are no longer complicit in our relatives' racism. It is difficult and demanding work, but it is absolutely necessary if we are to claim true allyship with the black folks who are fighting for their right to exist safely in this world.

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How To Set Boundaries With Your Racist Relatives - Tiny Buddha

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As the Black Lives Matter movement gains traction across the nation and the world, many of us are being called to use the skills we've learned to improve ourselves ⁠-such as speaking our truth, setting boundaries, and breaking the people-pleasing pattern⁠-to improve our communities, our countries, and our world.

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Movies and Documentaries to Use (and Avoid) when Teaching Civil Rights

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Movies and Documentaries to Use (and Avoid) when Teaching Civil Rights

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Zinn Education Project

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Documentaries and movies are highly effective tools for teaching civil rights history. They make the movement come alive, breathing life into the nameless and faceless masses who mobilized and organized for change. People are generally aware of Rosa Parks's role in the Montgomery bus boycott but are wholly unaware of the thousands of Black domestic workers who made victory possible by refusing to ride the buses for an entire year. Films add depth and dimension to the famous leaders who spearheaded the struggle, such as Martin Luther King Jr. Everyone knows who Dr. King is, but too few know him beyond sound bites from his "I Have a Dream" speech. And films generate empathy by capturing and conveying deep emotion, such as the paralyzing fear brought about by night riders. It is one thing to read about racial terror; it is another thing entirely to see it in high definition.

The pedagogical power of film is strengthened when documentaries and movies are paired with one another. The lessons learned in the former are reinforced in the latter. Pairing films also sharpens critical analysis of popular narratives of the movement. People are conditioned to believe what they see on screen. Pairing films challenges this basic assumption when what appears in a documentary, such as the presence of Black women in leadership positions, fails to show up in a movie.

An explosion of films on civil rights history over the last twenty-five years has created abundant options for using film in the classroom. Scores of documentaries have been produced, touching on subjects ranging from the origins of the movement to its aftermath. Although fewer movies have been produced, and their subject matter has been less varied, the selection is still strong.

Of course, not all films are equal. There are good ones that get the basic history correct and great ones that totally disrupt the Master Narrative. There are also terrible ones that reinforce the Master Narrative, and God-awful ones that simply fabricate history. Yet nearly all of them are useful, with the best ones revealing the truth about the past, and the worst ones exposing entrenched falsehoods. Thus, films about the movement, from the exceptional to the dreadful, that examine a broad cross section of subjects, from the origins of racism to contemporary civil rights struggles, can significantly deepen understanding of civil rights history.

Tedx Talk by Hasah Kwame Jeffries on "Hard History"

This 13-minute talk by Hasan Kwame Jeffries can be a useful companion to this critical list of films about the Civil Rights Movement and institutionalized racism in U.S. history.

Racism has shaped the contours of America from the earliest days of the Republic, fueling the need for a civil rights movement. Race: The Power of an Illusion (2003) is a great primer for discussing the role of racism in American society. The three-hour documentary begins by explaining race as a pseudoscientific invention designed to justify European capitalist exploitation of African labor. It then pivots toward racism, moving quickly beyond personal prejudice to look at the racialization of political structures and economic systems. Finally, it looks specifically at the racialization of the housing market to illustrate the harmful effect racial discrimination has had on contemporary African Americans.

I Am Not Your Negro (2017) explores racism in a completely different way, from the perspective of civil rights-era essayist James Baldwin. But it is equally effective as a springboard for an opening discussion on the need for a civil rights revolution. Using Baldwin's searing words, the documentary draws viewers in, making the pain of the Black past feel present. For some, Baldwin's indictment of white Americans for their commitment to white supremacy will confirm long-held suspicions. For others, it will be a revelation. But for all, it will prompt deep introspection, a necessary ingredient for frank and honest conversation.

Civil rights protest challenged contemporaneous patterns and practices of racial discrimination. For much of the twentieth century, this meant taking on Jim Crow. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002) provides a thorough overview of Jim Crow and the Black response to it. The four-hour documentary explores the history of segregation from emancipation through World War II, chronicling both its formal and informal manifestations in the South and beyond. The second and third episodes, which examine the Black experience from Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 through the start of the NAACP's school desegregation campaign in the 1930s, is particularly useful for establishing the movement's precursors and preconditions.

Dramatizations of Black life during the era of legal segregation help make clear that Jim Crow was much more than just a bundle of unfair laws. Mudbound (2017) explores personal interactions across and on either side of the color line in the Mississippi Delta during World War II. The film's gaze is intimate, providing a close look at the racialized customs that simultaneously separated and tied together Black tenant farmers and white landowners, showing how Jim Crow linked Black fates to white fortunes. The Great Debaters (2007) chronicles the trials and triumphs of the debate team at Wiley College, a historically Black college in Marshall, Texas, during the Depression. One scene in particular, "The Pig Farmer," effectively re-creates the kind of life-threatening, random encounters that African Americans often had with whites and is worthy of showing on its own. Something the Lord Made (2004), the story of pioneer heart surgeon Vivien Thomas, explores the less dramatic, daily indignities of segregation, rendering unmistakable the ways that Jim Crow customs, as practiced by both individuals and institutions, stifled human potential at great cost to society. The movie parallels the documentary Partners of the Heart (2002) but is far more emotionally engaging.

Two films set in the Jim Crow era that are inspiring tales of persistence and perseverance but are far less useful as overviews of the period are Hidden Figures (2016) and Loving (2016). Although both films treat their subjects thoughtfully and compassionately, and each has the added benefit of revolving around Black women, which too few films do, neither provides a clear enough sense of the scale and scope of segregation to effectively convey the intractable nature of Jim Crow. Another film set in the Jim Crow era that is of no use at all is The Help (2011). The movie fixates on normalizing white privilege and Black subservience and completely marginalizes the Mississippi freedom movement.

Violence was the cornerstone of Jim Crow. Whites resorted to it to regulate Black behavior, control Black labor, and steal Black wealth. The documentary Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America (2006) examines three incidents of early twentieth-century racial violence that resulted in Black landowners losing their lives and property. It also shows how the land grab impeded Black economic upward mobility for generations. An Outrage (2017) takes a personal look at lynching through the eyes of its victims and their descendants. It is a hauntingly moving portrayal of Jim Crow's strange fruit.

The kind of mob violence that led to lynching can be hard to fathom, but Rosewood (1997), which depicts the 1923 racial pogrom in the all-Black town of Rosewood, Florida, reveals the mechanics of lynch mobs, including the rapidity with which they formed, and captures the unspeakable horror of their murderous rampages.

White sheriffs rarely protected the targets of racial violence, and white judges and juries almost never provided justice to victims. Instead, they worked to uphold Jim Crow laws and enforce Jim Crow customs. Few cases illustrate this better than that of the Scottsboro Boys. Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (2000) recounts the conviction of nine innocent Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. Slavery by Another Name (2012) takes a broader look at the justice system under Jim Crow by detailing the ways white southerners used convict leasing to reestablish and maintain white supremacy after Reconstruction. It is a harrowing account of brutal capitalist excess.

A southern prison labor camp, not unlike Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison Farm, is the backdrop for Life (1999), a comedy featuring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence as two would-be bootleggers sentenced to life in prison for a murder they did not commit. The film touches on many of the themes discussed in Slavery by Another Name, including judicial malfeasance, creating the opportunity for critical analysis of popular representations and misrepresentations of segregation.

Depicting Black suffering during the Jim Crow era makes clear why African Americans were so desperate for change. Highlighting Black organizing during the same period is just as important because it demonstrates African Americans' refusal to accept the status quo. Birth of a Movement: The Battle Against America's First Blockbuster (2017) describes the effort led by William Monroe Trotter, a Boston-based activist and newspaper editor, to ban D. W. Griffith's white supremacist propaganda film Birth of a Nation. Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2000) examines the life of the Jamaican-born activist, who through the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and its newspaper, the Negro World, spread the gospel of Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Much like these documentaries, 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002), a fictionalized account of civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph's effort to organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1920s, introduces viewers to a grassroots campaign that not only challenged Jim Crow but also helped create the organizing infrastructure that enabled the civil rights movement to flourish years later.

World War II looms large in civil rights history. "Deadly Calling," the third episode of The War (2007), provides a useful overview of the Black wartime experience at home and abroad, albeit interspersed between stories of military developments overseas. The Black Press: Sol diers Without Swords (1999) probes much deeper by tracking the unheralded effort of Black journalists to advance democracy for black soldiers on the frontlines and for Black citizens on the home front. In Their Own Words: The Tuskegee Airmen (2012) uses oral history to zero in on the civil rights hardships and military heroism of Black flyers. By contrast, the major motion picture Red Tails (2012) omits the airmen's fight against racial discrimination on U.S. soil before, during, and after their time in the army. An egregious oversight, it nonetheless creates an opportunity to use the film to interrogate the idea that Black military service and sacrifice were enough to rid whites of racial prejudice.

When northern Black servicemen and servicewomen who had been stationed in the South returned home, they were unable to escape racial discrimination. Like the waves of Black southerners who had left the region during the war years, they could not outrun white supremacy. To be sure, a different kind of Jim Crow reigned up north, but it was still Jim Crow. Neither New York nor Cleveland nor Oakland turned out to be the fabled Promised Land.

Goin' to Chicago (1994) demystifies northern Jim Crow by examining the lives of a group of older Black Chicagoans who migrated from the Mississippi Delta. A common experience in nearly all of their personal stories is housing discrimination. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (2011), which explores the creation and collapse of a massive public housing complex in St. Louis, masterfully unpacks housing discrimination, including the central role played by the state and federal governments. The movie Fences (2016) is the perfect complement to these documentaries. Set in Pittsburgh, it shows how working-class African Americans tried to get the most out of life despite the constant pressure of racial discrimination. Sports animated the protagonist in Fences, Troy Maxson, like nothing else in life. Baseball in particular was his salvation and refuge, and to hear him tell it, he was spectacular. But sports did not unburden him of the weight of racism, just as it did not relieve those in the real world who either toiled in segregated Black leagues or broke into white professional leagues. Their struggle provides a window through which to view not only the intersection of race and sports but also Jim Crow America, especially in the North.

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004) chronicles the first Black heavyweight boxing champion's brazen exploits in and out of the ring during the first part of the twentieth century. Jesse Owens (2012) follows the journey of the 1936 Olympic gold medalist in track and field from Cleveland to Berlin, highlighting the many obstacles Jim Crow placed before him. Olympic Pride-American Prejudice (2016) pushes beyond the Owens narrative to share the experiences of the seventeen Black athletes, including two Black women, who joined Owens on the 1936 U.S. Olympic team. Only the Ball Was White (1980) provides an excellent overview of the Negro Leagues, a key example of a Black parallel institution. "Shadow Ball," the fifth "Inning" of Baseball (1994), also explores the Negro Leagues and its star players but in greater depth. Jackie Robinson (2016) offers a detailed glimpse of the on-the-field achievements and off-the-field civil rights advocacy of the Brooklyn Dodgers' legend. Black Magic (2008) looks at the history of basketball at historically Black colleges and universities and the impact desegregation had on the sport, Black athletes, and Black coaches, while Breaking the Huddle: The Integration of College Football (2008) does the same for football. And Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World (2001) tells of the far-reaching impact that the boxing great's stand against white supremacy and opposition to the Vietnam War had on people.

Sports movies abound, making it possible to pair nearly all of these documentaries with direct cinematic counterparts. Race (2016), (2013), and Ali (2001) are biopics about Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, and Muhammad Ali, while Glory Road (2006) and Remember the Titans (2000) revolve around the integration of college basketball and high school football. But every one of these films treat civil rights more or less the same - racism is reduced to personal prejudice practiced by a handful of rednecks; it is overcome by Black athletes through nonviolent perseverance; and it is rejected by whites once they witness African American athletes performing at a high level. The usefulness of these films, then, is mainly as prompts for analyzing the shortcomings of normative narratives of the persistence and eventual demise of Jim Crow.

Much like movies on race and sports during the Jim Crow era, movies specifically about the civil rights movement tend to follow the Master Narrative, with storylines revolving around preachers and presidents and a heavy emphasis on nonviolence. Documentaries about the movement, however, are generally much better, shifting the focus away from great men and broadening the range of strategies and tactics beyond nonviolence.

Eyes on the Prize remains the gold standard for documentaries on the civil rights movement. Its fourteen hour-long episodes draw on a rich array of primary source material, including original broadcast news footage and interviews with movement leaders and foot soldiers, to weave together an accessible overview of the movement. It is not, however, without shortcomings. At times it is overly event and leader driven, especially its early episodes, causing the complexity of the movement, including its geographic diversity, to be lost. The pacing is also a bit slow for today's younger viewers, who have grown up watching films with more visual activity. It is best used, then, selectively, in segments, as an introduction to key events and people.

By contrast, Soundtrack for a Revolution (2009), which tells the story of the movement through freedom songs, pulsates with energy. Civil rights music inspired, encouraged, and energized movement participants, who are called on here to explain their purpose and importance. Although contemporary artists, such as John Legend, perform the songs, the arrangements are traditional. Unfortunately, so too is the narrative arc. The film adheres too closely to the Montgomery to Memphis framework, privileging the experiences of Dr. King above all else.

Lee Daniels's The Butler (2013), whose lead character, Cecil Gaines, serves as a valet to eight U.S. presidents, is one of a small handful of movies that attempt to engage the entire history of the civil rights movement. Not surprisingly, its take on the movement is conventional, emphasizing decisions made in the Oval Office over those made at mass meetings. Indeed, the movement does not even seem to exist until Gaines arrives at the White House, and it loses steam completely when Black Power emerges. In this sense, it is a classic depiction of the Master Narrative and should only be shown as such. At the same time, the film re-creates a few pivotal movement moments that are almost always ignored on screen, most notably the nonviolent direct action workshops led by Rev. James Lawson in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1959.

Most treatments of the civil rights movement are far less ambitious than Eyes, Soundtrack, or The Butler. Rather than tackling the subject as a whole, they focus instead on a specific event, historical figure, or both. Beginning with school desegregation, The Road to Brown (1990) traces the history of the NAACP's southern school desegregation campaign, which culminated in the US Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The film introduces Charles Hamilton Houston, the architect of the NAACP's strategy, and shines a light on the segregated communities involved in the cases. Mr. Civil Rights: Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP (2014) recounts the NAACP's long legal battle to desegregate southern schools that Marshall, a protégé of Houston, helped lead. The biopic Marshall (2017) dances around the edges of this history, choosing instead to focus on Marshall's early courtroom activism outside the South. Laurence Fishburne's one-person play, Thurgood (2011), however, fits perfectly with these documentaries. It is unusually comprehensive in its coverage of the courtroom challenge, and Fishburne's performance is masterful. In fact, Thurgood is strong enough historically and theatrically to be shown on its own.

It is well established that the civil rights movement did not begin with Brown, but the Supreme Court ruling, along with the murder of Emmett Till and the start of the Montgomery bus boycott one year later, are critically important to the movement's evolution. Together, they mobilized new constituencies and created new possibilities for pursuing change.

The Murder of Emmett Till (2003) details the events surrounding the lynching of the fourteen-year-old Chicago boy at the hands of two white men in Money, Mississippi, making direct connections to the Great Migration and rabid white resistance to Brown. The filmmaker's interview with Mamie Till, young Emmett's mother, in which she describes the impact of her son's murder, is particularly powerful. "Awakenings, 1954-1956," the first episode of Eyes on the Prize, discusses the death of Till and the emergence of the Montgomery bus boycott, showing how their combined force pushed the movement in a new direction. The movie (2001), which is based on historian Stewart Burns's edited collection of oral histories with movement participants, stands out as the best film or documentary on the Montgomery protest. It makes clear the mechanics of the movement, depicts the central role of women, and portrays King as he was - a reluctant leader struggling to catch up to his people.

Returning to school desegregation, the crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 is explained succinctly in "Fighting Back, 1957-1962," the second episode of Eyes on the Prize. This segment nicely sets up Nine from Little Rock: Pioneers of Desegregation (1964). This documentary short, filmed seven years after the highpoint of the conflict, profiles the lives of the nine Black students who desegregated Central High School. Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later (2007) shares the perspectives of students and community members five decades removed from the crisis, creating an opportunity to discuss school segregation and desegregation in a contemporary context.

The Little Rock Nine were the vanguard of southern student protest, which exploded into full public view with unimaginable energy in February 1960 with the lunch counter sit-ins. A Force More Powerful (1999), which examines a half-dozen, nonviolent, direct action campaigns across the globe during the twentieth century, draws on rare archival footage to take viewers inside the Nashville sit-in movement, revealing the practicalities of a nonviolent campaign. Meanwhile, Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (1981) introduces viewers to veteran activist Ella Baker, the guiding force behind the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Baker infused SNCC with a commitment to grassroots democratic organizing, enabling the organization to catapult the movement forward in the early 1960s.

Some of the tough decisions that SNCC activists had to make are beautifully dramatized in Freedom Song (2000), a fictionalized account of a SNCC direct action and voter registration campaign. Rather than focusing on a single, large-scale, mobilizing event, Freedom Song hones in on the slow, hard work of organizing, making grassroots activism visible, a rarity in movies. Freedom Song also touches directly on the Freedom Rides, making it a terrific companion for Freedom Riders (2011), which tells the story of the more than four hundred African American and white activists who traveled to the South in 1961 to challenge segregation in interstate travel.

Young people remained at the forefront of the struggle in 1963. In Birmingham, Alabama, they forced white elected officials and business leaders to desegregate downtown by taking to the streets and filling the city's jails. Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004) documents their courage and heroism. There was, however, a steep price to be paid, and four young people paid it with their lives when Klansmen bombed Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. 4 Little Girls (1997) revisits that horrible moment, recalling the lives lost and explaining the far-reaching and long-lasting impact of their deaths.

The next year, in St. Augustine, Florida, young people conducted wade-ins at beaches and a swim-in at a hotel pool to desegregate America's oldest city. Often overlooked, the struggle in "Florida's Birmingham" drew national attention to the brutality that undergirded Jim Crow, helping to bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Dare Not Walk Alone (2008) places St. Augustine back in the national narrative, connecting the actions of local people with those of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson. But only the first half of the eighty-minute documentary examines the movement in 1964. The second half looks at local Black life nearly fifty years later, pointing out the underlying reasons for the persistence of poverty, rising incarceration rates, and failing schools. A sobering reminder of the movement's limits, this part of the film creates an opportunity to reflect on the long-term impact of the fight for civil rights.

Whereas St. Augustine has been underemphasized, Freedom Summer has been overemphasized, owing to the participation of large numbers of northern white students who joined the effort to break segregationists' stranglehold on Mississippi. Freedom Summer (2014) chronicles the events of those intense months, from the formation of freedom schools to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party's Atlantic City challenge. Freedom on My Mind (1994) covers the same subject but looks more closely at the years leading up to 1964, providing a much better sense of the Mississippi movement's evolution. The experiences of one white activist are the subject of An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (2013), creating space for dialogue about the role of whites in the movement.

The flip side of white participation in the freedom struggle - white opposition to it - is covered in Spies of Mississippi (2014), which examines the state of Mississippi's use of intelligence gathering, economic coercion, political intimidation, and murder to thwart the freedom struggle. Neshoba: The Price of Freedom (2011) turns a spotlight on organized racial terror groups by looking at the infamous murder of three civil rights workers by Klansmen at the start of Freedom Summer.

More movies have been made about civil rights in Mississippi than have been made about any other civil rights topic, but with the notable exception of Freedom Song, none are especially good, and a few are just plain bad. Of the latter, Mississippi Burning (1988), possibly the most watched civil rights film of all time, tops the list, having managed to make the movement's success hinge totally on the wit and wisdom of white FBI agents. It is worth showing only to interrogate a fabrication of movement history.

Selma (2015) is everything that Mississippi Burning is not. It centers African Americans - they are the primary shapers of their own destiny, and it portrays the FBI with much greater accuracy, as more adversary than ally. These reasons alone make it worth watching. But as a depiction of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, it is not without flaws. Local Alabama activists take a backseat to national leaders, and advocates of self-defense, especially within SNCC, are depicted as overly emotional and irrational. This is not totally unexpected because the movie is actually a biopic, a portrayal of Dr. King revolving around his civil rights leadership and nonviolent approach to change. As such, it works well with the documentaries Citizen King (2005) and King in the Wilderness (2018), which examine the final years of King's life; The March (2013), which goes behind the scenes of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; and At the River I Stand (1993), a chronicle of King's time with striking Memphis sanitation workers shortly before his death. It also pairs nicely with King: A Filmed Record . . . Montgomery to Memphis (1970), which pulls together rare footage of King delivering some of his most important speeches, including "I Have A Dream."

As seen in Selma, King's outsized presence in civil rights narratives obscures key elements of the freedom struggle, chief among these being self-defense. Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power (2004) addresses this oversight by sharing the story of Williams's armed defense of the Black community in Monroe, North Carolina, and full-throated advocacy of self-defense via the radio waves. Deacons for Defense (2003), a fictionalized account of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the armed self-defense group founded in Jonesboro, Louisiana, in 1964 to protect local movement participants, including nonviolent activists, complements Negroes with Guns perfectly. The story of the Deacons, which is ably captured here, demonstrates the ways armed self-defense could make nonviolent direct action possible and compel reluctant federal officials to act on behalf of African Americans.

But it is neither the Deacons nor Rob Williams who come most immediately to mind when thinking about African Americans and armed self-defense, but rather Malcolm X. Even in Selma, the former spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) makes a cameo appearance as the foil to King's nonviolence. Malcolm, of course, was much more than a voice of Black rage; he was an astute political thinker with a constantly evolving worldview, which comes across clearly in Malcolm X: Make It Plain (1994), the most comprehensive documentary on his life. Spike Lee's artful Malcolm X (1992) is also a viable option for introducing Malcolm as it cleaves closely to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Malcolm lived his entire life in the Midwest and the Northeast. Treatments of his life, therefore, can be used to offer insights into the northern freedom struggle. So too can The Hate That Hate Produced (1959), a news exposé on the NOI. Although the program frames the group as a Black supremacist cult, the interviews with Malcolm, NOI spiritual leader Elijah Muhammad, and NOI members are revelatory in terms of perspectives on racism from Black northerners who rejected integration.

The view of moderate, mainstream Black northerners comes across in two biographies. The first is Adam Clayton Powell (1989), which explores the life and politics of the outspoken civil rights activist who represented Harlem in Congress in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. And the second is The Power Broker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights (2012), which delves into the political machinations of the head of the National Urban League.

The sentiments of everyday Black northerners trapped in declining, deindustrializing, urban centers are discernible through documentaries on the uprisings of the mid- to late 1960s. July '64 (2006) offers insights into the thoughts of ordinary African Americans in Rochester, New York, through its exploration of the causes and consequences of the three-day rebellion that took place there in the summer of 1964. Revolution '67 (2007) does the same for African Americans living in Newark, New Jersey, during that uprising three years later. Both documentaries work with Detroit (2017), a severely flawed dramatization of the murder of three African Americans by police at the Algiers Motel during the 1967 Motor City rebellion. The documentaries make visible what is rendered invisible in Detroit, most notably the local movement and the institutionalized nature of police terror.

Urban uprisings offer a convenient entry point for discussing the transition from civil rights to Black Power, but jumping immediately from one to the other misses Black Power's southern roots. "Out of the Shadows," the first episode of Black America since MLK: And Still I Rise (2016), and "The Time Has Come, 1964-1966," the seventh installment of Eyes on the Prize, explain the genesis of Black Power in SNCC's Lowndes County, Alabama, organizing project. The Black America episode also introduces the Oakland, California, Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP), the most iconic organization of the Black Power era.

The BPP straddles the civil rights and Black Power periods, making it the ideal organization for studying the transition between the eras. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) offers a rich and engaging overview of the BPP, although it privileges what was happening at the party's headquarters in Oakland over everything else. The documentary short Emory Douglas: The Art of the Black Panthers (2015) provides a succinct, yet revealing, look at the political thinking of party leaders, rank-and-file members, and supporters. And The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971) exposes the government's criminal conspiracy to crush the BPP that led to the assassination of Hampton, the Chicago Panthers' bold, brash, and brilliant leader.

The Black Panthers are generally treated harshly in movies. In For rest Gump (1994), and more recently in The Butler, they are mocked as gun-toting, wannabe revolutionaries who contributed nothing to the movement other than violence. Scenes from both films are worth showing as examples of gross mischaracterizations in popular portrayals of civil rights and post-civil rights Black radicalism. The scene in Forrest Gump is especially worth deconstructing because it is the only exposure most students have to the BPP and Black Power.

A notable exception to these kinds of distorted depictions emanating from Hollywood is Blood Done Sign My Name (2010), an account of white racial violence and Black protest in the small town of Oxford, North Carolina, in 1970. The film casts Black Power protest as an extension of civil rights activism and treats Black Power advocates as serious political thinkers. Both of these points are also well made in Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre, 1968 (2008), which examines Black activism at South Carolina State University and investigates the murder of three students by state troopers. The emphasis on student activism in both films makes pairing them together work for the purpose of discussing the emergence of Black Power.

"Move On Up," the second episode of Black America Since MLK, covers the 1970s, providing a good sense of those areas of Black life where civil rights victories had made a substantial difference and those areas where radical change was still needed. The final three episodes of Eyes on the Prize do similar work, but in a bit more detail. Meanwhile, The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975 (2011), a compilation of interviews with activists and movement footage shot by Swedish journalists during the period, offers a narrower kind of overview of the era by analyzing Black Power ideology as a response to conditions left unaddressed by the civil rights movement.

Finally, there are several noteworthy documentaries on contemporary topics through which to explore the legacy of the movement. The development of hip-hop, from the streets of the Bronx to the concert stages of Europe, is chronicled in Hip Hop Evolution (2016). Letter to the President (2005) and Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992 (2017) examine the devastating impact that Reaganomics had on the African American community, the former through rap music and the latter through the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. The cultural influence and economic exploitation of Black athletes at predominantly white universities is the subject of The Fab Five (2011). OJ Made in America (2016) ties all of these themes together into a coherent and compelling narrative of Black life from the 1960s through the 1990s by chronicling football legend O. J. Simpson's phenomenal rise and spectacular fall. The destruction wrought in New Orleans by decades of discriminatory housing policy and the federal government's grossly negligent response to Hurricane Katrina is explored in When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006). The House I Live In (2012) and The 13th (2016) offer micro- and macro-level views of mass incarceration. The Central Park Five (2012) and Every Mother's Son (2004) take intimate, deeply personal looks at unconstitutional police practices and their collateral consequences. And Whose Streets? (2017) tells the story of the Ferguson, Missouri, uprising in 2014, from the killing of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown by local police to the birth of the Movement for Black Lives, from the point of view of the activists who led it.

There are very few major motion pictures on contemporary civil rights topics as powerful as Fruitvale Station (2013), a heart-wrenching dramatization of Oscar Grant III's last day alive. The twenty-two-year-old African American was shot and killed by Bay Area transit police on New Year's Day in 2008. The film is the perfect complement to any of the documentaries on contemporary topics, especially the ones on mass incarceration and policing, including Whose Streets?

Documentaries and movies are incredible resources for teaching civil rights history, and never before have so many been available for classroom instruction. The best ones can truly deepen understanding of the movement, but even the worst ones can be used to make clear what the struggle was about. The right documentary, paired with the right movie, can help students wrap their minds around even those aspects of the movement that are the hardest to comprehend.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is associate professor of History at The Ohio State University where he teaches courses on the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. Jeffries is the author of Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt (NYU Press, 2009) and the editor of Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Jeffries has worked on several public history projects including the renovation of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. He hosts the podcast Teaching Hard History: American Slavery for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

From Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement edited by Hasan Kwame Jeffries. Reprinted by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. © 2019 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.

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Two Thumbs Up: Movies and Documentaries to Use (and Avoid) When Teaching Civil Rights - Zinn Education Project

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Documentaries and movies are highly effective tools for teaching civil rights history. They make the movement come alive, breathing life into the nameless and faceless masses who mobilized and organized for change.

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Build Your Stack: Challenging Stereotypes - Books as Windows

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Build Your Stack: Challenging Stereotypes - Books as Windows

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National Council of Teachers of English

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This blog post is part of Build Your Stack,® a new initiative focused exclusively on helping teachers build their book knowledge and their classroom libraries. It was written by NCTE member Alie Stumpf.
The journey to my "stack" begins in my homogeneously White, rural New England hometown, where people assumed similarities and fought to keep the status quo.

We mostly read the British and American canon for class, and I feasted on Lois Duncan and R. L. Stine's Fear Street series on the side. I had just one memorable teacher of color, an elderly Black woman who introduced me to Night and horrors of the Holocaust, but not to Morrison, Baldwin, or Angelou. Eventually in high school we read Things Fall Apart and Raisin in the Sun, yet without critically analyzing the effects of imperialism or redlining that drive the works. As a result, our conversations about Okonkwo and Walter focused on tragic flaws rather than the crushing impact of White supremacy.

In essence, until I went to college, I was not challenged by my curriculum or my community to consider the ways social policy or privilege impact a person's life. I read books about lives different from my own, but without important context, I judged characters through my own world view and privileges. I began to realize all I had missed, rushed to catch up, and got the urge to teach.

Early on in my own teaching career in NYC, I learned of Rudine Sims Bishop's work, advocating that books offer children mirrors to see themselves in, windows to see into others' lives, and sliding glass doors to walk into worlds different from their own. I culled library books that embraced Dr. Bishop's vision; from Jacqueline Woodson to Matt de la Peña, I figured where some found mirrors, others would find windows, and the interaction would breed curiosity and compassion.

Throughout various schools and grade levels, I found a similar, unsettling trend; kids often struggled to read honestly for windows into others' lives. Regardless of reading skill or age, kids either breezed through or abandoned books that challenged them to learn unfamiliar names, places, or historical events. (I've found fantasy readers to be a big exception to this; most will memorize cat clans and magical worlds as a way of clinging to the certainty of the good/evil trope.) A sixth-grade student read Rita Williams Garcia's One Crazy Summer in just a few days, remarking that she loved the book and could not understand why the mom was so mean. I asked her what she had learned about the Black Panther Party and she stared at me, blankly. Another student clung to the detail that Jason Reynold's protagonist Castle Crenshaw was being raised by a single mom, yet overlooked the ways the trauma of domestic violence lingered.

Similar to the way I was reading as a kid, my students either subconsciously or intentionally skipped over the parts of the book in which the character experienced something for which they themselves had no point of reference, rendering an incomplete perception of a character or misunderstanding the complexities of a culture or historical event.

Of course, I had provided such information for students when reading whole class novels, yet I yearned for a structure that placed the responsibility more on the student. If I wanted my students to read their independent choice books for windows, then I needed to give them tools and time to conduct research that their books inspired.

Discovering Jess Lifshitz on Twitter changed all of this for me. In her incredible blog Crawling Out of the Classroom, she details ways that she teaches readers how to read for windows. She honors her students' proclivity toward mirrors while priming them to linger on differences. While reading for windows, her students:

see themselves reflected in the lives of others who are different

learn something new about the world or the people living in it

form questions when they need more information in order to understand the characters experiences

This framing allows students to go beyond simple connections and use reading to expand their understanding of humanity. It also stresses the importance of using a novel to inspire nonfiction research, of giving students opportunities to move between books and online sources to grow their understanding of an unfamiliar setting.

We have been reading both in clubs and individually throughout the semester, making space for questioning, reflecting, and online research along the way. This year students still leaned on me for resources to find answers to their questions, yet I hope to grow their research skills earlier next year so that they can develop greater independence.

The following are some of the books and nonfiction resources that moved students:
It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas
Many students read in book clubs, and none of them had a solid idea of who Emmett Till was. They watched a Time video "The Body of Emmet Till" narrated by Bryan Stevenson. Carving out class time to watch this film together and conduct supplemental research allowed them to experience the shattering images of Till's funeral, learn the role such photography played in galvanizing the civil rights movement, and make connections to the media-driven Black Lives Matter movement.
Save Me a Seat by Sarah Weeks & Gita Varadarajan
Set in the 1970s, Iranian refugee Zomorod tells the story of how she and her parents struggled to settle and find work and community in the US. The family angrily witnesses the Iranian revolution from the television, and must face a surge in anti-Iranian prejudice in their community. The kid-friendly encyclopedia website Ducksters has some helpful information about the Iran Hostage crisis, which Zomorod and her family agonize over for much of the book. Zomorod's witty narration and changing friendships also make this an enticing read for middle schoolers.
The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore
If you have been seeing this book everywhere, It's for a good reason. Get it! One of my students read it for Gene Luen Yang's Reading Without Walls challenge, and struggled to get past the "girl drama" in the beginning. Once we read about the Islam faith and about the process of becoming a US citizen, as Amina's friend Soojin experiences, he began to see the book as more meaningful. Shortly after he finished the book, the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand occurred and he was both amazed to see events from the book playing out in a larger, more deadly scale, and also disturbed by such deep, senseless misunderstandings.

With its alternating perspectives, this novel is interesting (and confusing for some), because Joe and Ravi do not develop a relationship with one another until pretty late in the novel. While Joe struggles with an auditory processing disorder and a history with the school bully, Ravi, a recent immigrant from India, struggles to find his place among his teachers and peers in a new setting. My co-teacher used Google images to give students a virtual tour of large classroom settings in India, helping students process why Ravi is so eager to stand out and get the teacher's approval in class. This "windows" work shifted some students in their analysis of Ravi; they better understood his need for attention and were less apt to label him "annoying."

Ally Nickerson's life revolves around her fear that people will discover her most tightly held secret-she can't read. Her secret not only keeps her on edge, but also distances her from other kids and adults who might help her. Ally eventually confides in a teacher, who helps her learn about her dyslexia and discover her true intellect. A few years ago at the NCTE Convention, I heard Hunt speak about her own learning challenges and the transformational influence a teacher had on how she thought about herself. Many of my students have learning challenges, and it's helpful to give them mirrors and windows into the challenges they or their peers face. I recommend the site kidshealth.org to research specific conditions in kid-friendly terms.
Alie Stumpf has been teaching reading and writing in New York City public schools since 2006. She lives in Brooklyn and currently teaches sixth-grade humanities in Manhattan.
My students have been enthralled by Lolly's Lego creations and impressed by his navigation of a violent landscape. One student misinterpreted Rose, characterizing her as cold and unfeeling because she did not seem to react to anything-even her own mom dying. It took some research about the autism spectrum for him to better understand this character. In addition, the Everytown For Gun Safety 's website captures local data about gun violence, giving kids a visceral snapshot of the severity of the problem and about which communities it impacts the most.

We are still trying to find the balance in my classroom between trusting that the author will explain and looking up historical or setting details to engage more deeply with the text.

My "next steps" in this work include finding more nonfiction picture books to make it easy for kids to find the right book during independent reading. I also need to remind myself that kids need the support to reach beyond what's comfortable and the same freedom to abandon books that aren't working for them. Some authentic #ownvoices work so rawly immerses readers in their cultural world that it can feel disorienting or overly intimate, yet other readers may find the same authenticity illuminating or validating. What remains crucial is connecting kids with helpful resources that demystify "windows," and invite them to become more responsible readers of the world.

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Build Your Stack: Challenging Stereotypes-Books as Windows - NCTE

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This blog post is part of Build Your Stack,® a new initiative focused exclusively on helping teachers build their book knowledge and their classroom libraries. It was written by NCTE member Alie Stumpf. The journey to my "stack" begins in my homogeneously White, rural New England hometown, where people assumed similarities and fought to keep the status quo.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Building Anti Racist White Educators

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We are pleased to introduce our new logo at the top of our site. It was designed by Brian Reddy, an artist and educator in Massachusetts. You can visit his website or to see more of his work.

Teaching Tolerance Grant We are also pleased to announce that we received a grant from
Teaching Tolerance (a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center) to deepen and expand our work. As a major component of this grant, we have established a formal accountability partnership with the Melanated Educators Collective to compensate Black educators to review our resources, provide guidance for our work, and co-facilitate our summer reading series. We are also looking forward to hosting our first national convening in Spring 2021, hopefully in-person in Philadelphia.

Everyone wants the best for their students.As educators, we want to do our jobs well. We want to be fair, we want to promote safe communities, and we want to support all our students in every aspect of their lives.We've created some tools to help you realize these goals that you already have.White teachers, even those with experience and compassion, can unconsciously cause pain to students of color in their classrooms. We believe that through consistent study and reflection, we can slowly address our own unconscious biases and make changes so we can better support the academic, social and emotional well-being of our students of color.We want YOU to be part of a decentralized inquiry series to support teachers to better explore their own biases and improve their own teaching practices.

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This Reading and Inquiry Series provides a monthly set of tools for learning, introspection and having conversations about issues of racism in our schools, classrooms and communities. We hope that through regular reflection and conversation, you can get better at recognizing and resisting your biases and the impact they have on your students and colleagues of color.

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We are pleased to introduce our new logo at the top of our site. It was designed by Brian Reddy, an artist and educator in Massachusetts. You can visit his website or to see more of his work.

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act.tv

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TED Ed

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The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you - Anthony Hazard

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Micro Aggressions are Like Mosquito Bites

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Micro Aggressions are Like Mosquito Bites

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fusion comedy

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How microaggressions are like mosquito bites • Same Difference

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chescaleigh

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Students Learn a Powerful Lesson About Privilege

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Students Learn a Powerful Lesson About Privilege

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BuzzFeedVideo

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Students Learn A Powerful Lesson About Privilege

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Purdue University Diversity

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Mindful About Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out

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Mindful About Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out

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Ruth King

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We're a diverse network of education and social justice field leaders from 150 organizations and 19 foundations.

Get To Know Our Growing Network

In 2012, at a meeting of the Education Funders Strategy Group an inquiry was made:

Were other funders thinking about how a different set of guiding values might lead to a different set of educational policies that would help grow and support "New Models" of learning? How can funders show up in different education spaces, wanting to honoring different contexts and communities. How can we be real about the ways the system needs to update and change?

Conversation led to clarity: The dominant narrative about education was flawed and we needed a better way to articulate a powerful vision for the future of learning. We needed more power in the field to overcome the siloed nature of 1,000 different efforts. We needed an affirmative vision to bring people together.

Movement Strategy Center supported development of a long-term strategy to build field alignment among organizations and like-minded efforts with shared values and a common agenda. The core proposition was that field and funders need to pivot and partner shoulder-to-shoulder, informed by the RE-AMP network model to fundamentally change how people relate to and strategize with each other through the practice of partnership. How we move together is as critical to who we are as what we're moving towards.

The Partnership for the Future of Learning (the Partnership) is now composed of 18 foundations and ~100 networks, organizations, districts, and institutions. Our network exists exists to protect and strengthen public education for more meaningful and equitable future of learning. For all of us.

The National Public Education Support Fund (NPESF) is the organizational and fiduciary home to the Partnership for the Future of Learning. NPESF is a hub for convening and connecting influential leaders in education philanthropy, advocacy, research, policy, and practice.

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The following partners are spokespeople, scholars, influencers, and storytellers who you can request for public-facing opportunities such as media inquiries, interviews, speeches, panels, and written pieces.

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Please tell us more about your request, including which ambassador/s that best fit the inquiry.

2020 Steering Committee Members

Shaun Adamec, Adamec Communications

Evelyn Aissa, Reaching Higher New Hampshire

Saa'un Bell, Californians for Justice

Daaiyah Bilal-Threats, NEA

Renee Blahuta, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Keron Blair, Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

Vivian Chang, Sandler Foundation

Linda Darling-Hammond, Learning Policy Institute

Nick Donohue, Nellie Mae Education Foundation

Cyrus Driver, National Public Education Support Fund

Roberta Furger, Learning Policy Institute

Frank Gettridge, National Public Education Support Fund

Jaime Koppel, Communities for Just Schools Fund

David Rattray, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce

Kwesi Rollins, Institute for Educational Leadership

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Warren Simmons, National Education Policy Center

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A Snapshot of the Partnership
Below are partners who opted in to being listed on our website. We're growing and gathering even as you read this.

Albert Sykes and Dana Bennis, IDEA: Institute for Democratic Education in America

Deborah J. Menkart and Rosalie Reyes, Teaching for Change

Shruti Sehra, New Profit

Nicholas C. Donohue, Nellie Mae Education Foundation

Charlie Toulmin, Nellie Mae Education Foundation

Monica Snellings and Kelly Young, Education Reimagined

Pam Moran, Virginia School Consortium for Learning

Sunanna Chand, Remake Learning

Renee Blahuta, Program Officer, W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Gloria Totten, Public Leadership Institute

Evelyn Aissa, Reaching Higher NH

Janet Kishbaugh and Carolyn Wood, Georgia Coalition for Public Education; Public Education Matters Georgia

Roberta Furger, Amber Hu, Barbara McKenna, and Sara Robertson, Learning Policy Institute

David Rattray, LA Chamber / UNITE-LA

Gene Wilhoit, Center for Innovation in Education

Deborah S. Delisle and Jason Amos, Alliance for Excellent Education

Keith Catone, Center for Youth & Community Leadership in Education (CYCLE)

Dr. Paul Rogers, Ashoka

Eric Braxton, Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing

Scott Hartl, EL Education

Karen DeMoss, Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College

Jonas Barriere , UnifiEd

Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, Dignity in Schools Campaign

Marla Ucelli-Kashyap, AFT

Susan Zeig, Producer, Community Concern Films//Chair, Dept of Communications and Film, LIU Post

Shelly Masur, CDE Foundation

John Affeldt, Angelica Jongco, Isabel Alegria, and Duc Luu, Public Advocates

Jaribu Lee and Jitu Brown, Journey for Justice Alliance

Warren Simmons, Kevin Welner, Michelle Renée Valladares, Matthew Garcia, National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado, Boulder

Jeff Bryant, Freelance Writer and Advocacy Journalist

Jo Anderson, Jr., Co-Executive Director, Consortium for Educational Change (CEC)

RE Katz, Illinois State Board of Education

Jon Snyder, Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education

Ellen Hume-Howard, New Hampshire Learning Initiative

Keron Blair, Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools

Chris Jackson, Big Picture Learning

S. Kwesi Rollins, Institute for Educational Leadership

José Muñoz, Coalition for Community Schools, Institute for Educational Leadership

Kyle Serrette and Daaiyah Bilal-Threats, National Education Association

Southern Education Foundation

Richard Gray and Paloma Garcia, NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools

Dr. Robin D. Cooper, Just S'UNO, LLC

Saa'un Bell, Californians for Justice

Nick Johnson, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

Danny Carlson, National Association of Elementary School Principals

Roberto Rodriguez, Teach Plus

Support Team & Consulting Partners

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Who We Are - Partnership for the Future of Learning

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We're a diverse network of education and social justice field leaders from 150 organizations and 19 foundations. Get To Know Our Growing Network In 2012, at a meeting of the Education Funders Strategy Group an inquiry was made: Were other funders thinking about how a different set of guiding values might lead to a different set of educational policies that would help grow and support "New Models" of learning?

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21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge

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21-Day Racial Equity Challenge — America & Moore

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In 1996, America & MOORE, LLC was established to provide comprehensive diversity and leadership trainings, workshops, keynotes and consultation for schools, businesses, colleges and universities. After 20 years, our list of challenging and action-oriented sessions includes, but is not limited to White Women Teaching Black Boys, The N!gga(er) Word, America Is Changing: Are You Ready?, The Personal Achievement Gap, #Zero2Hero: An Addiction and Success Story, White Privilege 101, Diversity, Power, Leadership & Moore. Founder, Dr. Moore is recognized as one of the nation’s top motivational speakers, educators and consultants, especially for his work with students K-16.
Dr. Moore is co-founder of the on-line journal Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, co-editor of Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories and the forthcoming book, A White Women’s Guide to Teaching Black Boys. Dr. Moore received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in Education Leadership. His PhD research is on Black Football Players at D3 Schools in the Midwest. (T): @eddieknowsmoore | (IG): eddiemoorejr

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Harvard University

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On the next page you'll be asked to select an Implicit Association Test (IAT) from a list of possible topics . We will also ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes or beliefs about these topics and provide some information about yourself.

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Peter Hopkins, Newcastle University

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A brief history of the enduring phony science that perpetuates white supremacy

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A brief history of the enduring phony science that perpetuates white supremacy

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Michael A. Ruane
The Washington Post

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People explore the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

The mysterious and chronic sickness had been afflicting slaves for years, working its way into their minds and causing them to flee from their plantations.

Unknown in medical literature, its troubling symptoms were familiar to masters and overseers, especially in the South, where hundreds of enslaved people ran from captivity every year.

On March 12, 1851, the noted physician Samuel A. Cartwright reported to the Medical Association of Louisiana that he had identified the malady and, by combining two Greek terms, given it a name: Drapetomania.

He also announced that it was completely curable.

Negroes, with their smaller brains and blood vessels, and their tendency toward indolence and barbarism, Cartwright told fellow doctors, had only to be kept benevolently in the state of submission, awe and reverence that God had ordained.

"The Negro is [then] spellbound, and cannot run away," he said.

The Dawn of American Slavery: Jamestown 400 special report

Cartwright's presentation a decade before the Civil War was part of the long, insidious practice of what historians call scientific racism - the spread of bogus theories of supposed black inferiority in an attempt to rationalize slavery and centuries of social and economic domination and plunder.

Here, enslaved people were beneath even the human desire for freedom. They had to be diseased.

This thinking would thrive in the 18th and especially the 19th centuries. It would mutate, vary in perversion and persevere for 400 years right up to the present day. Starting with theories of physical and intellectual inferiority that likened blacks to animals - monkeys and apes especially - or helpless children, it would evolve to infer black cultural and then social inferiority.

"What black inferiority meant has changed in every generation . . . but ultimately Americans have been making the same case," said historian Ibram X. Kendi.

Such thought exists today with pernicious assumptions about the current nature of black life and black people, still featuring age-old racist references to blacks as animals. It persists despite the advent of modern DNA science, which has shown race to be fundamentally a social construct. Humans, as it turns out, share about 99.9 percent of their DNA with each other, and outward physical characteristics such as hair texture and skin color, about which racists have long obsessed, occupy just a tiny portion of the human genome.

Even so, many Americans, blind to the origins of racist notions, "think that there's such things as black blood and black diseases and that black people are by nature predisposed to dancing and athletics," Kendi said. "These are common ideas."

Modern examples - sometimes overt, sometimes seemingly springing from the collective American subconscious - underscore the insidiousness of pseudoscientific ideas about race that were first promoted in earlier centuries.

Consider comedian Roseanne Barr's use of an ape analogy in a tweet about Valerie Jarrett, an African American adviser to President Barack Obama, which led to the cancellation of Barr's ABC television show.

Now consider Cartwright's claims in 1851 that, among other things, a Negro withstood the rays of the sun better because of an eye feature like one found in apes.

Cartwright also speciously observed that the black man's neck was shorter than a white person's, his "bile" was a deeper color, his blood blacker, his feet flatter, his skull different.

Anthony and Mary Johnson: the free black pioneers whose surprising story tells much about race in Virginia

Yet, in addition to his keen eyesight, he had other animal-like senses, smelling better and hearing better than the white man.

"Like children, [Negroes] require government in everything . . . or they will run into excesses," Cartwright said. Slavery, he concluded unsurprisingly, was for the enslaved person's own good.

The twisted vestiges of scientific racism continue to inspire white hatred of and violence toward blacks today.

"Anyone who thinks that White and black people look as different as we do on the outside, but are somehow magically the same on the inside, is delusional," mass murderer Dylann Roof wrote in the crude manifesto that he posted on the Internet in 2015. "Negroes have lower Iqs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior."

On June 17, 2015, Roof went into an African American church in Charleston, S.C., and shot nine black worshipers to death. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

'More sensation than reflection'

Self-interested justifications for atrocities against and the oppression of African Americans go back to the 1400s and an early Portuguese defense of slave trading written by Gomes Eanes de Zurara, wrote Kendi, a professor at American University in Washington, in his book, "Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America," which won the 2016 National Book Award.

Zurara wrote that captured Africans had "lived like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings . . . [and] only knew how to live in bestial sloth." Once enslaved, their souls could be saved and their lives improved, he said.

On this side of the Atlantic, Thomas Jefferson played an early and highly influential role in the establishment of pseudoscientific ideas about black racial inferiority.

On Feb. 27, 1787, more than a decade after he helped write the Declaration of Independence, future president Jefferson published his book "Notes on the State of Virginia," an extensive study of subjects including his state's geography, climate, religion and its enslaved black population.

The haunted houses': Legacy of Nat Turner's slave rebellion lingers, but reminders are disappearing

The book made clear that when the revered Founding Father said it was "self-evident, that all men are created equal," he was not including black people.

"In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection," wrote Jefferson, whose livelihood depended on the existence of slavery. "In imagination they are dull [and] tasteless. . . . This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people."

"Deep rooted prejudices . . . real distinctions which nature has made . . . and many other circumstances will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race," he wrote.

It was perhaps the most damaging and enduring instance of scientific racism in American history, Kendi said.

"This was one of the . . . best selling nonfiction books in early America," he said. "And black and other anti-racist activists were arguing against Jefferson's theory of black intellectual inferiority into the 1830s."

'Pervading darkness'

In 1849, Samuel Cartwright was engaged by a Louisiana medical committee to investigate "the diseases and physical peculiarities of our negro population."

He seemed well qualified. The 57-year-old native of Fairfax County, Va., had practiced in Natchez, Miss., for 25 years, and his patients included his friend Jefferson Davis, the future president of the Confederacy. The same year the report was issued, he was appointed professor of "diseases of the Negro" at what is now Tulane University.

He began his report for the Louisiana committee by reviewing "the anatomical and physiological differences between the negro and the white man."

Skin color was obvious.

But "there are other differences more deep, durable and indelible," he wrote. "The membranes, the muscles, the tendons . . . even the negro's brain and nerves . . . are tinctured with a shade of pervading darkness."

Then there was the true cause of the enslaved person's "debasement of mind," he wrote.

"It is . . . [the] defective hematosis, or atmosperization of the blood, conjoined with a deficiency of cerebral matter in the cranium . . . [that] has rendered the people of Africa unable to take care of themselves," he claimed.

The remarkable survival story of Angela, the first enslaved African woman recorded in Virginia

Although Cartwright's ideas were actually part of a long racist tradition, by the time he rendered them they had a new urgency, said Khalil Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

The rise of the movement to abolish slavery "created a crisis of knowledge about . . . who people of African descent were in the hierarchy of man, and what precisely were they capable of," he said.

Until then, he said, despite pronouncements like Jefferson's, science wasn't essential to justifying slavery. Now, under threat, the then-250-year-old institution was direly in need of a "scientific" rationale.

"There is a great convulsion before us," Josiah C. Nott, a South Carolina physician, anthropologist and a future medical director in the Confederate army, told a Southern Rights Association meeting in 1851.

"It is time that we should arouse from our lethargy and prepare for the crises," he said.

Nott offered his pseudoscientific rationale: "Look around you . . . at the Negro races," Nott said. "Their physical type is peculiar; their grade of intellect is greatly inferior; they are utterly wanting in moral and physical energy."

Embedded within his speech was a not-so-hidden motive: The institution of slavery, he said, "has grown up with us from our infancy, it has become part of our very being; our national prosperity and domestic happiness are inseparable from it."

Evolutionary ladder

Around that time, in 1850, an enslaved man named Jack stood before a camera in Columbia, S.C. His face was deeply creased, perhaps from age, perhaps from long exposure to the weather.

He was described as a "driver" - of what was not specified. Livestock? Wagons? People?

Originally from Guinea, in West Africa, he was owned by one B.F. Taylor Esq., who had a plantation in Columbia, S.C.

That March, Jack, who looked about 40, and six other enslaved men and women, were brought to the studio to have their photographs taken. They were specimens, and for the most part they were pictured naked.

The images were made at the behest of Louis Agassiz, the famous Swiss American scientist and Harvard professor, who was studying what was called "polygenism."

This was the latest "scientific" tool applied to the idea of supposed black inferiority: the now-discredited notion that man sprang from numerous sources and that "races" could therefore be categorized and ranked.

It would carry well into the 20th century.

The photographs were "designed to analyze the physical differences between European whites and African blacks, but at the same time . . . prove the superiority of the white race," photography scholar Brian Wallis wrote in a 1995 essay on the pictures.

"In nineteenth-century anthropology, blacks were often situated along the evolutionary ladder midway between a classical ideal and the orangutan," he wrote.

The Bible was used to justify slavery. The Africans made it their path to freedom

Such thinking went with the rise in the early 1900s of modern eugenics - the idea that a "race" could and should be purified by selective breeding and the elimination of flawed peoples.

In 1916, a New York lawyer and racial theorist named Madison Grant wrote a notorious book called "The Passing of the Great Race."

Grant, whose father, a Union army doctor, had earned the Medal of Honor in the Civil War, believed in a rigid racial hierarchy, with "nordics" at the top and blacks and others at the bottom.

"Negroes have demonstrated throughout recorded time that they are a stationary species and that they do not possess the potentiality of progress or initiative from within," Grant wrote.

His book was translated into several languages.

One reader in Germany was especially admiring. He, too, mused about extermination, but of a different "race." His name was Adolf Hitler, and he reportedly referred to his copy of the book as his Bible.

In 1936, African American sprinter Jesse Owens smashed the ideas of Hitler and Madison when he won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

But Owens's own track coach belittled the success of black runners: "It was not long ago that his ability to sprint and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle."

The old notion lived on, and so have many white social and economic advantages.

Even when "Americans have discarded old racist ideas, new racist ideas have constantly been produced for their renewed consumption," Kendi wrote.

Some day, he hoped, the time will come "when Americans will realize that the only thing wrong with black people is that they think there is something wrong with black people."

'The haunted houses': Legacy of Nat Turner's slave rebellion lingers, but reminders are disappearingearing

Freedom and slavery, the 'central paradox of American history'

Anthony and Mary Johnson were pioneers on the Eastern Shore whose surprising story tells much about race in Virginia history

Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.

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A brief history of the enduring phony science that perpetuates white supremacy

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The mysterious and chronic sickness had been afflicting slaves for years, working its way into their minds and causing them to flee from their plantations. Unknown in medical literature, its troubling symptoms were familiar to masters and overseers, especially in the South, where hundreds of enslaved people ran from captivity every year.

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Katy Waldman, Slate

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This article supplements Episode 1 of The History of American Slavery.

1. Now Is the Time to Refresh Your Memory on the History of American Slavery

2. How Black Soldiers Showed the North That the War Couldn't Be Won Without Them

3. "The Psychological Effect of Slavery on [the Slave Owner] Was Fatal"

4. Blogging W.E.B. DuBois' Black Reconstruction

Should the historian's first responsibility be passively representing the past, or actively seeking to right its wrongs, even if in some small way? Academics are divided over whether to use the term slave or enslaved person to describe black victims of institutionalized forced labor in the United States. The debate has even spilled from the windows of the ivory tower, with a Straight Dope poll inviting respondents to weigh in on the harsh single word versus the multipart "circumlocution." ( Bondsperson has emerged as a distant third contender.) It may seem like a meaningless exercise in semantics, ancillary to the system's central sin. But larger questions crowd close.

Slave remains the more popular and widespread term. Yet, in the '90s, an era that saw sensitivities to language increase, especially in academia, enslaved person supplanted it as the "superior" phrasing. The heightened delicacy of enslaved person-the men and women it describes are humans first, commodities second-was seen to do important work: restoring identity, reversing a cascade of institutional denials and obliterations. As one academic posted on a humanities and social sciences message board, " Slave is reductive and static and does not accurately reflect reality. Enslaved individuals are ... complex human beings." To reduce the people involved to a nonhuman noun was to reproduce the violence of slavery on a linguistic level; to dispense with it amounted to a form of emancipation: "Doesn't emphasizing the personhood of people held as slaves allow us to escape the legacy of slavery, and free historians to better describe the past?" Or, as the writer Andi Cumbo-Floyd eloquently put it: "We carry them forward as people, not the property that they were in that time."

Advocates for enslaved person claim that slave imagines slavery as an internal or even metaphysical condition, not an imposed and arbitrary one. Whereas enslaved person makes clear that the status is involuntary, and-as one grad student argued on the message board-dynamic. "Slavery," he wrote, "is ... a process. It's constantly being negotiated. ... For slaveholders, maintaining slavery legally, socially, and culturally is a constant struggle. And the reverse is true, of course, for slaves."

But others disagree. Historian Eric Foner thinks substituting two words where one will do is needlessly obfuscating. "I was taught long ago by my mentor Richard Hofstadter that it is always better to use as few words as possible in conveying an idea," he emailed. " Slave is a familiar word and if it was good enough for Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists who fought to end the system, it is good enough for me."

Foner's stance is not quite expressive economy uber alles. Rather, "I do not think that slave suggests that this is the essence of a person's being," he clarified. "It is a condition in which people find themselves and that severely limits their opportunities and options, but it does not mean, as some claim, that the word means they are nothing but slaves. Slaves are human beings and can be husbands, wives (in fact if not in law), fathers and mothers, members of religious groups, skilled craftsmen. ... All people have multiple identities, including slaves."

Yet, if Foner questions whether slave does what its detractors say it does, still others favor the wordprecisely because it seems to blot out the complex skein of roles that constitutes a person. For this faction, enslavement " pervades and conditions all other identities, either chosen or given." To suggest anything else flies in the face of empirical fact-it "implies a degree of autonomy that was simply never there." More, sugarcoating the language of historical recall wastes an opportunity to reinforce slavery's inhumanity, to hammer home the brutishness of the perpetrators' worldview by forcing readers to inhabit it. (One thing the slave and enslaved person camps can agree on? The term slaveholder is far too kind. "That terminology is a gift," historian Joshua Rothman told me. "They are thieves of others' humanity. Man stealers. Vampires.")

All of which raises a host of questions. Is it more accurate to emphasize people's agency within the crushing institution of slavery, or to drill down into the system's demeaning horror? And accuracy aside, what's the more responsible route for a historian?

Peer through the keyhole of the terminology debate, and you'll glimpse a bigger argument being hashed out. If you sing the inventiveness and resiliency of enslaved communities-men and women who resisted, or educated themselves; who became fully actualized humans and created a rich culture-you risk implying that slavery wasn't that degrading. You insult the experience of the victims and almost apologize for the system. On the other hand, stripping enslaved people of agency would seem to reenact the evil of taking them captive in the first place. "There's a long history of people arguing over the 'degradation' issue and using it to justify paternalistic treatment," said Rebecca Onion, co-host of Slate Academy's History of American Slavery. "After the war, people said, 'exslaves can't take care of themselves so we need to do it for them.' "

In some ways, the debate echoes conversations about domestic violence. Are battered women "victims" or "survivors"? What's worth more to someone who has endured terrible treatment: an affirmation of their indomitability, or a respectful and empathetic acknowledgment of all they've been through? In theory, the two aren't mutually exclusive; in practice, they're tricky to reconcile. Historian Roberta Gold, drawing on her experience volunteering at sexual assault crisis centers, voiced doubts about mandating one term or another:

I am all for empowering people who've been abused, but I've often wondered whether these semantics weren't more important to the counselors and advocates than to the women who'd been raped and beaten. I've heard some of the latter say "victim" without seeming to think it was a dirty word. And indeed, why should victimhood be shameful? As well, the idea that there is a right and a wrong term seems to fly in the face of one of the best lessons I got from my counselor training, which is that different people respond differently to the trauma.

All fair points, and yet I'd argue that victim does something different, language-wise, than slave-while it defines someone as a passive recipient of abuse, it doesn't shear away her humanity. Enslaved person seems useful because it can convey the monstrousness of slavery without subsuming those it describes into a separate ontological category. In fact, by underscoring victims' personhood, this phrasing perhaps conjures the system's evils more vividly.

"I have come over the course of my writing over time to try to use enslaved people when I can," Rothman said. "But I am not quite as doctrinaire about it as some people are." In his work, he's "concerned with how a sentence sounds as well as the political implications of my language. I don't like reading anything that pounds one word into your head over and over."

Isn't the aesthetic argument-sentence variety, etc.-a bit of a cop-out? "It's impossible to strike the right balance between a dehumanizing institution and one in which people were able to carve out lives of meaning for themselves," Rothman continued. "There's no right answer." Still, he would rather downplay the self-determining powers of the enslaved than understate slavery's abasements. "There's no way to get around how dehumanizing it is to be turned into a commodity," he said. "You can try to use your scholarship to restore humanity to people, but it doesn't change the history of it."

"I think we like stories of agency too much, and they make us feel better about something that was totally awful," agreed Onion. That said, she prefers enslaved person to slave. Acknowledging slavery's real degradations doesn't have to mean "using words that strip humanity from the people who were affected." That's why in Slate Academy's History of American Slavery, she's referring to the nine human beings whose stories the series tells as enslaved people. Language should be a light cast back on the past, not another set of chains.

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This article supplements Episode 1 of The History of American Slavery . Now Is the Time to Refresh Your Memory on the History of American Slavery How Black Soldiers Showed the North That the War Couldn't Be Won Without Them "The Psychological Effect of Slavery on [the Slave Owner] Was Fatal" Blogging W.E.B.

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The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

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The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias

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Dolly Chugh

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Bettina L. Love

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Dr. Bettina Love is the William F. Russell Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and the bestselling author of Punished for Dreaming

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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

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Located in Harlem, a leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library's renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.
Our Art & Artifacts and Moving Image and Recorded Sound divisions will be closed through Monday, Sept. 25. We apologize for any inconvenience.

To learn about the Center's research divisions, schedule an appointment, or find out about other services, see our resources for researchers. Please note: Division hours may vary.

The Schomburg Shop sells clothing, jewelry, books, and more for all ages. Items are created by Black and Brown artists. The Shop is open Tuesday to Saturday 11 AM-6 PM.

Though there are no guided tours at this time, we are working diligently to restore this key service to visitors in spring 2024. Please continue to check this page and the Schomburg Tours page for updates and more information.

Please note: Due to new Library policy, e-bikes, e-scooters, and electronic transportation devices are not permitted inside any NYPL location. This does not apply to mobility aids.

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Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

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The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is one of the world's leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

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If You Really Want to Make a Difference in Black Lives, Change How You Teach White Kids

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If You Really Want to Make a Difference in Black Lives, Change How You Teach White Kids

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Nahliah Webber educationpost.org

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The latest episodes of police murdering Black people have my chest burning like a building set ablaze. My heart is hot, my stomach churns. My head filled with black smoke. I am exhausted.

My body is weak from seeing, hearing, reading and crying over people who look like my father and brothers getting choked out on video ... again. My body hurts not seeing anything happen when people who look like my mother or me are killed by violent White men. The silence when Black trans- men and women are killed by police violently bangs in my eardrum. I'm sore from the hashtags marking yet another Black death gone viral. Physically, emotionally, mentally, I'm hurt. Professionally I'm tired.

I work in education advocacy and I focus on the protection, advancement and dignity of Black children and Black life. Black death is a threat to everything I work and live for, so when it happens I can't help but relate what I see, experience and feel to my work. When anything goes down with Black people I think about education and schools and whether I am a part of something that is preserving Black life or failing it.

As I saw the system choke the life out of George Floyd I became enraged because I knew the focus would be on the systems that produced this end result and not the ones that groomed both George Floyd and the cop who killed him for that moment. That the conversations would be about prosecution and police training, but not changing the places that socialize Americans for White violence and Black death.

The system that killed George Floyd and the system that raised and educated the cop who killed him are the same. And in the same way that folks are tired of the viral Black death-protest-fake trial-acquittal-rinse and repeat cycle, I am tired of folks acting like there's no direct connection between the schools where White children sit and the street corners where they choke out Black life.

There's a George Floyd in every school where Black children learn. Black children are screamed at, berated, surveilled and searched in schools. Black children are slammed and dragged, kicked and prodded in classrooms. Black children are denied an education and disrespected because of their culture. Black children are groomed for containment. We've got children walking on tape with hands over their mouths like prisoners in training.

Black children are suspended, detained, "demerited" and isolated in schools for trivial things every day. And there's a killer cop sitting in every school where White children learn. They hear the litany of bad statistics and stereotypes about "scary" Black people in their classes and on the news. They gleefully soak in their White-washed history that downplays the holocaust of Indigenous, Native peoples and Africans in the Americas. They happily believe their all-White spaces exist as a matter of personal effort and willingly use violence against Black bodies to keep those spaces white.

Yet whenever we talk about what's wrong with the systems that train and socialize young minds to become violent and depraved adults who, say choose to choke people out as part of their jobs, all we ever hear is that Black children, Black families, Black communities, Black-NESS are "behind" and stuck in gaps. Conservatives, liberals and progressives alike grow their careers and feed their families off of myths about Black deficiency.

If you let them tell it, Black kids are in terrible shape while White children are doing gloriously. But how can White kids be doing okay when they're growing up to be police officers, district attorneys, mayors, judges, media, mothers, fathers and presidents who take away Black life and call it justified? As Black bodies drop like flies around us from physical, medical, economic, and material deprivation and violence at White hands, how can we in any of our minds or metrics conclude that the Whites are alright? What kind of warped standards are these?

Because let me tell you something ...

And any school or culture that produces children to grow up like this is failing.

White children are left unchecked and unbothered in their schools, homes and communities to join, advance and protect systems that take away Black life. We never talk about this moral and human failing in White culture as something that needs to get fixed now. Instead, we pour millions of dollars into discussions, conferences, professional development, curriculum and consultancies that talk about fixing Black people. And I'm tired.

I'm tired of White people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravity, snuffing out Black life with no consequences and then having the nerve to tell Black children that they are "behind" and need to work harder.

I'm tired of White people telling Black kids that they need to be held "accountable," yet killer cops go free when they take Black life and White teachers go free when they miseducate Black kids.

I'm tired of White people taking their violent culture, standards and metrics into Black spaces and telling Black children that they don't measure up. Because who is really failing here?

Where's the urgency for school reform for White kids being indoctrinated in Black death and protected from the consequences?

Where are the government-sponsored reports looking into how White mothers are raising culturally deprived children who think Black death is okay?

Where are the national conferences, white papers and policy positions on the pathology of Whiteness in schools and how it leaves White children behind as adults?

Why isn't Bill Gates throwing billions into school programs teaching White kids how not to grow up racist and choke out Black life?

The federal government needs to commission studies on White neighborhoods that produce and insulate anti-Black physical, economic and political violence. City councils and state legislatures should redline those places and determine them to be "high risk" and unfit for life. School reformers need to lobby, plot and plan on how to disrupt school systems that produce, protect and reward White violence.

Go get Walmart and the Koch brothers to fund tens of thousands of recent White college graduates trained in anti-racism and dispatch them to the disadvantaged all-White school districts across the country full of future killer cops. Take your six weeks of training and be an anti-racist teacher in classrooms full of families that hoard resources, separate their school districts and fund the police to keep their knees on Black necks.

Simply, this time after you take off your Black Lives Matter t-shirt and recycle your protest signs, don't go back into Black spaces with your usual bullshit. This time if you really want to make a difference in Black lives-and not have to protest this shit again -go reform white kids.

Because that's where the problem is-with White children being raised from infancy to violate Black bodies with no remorse or accountability. That cop didn't just learn how to snuff out George Floyd's life in a police training or on the job. He spent a lifetime preparing for that moment with his parents and family, teachers, coaches, neighborhoods and churches.

Eventually, the fires will burn out and the aftermath of the latest uprisings will clear. The heat in my chest may subside a little, but the grief will still be there for the next time. And unfortunately, there will be a next time because I've seen this episode before. We all have. Today we scream for justice but on Monday we'll call for better police training and a guilty verdict that will only leave the system-all the systems-intact. And we'll feel better about ourselves as we return to business as usual, preparing children for White violence and Black death, again.

I'm tired.

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If You Really Want to Make a Difference in Black Lives, Change How You Teach White Kids

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The latest episodes of police murdering Black people have my chest burning like a building set ablaze. My heart is hot, my stomach churns. My head filled w

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End gerrymandering

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President Obama and Eric Holder on Why Gerrymandering is Bad for Our Democracy: Explained

We cannot achieve meaningful progress on the issues so many Americans care about when elected officials feel more accountable to the most radical parts of their base rather than to the rational, reasonable solutions that most Americans support. With the upcoming 2020 Census and subsequent redistricting in 2021 - the process by which new congressional and state legislative district maps are drawn using census data - the time to act is now. The next decade of our nation's politics and progress is on the line and we need you on the front lines.

Whether you care about providing access to affordable health care, reducing the gun violence that plagues our schools and communities, protecting voting rights, achieving equal pay, or solving the urgent threat of climate change, there is a fundamental structural barrier that prevents progress: rigged electoral maps drawn with surgical precision by politicians to preserve their party's political power and silence the will of the people.

"Because for all the hard-fought progress we've achieved together, the lack of truly representative government has too often stood in the way of change."

President
Barack Obama

"With fair maps and a more just electoral system, we can have leaders who are more likely to tackle the important issues facing our country and be more responsive to the needs and desires of the people they were elected to represent."

Eric H. Holder, Jr.
82nd U.S. Attorney General

We cannot achieve meaningful progress on the issues so many Americans care about when elected officials feel more accountable to the most radical parts of their base rather than to the rational, reasonable solutions that most Americans support. With the upcoming 2020 Census and subsequent redistricting in 2021 - the process by which new congressional and state legislative district maps are drawn using census data - the time to act is now. The next decade of our nation's politics and progress is on the line and we need you on the front lines.

The fight for fair maps is happening nationwide, but we've identified 10 priority states where we can have a unique impact on fair representation for the next decade.

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We cannot achieve meaningful progress on the issues so many Americans care about when elected officials feel more accountable to the most radical parts of their base rather than to the rational, reasonable solutions that most Americans support.

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Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture & Identity

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Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing Our Stories of Race, Culture & Identity

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Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi

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Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development

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Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development

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Enid, Lee, Deborah, Menkart, Margo Okazawa-Rey (eds)

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A Practical Guide to K-12 Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education and Staff Development

Beyond Heroes and Holidays is an interdisciplinary guide for teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Through lessons and readings, we share examples of how educators, staff, students, and parents can work together to transform the curriculum, rather than simply adding to current frameworks. We also go beyond the classroom to address issues such as tracking, parent/school relations, and language policies. There are readings and activities for pre- and in-service staff development.

Sample Contents

Purchase. (You will be taken to Teaching for Change's webstore.)

Reviews

" Beyond Heroes and Holidays is a find. It provides a rich array of resources, models and strategies for promoting multicultural education. And it can be used by all teachers, new as well as experienced, K-12 as well as university-level. This book is for anyone who has either wondered, 'How can I incorporate multicultural education into my classroom?' More... " - David Stone, Assistant Professor in Counselor Education at Ohio University, Democracy and Education

Beyond Heroes and Holidays "is a must-have for educators at all levels... The editors use the philosophy of critical pedagogy, pioneered by the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire to guide the book. Infused within critical pedagogy is a focus on race and class-based inequity in education that analyzes multicultural education through multiples lenses and from multiple levels: the individual and personal (micro); community (meso); and the societal (macro).

"I personally found this refreshing because too often misuses of what some define as "multicultural education" avoid serious analyses of race and racism in schools and society. If not careful, multicultural education has the potential to be coopted by naive and sometimes well-intentioned educators who have not critically examined their relative positions within a personal, and global context. For many of them, unfortunately, multicultural education is only about heroes, holidays, ethnic foods, and cultural attire, and devoid of serious discussions of race and class-based inequities...

"I highly suggest this book for beginning and advanced multicultural educators, schoolteachers, and college professors across disciplines, as well as activists and intellectuals outside of formal educational institutions." - Jerome E. Morris is a member of Edliberation and assistant professor in the Department of Social Foundations of Education at The University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia

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Beyond Heroes and Holidays - Teaching for Change

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A Practical Guide to K-12 Multicultural, Anti-Racist Education and Staff Development Beyond Heroes and Holidays is an interdisciplinary guide for teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Through lessons and readings, we share examples of how educators, staff, students, and parents can work together to transform the curriculum, rather than simply adding to current frameworks.

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Racial Equity, Affirmation & Literacy

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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

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Emmanual Acho

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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man - Episode 4

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Brene Brown

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Join researcher and #1 New York Times best-selling author Brené Brown as she unpacks and explores the ideas, stories, experiences, books, films, and music that reflect the universal experiences of being human, from the bravest moments to the most brokenhearted.

Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work. She also holds the position of visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business.

Brené has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She is the author of six #1 New York Times best sellers and is the host of two award-winning podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.

Brené's books have been translated into more than 30 languages, and her titles include Atlas of the Heart, Dare to Lead, Braving the Wilderness, Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of Imperfection. With Tarana Burke, she co-edited the best-selling anthology You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience.

Brené's TED talk on the Power of Vulnerability is one of the top five most-viewed TED talks in the world, with over 50 million views. Brené is the first researcher to have a filmed lecture on Netflix, and in March 2022, she launched a new show on HBO Max that focuses on her latest book, Atlas of the Heart.

Brené spends most of her time working in organizations around the world, helping develop braver leaders and more-courageous cultures.

She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve. They have two children, Ellen and Charlie, and a weird Bichon named Lucy.

Follow Brené

Brené Brown: Hi everyone. I'm Brené Brown. Welcome to the Unlocking Us podcast.

BB: Twelve years ago I bought a used microphone, I hooked it up to my laptop, and recorded a podcast on empathy and shame. It was very DIY from my kitchen table, but I fell in love with podcasting. It was intimate, raw, and most importantly it gave me a way to connect directly with you. Well, here it is a dozen years later, and I'm coming back, with Unlocking Us.

BB: I've given a lot of thought to how I want to spend this next decade, and one thing I know for sure is that I want to have more meaningful conversations. Conversations that help us unlock the deeply human part of who we are.

BB: Together we can explore ideas, stories, experiences, research, books, films, music. Anything that reflects the universal experiences of being human. From the bravest moments to the most brokenhearted.

BB: Some episodes of the new podcast will be conversations with the people who are teaching me, challenging me, confusing me, and maybe even ticking me off a little bit. Some days I'll just talk directly to you about what I'm learning and how it's changing the way I think and show up. We'll also have a way for you to send me questions for Ask Me Anything episodes. And, at some point, I'm going to hit the road and do some live shows too.

BB: Episodes of Unlocking Us will drop every Wednesday. You can find me wherever you normally listen to your podcasts.

BB: Here's the thing. I want to live, love, parent and lead with more courage and more heart. And that requires conversations that help us learn, grow, and challenge what we think we know about ourselves, about each other, and about this world. You can subscribe now, invite your friends, and I really cannot wait to have these conversations with you.

© 2020 Brené Brown Education and Research Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Brown, B. (Host). (2020, January 13). Introducing: Unlocking Us. [Audio podcast episode]. In Unlocking Us with Brené Brown. Cadence13. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/introducing-unlocking-us/

Join researcher and #1 New York Times best-selling author Brené Brown as she unpacks and explores the ideas, stories, experiences, books, films, and music that reflect the universal experiences of being human, from the bravest moments to the most brokenhearted.

Brené Brown: Hi everyone. I'm Brené Brown. Welcome to the Unlocking Us podcast.

BB: Twelve years ago I bought a used microphone, I hooked it up to my laptop, and recorded a podcast on empathy and shame. It was very DIY from my kitchen table, but I fell in love with podcasting. It was intimate, raw, and most importantly it gave me a way to connect directly with you. Well, here it is a dozen years later, and I'm coming back, with Unlocking Us.

BB: I've given a lot of thought to how I want to spend this next decade, and one thing I know for sure is that I want to have more meaningful conversations. Conversations that help us unlock the deeply human part of who we are.

BB: Together we can explore ideas, stories, experiences, research, books, films, music. Anything that reflects the universal experiences of being human. From the bravest moments to the most brokenhearted.

BB: Some episodes of the new podcast will be conversations with the people who are teaching me, challenging me, confusing me, and maybe even ticking me off a little bit. Some days I'll just talk directly to you about what I'm learning and how it's changing the way I think and show up. We'll also have a way for you to send me questions for Ask Me Anything episodes. And, at some point, I'm going to hit the road and do some live shows too.

BB: Episodes of Unlocking Us will drop every Wednesday. You can find me wherever you normally listen to your podcasts.

BB: Here's the thing. I want to live, love, parent and lead with more courage and more heart. And that requires conversations that help us learn, grow, and challenge what we think we know about ourselves, about each other, and about this world. You can subscribe now, invite your friends, and I really cannot wait to have these conversations with you.

© 2020 Brené Brown Education and Research Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Brown, B. (Host). (2020, January 13). Introducing: Unlocking Us. [Audio podcast episode]. In Unlocking Us with Brené Brown. Cadence13. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/introducing-unlocking-us/

Unlocking Us Podcast with Brené Brown & Ashley Brown Ruiz

Unlocking Us Podcast with Brené Brown & Ashley Brown Ruiz

Unlocking Us Podcast with Father Richard Rohr

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Join researcher and #1 New York Times best-selling author Brené Brown as she unpacks and explores the ideas, stories, experiences, books, films, and music that reflect the universal experiences of being human, from the bravest moments to the most brokenhearted.

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Dr. Laurie Santos, The Happiness Lab

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"This is Dolly Chugh, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business and author of the book The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias."
Chugh, D. (2018). The person you mean to be: How good people fight bias. HarperCollins.
"Dolly's builder idea is similar to what historian and American University professor Ibram Kendi has called becoming an anti-racist."
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an Antiracist. One World/Ballantine.
"Jennifer Richeson and Nicole Shelton had white subjects chat about a controversial issue with either a White or Black stranger."
Richeson, J. A., & Shelton, J. N. (2003). When prejudice does not pay: Effects of interracial contact on executive function. Psychological Science, 14(3), 287-290.
"And later work from Richeson's lab showed that white subjects have a really pronounced performance dip when they're reminded to not seem racist during the interaction"
Trawalter, S., & Richeson, J. A. (2006). Regulatory focus and executive function after interracial interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(3), 406-412.
"Research has also shown that our minds go through a whole host of mental gymnastics when our moral identities are threatened - what psychologists call motivated reasoning."
Chugh, D. (2018). The person you mean to be: How good people fight bias. HarperCollins.
"Psychologists Taylor Phillips and Brian Lowrey posed this same question to a group of white participants, with half the subjects first hearing that statement about race that I just read to you."
Phillips, L. T., & Lowery, B. S. (2015). The hard-knock life? Whites claim hardships in response to racial inequity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 61, 12-18.
"James Barr and Dan Hudson are the duo behind the hit LGBTQ+ podcast A Gay and a Non-Gay."
A Gay and a Non-Gay Podcast
"That's why Dolly wants us to strive instead to be good-ish people."
Chugh, D. (2018). The person you mean to be: How good people fight bias. HarperCollins.
"Which means that many of us enter these hard conversations with what renowned Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has referred to as a fixed mindset - the belief that our views are a fixed quantity."
Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House Digital, Inc.
"And what we know from the mindset research is that when you're in a fixed mindset and you make a mistake, your brain activation actually goes down, you actually withdraw attention from the mistake."
Schroder, H. S., Fisher, M. E., Lin, Y., Lo, S. L., Danovitch, J. H., & Moser, J. S. (2017). Neural evidence for enhanced attention to mistakes among school-aged children with a growth mindset. Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 24, 42-50.
"Dweck's research has shown that people with a growth mindset are willing to embrace harder and harder learning challenges. They even devote more neural resources to paying attention to their mistakes, which can aid learning."
Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House Digital, Inc.
"And Dweck along with colleagues like Jamil Zaki have shown that mindset has a significant impact on how people approach hard identity challenges."
Schumann, K., Zaki, J., & Dweck, C. S. (2014). Addressing the empathy deficit: Beliefs about the malleability of empathy predict effortful responses when empathy is challenging. Journal of personality and social psychology, 107(3), 475.
"Dweck's work has shown that it can be as simply as reminding yourself that you can change with a simple three letter word- yet."
Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House Digital, Inc.
The result was a powerful article entitled "I'm a white middle-class cis straight male and this is how I learnt how to be an LGBTQ+ ally." It was one of the first times he'd publicly applied the word ally to himself."
https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/21/im-a-white-middle-class-cis-male-and-this-is-how-i-learnt-how-to-be-an-lgbtq-ally-10325190/
"One study found that white people who call someone out for using a racist stereotype are judged less negatively than a black person who does the exact same thing using the exact same words and tone."
Czopp, A. M., & Monteith, M. J. (2003). Confronting prejudice (literally): Reactions to confrontations of racial and gender bias. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(4), 532-544.
"Another study showed white participants videos in which a black or white person called someone out for a racist comment."
Rasinski, H. M., & Czopp, A. M. (2010). The effect of target status on witnesses' reactions to confrontations of bias. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 32(1), 8-16.
"Richard Lapchick was introduced to the discomfort that comes from being a white ally very early on in life."
Richard Lapchik biography
"His father, Joe Lapchick, head coach of the New York Knickerbockers, had just signed Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, one of the first African American players in the NBA."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lapchick
"Richard is now a professor, author and human-rights activist, someone the NCAA recently christened "the racial conscience of sports."
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/lapchick-recognized-champion-diversity

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Episode 10: How to Be a Better Ally - The Happiness Lab

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You might detest bigotry and injustice, but have you done anything to address these problems? There are many reasons we stay silent and inactive when we know we should intervene to defend the rights of others.

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Netflix documentary (2016) Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation's prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans.

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In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom. Watch trailers & learn more.

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The New York Times

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's true origin.

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NYU Metro Center

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Founded in 1940 by Thurgood Marshall, the Legal Defense Fund is America's premier legal organization fighting for racial justice.

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Mindfulness & Multicultural Counseling Anti Racism Resources

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Mindfulness & Multicultural Counseling Anti Racism Resources

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Dr. Nathalie Edmond

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The United States was founded on white supremacy which is a system (political, economical, legal, and cultural) rather than just individuals from extremist groups, that assumes that white people are superior. In this system whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources. White people benefit from the system and anyone who is in proximity to whiteness. In this system whiteness is viewed as good and anything else is viewed as inferior. There is a deep anti-blackness sentiment in white supremacy culture based on the enslavement of black people to build wealth in the United States hundreds of years ago. Even when black people were freed from slavery, additional forms of oppression continued such as lack of reparations to help reduce the impact of generations of slavery; lynchings, jim crow laws, redlining which deepened segregation, unequal access to GI bill for returning military.

After the civil rights movement racism went underground but continued to operate in laws that disproportionately affect people of color and has led to mass incarceration (modern day slavery and the new jim crow.

Check out this video about the history of racism. Take a moment to center yourself and check in with yourself before watching any video. Decide what is self care and what is avoidance within your body.

​The system of white supremacy leads to white privilege and racism. Racism ranges from indifference and minimization to overt racism, calls for violence and genocide. Need a primer on what is white supremacy and white privilege? Check out the video below
Meditation and Self-Inquiry Exercise to connect to body, mind, and feelings

SIFT through your experiences as you watch the videos on this page

Sensations, Images, Feelings, Thoughts

What do you want to deny?

What is easy to hear?

What is hard to hear?

Where do you see yourself?

Where do you see your loved ones?

Utilize RAIN Meditation to deal with any distress that arises- Recognize, Acknowledge/Allow, Investigate, and Nuture/Nonattachment

Here is a classic article from Peggy McIntosh called "Unpacking the invisible knapsack" which talks about white privilege

White supremacy and racism negatively impacts all of us. The reality is that we are all are conditioned into racism unless we take an active and ongoing stance to become anti-racist. I ask myself daily if I am making choices that dismantle white supremacy or support it.

Explore your own racial identity. How does your racial identity interact with other identities you have about yourself. What identities are privileged and what identities are oppressed?

If you are a white person do not rely on people of color to educate you on the history of racism and how it shows up in daily life.

Remember that white silence harms. Privilege allows you to stay quiet; to not be aware of what is happening to BIPOC. Better to say something that you don't think is perfect than to say nothing at all. BIPOC notice the silence.

Develop the skills to have difficult and often emotional conversations with your circle of influence. White supremacy is maintained by every day choices people make to keep the system alive or being indifferent to the system.

Learn about microaggressions.

Read some of the books below or listen to a podcast

Create an affinity group (people with similar racial identity) to support each other in becoming anti-racist

Diversify your life. Challenge yourself to go to different neighborhoods. Support BIPOC businesses, art, books.

Donate to the organizations already doing racial justice work

Listen to what people of color are asking for.

75 things white people can do now

whiteawake.org/

21 day racial equity habit challenge

As a white person will you use your voice and your privilege to make a difference? As a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) how will you challenge the internalized racism that causes you stress, trauma, and grief? We can dismantle racism by starting on the bottom of the pyramid, by waking up to what's happening in our household and local communities.

It's ok not to know... at first. It's ok to be afraid. Becoming an anti-racist is a journey that involves a lot of self inquiry and exploration so that you can navigate the multiple truths of power and privilege. It requires humility and willingness to stretch past your comfort zone. Challenge the conditioning that we all learn from living in the United States. Becoming an anti-racist applies to all white people as well as BIPOC individuals and clinicians. BIPOC individuals can also not have an anti-racist lens because they have internalized the racism of the larger society. ​

​ Free 2 part series "Uncovering the Trauma of Racism" on 7/13 and 7/20 from 7 to 8:30 pm. Hosted through the Princeton Library and Not In Our Town (NIOT). Led by Dr. Nathalie Edmond. Save your spothere

Join Dr. Nathalie Edmond in a webinar series:
​ "Mindful of Race: Becoming an anti-racist" ​

July series is full. Next one will be in September. Check out the 8/8 half day workshop listed below.

based on first section of Ruth King's book "Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out"

developing mindfulness skills and finding out ways you can make a difference today in different areas of your life

do self-inquiry work to see how we are conditioned, what are our blindspots, and what we need to change

explore concepts of white supremacy, power analysis, nonviolent communication, microaggressions, intersectionality of identities, unconscious bias, how you may be complicit in maintaining racism, equity vs equality, how you can transform your workplace, church, business to be more inclusive and center social justice and the voices of BIPOC

Expectations for series to help guide discussions and self-inquiry: read first four chapters of Mindful of Race by Ruth King and watch following videos which you can find on this page: untold story of racism, white supremacy and privilege, and RAIN meditation. More videos will be shared during the course of the series.

Cost is based on what you can pay:
$80 (scholarship level), $120 (pay for yourself) or $160 (covers the cost for yourself and someone on scholarship)

Schedule a consultation with Dr. Nathalie Edmond to learn how you can build an anti-racist/anti-oppression lens, achieve true diversity and inclusion in your business, church, schools, local community.

Interested in joining a supervision group for therapists wanting to infuse anti-racist lens to your clinical work contact Dr. Edmond. Conversation about healing racial trauma Reflections on internalized racism by Dr. Edmond
Anti-Racism Fundamentals Workshop on Saturday, 8/8 from 1 to 4 pm via zoom with Dr. Nathalie Edmond
All of us, but white people in particular, are challenged this year to explore moving away from colorblindness or neutrality about racism to becoming an anti-racist. Mindfulness can be a path to exploring our stories through the lens of race, learning our biases, and becoming allies in the quest to have freedom for all and equity that challenges the racist foundations of the United States. Concepts such as white supremacy, white privilege, internalized racism, microaggressions, Black Lives Matter will be explored as well as actions people can take to become an anti-racist.​​

Cost: $50-$100; $50 (Scholarship level)

Register here
A conversation between Dr. Edmond and her spouse about their journey of being anti-racist

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The United States was founded on white supremacy which is a system (political, economical, legal, and cultural) rather than just individuals from extremist groups, that assumes that white people are superior. In this system whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources. White people benefit from the system and anyone who is in proximity to whiteness.

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Bettina L. Love, Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad, Dena Simmons, Ed.D, Brian Jones

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HaymarketBooks.org

Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the US education system overnight. The antiracist rebellion in the streets has shown a light on the deep racial inequality in America.

Educators and activists who have nurtured radical dreams for public schools now face an unprecedented moment of change, and the challenge of trying to teach and organize online in the midst of unfolding crises.

Scholar and author Bettina Love's concept of abolitionist teaching is about adopting the radical stance of the movement that ultimately overthrew slavery, but persisted and insisted on freedom long before that victory.
What would freedom look like in our schools? How can abolitionist educators make the most of this moment to fight for humane, liberatory, anti-racist schooling for black youth and for all youth?
Bettina L. Love is an award-winning author and the Athletic Association Endowed Professor at University of Georgia. She is the author of We Want To Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom and Hip Hop's Li'l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South.

Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy at Georgia State University. She also serves as the director of the GSU Urban Literacy Clinic. Dr. Muhammad's scholarship has appeared in leading educational journals and books. Some of her recognitions include the 2014 recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English, Promising New Researcher Award, the 2016 NCTE Janet Emig Award, the 2017 GSU Urban Education Research Award and the 2018 UIC College of Education Researcher of the Year. She is the author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.

Dena Simmons, Ed.D., is an activist, educator, and student of life from the Bronx, New York. She is the Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale Child Study Center. She writes and speaks nationally about social justice and culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy as well as creating emotionally intelligent and safe classrooms within the context of equity and liberation. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin's Press, 2021).

Brian Jones is the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He writes about black education history and politics.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem is one of the world's leading cultural institutions devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

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The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the US education system overnight. The antiracist rebellion in the streets has shown a light on the deep racial inequality in America. Educators and activists who have nurtured radical dreams for public schools now face an unprecedented moment of change, and the challenge of trying to teach and organize online in the midst of unfolding crises.

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Deepening Your Understanding of Race and Racism

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Deepening Your Understanding of Race and Racism

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PBS

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Deepening Your Understanding of Race and Racism | Tools for Anti-Racist Teaching | PBS LearningMedia

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Explore the role media plays in our understanding of race and racism. Hear from experts who share advice on how educators can use media to confront injustice, and create anti-racist classroom environments.

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WhiteAccomplices, Curated by Jonathan Osler: “Opportunities for White People in the Fight for Racial Justice: Moving from Actor to Ally to Accomplice.”

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National Museum of African American History & Culture

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#APeoplesJourney: African American Women and the Struggle for Equality

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of our Schools

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Interview with Bettina Love, Ghouldy Muhammad and Dena Simmons

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An Artist's Unflinching Look at Racial Violence

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An Artist's Unflinching Look at Racial Violence

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Sanford Biggers

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TED.com, home of TED Talks, is a global initiative about ideas worth spreading via TEDx, The Audacious Project, TED Books, TED Conferences, TED-Ed and more.

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What Anti Racist Teachers Do Differently

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What Anti Racist Teachers Do Differently

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The Atlantic

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They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching.

Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.
Ask black students who their favorite teacher is, and they will joyfully tell you. Ask them what it is about their favorite teacher, and most will say some version of this: They know how to work with me. So much is in that statement. It means that these students want to work, that they see their teachers as partners in the learning process, and that they know the teacher-student relationship is one in which they both have power. In other words, black students know that they bring intellect to the classroom, and they know when they are seen-and not seen.

As the principal of San Francisco's Mission High School and an anti-racist educator for more than 30 years, I have witnessed countless black students thrive in classrooms where teachers see them accurately and show that they are happy to have them there. In these classes, students choose to sit in the front of the class, take careful notes, shoot their hands up in discussions, and ask unexpected questions that cause the teacher and other classmates to stop and think. Given the chance, they email, text, and call the teachers who believe in them. In short, these students are everything their families and community members have raised and supported them to be.

I have seen some of these very same students walk into another teacher's classroom, go to the last row of desks, and put their head down. I have seen them sit frozen in their seat, staring at an assignment-when earlier I had heard them make jokes, talk excitedly about the content of their history class, celebrate solving a vexing algebra equation, or shake a test tube with authority, waiting for a result. Their report cards often reveal this disparity in classroom experiences: A's and B's in classes where they feel valued and C's, D's, or even F's in classes where they don't.

When black students' academic strengths are overlooked, black students are marginalized. They are kept out of advanced courses, given bad grades, and sent to the dean's office. Over the years, the power that they initially bring to school is siphoned off by educators at every level of the educational system who do not respect, and in some cases do not wish to respect, the intellectual contributions of black students.

Anti-racist teachers take black students seriously. They create a curriculum with black students in mind, and they carefully read students' work to understand what they are expressing. This might sound fairly standard, but making black students feel valued goes beyond general "good teaching." It requires educators to view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. This is a paradigm shift: Instead of only asking black students who are not doing well in class to start identifying with school, we also ask teachers whose black students are not doing well in their classes to start identifying with those students.

I spent the majority of my career in the classroom, and I loved it because-to do it well-it required that I call on all aspects of my humanity. Standing in front of my black students, I knew that it was my responsibility to invite them into the classroom and then to see, push, and protect them once they were there. Over the years, collaborating with other anti-racist educators, I co-developed an approach that was successful-and it showed in the students' attendance, grades, and quality of work.

We read articles and books, and we attend workshops centered around black pedagogy. That helps us examine cultural differences in discourse styles, so we can better understand black students' analytical approaches in essays. We learn how to integrate oral language into our curriculum, such as adding a debate unit or a poetry-recitation assignment, and to provide ample opportunities for students to work together. And we learn that nothing goes without saying and that praise and direction should be plentiful. In essence, we do what works for black students, which also works for all students.

Educators who are committed to black students use evidence in their own classrooms to find ways to improve. They analyze the assignments handed in, identifying ways in which their teaching reached-and didn't reach-all of their students. They recognize the brilliance of a black student's contribution to a class discussion and seize on it. They disaggregate data such as grades and attendance by ethnicity, look for patterns, and problematize their own practice-rather than assume that their students weren't motivated or sufficiently prepared to engage with challenging material. They ask themselves: Why did Taylor get a C on the final when he earned an A or a B on all of his other assignments, many of them equally demanding? Why is Vince silent in his group? What inspired Hile to write multiple drafts of her essay, each time asking for more detailed feedback? They seek support from colleagues who are effective teachers for all of their students, including black students, because they know that the changes they make to their teaching practice will have an impact on their students' achievement. All of this makes them better educators.

Teachers who do not value black students will shift the discussion away from their own practice when they see that black students are not succeeding in their classes. They will create bonds that eventually turn into factions with fellow educators who are also unwilling to change their approach.

To fight against systemic racism means to buck norms. Educators at every level must be willing to be uncomfortable in their struggle for black students, recognizing students' power and feeding it by honoring their many contributions to our schools. Teachers need to insist on using their own power to consistently reveal and examine their practice, and seek input from black stakeholders; they must invite black parents to the table, listen to their concerns and ideas, and act on them. Principals must clearly and consistently communicate the anti-racist vision for their school, create professional-development opportunities for staff, recognize teachers who successfully teach all of their students, and intervene when they see problems. District-level administrators must more firmly root their anti-racist messaging in black students' school experiences, making expectations for educators clear. And school-board members need to listen to educators who have shown efficacy in educating black students. They must enact policies that hold us all accountable to our black families. We must make demands of ourselves and work together in our communities.

The only measure of our anti-racist teaching will be the academic success of all of our students, including our black students.
This article is part of our project "On Teaching," which is supported by grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Panta Rhea Foundation.

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. Editor's Note: In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. In recent years, that number is closer to just three years leading a classroom. The "On Teaching" series focuses on the wisdom of veteran teachers.

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Abolitionist Teaching Network

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We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and our services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.

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Karen Gaffney - Dismantling the Racist Machine workshop follow up materials and resources

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This website is intended to provide additional support for Karen Gaffney's workshop "Dismantling the Racism Machine: Myths Taught to White People that Perpetuate White Supremacy," given to the Human Services Academy of Somerset County, NJ on July 27, 2020.

Workshop description: Based on her book Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox, Dr. Karen Gaffney leads this month's timely workshop which will focus on two core myths that white people are taught that contribute to the persistence of white supremacy. These myths include the false beliefs that race is biological and that race, including whiteness, has always existed. This workshop will explore: Why are these myths dangerous, and how do they perpetuate systemic racism and racial violence today? What strategies can we use to debunk these myths, and how can we develop an antiracist mindset? Are you ready to create a more just society?
Here are the Powerpoint slides available for you to download: Powerpoint Dismantling the Racism Machine Gaffney Human Services Academy Somerset County July 27 2020 VIDEO: Click here for the link to the recording of the event Recommended sources to follow up on the material and questions presented
Articles and Books

Karen's book Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox (on sale for month of July) (also available on Amazon)

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad (book)
"The disturbing reason some African American patients may be undertreated for pain"
"Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race" (from Race: The Power of an Illusion)
"I Don't Feel Your Pain: A failure of empathy perpetuates racial disparities" "What Scientists Mean When They Say 'Race' Is Not Genetic" "Race ≠ DNA: If race is a social construct, what's up with DNA ancestry testing?" "What's Killing America's Black Infants?" "Racism in the Kindergarten Classroom: New research finds faces of five-year-old black boys put whites in a more threat-conscious state of mind" "Why Won't Society Let Black Girls Be Children?" "The school to prison pipeline, explained" (Justice Policy Institute) "The problem is white supremacy" "White identity in America is ideology, not biology. The history of 'whiteness' proves it." "White Debt"
The 1619 Project ( The New York Times)
"Poor whites live in richer neighborhoods than middle-class blacks and Latinos" "The black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968"
"For those who say, how can we defund the police." (This is Karen's 4-part blog series on her website)
"Confronting the U.S. Census as a Weapon of White Supremacy" (Karen's article)
Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini (book)

The History of White Peopleby Nell Irvin Painter (book)

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (book)

Films, videos, and podcasts

Race: The Power of an Illusion Episode 1 "The Difference Among Us" (PBS documentary) (just under 1 hour) (Note that Episodes 2 and 3 are also worth watching. All three episodes are available on vimeo for $4.99 rental. They are also available on Kanopy, if you have access to that service through a library, like RVCC).

TED Talk with Dorothy Roberts "The Problem with Race-Based Medicine" (15 minutes)

"The Biology of Skin Color," Nina Jablonski (HHMI Biointeractive) (20 minutes)

"The Origin of Race in the USA," Danielle Bainbridge (The Origin of Everything series, PBS Digital Studios) (10 minutes)
Adam Ruins Everything: The Disturbing History of the Suburbs Michelle Alexander's TED Talk "The future of race in America" Bryan Stevenson's TED Talk "We need to talk about an injustice" Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk "The Danger of a Single Story"
A Conversation With Latinos on Race ( NY Times video)

A Conversation with Asian-Americans on Race ( NY Times video)

A Conversation With Native Americans on Race ( NY Times video)

The Surprisingly Racist History of "Caucasian" (5 minute video)
Podcast episode of "On Being with Krista Tippett" with guest Resmaa Menakem (author of My Grandmother's Hands) 'Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence' Podcast follow-up episode of "On Being with Krista Tippett" with guest Resmaa Menakem (author of My Grandmother's Hands) and Robin DiAngelo (author of White Fragility) in conversation
"Seeing White" (14-part podcast series from Scene on Radio that covers the social construction of race, the invention of whiteness, systemic racism, and more)

TED Talks with Titus Kaphar "Can art amend history?" and "Can beauty open our hearts to difficult conversations?"

The Chinese Exclusion Act (PBS film)

Slavery by Another Name (book and PBS film)

13th (film on Netflix)

interview on Fresh Air with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez ( website for his film Harvest of Empire here) (look on youtube for this film)

Note that additional resources are available on the rest of my website - go to the tab for Resources on Race and Racism as well as the additional Resource pages under that tab.

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Dismantling the Racism Machine workshop for Human Services Academy of Somerset County

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This website is intended to provide additional support for Karen Gaffney's workshop "Dismantling the Racism Machine: Myths Taught to White People that Perpetuate White Supremacy," given to the Human Services Academy of Somerset County, NJ on July 27, 2020. Workshop description: Based on her book Dismantling the Racism Machine: A Manual and Toolbox, Dr. Karen...

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W. Kamau Bell

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'United Shades of America' follows comedian and political provocateur W. Kamau Bell as he explores communities across America to understand the unique challenges they face.

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Dr. Gholdy Muhammad

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From our friends at Scholastic, we're SO happy to welcome renowned author and education expert Dr. Gholdy Muhammad of Georgia State University School of Education to Education Talk Radio. Learn about her book, which has the same title as this show.

Listen to the interview below

Was this page valuable to you?
Please share it with your friends and colleagues

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Listen: Cultivating Genius - An Equity Framework for Culturally & Historically Responsive Literacy

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From our friends at Scholastic, we're SO happy to welcome renowned author and education expert Dr. Gholdy Muhammad of Georgia State University School of Education to Education Talk Radio. Learn about her book, which has the same title as this show. Listen to the interview below

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George Takei

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George Takei: Why I love a country that once betrayed me

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When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a "security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal definition of patriotism and democracy.

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PBS

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About the Show

Asian Americans is a five-hour film series that will chronicle the contributions, and challenges of Asian Americans, the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. Personal histories and new academic research will cast a fresh lens on U.S. history and the role Asian Americans have played in it.

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The history of identity, contributions, and challenges experienced by Asian Americans.

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Don Lemon

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America is in crisis right now. A lot of people want to help, but have no idea where to start. We're going to dig deep into the reality of being Black and Brown in America, and explore what you can do to help find a path forward.

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Annaliese A. Singh

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Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing

The Social Justice Handbook Series

by Anneliese A. Singh

Foreword by Tim Wise

Afterword by Derald Wing Sue

Published by: New Harbinger Publications

Imprint: New Harbinger Publications

240 Pages, 8.00 x 10.00 x 0.52 in

Paperback

9781684032709

Published: August 2019

$24.95

Buy Now

eBooks (ePub, PDF)

9781684032723

Published: August 2019

$19.55 $13.99

Buy Now

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A powerful and practical guide to help you navigate racism, challenge privilege, manage stress and trauma, and begin to heal.Healing from racism is a journey...

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Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation (downloadable guide)

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Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation (downloadable guide)

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Everyday Democracy

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Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation (rev. 2019)

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A six-session discussion guide to help all kinds of people take part in meaningful dialogue to examine gaps among racial and ethnic groups and create institutional and policy change.

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Karen Gaffney

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New York Times

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Introducing: Nice White Parents (Published 2020)

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A new five-part series about building a better school system, and what gets in the way. New episodes of “Nice White Parents” are available here, brought to you by Serial Productions and The New York Times.

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Minor Feelings: An Asian America Reckoning

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Minor Feelings: An Asian America Reckoning

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Cathy Park Hong

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Explaining White Privilege To a Broke White Person

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Explaining White Privilege To a Broke White Person

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Gina Crosley-Corcoran

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Years ago some feminist on the Internet told me I was "privileged."

"THE F&CK!?!?" I said.

I came from the kind of poor that people don't want to believe still exists in this country. Have you ever spent a frigid northern-Illinois winter without heat or running water? I have. At 12 years old were you making ramen noodles in a coffee maker with water you fetched from a public bathroom? I was. Have you ever lived in a camper year-round and used a random relative's apartment as your mailing address? We did. Did you attend so many different elementary schools that you can only remember a quarter of their names? Welcome to my childhood.
This is actually a much nicer trailer setup than the one I grew up in.
So when that feminist told me I had "white privilege," I told her that my white skin didn't do shit to prevent me from experiencing poverty. Then, like any good, educated feminist would, she directed me to Peggy McIntosh's now-famous 1988 piece " White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."

After one reads McIntosh's powerful essay, it's impossible to deny that being born with white skin in America affords people certain unearned privileges in life that people of other skin colors simply are not afforded. For example:
"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."
"When I am told about our national heritage or about 'civilization,' I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."

"If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race."

"I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."

If you read through the rest of the list, you can see how white people and people of color experience the world in very different ways. But listen: This is not said to make white people feel guilty about their privilege. It's not your fault that you were born with white skin and experience these privileges. But whether you realize it or not, you do benefit from it, and it is your fault if you don't maintain awareness of that fact.

I do understand that McIntosh's essay may rub some people the wrong way. There are several points on the list that I felt spoke more to the author's status as a middle-class person than to her status as a white person. For example:
"If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can afford and in which I would want to live."
"I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me."

"I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed."

"If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege."

And there are so many more points in the essay where the word "class" could be substituted for the word "race," which would ultimately paint a very different picture. That is why I had such a hard time identifying with this essay for so long. When I first wrote about white privilege years ago, I demanded to know why this white woman felt that my experiences were the same as hers when, no, my family most certainly could not rent housing "in an area which we could afford and want to live," and no, I couldn't go shopping without fear in our low-income neighborhoods.

The idea that any ol' white person can find a publisher for a piece is most certainly a symptom of class privilege. Having come from a family of people who didn't even graduate from high school, who knew not a single academic or intellectual person, it would never occur to me to assume that I could be published. It is absolutely a freak anomaly that I'm in graduate school, considering that not one person on either side of my family has a college degree. And it took me until my 30s to ever believe that someone from my stock could achieve such a thing. Poverty colors nearly everything about your perspective on opportunities for advancement in life. Middle-class, educated people assume that anyone can achieve their goals if they work hard enough. Folks steeped in poverty rarely see a life past working at the gas station, making the rent on their trailer, and self-medicating with cigarettes and prescription drugs until they die of a heart attack. (I've just described one whole side of my family and the life I assumed I'd be living before I lucked out of it.)

I, maybe more than most people, can completely understand why broke white folks get pissed when the word "privilege" is thrown around. As a child I was constantly discriminated against because of my poverty, and those wounds still run very deep. But luckily my college education introduced me to a more nuanced concept of privilege: the term "intersectionality." The concept of intersectionality recognizes that people can be privileged in some ways and definitely not privileged in others. There are many different types of privilege, not just skin-color privilege, that impact the way people can move through the world or are discriminated against. These are all things you are born into, not things you earned, that afford you opportunities that others may not have. For example:

Citizenship: Simply being born in this country affords you certain privileges that non-citizens will never access.

Class: Being born into a financially stable family can help guarantee your health, happiness, safety, education, intelligence, and future opportunities.

Sexual orientation: If you were born straight, every state in this country affords you privileges that non-straight folks have to fight the Supreme Court for.

Sex: If you were born male, you can assume that you can walk through a parking garage without worrying that you'll be raped and then have to deal with a defense attorney blaming it on what you were wearing.

Ability: If you were born able-bodied, you probably don't have to plan your life around handicap access, braille, or other special needs.

Gender identity: If you were born cisgender (that is, your gender identity matches the sex you were assigned at birth), you don't have to worry that using the restroom or locker room will invoke public outrage.

As you can see, belonging to one or more category of privilege, especially being a straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied male, can be like winning a lottery you didn't even know you were playing. But this is not to imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another, or that people lacking in one area of privilege understand what it's like to be lacking in other areas. Race discrimination is not equal to sex discrimination and so forth.

And listen: Recognizing privilege doesn't mean suffering guilt or shame for your lot in life. Nobody's saying that straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied males are all a bunch of assholes who don't work hard for what they have. Recognizing privilege simply means being aware that some people have to work much harder just to experience the things you take for granted (if they ever can experience them at all).

I know now that I am privileged in many ways. I am privileged as a natural-born white citizen. I am privileged as a cisgender woman. I am privileged as an able-bodied person. I am privileged that my first language is also our national language, and that I was born with an intellect and ambition that pulled me out of the poverty that I was otherwise destined for. I was privileged to be able to marry my way "up" by partnering with a privileged, middle-class, educated male who fully expected me to earn a college degree.

There are a million ways I experience privilege, and some that I certainly don't. But thankfully, intersectionality allows us to examine these varying dimensions and degrees of discrimination while raising awareness of the results of multiple systems of oppression at work.

Tell me: Are you a white person who's felt uncomfortable with the term "white privilege"? Does a more nuanced approach help you see your own privilege more clearly?

___________________
Also on The Huffington Post:

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Explaining White Privilege To A Broke White Person

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Years ago some feminist on the Internet told me I was "privileged." "THE F&CK!?!?" I said. I came from the kind of poor that people don't want to believe still exists in this country. Have you ever spent a frigid northern-Illinois winter without heat or running water? I have.

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Teaching Tolerance

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Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz

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Yolanda Sealy-Ruiz: The archaeology of the self

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How do issues of race, class, religion, and sexual orientation live within us? How does our societal conditioning shape the way educators show up in classrooms?

Bronx native Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz challenges educators to examine their views on the communities and students they serve.

Using an archaeological approach, Sealey-Ruiz mentors educators of all backgrounds on how to do the "deep work" of excavating their personal histories and activating their racial consciousness as a precursor to theorizing about pedagogy.

Learn and see more episodes at www.crestories.org

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Project Humanities

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This list is written by Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. From McIntosh's Essay "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies", this list is what she calls the " Daily effects of white privilege." She states:

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

(McIntosh).

Source: http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

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This list is written by Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. From McIntosh's Essay "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies", this list is what she calls the " Daily effects of white privilege."

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CBS News - Teen Activist

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Teenage activist Marley Dias on the trailblazer who inspired her

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Confronting Our Discomfort: Clearing the Way for Anti-Bias in Early Education

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Confronting Our Discomfort: Clearing the Way for Anti-Bias in Early Education

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Tamar Jacobson

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My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and our Bodies

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My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and our Bodies

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Resmaa Menakem

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Lorena German

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We disrupted To Kill a Mockingbird the week of 5/21. Check out the Twitter moment below (click on image).

Our #DisruptTexts chat of To Kill a Mockingbird surfaced some great points for conversation and discussion. It led me (Lorena Germán) to reflect on the following points:

Tom and Calpurnia and the other African American characters are mistreated, misunderstood, underrepresented. The story is about a horrible court case centered around Tom, but we only hear from him as he responds when called upon. We don't hear the real Tom. We never meet him. Lula, the one African American woman that actually expresses rage at the social and political context, is presented in a negative light. Her anger is misunderstood and therefore misrepresented. She is "just" the angry black woman, fulfilling a stereotype. This is how she is mistreated and women like Lula are allowed to exist this way in the imagination of the reader. My white students often read her and immediately think: reverse racism. If you've done any work on equity and racial identity, then you know that doesn't exist. In a literary sense, she is a missed opportunity.

This book is loved by so many white Americans. It's so popular. So many have a deep relationship to it and it lives in a general cloud of nostalgia in schools. Challenging the teaching of it strikes some deep emotional chords for them. This disruption of its position on the pedestal is perceived as a threat to many because it forces them to have to reconsider their own moral compass as well as question their own teaching approach. That shouldn't stop this work. We are not called to teach texts we love, but to teach skills so our students can be critical thinkers. If we are skilled teachers, we can do that with any text. There are better texts.

To Kill a Mockingbird, if taught well, for the right audience, can surface some necessary and critical learning opportunities. The resources shared in the chat are a great starting point for that. Using the book to collaborate with a Humanities or Social Studies colleague is a great opportunity to fill in educational gaps in history that students experience. Using this narrative to teach about the Scottsboro Boys, Emmett Till, and other real-life cases that connect to Tom is a good idea. Using this narrative to discuss the post-Reconstruction south's racial context is also critical. Teaching this book and only focusing on its narrative elements is irresponsible. Without interrogating it, its flaws, or digging deeper teachers uphold the racism it presents.

Atticus has been and continues to be problematic and so many white people don't want to admit it. His advocacy has limits. He's not willing to question the very system that has allowed Tom to end up in this racist situation. In the face of pure racism and bigotry he doesn't see the need to publicly disrupt the legal system. Yes, he defends Tom. Yes he questions Mayella. No, he doesn't go beyond that. He doesn't protest. He doesn't say he's going to take on the court system. He doesn't say he's going to make structural changes so this stops happening. He doesn't use his privilege to bring about change. He lets Tom die. He is a part of the very system that let Tom die. I was encouraged by how many white folks in our chat mentioned it, though, so there's hope in progress.

Part of being a teacher that designs curriculum and lessons from a student-driven approach means that in addition to offering them choice, I select texts based on who is sitting in front of me. My job is not to teach my favorite novels or the novels I read with my mother when I was young. My job is to prepare an educational experience to meet the needs of the learner. Depending on the classroom, it may be a terrible idea to teach To Kill a Mockingbird . In my current context, I do teach it. I do so because I have a predominantly white group of students who have often already heard of it, some who have read it, and many whose parents have idolized it. I use it as an entry point to engage them in critical anti-racism dialogue. It's an entry point because it's familiar, it doesn't feel intimidating for them, and it connotes comfort and nostalgia. It's overall presumed to be a positive reading experience. So, I use the feelings it engenders for them and then introduce anti-racist ideas and elements of critical race theory* to help them see the racism in the text and in their own lives. The unit I teach asks students to dig deep into Lee's book in a way that unveils some of our own biases and presents us with a mirror. While students may enjoy moments of the book or certain characters, this isn't a text they necessarily end up loving when it's all over. In my classroom, the book is not placed or kept on a book pedestal. We lift it up, look under its pages, between its characters, and expose its gaps.
(*"elements of"- Added to clarify that we don't directly teach critical race theory to students, but mores associated ideas and elements in a broader sense. We edited for clarity considering the current political context/climate.)

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CHAT: Disrupting 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

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We disrupted To Kill a Mockingbird the week of 5/21. Check out the Twitter moment below (click on image). Our #DisruptTexts chat of To Kill a Mockingbird surfaced some great points for conversation and discussion. It led me (Lorena Germán) to reflect on the following points: Tom and Calpurnia and the other African American characters are...

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Tiffany Jewell

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School Social Work Association of America

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This page was developed as a part of a larger effort to support school social worker leadership in addressing issues of racial equity and social justice. Our SSWAA model calls for school social workers to address education rights and advocacy as a critical component of the work that we do. School social workers are ethically called to address structural inequalities that impact a students' educational trajectories and advocating for policy changes at all levels. School social workers play an important role in addressing issues of racial equity, inclusion, and social and economic justice in our schools. Particularly at a time when there is a national call for addressing racial inequalities and be actively anti-racist in our work and personal lives, we hope that these resources can support this work for school social workers nationally and internationally.

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Racial Equity and Social Justice | sswaa

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This page was developed as a part of a larger effort to support school social worker leadership in addressing issues of racial equity and social justice. Our SSWAA model calls for school social workers to address education rights and advocacy as a critical component of the work that we do.

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Glenn Singleton

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Glenn Singleton: "Courageous Conversations about Race"

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Helping Empower Anti Racist Teachers

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LOGOS, SITE DESIGN, & CONTENT © NJ HEART 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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21-Day Racial Equity Challenge — America & Moore

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In 1996, America & MOORE, LLC was established to provide comprehensive diversity and leadership trainings, workshops, keynotes and consultation for schools, businesses, colleges and universities. After 20 years, our list of challenging and action-oriented sessions includes, but is not limited to White Women Teaching Black Boys, The N!gga(er) Word, America Is Changing: Are You Ready?, The Personal Achievement Gap, #Zero2Hero: An Addiction and Success Story, White Privilege 101, Diversity, Power, Leadership & Moore. Founder, Dr. Moore is recognized as one of the nation’s top motivational speakers, educators and consultants, especially for his work with students K-16.
Dr. Moore is co-founder of the on-line journal Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, co-editor of Everyday White People Confront Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories and the forthcoming book, A White Women’s Guide to Teaching Black Boys. Dr. Moore received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in Education Leadership. His PhD research is on Black Football Players at D3 Schools in the Midwest. (T): @eddieknowsmoore | (IG): eddiemoorejr