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Supporting Early Language Development for Diverse Learners (posted 2/12/20)

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Supporting Early Language Development for Diverse Learners (posted 2/12/20)

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An excellent article that highlights the value of children's diverse languages and dialects, and the rich cultural and linguistic diversity they bring.

http://www.ascd.org/ascd-express/vol16/num06/supporting-early-language-development-for-diverse-learners.aspx?fbclid=IwAR34NPYvsVKfgFQb31FxZ_h0JWiypTS4z7iYb3dzPD3WcKaGJjocQ-lpgAk

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Empowering Educators: A Guidebook on Race & Racism (posted 2/12/20)

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Empowering Educators: A Guidebook on Race & Racism (posted 2/12/20)

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An excellent guide to ABAR education. I find the questions for reflecting on subject areas, and evaluting and selecting literature through an ABAR lens particularly valuable! This work is integral to developing intercultural understanding, and there are many useful ideas and strategies for engaging in antiraacism work.

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Every Wednesday evening for the last year, I have been relearning Hindi, my third language after Bengali and English. Although it's been wonderful to feel more connected to my culture, I've been surprised and somewhat disappointed to discover the gendered structure of my mother tongue. English has always been my default, which doesn't have as many gender-based distinctions, so with Hindi, I have had to learn how to think and speak in a new way, one where I am constantly aware of gender.
More like this:
- Seven Japanese words that help us to be calm

- The language rules we know but don't know we know

- Why 'they' is the ultimate 21st-Century word

The world has historically prescribed the male gender as default, a construct that is reinforced through language. As humans, our collective identity is understood as masculine - we use 'man' to describe our species and 'mankind' as a way to unify us. In her book Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez writes that: "Seeing men as the human default is fundamental to the structure of human society." Our culture and language follow a generic masculine framework where, she explains, "male bias is so firmly embedded in our psyche that even genuinely gender-neutral words [like doctor or actor] are read as male". In some cases, the masculine form speaks for all genders: for example, in India's legal system, documents are written in the masculine, which is considered to include women unless otherwise specified. In many ways, language both reflects and creates the gender inequalities that exist in society. How we speak affects how we think and how we interpret the world around us. So, as we are working to reimagine our defaults around gender and build a more socially-conscious and inclusive culture, we also need to reckon with language.

Spanish is one of the four most-spoken gendered languages - along with French, Arabic and Hindi (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld / Getty Images)

Global languages fall into three categories with respect to gender: gendered languages like Spanish (where nouns and pronouns have a gender), genderless languages such as Mandarin (where nouns and pronouns don't have a marked gender), and natural gender languages like English (with gendered pronouns and genderless nouns). The gender structure of the language we're speaking will have the effect of making us more or less aware of gender. With gendered languages, we have to think of gender while conjugating a verb or using a noun, so is it possible that gender-based stereotypes and gendered power structures are more likely to influence our thoughts and opinions about the sexes?

While learning Hindi, a gendered language, I realised that I was expected to show respect to men, sometimes more than women. I wasn't allowed to speak to my male and female classmates in the same way: With men, I was taught to use the honorific plural ( Aap kya kar rahe hain? over Tu kya kar raha hai? to ask 'What are you doing?'), but could only show respect to women using feminine endings ( Aap kya kar rahin hain? over Tu kya kar rahi hai?). Although we can respectfully address both genders, we can't use the same language structure, which calls attention to the gender of the person we're speaking to.

In Hindi, some wives use aap (formal) to refer to their husbands, while husbands use tum, the informal 'you', for their wives (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld / Getty Images)

Depending on where we're from and how we learned the language, we may be taught to show equal respect to men and women, or to treat them differently. Although formal language can be linked to respect, informal language can also be used to express intimacy or affection. With Hindi, some wives use aap, the respectful way of saying 'you', to refer to their husbands, while husbands use tum, the informal 'you' for their wives, and other couples use the same pronoun for each other.
The male default
The world's four most spoken gendered languages are Hindi, Spanish, French and Arabic. They share many of the same gender patterns: masculine as the default grammatical gender, mixed-gender groups using masculine endings, and feminine nouns derived from masculine versions. Through their structure, they emphasise Criado Perez's observation of the male default.

For example, Spanish follows a generic masculine when it's unclear if a subject is male or female; a male friend is amigo and a female friend is amiga, but a group of friends is amigos. The male default also applies to mixed-gender groups, like amigos, which use masculine endings. The same goes for adjectives: a group of good female friends are buenas amigas, but as soon as there is one male in the group they'll be buenos amigos. It's also clear that masculine is the standard gender in Spanish, since it's the default form used in dictionaries.

In Arabic, the origin of all words is their masculine version. When referring to women, the feminine ending taa marbuta (ة), which sounds like an 'ah', is added to words. Words like katib 'writer' don't require a distinction when describing men, but if we're talking about a female writer, we have to add the feminine ending taa marbuta ( ة) katibah 'female writer'. So, when we're speaking to or about women, we're more aware of their gender identity because we can't use the male default and have to change the way we speak. Furthermore, the masculine conjugation of words is also used when referring to any group that has a single male, regardless of the gender of the majority of the group. So, when referring to a group of one male writer and 100 female writers, it is 'male writers' ( kottab), not 'female writers' ( katibat).

The languages we speak influence how we construct society, and can even set the precedent for gender equality in our social systems. In a 2011 study, Jennifer Prewitt-Freilino, associate professor at the Rhode Island school of design, along with colleagues, found that countries with gendered languages experienced higher average gender inequality. The study also revealed that natural gender languages like English experienced the most equality, although one might expect that genderless languages would be the most equal.

"Historically, genderless language can cause people's minds to jump to the masculine, without calling it out specifically [like assuming the term 'congressperson' is referring to a man]," Prewitt-Freilino tells BBC Culture. "This is why we found that natural gender languages seem to be better at this, because when they create reformed language, they're building new gender-neutral words in gendered language, which calls attention to the correction of the gendered system [and makes it easier to recognise bias]."
Towards a more inclusive language
There has been some advocacy around language reform in the last few years, especially with regards to French and Spanish, which are heavily gendered languages with no neutral forms. In several Spanish-speaking countries, people have created gender-neutral options to make their Spanish more inclusive, through endings like -e, -@ and -x, which provide flexibility beyond the gender binary. In Spain, a grassroots movement to rewrite the constitution using gender-neutral language (instead of the existing masculine form) has reached the government. In France, activists have introduced a mixed gender style called écriture inclusive, which adds both gendered endings to a word to make it gender-neutral ( ami·e·s). Institutions are also showing support, with the European Union creating an autonomous body called the European Institute for Gender Equality, which works to enforce policy-based gender equality and even funds research around language reform.

In Arabic, the origin of all words is masculine. When referring to women, the feminine ending taa marbuta (ة), is added to words (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld/Getty Images)

"Language is a constantly evolving process, but people have a sense that there is a right and a wrong. The problem is that not everybody agrees on what that language should be. The conventions are moving so fast that it's hard for anyone to stay on board," adds Prewitt-Freilino. "It can also be used as a gatekeeping mechanism of 'Are you in or are you out?' without recognising the discussion of why different people value different terms around identity and that it should always be a conversation."

There has been an important interplay between conversations around gender and identity, and how they are represented in language. For years, the Latin American community in the US has discussed different identity terms - first pushing back against 'Hispanic' which was seen as a colonial word promoting Spanish heritage, then using 'Latino/a' as a way to meaningfully bring together different ethnic groups, and now working to reform the gendered terms through the label ' Latinx'. But although 'Latinx' is being used by some young people in the US, many people of Latin-American descent in other countries don't identify with it.

"Even if it's not fully endorsed, it's part of the conversation now," political psychologist Efrén O Pérez tells BBC Culture. "It's entertaining to see it unfold as a social scientist. You can talk about how you don't like the word or not, but once you use it, it's actually influencing how you think about politics."
Why gender-neutral terms matter
People may dismiss gender-neutral language, seeing it as unnecessary or purely ideological, but Pérez's research shows that it actually impacts public opinion. His 2019 study with Margit Tavits revealed that using gender-neutral pronouns increases positive attitudes towards women and LGBTQ+ people, through reducing the prominence of male identity and subsequently causing less gender-based bias.

"Our language essentially directs our attention to some aspects of reality and away from other aspects of reality. If I speak English, I'm less likely to make male/female distinctions than if I speak Spanish," explains Pérez. "You can't change culture, but as some of these gender-neutral terms reveal, you can adjust the terms that you use. Maybe we can't change entire vocabularies, but once you introduce certain gender-neutral options to the extent that people employ them or subscribe to them, it does matter."

People have also found ways to create gender-neutral options within existing language structures. Shweta Vaidya, a transgender writer based in Mumbai, uses the plural hum (we) form of Hindi as a gender-neutral alternative.

"I avoid gendering myself by using a passive voice, and if I want to assert my female pronouns I will, but sometimes it's easier to just be gender-neutral and get away with it," Vaidya tells BBC Culture. "When I use hum, I don't have to use gendered endings, and it's not weird in Hindi, because people speak like this in places like Kanpur, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in Central India."

In Spain, there is a grassroots movement to rewrite the constitution using gender-neutral language (Credit: Javier Hirschfeld / Getty Images)

Gender identity and expression are unique in every culture, but the language around them is still limited. Western definitions of gender variance tend to overshadow how we view gender identity, even in other parts of the world. "Being transgender in a Western vocabulary is a system that we are following right now, which has certain limitations to what people perceive to be the norm. Gender has been colonised - gender minorities like the Faʻafafine community in Samoa have been represented as gay men, when they have their own understanding of gender identity," adds Vaidya. "We know that there has been a whitewashing of language, where cultural nuances around gender have been lost in translation, but we haven't corrected our mistakes. Translation is not easy, especially when you try to translate cultural experiences into identities."

But even if cultures have language for gender variance, that doesn't guarantee understanding or acceptance. Hijras, a sociocultural group of trans women and intersex people described as the 'third gender', have a long history in South Asian culture. But for centuries, hijra and 'transgender' have been used interchangeably, which has led to India's trans community being misunderstood and undervalued. When the Transgender Persons Bill was passed last year, the Hindi translation used the term ubhaylingi (hermaphrodite) to represent trans people, so the law doesn't protect or recognise the whole community. "As many trans people have repeatedly asked, 'If we are supposed to be the third gender, who gets to be the first?'" explains Vaidya. In this way, language has an undeniable impact on who can access equal rights.

Language reform is possible, but it takes time. This doesn't necessarily mean dismantling existing systems, but rather making space for more inclusive options. Instead of allowing language to construct how we view the world, we could push in the other direction, questioning how we can reflect our world through our choice of language.

"It's hard to think about systems of language without thinking about the more globalised context in which we're existing," says Prewitt-Freilino. "I think it's a give and take - what terms get created; how language shifts and gets used in different ways. What's really interesting to me is the back and forth between the language and the culture."
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Languages have very different rules when it comes to gender - but does that have an impact on how we see the world? Nayantara Dutta takes a look.

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Useful book for really grappling with the roots of and implications of systemic racism and white supremacy. White Fragility.

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A super YA novel in Verse featuring a Latina from Harlem

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A super YA novel in Verse featuring a Latina from Harlem

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Best for grades 9-12

Xoiomara - or X- wants to let poetry help her find her identity and voice but she struggles against her mother's conservative Catholic values, the sexism that  confuses her ermerging interest in boys. Will she find the courage to perform in local poetry slams?

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Best for Grade 8-10: A Long Way Down

An African-American Teen witnesses his brother killed in a gang shooting - and has to decide if he will follow the unwritten code of his inner-city neighborhood and take revenge by shooting the supposed shooter - or stop the cycle. He is visited by the ghosts of friends and family who've been shooting victims and at the end of the novel, it is unclear how he will decide. Powerful!

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Anti-Racist : a person who opposes racism and promotes racial tolerance.

Bias : favoring or showing prejudice towards certain people or ideas.

BIPOC : Black, Indigenous and People of Color.

Cultural Appropriation: inappropriately and/or incorrectly using or taking advantage of, or claiming ownership and rights to use another culture's capital and patrimony; such as fashion, trends, iconography, traditional art, ceremonies, etc.

False Narrative : a story that you perceive as being true but has little basis in reality, this perception can be due to insufficient or inaccurate information or to insufficient or inaccurate assessment.

NBIPOC : Non-Black Indigenous People of Color

Person of color : a person who is not white or of European parentage.

Stereotype : a category or group that we put people into (thinking a certain type of person or thing acts/thinks/looks a certain way).

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An interactive online teaching resource against discrimination. Try out this free tool designed by the Anne Frank House and partners. Ready for distance learning.

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Developing Intercultural understanding in MYP Design

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Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools collaborate to bring people's history to the classroom.

A dedicated website to encourage and support teaching about Central American history.

The best selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, YA, and educators.

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Building social justice starting in the classroom.

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One of my current roles in my school is to lead a group of staff who are interested in exploring the significance of interculturalism within our school community, and to explore ways of furthering intercultural education and sharing relevant best practice.

This has led me to creating the following image. It is based on work originating in the 1970s by cultural / social anthropologists and, soon after, business theorists and there are many similar images on the Internet. I wanted to create a 'fresh' version so that I could release it on a Creative Commons License, one that could be freely shared amongst those who find this particular model of culture useful. (Many related images seem to be copyrighted, sometimes because they have used a copyrighted image of an iceberg).

The idea of culture as an iceberg is simple but powerful when reflecting on how a school could actively promote intercultural education. We readily identify with the more 'visible' and 'obvious' aspects of culture, and so recognise where we celebrate these aspects within the school programme. However, for genuinely meaningful intercultural education to take place, the whole school community needs to reflect on and learn about the less tangible but no less important 'invisible' aspects as suggested below the waterline in the image below. Crucially, the cultural aspects on the visible part of the iceberg are influenced by the sub-surface values, beliefs, notions, attitudes and assumptions.

I will post the same image and related links on my school's interculturalism blog: http://interculturalism.blogspot.com/.

Click on the image for a larger version.

The iceberg model of culture has been arrived at through the work of many theorists, including those referenced below:

French, W., & Bell, C. (1995). Organization development. (5th Ed.). [Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall International]

Hall, E. T. (1976) Beyond Culture [New York: Doubleday]

Selfridge, R., Sokolik, S. (1975) "A comprehensive view of organizational management". MSU Business Topics, 23(1), 46-61

Weaver, G. R. (1986). "Understanding and coping with cross-cultural adjustment stress". In Paige R. M. (Ed.), Cross-Cultural Orientation, New Conceptualizations and Applications. [Lanham, MD: University Press of America]

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Visualising the Iceberg Model of Culture

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One of my current roles in my school is to lead a group of staff who are interested in exploring the significance of interculturalism within our school community, and to explore ways of furthering intercultural education and sharing relevant best practice. This has led me to creating the following image.

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"In Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding, Debra Rader has produced a clearly-structured, carefully researched volume which informs and encourages its readers to integrate intercultural understanding into their teaching, and also challenges them to reflect on issues relating to their own cultures, beliefs, values and attitudes. This new title promises to be a must-read for anyone with a concern for supporting the young adults of tomorrow in developing the skills and attributes that will be essential if they are to live peacefully with others in our increasingly complex world." - Mary Hayden, Professor of International Education, University of Bath, UK

"This is a remarkable book, perhaps even a courageous one. Debra Rader's appeal to teachers blends theory and practice into a narrative that is passionate and inspiring, urgent and compelling, with a mine of resources and ideas for lessons and activities. It will be a seminal text on how to address the most important educational challenge of our era." - Terry Haywood, Trustee, Alliance for International Education and International Schools Consultant

"Debra Rader's book is a deep dive into what intercultural understanding is, why it is vital to our global wellbeing, and how to foster it in children. Approachable, insightful, practical, and hopeful, it is a must-have resource for educators committed to making the world a better place, one child at a time." - Rana DiOrio, author of the award-winning What Does It Mean To Be . . .?® children's picture book series

"Digitalisation has connected people, countries and continents, bringing together a majority of the world's population in ways that vastly increases our individual and collective potential. But the same forces have also made the world more volatile, more complex and more uncertain. More than ever, schools are called to help students see the world through different eyes, appreciate different cultures and divergent thinking, and to build a shared understanding among groups with diverse experiences and interests, thus increasing our radius of trust to strangers and institutions. This is easy to say, but really hard to accomplish in a classroom. This book provides a framework for how to do this, and not only that, it also illustrates in insightful and practical ways what it might look like when intercultural understanding is lived in our daily lives." - Andreas Schleicher, Director OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General

"This book is an excellent resource for the multicultural and multilingual children I teach. The literature recommendations are diverse, relevant to my students' lives, and consistently provide opportunities for meaningful conversations. The lesson plans have been transformative for all the students in my class, and have deepened their appreciation of and thirst to learn more about all cultures and languages. Through this learning, my entire class raised their awareness of how we can honor our differences, engage with one another respectfully, and each help make the world a better place." - Grace Friedman, White Center Heights Elementary School, Seattle, WA, USA

" Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding is a critical exploration on how, as educators, we can intentionally build the values and skills children need to engage positively in an ever-increasing intercultural world. The rich array of quality children's literature featured, and the thoughtful and well-developed lesson plans that Ms. Rader has created to support the development of these essential skills offer valuable practical application for the classroom. Teachers will love them!" - Julia Alden, International School Leader and Educator

"With this thoughtful book, Debra Rader has given primary schools the gift of the 'what', 'why' and 'how' of intercultural understanding. Whereas previous experiences in developing intercultural understanding at the primary level may have been limited to food, flags and festivals, Rader's framework provides us with components of intercultural understanding and language with which to dialogue about it. This language is particularly helpful as we begin to think of ways to assess intercultural understanding. Based on current research, Rader also provides us with meaningful suggestions and activities that will allow all of us to integrate the development of intercultural understanding in our programs - rather than having it as an "add on" to our curriculum. This book serves as a very useful tool to extend the emotional intelligence of teachers." - Ochan Kusuma-Powell, co-author of Becoming an Emotionally Intelligent Teacher

"This book could not have appeared at a better time. It does more than offer a clear and easy-to-read exploration of intercultural understanding, a topic that matters in our changing, challenging and uncertain world. The researched-based guidelines will support teachers as they guide young children and help them understand and learn from the diversity they see around them. The many examples, strategies and activities will help children develop accepting and positive attitudes towards the many ways people live, speak, dress, eat, worship and celebrate. Rader provides a Framework for Developing Intercultural Understanding and invites teachers to integrate it into their prescribed curricula, connect their teaching to children's lives and transform their classrooms into exciting multicultural and multilingual places." - Roma Chumak-Horbatsch, Associate Professor School of Early Childhood Studies, Ryerson University, Canada

"Debra Rader has written an invaluable and comprehensive resource for educators to support the development of intercultural understanding in the children they teach. Both new and veteran teachers will find a rich treasure trove of activities and literature that can be easily woven into any existing curriculum. An impressive work!" - Mary Hannert, Early Childhood Educator

"Debra Rader makes a strong case for including teaching and learning for intercultural understanding into the school curriculum of young learners. Based on both thorough research and her own hands-on experiences, she clearly and passionately offers ideas as to how teachers can encourage and nurture intercultural understanding through rich discussions, meaningful activities, and detailed lesson plans based on quality children's literature. In addition, readers have a chance to reflect on their own understanding of the topics as they "pause for reflection" at various points along their journey through this most important book. A must-read for all teachers as they strive to teach compassion, and appreciation　and understanding of both their own cultures and traditions and those of others." - Sally Ott, Former Lower School Principal, The Latin School of Chicago

"Debra Rader takes us on a guided journey addressing a wide range of developmentally appropriate tasks aimed at helping young learners enhance their intercultural sensitivity, knowledge and skills. This book presents a comprehensive theoretical underpinning of the oftentimes-abstract concepts and critical issues related to intercultural development in concrete and tangible ways, laying a foundation for the wide range of practical strategies included in each chapter. This book is a welcomed and needed contribution for teachers concerned with enhancing the intercultural development of young children." - Kenneth Cushner, Emeritus Professor of International and Intercultural Education, Kent State University, USA

"In producing this title, Debra Rader has given educators a book well worth taking the time to read. She has an impressive CV in a number of areas in the field of education, which includes over 30 years of working in primary schools." - Gustavo M Lanata, International School Magazine

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Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding: Engaging Young Hearts and Minds

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Teaching and Learning for Intercultural Understanding is a comprehensive resource for educators in primary and early years classrooms. It provides teachers with a complete framework for developing intercultural understanding among pupils and includes practical and creative strategies and activities to stimulate discussion, awareness and comprehension of intercultural issues and ideas.

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Educators now face unprecedented challenges. Soul-searching and outcries for justice demand long overdue reforms of curricula and of classroom practices to confront racism. At the same time, we must work to combine and integrate these reforms into more online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe.

Teaching literature-in-translation, especially by contemporary writers, is one way to approach expanding diversity in both what and how students learn. This is one of the primary missions of Words Without Borders Campus, the public access education project that evolved from Words Without Borders, the online magazine which, since its founding in 2003, has published more than 2,500 stories, poems, essays and features translated from 122 languages from 139 countries.

I serve on the Words Without Borders board, and for the past six years, as Education Chair, I've been helping to steward the Words Without Borders Campus site. Edited by author and education specialist, Nadia Kalman, assisted by Executive Director Karen Phillips and the WWB staff, the site organizes themed units of literature in translation aimed at the first two years of college classrooms and at junior and senior levels of high school.

Free of charge, teachers can use a whole country-based curriculum, a themed unit, or single text, supported by teaching resources. So far, WWBC offers curriculum organized around six countries: China, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Mexico, and Russia. Scheduled next year are new units from South Korea, to be followed by non-anglophone West Africa.

The site currently counts 893 educators from around the world. In 2018, WWB-Campus earned honorable mention for the "Innovations in Reading Prize" from the National Book Foundation, a rare distinction.

Words Without Borders Campus has responded to the current historical moment by posting additional classroom resources to fight racism, xenophobia, and social injustice on its weekly blog feature. These include Sandrine Kao's story "The Park Bench" (translated from the French by Jane Roffe) that poignantly confronts anti-Chinese racism and xenophobia; and Marco Avilés essay, "I Am Not Your Cholo" (translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes) about the racism facing Lantinx immigrants that references directly James Baldwin's lifelong fight for civil and human rights.

From 2014-2016, Words Without Borders Campus completed a beta-testing phase in 75+ classrooms, one of which I taught at UNLV, ranked among the top three most diverse campuses in the United States. My students represented this diversity. My course was designed for a full semester, organized around units from Mexico, China, and Egypt.

From the Egypt unit, writing full of subtleties based on religious customs stimulated discussions of the nuanced contexts of Islam and its social influences, especially through reading "The Veiler of All Deeds" by Hamdi Abu Golayel-a tale of seduction, betrayal, and revenge involving a corrupt businessman, a cleric, and a neighborhood. Within events of the Arab spring, we explored nonfiction and graphic fiction linked to news reports, videos and commentaries. We also discovered pioneering women writers. We learned in a memoir by Miral Al-Tahawy?the first Bedouin woman author to emerge from the region?and through feminist poetry by Iman Mersal, how the Arab spring has been not only a movement for political rights but for women's rights, too, thus three strong social justice themes emerged from the unit: human rights, women's rights, and the struggle for freedom of expression.

Units from China focused on recent history, including how the era of "openness" (1980-2012) may have been a reaction to the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, explored through poetry by Yu Jian and fiction by Yu Hua. The current regime's repression and hard-liner return to Maoism under President Xi Jinping may be in part comprehended in this context-many of China's leaders survived abuses during the Cultural Revolution, so uncontrolled political and mass movements are anathema to them. We also examined the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement and its brutal repression as well as other prohibited topics in China, causing students to appreciate the values of free expression and democracy.

Exploring translation opens up awareness of how language shapes our worldview. One very unusual student for his diversity and background-an African-American-Japanese raised mostly in Japan who had studied both Japanese and written Chinese-came alive in our class in ways he hadn't shown before, leaping to the white board to draw out examples and explain how he reads a language in characters. Our class shared and appreciated this flowering of his identity.

One of the most controversial issues Words without Borders ever published is on "The Mexican Drug War". One of the units for Mexico is organized around this disturbing theme. Before this, our class studied "Leaving Home" and its heart-wrenching issues of immigration through poetry by Fausto Guardarrama López and fiction by Aura Estrada. (This theme has expanded since to include an excerpt from the impressive first novel by Aura Xilonen, The Gringo Champion, that tells the story of the young protagonist's escape from an ICE raid). We sampled the folklore and beauty found in indigenous writing translated from the Purépecha and Mazateco languages. We learned about Mexico's history and art, and about the variety and complexity of Mexican diversity spread out across the spectacular mosaic of its geography.

For the unit on the Mexican Drug Wars, with its shocking realities and crimes, I was apprehensive that such traumatic readings might cause the class to dead-end into numbness and pessimism?not at all the influence Words Without Borders Campus intends. I should have known better. Informed by the sharing of a first generation Mexican-American in our class, my students found alternative truths about this hard subject, not so much about the "war" as about how Mexico and its people are struggling daily to come to terms with an established narco-culture taking over its society. The story of popular resistance, and of the movement to demand justice for the victims from Ayotzinapa?the September 2014 disappearance of 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College on their way to demonstrate to support their impoverished school?became the story my students wished to pass on and carry back to their communities.

Increased awareness of the world and of its diversity should be among the top concerns of education in the twenty-first century. Failures to confront racism, and the rise of extremist nationalism and xenophobic populism not only in the United States but across the world, might in part be blamed on how a generation of educators have failed to teach enough awareness of other voices, other languages, other cultures than those of a predominantly white majority.

Words Without Borders Campus aspires to be part of correcting this failure. The site also offers resources and tools for transitions to online education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The site teaches a more informed self-awareness, especially for students who discover their first texts from the language and country of their heritage, which can affirm and empower them. As one pilot class student from La Guardia Community College in Queens, New York, described the effect of his reading across cultures so aptly: "It prepares you for life."

Douglas Unger is Director of the Creative Writing International Program at the University of Nevada.

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Teaching Diversity Across Cultures: Words Without Borders Campus | The International Educator (TIE Online)

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Educators now face unprecedented challenges. Soul-searching and outcries for justice demand long overdue reforms of curricula and of classroom practices to confront racism. At the same time, we must work to combine and integrate these reforms into more online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe.

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Association for International Educators and Leaders of Color |

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ÖL

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Parents and other caregivers are seeking resources to help them hold children through the current, terrible wave of racialized violence, which is exacerbated by the tensions and vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. As scholars, writers, and parents who use books to connect with our children and spark conversations with them, we've developed this book list to help engage the broad range of emotions and needs of diverse children in our multiracial society. In some cases, we've highlighted worthy, albeit lesser-known titles. Some are older books, some are newer, and a few will publish later this year but are available for pre-order now. This list skews heavily towards #ownvoices books and is arranged alphabetically by title.

Please use these books to help you do the work of making the world a safer, more equitable place for all children.

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20 Picture Books for 2020: Readings to Embrace Race, Provide Solace &...

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As scholars, writers, and parents who use books to connect with our children and spark conversations with them, we've developed this book list to help engage the broad range of emotions and needs of diverse children in our multiracial society.

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self-portrait didn't quite work!!! slk

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It's shocking how little has changed between the races in this country since 1963, when James Baldwin published this coolly impassioned plea to "end the racial nightmare." The Fire Next Time--even the title is beautiful, resonant, and incendiary. "Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" Baldwin demands, flicking aside the central race issue of his day and calling instead for full and shared acceptance of the fact that America is and always has been a multiracial society. Without this acceptance, he argues, the nation dooms itself to "sterility and decay" and to eventual destruction at the hands of the oppressed: "The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream."

Baldwin's seething insights and directives, so disturbing to the white liberals and black moderates of his day, have become the starting point for discussions of American race relations: that debasement and oppression of one people by another is "a recipe for murder"; that "color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality"; that whites can only truly liberate themselves when they liberate blacks, indeed when they "become black" symbolically and spiritually; that blacks and whites "deeply need each other here" in order for America to realize its identity as a nation.

Yet despite its edgy tone and the strong undercurrent of violence, The Fire Next Time is ultimately a hopeful and healing essay. Baldwin ranges far in these hundred pages--from a memoir of his abortive teenage religious awakening in Harlem (an interesting commentary on his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain) to a disturbing encounter with Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. But what binds it all together is the eloquence, intimacy, and controlled urgency of the voice. Baldwin clearly paid in sweat and shame for every word in this text. What's incredible is that he managed to keep his cool. --David Laskin

"Basically the finest essay I've ever read. . . . Baldwin refused to hold anyone's hand. He was both direct and beautiful all at once. He did not seem to write to convince you. He wrote beyond you." --Ta-Nehisi Coates

"So eloquent in its passion and so scorching in its candor that it is bound to unsettle any reader." -- The Atlantic

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the fire next time (vintage international)

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ethnic & regional / african american & black

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biography & autobiography / personal memoirs

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social science / discrimination & race relations

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social science / ethnic studies / african american studies

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ethnic & regional / african american & black

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biography & autobiography / personal memoirs

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belletristik / lyrik / dramatik / essays

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ethnic studies - african american studies

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ethnische gruppen und multikulturelle studien

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social science / discrimination & race relations

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social science / ethnic studies / african american studies

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social science/ethnic studies - american - african american studies

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books on racism; racism books; books about race; books by black authors; books on racism in america; james ollected essays; i am not your negro book; the fire this time; notes of a native son james baldwin; i am not your negro; top rated books; summer reads for women 2020; books; history books; autobiographies; sociology; biographies; civil rights; biography; non fiction; non fiction books best sellers; james baldwin; gifts for men; invisible man; james baldwin books; langston hughes; political science

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books on racism;racism books;books about race;books by black authors;books on racism in america;james baldwin collected essays;i am not your negro book;the fire this time;baldwin;notes of a native son james baldwin;i am not your negro;top rated books;summer reads for women 2020;books;history books;autobiographies;sociology;biographies;civil rights;biography;non fiction;non fiction books best sellers;james baldwin;gifts for men;invisible man;james baldwin books;langston hughes;political science

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civil rights; biography; james baldwin; gifts for men; invisible man; james baldwin books; langston hughes; top rated books; summer reads for women 2020; books; history books; autobiographies; sociology; biographies; non fiction; best sellers non fiction; non fiction books best sellers; james baldwin collected essays; i am not your negro book; the fire this time; baldwin; notes of a native son james baldwin; i am not your negro; racism books; books about race; books by black authors; books on racism in america

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james baldwin;father day gifts;father son gifts;fathers day;books for men;gifts for men;books for dad;fathers day gifts from daughter;first fathers day gifts;fathers day gifts from son;fathers day ideas;fathers day gifts;books for fathers day;grandparents day gifts;first fathers day;stepdad fathers day gifts;fathers day gifts from wife;fathers and sons;fire;invisible man;time;autobiography;civil rights;biography;race relations;black history;african american history;biographies;short stories

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The Fire Next Time (Vintage International)

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The Fire Next Time (Vintage International): Amazon.de: Baldwin, James: Fremdsprachige Bücher

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As the world becomes increasingly connected, knowledge of ourselves as individual learners and as members of a community becomes more important. When children begin their schooling with support for thinking, feeling, and acting in groups, they are more likely to participate in and practice democracy…

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This International Women's Day viral video proves the point that pay equality really needn't be so complicated.

Norwegian trade union Finansforbundet's campaign shows children being asked to fill two vases with blue and pink balls.

Upon completing the task they are rewarded with sweets - but the boy gets far more than the girl.

Their responses make it clear - pay equality really is child's play.

Reuse content

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This social experiment shows how children respond to gender inequality

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This International Women's Day viral video proves the point that pay equality really needn't be so complicated. Norwegian trade union Finansforbundet's campaign shows children being asked to fill two vases with blue and pink balls. Upon completing the task they are rewarded with sweets - but the boy gets far more than the girl.

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The Coloniality of Power:
Notes Toward De-Colonization

The "coloniality of power" is an expression coined by Anibal Quijano to name the structures of power, control, and hegemony that have emerged during the modernist era, the era of colonialism, which stretches from the conquest of the Americas to the present.

A vast movement of the world's people, in the aftermath of colonialism's demise, and fleeing the impoverishment, derailed development, and debt-servitude it left as its heritage, has accelerated toward the heartland of that colonialism: Europe and the US. This diaspora a logical response to the EuroAmerican despoliation of the third world's resources and public assets. The people of post-colonial regions, divested of their economies, and thus of their ability to live, follow their pillaged wealth into the EuroAmerican economies that plundered them. In the US, they face a virulent anti-immigrant machine that combines a racist populism with arbitrary policing and a militarized border.

Yet, under the aegis of corporate globalization, the immigrant laborer should have no different status than the worker who moves to Chicago from a rust-belt city like Youngtown looking for employment. Both are engaged in the same endeavor. If the immigrant reveals the machinery of coloniality that still surrounds the US economy, a similar coloniality, interior to the US border, is reflected in the Youngstown worker's decision to cross state lines. Yet they stand on opposite sides of an ideological boundary, whose many names include "ethnicity" or "national identity." Guarded by the anti-immigrant machine, this differential boundary gives the "citizen-worker," whose economic stature and well-being has been decimated by "runaway" industry, a renewed though meager sense of superiority as an identity replacement. In taking his place at that boundary, the anti-immigrant citizen-worker's participation in guarding the national economy against immigrants is a direct measure of his/her own colonization in the US, his/her conscription into what Anibal Quijano calls the coloniality of power.

We all live within a multiplicity of colonialities; subjected in both body and mind. It is not only our labor, or our sexualities and genders that mark colonial relations; it is not only the wars, the mass murder and death squads organized by imperialist classes, nor the subcolonies formed by women, African-American communities, or ethnic identities; it is also the hegemonic mind, the white, or masculinist, or heterosexist, or national chauvinist mind that constitutes and is constituted by coloniality.

We face a political situation in which an absence of ethics, a stench of death and corruption, surrounds us. Appearing in all domains of US governance and its institutional relations to people and to nations, this corruption presupposes an unspoken permissibility for itself -- for its wars, for mass murder, and for the torture that has appeared all too familiar to this society. We thus face the question of who we are in this mirror. The power of coloniality, as a structure of control, is that it speaks for us so forcefully that we see no recourse but to represent it, to uphold its existence, to ratify its dispensing with ethics and with the sanctity of human life in everything we say and do as labor and resource. It is not only the insufficiency of class struggles or revolutions that beset us, whose results have fallen into debt-servitude by falling for commodification and coloniality. It is the acceptibility of that corruption to those who should most be in opposition to it that strikes hardest, and gives measure to the success of the coloniality of power.

The coloniality of power constitutes a matrix that operates through control or hegemony over authority, labor, sexuality, and subjectivity -- that is, the practical domains of political administration, production and exploitation, personal life and reproduction, and world-view and interpretive perspective. The forms these have taken are the nation-state, capitalism, the nuclear family, and eurocentrism. Eurocentrism functions as the ideological valorization of EuroAmerican society as superior, progressive, and universal, though it really represents white supremacy, capitalist profitability, and EuroAmerican self-universalization. To throw off this post-colonial form of colonialism, to decolonize today, means throwing off this entire eurocentric system. To understand what this means we shall have to examine the history of its emergence.

1- conquest and modernism

In the time prior to the conquest, Europe was a poor, rural penisula on the western edge of Asia, with little of value to offer the world economy. (Dussel) At the center of the world economy, between India and Baghdad, Europeans found themselves hopelessly outcompeted, or ignored. The only means they were able to imagine to gain access to this world economy was conquest: the crusades of the middle ages, the 15th century slave trade from west Africa, the expulsion of the Moors and Jews from Spain, and the conquest of the Americas in the 16th. The project to enslave the American peoples enters the thinking of Columbus on his first voyage among the islands of the Caribbean.

The Spanish conquest of the Americas provided Europe with a means of entry into the world economy: money. Ironically, the massive influx of gold and silver corrupted and depressed Spain itself. Its vitality fled to the Americas, while the ability to use Europe's new wealth moved north, to the shipping and banking companies of England and Holland. 1700 marks a moment of consolidation of an Atlantic economy: and trans-Atlantic commerce in agricultural goods and metals between the Americas to Europe; the codification of slavery in the English colonies of North America; and English and Dutch control of shipping trade to the east.

In 200 years, the indigenous population of the Caribbean region, and much of Mexico and Peru, had been decimated, and the slave trade that replenished it with Africans had become the most profitable industry in the entire Atlantic economy. The so-called age of enlightenment opened and flourished with the dark groans of dark men and women in the unlit holds of ships, carried to a darker destiny, while pouring untold wealth into the vaults of Europe. It shifted the center of the world economy to the Atlantic. It was not Europe that put America on the map. It was the Americas -- the land of the Americas, the seizure and transformation of that land into European property, the destruction of the societies that had lived on that land, and the seizure of African people to be enslaved on that land -- that put Europe on the map. Modernism wades up onto the shores of Europe drenched in American and African blood, and declares itself the most advanced, the most civilized of societies, a bastion against the barbarism of the rest of the world. The incineration of whole Iraqi families in their cars at US checkpoints in Baghdad during the spring of 2003 is but a distant reflection of Virginia in 1700, or the Spanish administration of Cuba a century earlier.

2- race

What consolidated the seizure of land, in areas in which indigenous people had no concept of property in land, was race. (Mignolo) When people have lived with the land as ecology and habitat, to separate and alienate them from it as their most intimate means of living, and then bring them back to work on that same land to which they could no longer lay claim, requires a great wrenching of consciousness, a massive indoctrination. One cannot simply impose the name of "owner;" the invention of a discernible distinction, a process of self-superiorization through the inferiorization of others, is necessary. The origin of race is inseparable from land in seizure. Race, slavery, the concept of property in human beings as wealth itself, are all tied together in the juridical commodification of the land. The transformation of land into property was consolidated socially through the invention of racialization in the colonies.

Racialization occurred in different terms in the Spanish colonies than it did in the English colonies, but the purpose and effect was the same. Its purpose was to create a system of social categorization that differentiated between who could own land and who would be forced to work on it; a distiction in social category between who could define, and who was to be defined. Mere military superiority does not inferiorize; for the most part, it generates resistance. A more inclusive social process is required to consolidate conquest. It involves defining juridical structures, forms of spirituality and religion, and the nature of personhood for others. It is the power to define that divests others of the power to define themselves, to lay claim to juridicality or a spirituality of their own, and eventually results in a concept of racial difference.

This act of divestment, and the social inferiorization attendant upon its accompanying impoverishment, were the indispensible bases for the self-superiorization of those who had seized the land, and defined ownership on it. Coloniality kills those who lead resistance or rebellion, and uses the subsequent leaderlessness to inferiorize those who would have followed. Operation Phoenix (the Vietnam war name for this) begins in the 1530s. It is the source of the myth that Cuba would fall apart if Castro were to be killed.

For the Spanish, racialization emerged as a structure attaching people of different origins to specific economic strata and modes of labor exploitation. At first, the indigenous as such were enslaved. In the Caribbean region, they were quickly decimated by their separation from former means of physical and cultural survival. The starvation imposed on them by their conditions of labor brought them either death for rebellion or death from disease.

When African labor was brought to the Spanish colonies to replenish the deficit, and some Franciscans (particularly Bartolomeo de Las Casas) convinced the king to ban further enslavement of the indigenous, a multi-stratified labor system emerged that became the organizing principle for defining race. Africans were held as slaves, and sold as slaves. Indigenous people were held in encomiendas, then incorporated into a hacienda system, in a form of feudal serfdom. Mestizos, the product of the European seizure of indigenous and African women, filled the artisanal and urban clerical positions of colonial society, and formed an incipient middle class. The criollo, those of colonialist blood, yet born in the colonies, filled the administrative bureaucracies. And the Spanish born, pure in Christian "blood" and ancestry, and granted land ownership by the distant monarchy, constituted the elite, the aristocracy of the colonies. While the indigenous could be considered the first "race," that is, relationally racialized with respect to the Spanish as racializer, the complex economic system of colonial settlement produced a more complex hierarchy, organized according to ancestry, that equated raciality with class. If one was a slave, then one was "black," etc. Because no juridical bans against mixed marriages were imposed, a modicum of class movement between slavery, the serfdom, and the artisanal classes was possible from generation to generation, as the colonial economy developed.

A different mode of racialization occurred in the English colonies. Those colonies were not administered by military conquest, nor by land tenure related to a monarchy. Colonial administration, and the apportionment of land, was done through a corporate structure whose goal was productive profitability rather than resource extraction. The land seized was turned into capitalist enterprise, rather than feudal community. The plantations of Virginia were never as large as the Spanish land-grants, and concentrated on mass-production of agricultural commodities for an international market, rather than self-sufficiency as a land-grant complex of communities. The Colonial Council (rather than a land grantee) served as an on-site board of directors, responsible to a London board; and its function, as in all corporations, was to organize production, guarantee a labor supply, and facilitate marketing of the product. The English plantations were really the first form of large agro-business, and in their accounting, as businesses, the labor they indentured was accounted for as wealth.

Though at first English bond-labor was used on the plantations, the colony shifted to African bond-labor after the 1680s for a number of reasons. As the colonies grew, it became easier for English labor to escape, and blend in elsewhere, which was not the case for the Africans. English labor, though chattel because held by indenture contract, lost its estate value as the laborer's contractual release date approached. The Africans were given no contracts because they were not English, and thus had no protection against arbitrary extension of their term of servitude. Though originally held for customary terms, African servitude was slowly extended by various means, since it represented an immediate enhancement of plantation wealth. The value of the African bond-laborer was assessed through auction markets that developed for the Africans since, in the absence of a contract, transfer required a market place. The auction price became the on-going determination of the laborer's "value," like stock prices in the stock market. In sum, there was economic pressure to codify African labor as slavery (which occurred in 1682 and 1705), and to render the African person wealth as such.

But this did not yet express a racialization. When the English first arrived, they did not see themselves as white, and the terms they used for themselves, for the Africans and for the indigenous, referred to geographical origin ("Negro" referred to Africa rather than "race," for instance). The concept of racialization did not take hold until the 1690s. The English defined a white racialized identity for themselves by racializing the African labor force as slave, other, and finally as black. Racialization occurred through a transformation of color terms from descriptive to racializing, referring to social category rather than bodily characteristic. In terms of social categorization, race must be understood as essentially relational, a social relationality, and not something inherent in the people so racialized.

The contemporary concept of race derives from the English version. It was in the English colonies that the concept of "whiteness," and a notion of "white supremacy" (even a concept of "white nation" as theorized by Ben Franklin, and other independence luminaries) were developed. Its extension to all EuroAmerican thinking as a "natural" division of the human species (by a variety of European theorists, such as Linneaus, Buffon, Gobineau, etc.) has been with reference to whiteness, and the coloniality of white supremacy, as a mode of social identification, and not simply as a link to forms of labor exploitation. Whites did not simply gain racial supremacy within a field in which a number of races already existed; they invented race as a system in which they were already supreme, a field of definition in which other races already inferior. Though "racism" is alleged to exist between other races than the white, all racialization has occurred with respect to white supremacy itself, as the inventor and generator of the concept of race, and thus all racism makes essential reference to "white racism."

But social categorization occurs within a social framework and boundary. The indigenous peoples of Virginia were excluded from the colony from the beginning because they successfully resisted enslavement. As a result, they were criminalized as savage, denigrated as "heathen," and eventually denied even the subhuman status accorded slaves. Private dealings with them of any kind (without Council license) was banned and punished. But in great part, the indigenous were excluded from the colony in order to maintain the sanctity of commodity production, to keep it from being corrupted by the more communal form of production of those indigenous societies. Indeed, English settlers who escaped to the indigenous were recaptured and often killed.

The English colonies also banned mixed marriages, and eventually all sexual relations, between themselves and the Africans, whereas the Spanish did not. In a long series of ever more severe criminalizations of such intimacy, the colony adjudicated a binary categorization for itself, upon which Europe derived a concept of race whose defining characteristic was a "purity" for whiteness.

When "modernism" straddled the Atlantic economy, and proclaimed itself the dominant civilization in the world, it did so as white supremacist. That designation, of its own contrivance, has been used to valorize the destruction it has wrought on the world's non-European peoples, so that its destructiveness would not be called criminality. But it was also a call to solidarity for whites, against all those over whom it pretended and enacted supremacy. The first historical act of white supremacy was the American Revolution, fought by colonists whose identity, and hence allegiance, had shifted from "English" to "white" as a result of their invention of a structure of racialization.

In these terms, one thing that has to be understood about the working class of the US is that it has attained its class identity, as a working class, through the eurocentric concept of whiteness and white supremacy. That is, its identity as working class and its identity as white, are mutually conditioning. In the early 19th century, white workers of the northern states obained a place for themselves in white society by both opposing slavery and then excluding freed black workers from their organizations and guilds, thereby preserving and advancing white solidarity and white consensus. Racism may be a way in which the working class is divided against itself today, but the reason it works so well is that race and whiteness were the bases on which white workers defined themselves as the working class. As Fanon suggests, white workers do not acquiesce to capitalism in submission, but out of a belief in its (and their) superiority. Indeed, the Marxists in the US before the Civil War opposed abolition, claiming it would "divide the working class;" in so saying, they were signifying that even they saw the working class as white. Marx himself considered the slave to be a "factor of production" rather than a productive worker.

For us, today, racism is not only a subjective mechanism by which white supremacy and white racialized identity maintain themselves; it is also an institutional mechanism by which social institutions preserve themselves as white. To simply contest "racism" does not also constitute opposition to white supremacy itself. It is the structure of racialization, which sits at the core of all social and political structures in the modernist world, and is the common foundation for all the domains of power that constitute eurocentric coloniality, that is the enemy. Ultimately, even the class structures of capitalism cannot be understood, let alone transformed, without understanding how they were built through the operations of the structures of racialization.

3- the corporation, the nation

The Atlantic economy was from the beginning a capitalist economy. The plantations of Virginia were mass-production capitalist enterprises. Their labor force was of capitalized bond-labor, that is, labor used for profit and the profitability of enterprise and colony, but at its lowest possible wage (merest subsistence cost). And the bond-laborers themselves were accounted as wealth, part of the value of the real estate. The slave trade, the central and most critical industry in the Atlantic economy, was a hybrid of the Spanish form of seized resources and of profitability on investment (it was more than merely a transportation industry). Though the Spanish colonial economy was based on resource extraction, its role in founding the slave trade, and in providing Europe with money-metals, was at the center of the development of Atlantic capitalism.

It was the corporate model, developed in the English colonies, that gave form to that capitalism, and spread as a structural norm over the rest of the earth. For the Spanish, the profitability of their mines lay in the substance mined, not the capital accumulation of mining operations. And the large haciendas, guaranteed under a different jurisprudence than the capitalist, acheived a certain communal stasis and self-sufficiency in their operations. Instead, it was the northern European corporate model that took hold, and lay the basis for the nation-state.

To understand the meaning of this, one has to understand the different structures of violence inherent in the two modes of colonial domination. The violence of the Spanish was worse physically than it was culturally. They regarded African labor as throw-away labor, cheaper to replace than to maintain. For the English, who enslaved bond-labor as wealth, their violence was more cultural and social, rather than mortal. Their debasing of the psyche and sociality of African bond-labor was deeper. As a result, a black culture appeared in the US (in response to ensalvement) that is separate and distinct from the white European-derived culture of white corporate society; it was culturally necessary for survival, resistance, and as a buffer against white impunity and gratuitous hostility.

In other words, the oppression of black people in the US is of a special kind. On the one hand, black people sit at the core of white racialized identity, indispensible to its self definition; on the other, they must be continually evicted from the white domain in order for whites to feel autonomous in their identity as white, and to continually revive the sanctity of white supremacist identity from its dependency. Hence, there is an extreme level of arbitrarity and irrationality to white racism; it is devoid of political and economic motivation because it is the foundation of all white political and economic motivation. In its historical longevity, the trauma rendered normal in black life in the US is unequaled in the world. It is the extremity and unspeakability of this social condition that Toni Morrison has sought to represent in all her novels, "Beloved" in particular. And it is the difference between white and black cultures that DuBois never ceased attempting to make intelligible. But it is difficult to see because white and black people walk around each other on the streets every day.

Because white supremacy resides at the core of EuroAmerican society and culture, as the foundation for its entire mode of coloniality, there is a dependence on racialization at the core of the idea of a nation-state, which then expresses its inherent violence as war and nationalism. That is, if the US invented itself as a nation because the colonists shifted their social identity from being English to being white, it is the violence of white social institutedness which then appeared in the violance of Europe's nationalisms, as that notion of whiteness extended itself to Europe. It is that same violence that has re-emerged in the many anti-immigrant movements that have been sweeping Europe -- and indeed, imparting to it new forms of racialization. The hatred that has come so naturally to US soldiers against Iraqis, spawned by even the slightest gesture of resistance to the occupation, as well as by the destruction that the invasion itself has wrought, is only a further extension of white supremacist nationalism in the disguise of an American messianism.

Because they are based on white racialized identity, and a structure of racialization, both corporate mode of socio-economic organization and the modern nation-state have to be understood as white. Both are reflections of Europe's colonialism, an extension of how Europe was constituted and given identity by its domination of the Americas, and through which it developed its capitalism. It does not matter the color of the people who fill elected, administrative, or bureaucratic positions. The structure itself is "white" in its operations, in its paranoia, and its demand for social solidarity, which were inherited from colonialist origins. It is white because it is the way in which people are separated from the land of their ancesters, are given wage-labor jobs, by which the commodification of the land is maintained and guaranteed. To paraphrase Fanon, these structures are white because they direct all others to the ways of white people. The form violence takes in the nation-state is order; the form social consensus takes is anti-subversion; and the form paranoia takes is white patriotic chauvinism.

Insofar as the nation-state is eurocentric, and thus white (supremacist), its having been imposed on decolonization movements and independence rituals in former colonies imparts a constraint on them that links them to the EuroAmerican coloniality of power. This imposition has been accompanied by the claim that it is the most rational, the most progressive form of state or political organization. But that is because it represents the eurocentric colonialist source of its self-definition; and it brings with it connections to EuroAmerican capitalism. While it claims to represent, it cannot claim to be necessarily democratic; even military dictatorships claim to represent the nation. The political effect on the third world of having accepted the nation-state as an organizing principle has been the massive debt-servitude in the third world, a eurocentric subjectivity that has imprisoned indigenous communality in a subject-object ontology of individualism and commodification, and an overlay of objectified sexuality upon indigenous narratives of intimacy.

It is not sufficient (and in some cases not even relevant) to understand the nation-state through a class "analysis" of nationalism as such. Not all nationalism is eurocentric, or linked to the foundation of a nation-state; an anti-colonialist nationalism can go in other directions (cf. Cabral or Nkrumah). To understand the nation-state, apart from its nationaism, one must understand its whiteness, that is, its ties to coloniality, and thus its role in maintaining the realm of eurocentric political authority within that.

It is no accident that, though every Latin American anti-colonialist revolution has promised agrarian reform, only Cuba, which understood the nation-state as already colonialist, wholly implemented such a reform. They didn't do it because they were socialist; they became socialist because they implemented the agrarian reform. The participatory implementation of agrarian reform, though it zigzagged a bit, is what stood between the Cuban Revolution and the adoption of a eurocentric nation-state, because it laid the basis for both urban reform and the pilot projects that invented new forms of governance altogether.

4- Sexuality, motherhood, and the family

In the 17th century, the Virginia Colonial Council passed legislation concerning sexuality and motherhood (anti-miscegenation and matrilineality). Not only did these acts eventually play an important role in creating a structure of racialization (by providing a ground upon which to consider race biological), but they formed part of a structure of thought control.

In the plantation economy of Virginia, the first (of many) anti-miscegenation statute was passed in 1662, which made it illegal for English and Africans to marry. Its passage marks a moment when the colony shifted its plantation labor force from English to African, and was an attempt to divide English from African bond-laborers. It also meant that mixed offspring could not be legitimate, divesting them of rights to inheritance or property. In the same year, matrilineal servitude was legislated. This meant that the offspring of mixed relationships would take the servitude status of the mother (countermanding the central precept of patriarchy). It meant that all women, but African women in particular, were to be carefully regulated in their personal lives. For African women, it meant that any children they had would add to the wealth of the landowner for whom they worked.

These acts marked the creation of profoundly personal social and juridical distinctions (at the level of their emotional being) between the African and English bond-laborers. Before that, they had made common cause in escaping their servitude, as their primary mode of resistance. The colonial enactments separated them into different social categories. And it was through this legislation of sexuality and motherhood that the colony codified English purity.

The purity concept is an indispensible factor for the definition of race. Because human coloration exists on a continuum, there are no natural divisions in its spectrum. Between any two people of differing color, a third can be found whose color would lie between them. And there is no uniformity of color in any human community. The purity of English parentage became the mark of the first division in the color continuum, the basis on which, after 1690, the English defined themselves as "white," through their definition of others as non-white.

Punishment for miscegenation formed an indispensible barrier between defined groups, and matrilineal servitude status gave those groups different social meaning as categories in the white conception of colonial society.

The English (white) role as definers of race thus already contained an inherent pretense to superiority. The power to define is the power to objectify, and thus inferiorize; by defining an otherness for the Africans as property and wealth, the English defined themselves as superior. In defining others as non-white, they defined themselves as white. But in defining Africans as subhuman slave labor, whites also defined them as a threat, against which white society had to unite in solidarity, for the preservation of which any violence was permissible apriori as defensive violence. Thus, whiteness emerges as a structure of paranoia, social consensus, and violence, each of which generates the others.

White society developed around practices of continual gratuitous violence against black people; that is, violence against black people became the very source of whites's sense of well-being. This cultural paradigm was codified by the Dred Scott decision. It took the form of Jim Crow and debt-servitude after slavery was abolished; and now, in the wake of Jim Crow repeal, it has the form of police profiling, a prison-industrial complex, and felonized disenfranchisement. In Iraq, it is those who killed four mercenaries who were to be brought to "justice" in Fallujah, through absolute and arbitrary violence, for which 600 civilians were killed, and not the US soldiers whose very presence in Iraq is a crime against humanity.

In short, violence is the outcome of the form of social purity that anti-miscegenation establishes, once it becomes a cultural norm. The whites who were willing to work with black people after the Civil War, in Reconstruction governments, or later, were killed by the white supremacist paramilitary gangs (like the KKK), because they were seen as breaking solidarity with whiteness, thus undermining its indispensible purity. The sin was betrayal, not racial mixing; but the charge was racial mixing, the blurring of social categorizations, the most intimate disruption of how white people thought of themselves.

As a profoundly insidious outcome to the legislation of sexuality, one can say it conditions systematic thought control. The legislation of sexuality provides a definition of permissible imtimate relations. But if sexual prohibitions determine who can be intimate with whom, then they also determine who can befriend, or be friends with whom. Sexual prohibitions constitute the framework determining who one can associate with, which people can speak with each other, or construct dialogues and common social perspectives. In this sense, to determine who a person's friends can be is tantamount to a form of thought control. It delimits the range of alternate perspectives one is allowed, as well as which thought systems one can enter in one's interpretation of the world.

The coloniality of power, in all its forms of nation-state political structures, of capitalist control of labor, and of the social atomization represented by the control of sexuality and the nuclear family, depends on its structures of racialization first and foremost. And intimately interwoven into the racialization and open violence that underlies the matrix of control, that maintain its dimension of authority and subjectivity, are the bigotries of racism, heterosexism, eurcentric nationalism, and a criminalization of poverty. It is the system of these bigotries that mark the practice, in its many dimensions, of the hegemonic mind.

5- the hegemonic mind

The eurocentric concept of the nation-state has long been a

trap for those seeking liberation and a participatory, democratic form of self-governance, whether inside EuroAmerica or in the post-colonial world. It was nationalism that sidetracked socialist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was the concept of the nation-state that led national liberation revolutions to build independence out of the terms of former dependence (rather than their own sense of autonomy), replacing subservience with debt-servitude to the IMF.

The "white" EuroAmerican nation-state, whether democratic or not, in substituting representation for participation, preserves land as commodified property, and renders the citizen an object for which the system of representation is the political subject. The nation-state, as the expression of white supremacy, and a political form of subject-object (eurocentric) ontology that preserves the subject-object relation between state and citizen as well as between economic or social strata, is an indispensible buttress to the maintenance of other forms of chauvinism or bigotry, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and intellectual sectarianism. Nationalism takes its place as the archetype for other systems of derogation and violence. That is, the hegemonic mind obtains (and constructs for itself) its most generalized institutionality in the nation-state, as a matrix and a source of permissibility.

If the nation-state is the basis on which individual actions can express the institutional subjugation of others, it is the hegemonic mind that the institutional subjugations call upon for expression, as individual control or violence. It is the basis on which racism maintains its familiarity and effect on both individual and institutional levels, on which the prohibition of alternate sexualities invokes violence, and on which ethnic conflict can always be instigated. Mob violence, police riots, redlining, housing and employment discrimination, domestic violence, violence against women, anti-immigrant vigilatism, etc. -- all of which have murder as one of their permissible ends (for the coloniality of power) -- occur as reflections of eurocentric nationalism. The nation-state is the arena on which all bigotries step forth.

And this is important. The hegemonic mind is the way in which institutional subjugation or oppression expresses itself at the social, street, individual level. That is, the hegemonic mind is the way in which hegemonic persons (white, male, heterosexual, etc.) are colonized to maintain and effect the hierarchies and their inferiorizations. In exchange, they colonize the oppressed through their hegemonic operations, relying on the institutional matrix from which they get the scripts they enact. That is, the hegemonic mind is both colonizing and colonized, yet sees neither of these to the extent s/he thinks the hegemony s/he lives out as "natural," or obedient to a cultural universal. It is a result of being both colonizer and colonized that bigots become and remain angry and violent, unable to be themselves as colonized, watched to assure they enact the script properly, and then blame those they oppress.

Bigotry is a collocation in one act of judgment of speaking for others, generalizing them, gratuitously denigrating or assaulting them in so doing, being hypocritical in the act, and acting in bad faith. This is its structure. It doesn't matter whether it be anti-semitism, anti-black racism, homophobia, misogyny, redbaiting, or intra-movement polemic. It is always assaultive in its denigrations, dependent in its need for a threat, and gratuitously contemptuous toward its target. It is important to recognize this structure, because the political thinking of a person who finds this structure permissible, however progressive it may pretend to be, is suspect to the extent it contains a bigotted drive as its motivation.

Two things have held back all movements that have sought social justice as workers, as women, as racialized communities, as defense of the planet against corporate despoliation: a faith in the nation-state as a valid matrix for their ends, and the operation of the hegemonic mind within their own ranks.

Examples of the hegemonic mind are legion in the many bigotries that beset us. But unfortunately elsewhere as well. The black power movement took few steps against its own masculinism; feminism has tended to be dominated by white middle class women, and has tripped continually at relating to third world feminism; queer identity movements have not transcended their own commodification; and social justice movements have rarely transcended their own nationalism (for instance, the anti-immigrant stance of many radical ecologists). While the anti-corporate movements, and the World Social Forum, have taken some steps toward putting all these struggles together, they have not yet conceptualized an alternate socius in which global contestation of the hegemonic mind can be given political reality.

One thing the hegemonic mind can do to dismantle or decolonize the structure of its hegemonism, and thus to free itself from its own colonization, from the scripts institutional oppression gives it to enact, is to see itself through the eyes of the other. This would be an inversion of the DuBoisian notion of double consciousness. Double consciousness, according to DuBois, is the consciousness of the racialized, of having to see oneself always through the eyes of another, in the dominance and derogation of a hegemonic group. For decolonization, it is the hegemonic mind that must see itself through the eyes of those who see it as hegemonic, to see what it looks like to them, and to see what it means to them -- and thereby to confront dominance or hegemony in one's own person.

The coloniality of power expresses itself most basically as the hegemonic mind; this is the form of eurocentric thought control. As coloniality is a unified system of control, so the three levels of colonialism -- EuroAmerican domination of all others, the operation of subcolonial subjugations within the EuroAmerican framework (women, racialized communities, alternate sexualities, etc.), and the hegemonic mind -- must be fought all together.

This implies the necessity of producing modes of alternate political culture, so that one is not contesting these levels of control from within the very structures on which they depend. For instance, most political leadership is assumed through the deployment of some form of hegemonics: an attitude, a knowledge, a skill that is given value or valorized in the political culture. In deploying these hegemonically, political leadership reproduces the eurocentric nature of representation.

An alternate political culture is not simply something outside the system; it is first and foremost a domain from which a language and a dialogic can reveal eurocentrism in all its modes of thought control; yet not as polemic, which presumes a eurocentric subject-object relation to those it polemicizes. As a network, an alternate political culture would be a framework for political autonomy that speaks in terms that the eurocentric subject-object paradigm cannot hear. It needs to be a cultural framework in order to resist all efforts to reduce it to a subject-object paradigm again, and to commodify it. It has to be political in order to critically address the structures and ideological frameworks of the coloniality of power in opposition. And it has to be alternate to contest eurocentrism as the enemy without falling into the language of eurocentrism in doing so.

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The Coloniality of Power: Notes Toward De-Colonization The "coloniality of power" is an expression coined by Anibal Quijano to name the structures of power, control, and hegemony that have emerged during the modernist era, the era of colonialism, which stretches from the conquest of the Americas to the present.

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The video documentation of 'Deining in de Duif' in Amsterdam.

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De video documentatie van het project DEINING IN DE DUIF is gemaakt door Saskia Habermann in opdracht van Stichting PRA muziektheater.
Meer info over PRA muziektheater op pramuziektheater.nl

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Local Histories/Global Designs is an extended argument about the "coloniality" of power by one of the most innovative Latin American and Latino scholars. In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practices in the social sciences and area studies.

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Subjects
Globalization and Neoliberalism, Politics > Political Theory, Sociology > Social Theory

In On Decoloniality Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh explore the hidden forces of the colonial matrix of power, its origination, transformation, and current presence, while asking the crucial questions of decoloniality's how, what, why, with whom, and what for. Interweaving theory-praxis with local histories and perspectives of struggle, they illustrate the conceptual and analytic dynamism of decolonial ways of living and thinking, as well as the creative force of resistance and re-existence. This book speaks to the urgency of these times, encourages delinkings from the colonial matrix of power and its "universals" of Western modernity and global capitalism, and engages with arguments and struggles for dignity and life against death, destruction, and civilizational despair.

"As the first book in the Decoloniality series, it sets the tone and terms; it opens the conversation on decoloniality that is relevant globally as the Right rises and the colonial matrix of power is only strengthened through global capitalism. On Decoloniality brings important insights to the fore from locations not as well-known by English-reading theorists who might not concentrate on colonial language areas other than English." - Laura Marie de Vos, Transmotion

"On Decoloniality reflects on what it means to think, live and act decolonially in our present moment: what is at stake when we seek a decolonial perspective in both theory and praxis. This is not a compilation of the latest literature or a comprehensive introduction to decolonial thought, but rather an invitation to think dialectically about the decolonial praxis(es) and decolonial analytics." - Rosa M. O'Connor Acevedo, Radical Philosophy Review

"Although divided into two distinct parts authored under individual signatures, this is a book, which like a piano concert for two hands, displays a high degree of interplay and collaboration between Mignolo and Walsh. . . . For all readers and doers a major challenge and invitation is issued in the pages of On Decoloniality for learning how to think relationality will make serious demands of all imaginaries and modes of thinking we have thus far inherited and developed. This carefully thought-out book is not only a necessary intervention in the annals of 'theory' but a felicitous achievement in collaboration and in bringing together the task of presenting concepts, analytics and praxis under one single treatise." - Sara Castro-Klarén, MLN

"In the current climate of trying to rethink everything in order to find a way out of the contemporary morass of bankrupt and destructive epistemologies that are destroying the planet, [this] book is a timely intervention. It succinctly offers the reasons to find new concepts as well as providing incremental steps that do not simply reproduce what we 'know' already." - Sneja Gunew, Postcolonial Text

"By virtue of its synoptic character, uniqueness, and the authors' extensive discussion of praxis and movements, On Decoloniality stands out as a benchmark text." - Eduardo Mendieta, editor of Maps for a Fiesta: A Latina/o Perspective on Knowledge and the Global Crisis

"Highlighting the decolonial option as the 'interrelated processes of healing colonial wounds that originate in all of us,' Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh are at the height of their exploratory and explanatory powers in convincing all of us to engage with pluriversal decoloniality. Sweeping in its geopolitical reach, evacuating the theory-practice hierarchy in favor of thinking-doing and doing-thinking, On Decoloniality productively and imaginatively focuses on the what, why, with whom, and how of decoloniality." - Gloria Wekker, author of White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race

Related links

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Subjects Globalization and Neoliberalism, Politics > Political Theory, Sociology > Social Theory In On Decoloniality Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh explore the hidden forces of the colonial matrix of power, its origination, transformation, and current presence, while asking the crucial questions of decoloniality's how, what, why, with whom, and what for.

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Name | Last Modified | Size
cgi-bin | 2019-10-02 04:51 | -

Proudly Served by LiteSpeed Web Server at www.bellhooksinstitute.com Port 80

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A beautiful project  for:

Recording, archiving and sharing the traditional music of East Africa

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Recording, archiving and sharing the traditional music of East Africa

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Recommended by the Buddhist magazine Tricycle

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Stemming from part of the discussion from yesterday, here is Acknowledgement of Country in different languages. I thought it might be of interest.

An Acknowledgement of Country is an opportunity for anyone to show respect for Traditional Owners and the continuing connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to Country. It can be given by both non-Indigenous people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Our school has translated the Acknowledgement of Country into the languages that are taught at the school. There are more to come from what I understand (which is wonderful to see)…

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Acknowledgment of Country (Chinese, Japanese, Italian and French)

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Understanding how school discipline policies can contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline is essential for educators and families. Harsh punishments, automatic out-of-class time and police involvement for discipline can push young people out of classrooms and into the criminal legal system. But educators, parents and caregivers can help to change this harmful system by advocating for and implementing practices that prioritize mental health and well-being.

We offer this new resource page that highlights LFJ articles and content to open dialogue, shift practices and foster change to benefit all young people.

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Learning for Justice | Education Resources

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Learning for Justice 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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Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools collaborate to bring people's history to the classroom.

A dedicated website to encourage and support teaching about Central American history.

The best selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, YA, and educators.

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Building social justice starting in the classroom.

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International schools - the postcard of an idealised education. Well-lit classrooms with smartboards; readily available equipment still fresh in its packaging; selected teachers with frequent professional training and stimulating salaries; students of all colours from across the globe, children of the world's elite.

Or something like that. As someone who's attended seven international schools over the course of her childhood all over the Global South, I can affirm with some amusement that I am indoctrinated in the ways of the international baccalaureate, one of the most renowned programs in the expat-kid world (though also widely offered in local public schools in countries such as the US). I non-ironically hail to the glossy terms highlighted in the IB framework - global-mindedness, critical thinking.

But I am young, and only beginning to understand how this schooling often results in a kind of intellectual navel-gazing. Many of us have studied the textbook-standard topics of the Western world: the French Revolution, the Enlightenment, World War II.

But how is it that my friend Ochieng grew up in an international school in Kenya, and never learned any Kenyan history? How often have I learned something vital about a country I lived in, years after I had left it? How often did we as international students feel unrepresented in the course topics that were assigned to us? And how many of us, upon the death of George Floyd, felt the jolt of realisation that we know nothing about systemic racism, colonialism and its undiscussed modern successor?

The issue is a complex one. Our recent investigations have made this apparent. As our newsfeed and consciousness flooded with news of the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., my friend Clara suggested we create a petition to require more diversity in the International Baccalaureate syllabus.

We created surveys for educators and students. We made social media accounts. We started getting responses, lots of them. Decolonise IB emerged, with similar initiatives springing up simultaneously around the expat world and forming a growing network. In the two weeks since we've launched the petition, our views on the international education system have shifted drastically.
"We realize that [our school] is not unique at all - this apathetic response to anti-racism is actually a widespread issue across many international schools"
- Tiffany Shi, International School of Beijing Alumni for Anti-Racism.

With over 400 responses our student survey results are clear: for a baccalaureate that calls itself 'international', many pupils and alumni felt that their education was highly Western and White. Class content left the majority feeling uneducated on Black history, White privilege, systemic oppression, and generally any affairs pertaining to Black/Indigenous/People Of Colour. Not to mention matters concerning women, disabled people, refugees and the LGBTQIA+ community. International students are not exempt from feeling their education has often centred on the contributions of able-bodied cisgender straight White men. Our own culture and race often has little place in formal class discussions. " We are very much a flag, food and festivals administration, " one teacher wrote, but outside special events schools might provide little opportunity for the student body to celebrate its diversity.

What a waste, when our students' voices are such a powerful tool, especially at a time where the world needs to see solidarity among typically divided cultures. We need just as much to expose ourselves to the 'real world'- having been (though I can't speak for all of us) raised in our "Colour Blind" bubbles, as Rachel Engels astutely points out.

I cannot speak for international schools teaching British or US programs. But the IB, which we focused on given our experience and access to it, is a very loosely defined curriculum. Schools are essentially autonomous and the syllabus design mainly comes down to the teachers. Most of whom are White and North-American or West-European, raised by the systems that movements like Black Lives Matter are trying to dismantle.

The fact that the IB is so flexible is what makes it so wonderfully adaptable to each school, and that freedom is not used to its full advantage. There are excellent teachers in the IB, many of whom want to diversify the syllabus. Some schools may have an expanded curriculum that properly reflects the student body, but a completely segregated staff. One teacher told us about such a school that provided ongoing Professional Development on inclusivity, international literature in English class and a strong Mother Tongue module in the Primary Years Program. Yet in this African country the school board and staff (including Heads of Department and counselors) were predominantly White, with White teachers having meals under the "White tree" and mostly excluding BIPOC teachers from communal out-of-school activities.
"Black teachers feel undermined, especially the [Teacher Assistants], many of whom are highly qualified but see no future in the school,"
- Anonymous response to teacher survey

Trends of racism in the recruitment system are increasingly being discussed. Many teachers described their school board as passive, or open and encouraging towards framework diversity but never proactive. This needs to be a collective effort, from teachers to administration, to the client - parents.

Our families have skewed the business that way. There is such adulation of the Western world across the Global South; international schools need a conspicuous number of Western teachers to be deemed desirable by the local elite. Parents dream of sending their children to Ivy League schools, to Oxford and Cambridge. They want their kids to internalise Whiteness as a standard. The denigration of our own cultures has been going on for so long, and enforces the narrative of Western superiority.
"It's not enough for it to pay lip service through using carefully placed "buzz words" and the arbitrary provision of tick boxes that schools use to appear "inclusive." The systemic racism at international schools needs to be stamped down and rooted out."
- Anonymous response to teacher survey

Aside from lack of action there is also the issue of censorship - that of very relevant political conflicts in the host country, for one (China evidently comes to mind first). But also deliberate censorship by schools themselves; why would Ochieng's school teach Kenya's history of colonisation by the English, when the school itself was founded by and still caters to English diplomats? Why would a school in Turkmenistan discuss American involvement in the Iraq War, when children of the U.S. military are in that very classroom, directly because of similar interests in the region? Even schools with more diverse teaching programs skirt around such topics. And why wouldn't they? Admitting that international schools serve a colonial function? That's just bad publicity.

The best course of action for students and alumni now is to act on a local level, petitioning your school boards for change. Schools in China, Singapore, and the Philippines have formed teams with the hashtag #decolonise[school name] and tagging us so we may broadcast their efforts to the expat student community. We've had a number of thought-provoking Zoom conferences. Apart from promoting this work, further expanding our network and in the near future creating examples of lesson proposals, we're hoping to contact the IB directly. Change will likely not come just from the top down; we must work from the bottom up and push them to meet us in the middle.

International schools concern only a privileged minority. We are the 7% globally mobile international students, rubbing elbows if not intersecting with the infamous 1% wealthiest people on the planet. Changing expat education may not affect a large percentage of the population, but it will condition future CEOs, diplomats and politicians who might someday make important decisions.

My education challenged me to do more than memorise and regurgitate facts. So I maintain that the IB taught me to research critically, question common biases and formulate my own opinions. What's ironic is that this has backfired on the international education system as a generation of students looks back and notices the gaping holes in our not-so-global curriculum. We have not been equipped, intellectually or emotionally, to understand this world and its current crises, and more importantly, our position in upholding global racial capitalism. Our maps are distorted. Our education makes us complicit. If we want to use the platform of international schools to its full potential, to truly advance justice, equity, and global-mindedness, our community needs to recast its long outdated mould.

By Xoài David

Sign the Decolonise IB Petition, take our Student and Educator surveys, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Decolonise IB is currently affiliated with KDSL Global, theAssociation of International Educators and Leaders of Colour (AIELOC) and Linden Global Learning Support as well as alumni from the following schools: Shanghai American School, Shanghai United International School, Hong Kong International School, International School Beijing, International School Manila, Brent International School, Tashkent International School, Singapore American School, International School Bangkok, Jakarta International School, Sekolah Ciputra, American International School of Bucharest, American Community School Athens, Tashkent International School, Lincoln Community School (Ghana) and Bilkent Laboratory International School, Berlin Brandenburg International School.

Thanks to Clara Reynolds, Kelindah Schuster and B. Kim for edits.

Disclaimer: Decolonise IB in no way seeks to appropriate Black Lives Matter nor divert urgent attention from causes that require immediate social and material support.

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Decolonise IB: How international school alumni are mobilising to diversify the expat curriculum

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International schools - the postcard of an idealised education. Well-lit classrooms with smartboards; readily available equipment still fresh in its packaging; selected teachers with frequent professional training and stimulating salaries; students of all colours from across the globe, children of the world's elite. Or something like that.

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@ECISMLIE

@Multiculturkids
@MultiLingLiving

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Amazing Things Happen - by Alexander Amelines

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The Global Storybooks Portal is designed specifically for teachers, parents, and community members around the world. It makes 40 selected stories from the African Storybook available in major national, immigrant and refugee languages of individual countries, regions, and groups.

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Exploring Cultural identity/home languages - blog post with some resources to explore, home, culture and language.

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Welcome, Wilkommen to our Home Language Day! We hope you enjoyed our Assembly this morning. You can find all the information from the assembly here along with some of the resources you may need to participate in our celebration of language, culture and identity today!

Here is the live presentation we shared with you this morning! The activities are also shared with students as Seesaw Activities with explanations.

Made with Visme Presentation Maker

Here are the printable resources you might need to refer to. You should have received copies of this from your teacher already, but just in case here are the two documents you need to return to school.

This document below is just some example templates to help you plan your identity map! You can use one of these or create your own!

Home Identities

Choose from one of the activities below on our Home Language Day!

Categories Tags Posted on Home Language Events culture, home, home language, identity, language, mother tongue

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Welcome, Wilkommen to our Home Language Day! We hope you enjoyed our Assembly this morning. You can find all the information from the assembly here along with some of the resources you may need to participate in our celebration of language, culture and identity today!

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Jo

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This is another version of the culture map, developed by an indigenous Australian. We use it with our indigenous Australian students when they come to the school. It is something that we can (and some classes) do use in different subjects as a way of understanding from where our students come and how they see themselves.

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Consuelo

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Because all children deserve to see themselves in the books they read

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Lantana is an award-winning children's book publisher and social enterprise with a mission to publish inclusive books by authors from under-represented groups, celebrating every kind of child and family.

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Global Oneness Website (includes lesson plans)

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Global Oneness Website (includes lesson plans)

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Stories and lessons for growing minds

We are a free multimedia platform for educators and students. Through our immersive storytelling and curricula, we aim to plant seeds of empathy, interconnectedness, and a sacred relationship with our planet. Use our award-winning films, photo essays, and essays to learn about social, cultural, and environmental issues from individuals and communities worldwide. For grades 3-12, our stories and lessons encourage students to broaden their perspectives and worldviews while fostering universal human values and respect for the living world. We aim to bring universal values into the lives of educators and students.

Experience Our Storytelling

Watch this short video to learn more about the stories we tell.

Student Winners and Finalists: The Environment Is in You

In what ways is climate change impacting the place where you live?

In this contest, students documented the fragility, hope, and future of our planet's ecosystem due to climate change. Inspired by four environmental writers-Linda Hogan, Robert Hass, Wendell Berry, and Dara McAnulty-students explored changes to local systems, how the environment shapes our identity, and how our actions and awareness today can impact the future.

View Winners and Finalists

Feature

These five shorts films follows five Native American communities who are restoring their traditional land management practices.

Learn More

Essay

How might stories act as keys allowing us access to challenge, examine, uproot, and illumine our habits and fears?

Learn More

Feature

This feature shares the stories of four Indigenous communities in California who are working to revitalize their languages and cultures in order to pass them on to the next generation.

Learn More

"This film has historic relevancy. I can see myself using it to encourage students to think about the value of the space program and how it speaks to the American Spirit and how we are often looking forward in our progress. This film begs to be used as an exploration of what it means to be a global citizen, how students can learn from people not like themselves, and what actions students can take in their everyday lives to make the world a better place."

Michael Dunn, Director of College Counseling at Eagle Rock School & Professional Development Center

Stories Exploring Climate Change

Celebrating Student Artwork: New Student Gallery

Encourage thoughtful and meaningful conversations in the classroom with our student gallery. Use the gallery as a tool to foster curiosity, observation skills, and perspective-taking.

The gallery encourages students to learn from each other's perspectives. How are students witnessing and engaging with the world in new ways since the start of Covid-19? Search by theme, previous Global Oneness Project contests, or from locations around the world. The gallery is accompanied by an image analysis activity, including a Visible Thinking Routine from Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

View Student Gallery

Receive our newsletter to learn about new stories and companion lesson plans.

Who Is Using Our Materials

Our materials provide opportunities for an interdisciplinary approach to learning across disciplines from social sciences and humanities to environmental sciences. Education stakeholders, including K-12 educators, university professors, librarians, tech/media specialists, parents, and students are using our materials in multiple learning environments.

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Jason Isbell - "Outfit"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLXADgF4tyI

Bob Dylan "Tangled Up in Blue" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKcNyMBw818

Steely Dan "Reeling in the Years" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaH25Sghoqc"

Eric Johnson "Cliffs of Dover"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiRn3Zlw3Rw

Frank Sinatra "Autumn Leaves" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9vZ3hHyJL8

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Consuelo's Huipil

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Quite "bassoon-heavy" given my music background. :-)

Vivaldi bassoon concerto in A Minor (RV497)
⁃ 1st movement - Allegro molto https://youtu.be/odrfr1GM_T0
⁃ 2nd movement - Andante molto https://youtu.be/KsCNF_V5AoM
⁃ 3rd movement - Allegro https://youtu.be/QCAztFTMzLg

Mozart bassoon concerto https://youtu.be/D_opKFbEIB0

Paul Hindemith Bassoon Sonate https://youtu.be/dKyjXDVHgTI

Edward Elgar Romance for bassoon (Op.62) https://youtu.be/UbD4tIvpLB0

Weber Hungarian Andante and Rondo for Bassoon (Op.35) https://youtu.be/zDpEHLtXzJI

Vivaldi Concerto for Oboe and Bassoon in G Major (RV545)
⁃ 1st movement - Andante molto https://youtu.be/0JhNPlxqUtA
⁃ 2nd movement - Largo https://youtu.be/d7_EwfcX6ss
⁃ 3rd movement - Allegro molto https://youtu.be/Dggm4n_GbNM

Sting - Englishman in New York https://youtu.be/d27gTrPPAyk

Sting - Book of my life https://youtu.be/qOYuXBr9qUQ

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Understanding how a neurodiverse child might be in your class...

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Understanding how a neurodiverse child might be in your class...

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The best comedy is always based on slightly painful truth. Very insightful lady who uses her struggles to educate.

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How Hannah Gadsby's High-Functioning Autism Works | Netflix Is A Joke

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Heather’s artifact 2

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A MUST see for EVERYONE! You are welcome!

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Little People, Big Dreams series (Ella Fitzgerald, Greta Thunberg, etc.)

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Little People, Big Dreams series (Ella Fitzgerald, Greta Thunberg, etc.)

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Playlist of talks & video clips about diversity and inclusive practices.

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The Paradox of Diversity: Dr. Marylin Sanders Mobley at TEDxCLE 2013

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How may my humility(humble attitude) help others find a way to shor or feel accepting of others' or of my differences?
Might it be helpful to meet others' lack of understanding WITH understanding, too?