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The U.S. Congress established the Days of Remembrance as the nation's annual commemoration of the Holocaust. Each year across the United States, state and local government organizations, workplaces, schools, and religious and community centers host remembrance activities to reaffirm our nation's commitment to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive. The Days of Remembrance run from the Sunday before Holocaust Remembrance Day (also known as Yom HaShoah) through the following Sunday.

The U.S. Department of State annually hosts a Yom HaShoah event, often in partnership with the international diplomatic corps in Washington, DC, to honor the lives and memory of the six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust and the millions of other victims of Nazi persecution. Yom HaShoah also honors the survivors of history's darkest hour and those heroes who found the courage to resist Nazi oppression.

This year, in light of the social distancing required by the coronavirus pandemic, the Department of State is supporting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Virtual National Commemoration on April 21, 2020 at 11:00 a.m. EDT. The ceremony will be simulcast on Facebook and YouTube.

Learn more:
https://www.ushmm.org/remember/days-of-remembrance
https://www.ushmm.org/remember/days-of-remembrance/resources/calendar
https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/ushmm-virtual-2020-dor-ceremony

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Holocaust Remembrance Day - Yom HaShoah - on April 21 - United States Department of State

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The U.S. Congress established the Days of Remembrance as the nation's annual commemoration of the Holocaust. Each year across the United States, state and local government organizations, workplaces, schools, and religious and community centers host remembrance activities to reaffirm our nation's commitment to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.

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In the Fall 1992 issue of Teaching Tolerance magazine, we published the feature story "Talk About It!"

Earlier that year, the Rodney King verdict and the ensuing L.A. riots made it clear that "we didn't know what to say to each other," we wrote in that second-ever issue. Educators, we said at the time, faced a new and urgent need: "to find ways to talk truthfully about things like bigotry, injustice and violence."

More than 25 years later, the need is just as great. That's part of the reason we're releasing a new edition of Let's Talk!, our guide to leading critical conversations with students.

Released in 2015, the original Let's Talk! recommended ways K-12 educators could prepare for classroom conversations about critical topics and address student discomfort as the conversations unfold.

For our newest edition, we collected feedback from readers and users of the original and solicited advice from our Teaching Tolerance Advisory Board. In response to their suggestions, we expanded the guide. The new version helps K-12 educators lay the groundwork for conversations (on their own and with students), and it outlines classroom-ready strategies educators can use with students before, during and after critical conversations.

We're pleased to share this excerpt from Let's Talk!, which offers four recommendations for beginning such a discussion with your students.

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

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Increasing incidents of Xenophobia resulting from COVID-19, Rosetta Lee, Jenifer Moore, Shari Berga, Liza Talusan discuss Asian-Black solidarity.

Rosetta Lee is an educator at Seattle Girls' School and a consultant with non-profits, K-12 and Universities on topics such as cross-cultural communication, inclusive classrooms, and more tiny.cc/rosettalee.

Jenifer is the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Key School in Annapolis, MD. Jenifer has served children of ...

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Asian-Black Solidarity During COVID-19 - Third Space with Jen Cort

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Increasing incidents of Xenophobia resulting from COVID-19, Rosetta Lee, Jenifer Moore, Shari Berga, Liza Talusan discuss Asian-Black solidarity. Rosetta Lee is an educator at Seattle Girls' School and a consultant with non-profits, K-12 and Universities on topics such as cross-cultural communication, inclusive classrooms, and more tiny.cc/rosettalee.

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Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

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Global anxiety about the outbreak of the coronavirus has led to the spread of much misinformation and scapegoating. In schools and communities in the U.S., we have seen incidents of bias, harassment, bullying, isolation, exclusion and xenophobia against Chinese people and those who are perceived as being Chinese.

Coronavirus and Racism: Defining the Threat

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) coronaviruses are:

A large family of viruses found in both animals and humans. Some infect people and are known to cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A novel coronavirus (CoV) is a new strain of coronavirus that has not been previously identified in humans. The new or "novel" coronavirus, now called 2019-nCoV, had not previously detected before the outbreak was reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019.

As of February 10, 2020, over 35,000 illnesses and 811 deaths have been reported in mainland China due to the coronavirus. In the U.S., there are of the virus and recently a U.S. citizen in Wuhan, China died from coronavirus. Chinese cities have been quarantined, borders have been sealed, and travel has been banned. The WHO has declared the coronavirus an international public health emergency.

It is an established fact that the coronavirus, while most likely originating in China, does not discriminate based on ethnic background or race. Virtually anyone can contract and contribute to the spread of this disease.

Coronavirus and Racism: Scapegoating Throughout History

The scapegoating that has taken place in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak is not new. We define scapegoating as: "Blaming an individual or group for something based on that person or group's identity when the person or group is not responsible. Bias, prejudicial thinking and discriminatory acts can lead to scapegoating."

Contagious diseases often fuel scapegoating and xenophobia. As with any public health crisis, the fear of a pandemic leads to misinformation, conspiracy theories and scapegoating, especially on social media platforms and the internet. The seemingly endless news media coverage may make these diseases seem more threatening, widespread and deadly than they are.

Throughout history, we find examples of marginalized groups being scapegoated specifically around illness and disease. They quickly become targets of xenophobia, a fear of people perceived to be "foreign" or "strange." In the 1920s, associations between germs and immigrants led to immigration restrictions in New York City. In the 1980s in the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Haitian immigrants were singled out as "high risk" and the Haitian community was stigmatized and blamed for spreading the disease. With the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, panic about the disease and xenophobia manifested in the U.S. It was dubbed "Fearbola" yet only nine people were infected. "Historically, in both popular and scientific discourse, contagious disease has often been linked, in a blanket way, to population groups thought to be 'outsiders," Merlin Chowkwanyun, historian and assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, told Vox.

Scapegoating of victims can result in a loss of public compassion and empathy for those most directly affected by the disease.

A chart detailing coronavirus symptoms and prevention,

Coronavirus and Racism: Bias and Scapegoating in Schools and Communities

Amid this current health crisis, misinformation, bias and scapegoating is increasing. False numbers, misinformation and fear-mongering is spreading on social media. Some Chinese people, and those who are East Asian or perceived to be Chinese, are being harassed, bullied, excluded and targeted. Although there has been only one reported case of the disease on college campuses, fear and panic are becoming more commonplace.

In the news every day, we hear stories about Asian people receiving suspicious looks, offensive comments in person and online, nervous glances and being shunned and isolated. Extremists are using people's fears about the coronavirus virus to spread racism and conspiracy theories, primarily using social media platforms to share their hateful views. It's almost as if the fear of the spread of this virus has granted a free pass for some to give voice to racist and xenophobic views.

Coronavirus and Racism: How Can Schools and Families Address the Issue?

In a climate of panic and fear, it is important to share accurate information as a means of maintaining a realistic and fact-based understanding of the situation. The adults in young people's lives can help provide accurate information, explore emotions, and, most importantly, play a role in reducing stereotyping and scapegoating.

Listen to young people's fears and questions. When something like the coronavirus makes the daily news headlines, there is going to be fear, especially when it's new and there isn't a lot of information about the scale and extent of the threat to public health. Encourage young people to express those fears and strong feelings without resorting to misinformation and scapegoating. Listening to the nature of their fears will help you understand what they're worried about and provide an opportunity to allay their concerns with as much factual information as possible.

Provide factual information. Familiarize yourself so that you can provide young people with accurate information about the disease, the health threat, and the prevention efforts. Direct students and young people to credible sources of information online, and teach them to identify sources that are less credible. This will help to quell irrational fears that lead to pervasive bias and scapegoating. It can also tap into their empathy and compassion. has lesson plans and resources on the topic. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control websites provide timely information.

Teach about stereotypes and scapegoating. This latest example of scapegoating provides a teachable moment to discuss how scapegoating is used to blame an entire people for a societal problem. The scapegoating of Jews during the Holocaust and current day examples of anti-Muslim bias and scapegoating can be instructive in helping young people separate fact from fiction, understand the fear for what it is and not give rise to stereotypes, scapegoating and xenophobia. You can also encourage young people to use social media, as these teens used TikTok , to confront the bias directly.

Support targeted students. If individual students are targeted by bias, it is best to address it immediately and clearly. Schools, communities and families should be proactive in stating visibly and emphatically that bias and scapegoating have no place at school. Model and teach young people when others are targeted by bias and bullying.

Promote a respectful and inclusive school and classroom climate. In order to provide a safe and equitable environment for all, we need to address bias when we see it, no matter how large or small. All students should be treated with respect, compassion and equity in order to provide a positive school climate for all.

We should be able to understand and help prevent the spread of coronavirus and racism without resorting to stereotypes and xenophobia. Teaching young people about the disease and, at the same time, deconstructing how scapegoating works will pave the way to a deeper understanding and empathy for all people.

This article was originally published by ADL and can be found here .

For more on coronavirus and racism, explore coronavirus lesson plans and resources with our curated prek-12 collection.

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Coronavirus and Racism: Fear, Stereotypes and Scapegoating

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Global anxiety about the outbreak of the coronavirus has led to the spread of much misinformation and scapegoating. In schools and communities in the U.S., we have seen incidents of bias, harassment, bullying, isolation, exclusion and xenophobia against Chinese people and those who are perceived as being Chinese.

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Find all our Film Club films here.
" Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School " is a four-minute film that explores what happens when stereotypes and fear about Covid-19 arrive before the actual disease does? In this Opinion video, Katherine Oung, a 11th grader in Florida, shows what teenagers like her and her friends face as the coronavirus pandemic brings to the surface the racism underlying her community.

Katherine Oung says, "Historically, pandemics have stoked xenophobia." Does this resonate with your experience of the coronavirus? What kinds of rumors, stereotypes, xenophobia and racism have you seen, heard or experienced during the outbreak?
Students
1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.

2. After watching, think about these questions:

What questions do you still have?

What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you've read or seen? If so, how and why?

3. An additional challenge | Respond to the essential question at the top of this post: How is the coronavirus pandemic bringing out fears, stereotypes, xenophobia and racism?

4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)

5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the "Reply" button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
More?
* See all the films in this series.

* Read our list of practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries in the classroom.

* Want to make sure you never miss a film? Add Film Club to your Google calendar to receive weekly reminders and see our full publishing schedule for the 2019-20 school year.

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Film Club: 'Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School'

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Find all our Film Club films here. " Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School " is a four-minute film that explores what happens when stereotypes and fear about Covid-19 arrive before the actual disease does?

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In the United States and abroad, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) threatens our health, disrupts our routines, and undermines our financial and economic well-being. Diagnoses of anxiety in children were at a peak even before the coronavirus provided more cause for alarm. Join us for a conversation with a developmental behavioral pediatrician, based in Houston, and a child psychologist, based in the Bay Area, about how parents, guardians, and other caregivers can best protect children in these difficult times. As always, we also take your questions and comments.

A lightly edited transcript follows.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

EmbraceRace: We're so pleased to have two of our favorite doctors in the race and kids space with us tonight in conversation along with all of you joining us from all around the country.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith is a child clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma and issues of race. She combines her love of teaching and advocacy by serving as a professor and by directing mental health programs for children experiencing trauma, homelessness or foster care. An adjunct professor at the Wright Institute, much of her work is with Bay Area schools and nonprofits as a clinician, consultant and trainer.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin is a developmental behavioral pediatrician in the Meyer Center for Developmental Pediatrics at Texas Children's Hospital and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics for Baylor College of Medicine. Since 2018, she has led a team of multi-disciplinary, multi-ethnic pediatric professionals to conduct anti-racism workshops across the country. The workshops focus on racism as an Adverse Childhood Experience, training healthcare professionals to become "anti-racists," and addressing the effects of racism during clinical encounters with patients.

EmbraceRace: You're in different parts of the country, I know things are changing really quickly. Adiaha, from where you are in Houston, what are you seeing? What's the COVID-19, or the corona virus situation, and especially how it's being experienced, not only by you, but the people you serve?

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: Well, thank you for having me on as a guest. I've been a big fan of EmbraceRace for quite some time.

The Houston area, as the state of Texas, has been rather delayed in the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And as a result, we haven't had the type of systemic closures that you see in other parts of the country. We're getting there now. This week has been a pivotal week, in various cities, encouraging people to remain home. It's been done step-by-step. First we had school closures, then restaurants went from in-dining to to-go-dining, grocery stores are trying to remain stocked, because people are shopping and collecting toilet paper, we don't know why.

And then today, the City of Houston, and the surrounding county that Houston is in, gave a stay at home order starting at midnight tonight. With families that I've spoken with, they've all had very different experiences. We have a large oil industry here, so because of the international conflicts regarding oil, I've had parents be furloughed from their jobs due to the oil industry. But then another parent, even in the same family, will lose their job, or be laid-off because of COVID-19. So we're already seeing economic effects. We've been seeing those for about two weeks, at least among my patient population.

Some of the children have had worries, concerns, a lot of questions. Parents have been pretty good at fielding their children's questions appropriately, and trying to seek evidence-based information with scientific facts from the CDC website. And I've been encouraging families to do that. Finally, schools locally are closed and they have started online schooling programs this week in the Houston area.

And so now families are having to adapt to having online learning. In some schools, the children face-to-face video conference with their teachers, at a specific time every day. And then there are other schools where children are receiving assignments just once a week, to turn in at their own pace. So everyone's trying to figure out what to do.

EmbraceRace: What are you seeing Allison?

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: I'm calling from the Bay Area, from Oakland [California] in particular. We are a couple of weeks ahead, with this being our second full week of school closure, and actually it was last week Monday that, the Bay area went under shelter-in-place. So we're about two weeks, a week and a half ahead, and also have been having our kids out of school for two weeks now.

In [the mental health] sphere of work, we've been really having a challenge about how we are reaching out to folks. We've got a number of logistical challenges, making sure that we can engage in therapy and outreach. And that's namely about privacy over the phone or how to do telehealth.

So I'm part of communities that are trying to figure out how to make that work, and people are figuring out how to make it work. I'm finding clinically that a lot of our clients, that they're not necessarily finding the time for therapy right now, that there's more and other immediate needs that are more pressing. And that's not to say there aren't mental health needs, but showing up for a therapy appointment, even via Zoom, is falling to the bottom of the list, and other kinds of things, we're seeing a whole range of stuff happening clinically.

I think as Adiaha also spoke about, just the range of the economic impact, and our schools have not, at least in the Bay area, systematically moved to online, in terms of the public schools. We have a large population of kids that don't have online access. So I just got off a family-school call, where we're trying to figure out how to deliver hotspots and Chromebooks to families, and to try to make that work. And as such, we really haven't started online.

So a lot of our families, at least in the public-school arena, are hodgepodging it, and trying to figure out how to do this together, with some big challenges around kids that already have underlying anxiety, learning disorders, learning disability type of issues. That's a challenge. And I'm also now working with a lot of parents, and parents who are managing their own anxiety - or not! - in this moment. That's also what showing up.

EmbraceRace: You're both touching on a number of things already that we can identify. So there's the need to protect ourselves, and our children, and each other, and others from possibly contracting the disease. There are a different set of issues for parents, for children, for educators.

Number one, what are some of the basic guidelines you're offering your clients, and then the folks who you're interacting with, that we should all know? And what are some of the misunderstandings you're finding to be prevalent among the people that you're dealing with, if any? Adiaha, let me start with you. What are you seeing?

Make sure you're getting medically accurate, evidence-based information about COVID-19.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: I'm a developmental behavioral pediatrician in the Houston area, and I care for children with a variety of developmental disabilities and behavior disorders. And, what we're hearing from parents are a variety of levels of understanding. There are some parents that are getting information from social media that is not accurate. [ See the World Health Organization's list of COVID-19 Myth Busters.] And so it's good for us to talk about that, and refer them to sources, where they can receive medically accurate, scientifically updated information [as from the CDC website.]

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: There was one misconception that came out, that I think it's really important to disabuse, which is, I heard a number of people saying, "Well, I'm not hugging my kids anymore, because I don't want them to get infected." And I really want to challenge that. I know that that's a worry and concern, but actually especially for our little ones, we need to do what we can to make sure that we're safe. Of course, if you're in direct risk, you want to be thoughtful of that, but we need to be hugging our kids in our homes. We need to be providing with them with lots of extra love right now in this kind of moment. So, I'm worried about that [misconception]. I don't want that message to kind of spread.

Maintain a routine with your child(ren).

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: One of the things I've asked parents to do, is to set up a schedule for their children and a routine. Because children do better when they have structure and routine. Children with developmental disabilities or behavior disorders, really struggle with adapting to changes, and having a day where there is no order and structure. When it's unpredictable, it really stresses them out. And one of the ways that children respond to stress, is through disruptive behaviors. Behavior is a form of communication, it has a meaning, and children are trying to tell us something. So when their behaviors escalate it's often a sign that the child is stressed, and it is up to the adults to figure out, how to reduce the child's stress. One easy way of doing it, is just having a simple schedule. Try to have consistent wake-up times, and bed-times, schedules for morning activities, schedules for meal times, and routine bedtime activities.

One of the ways that children respond to stress, is through disruptive behaviors. Behavior is a form of communication, it has a meaning, and children are trying to tell us something. So when their behaviors escalate it's often a sign that the child is stressed, and it is up to the adults to figure out, how to reduce the child's stress.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: I'm also recommending pairing up indoor, and outdoor activities, as long as they are engaging in social distancing, and remaining at least 6 to 10 feet away from other people. What I explained to folks is the reason we're recommending 6 to 10 feet is because that's how far a cough or sneeze can travel. And the COVID-19 virus is transmitted through those respiratory droplets that we expel when we cough and when we sneeze.

The other thing we talk about, or resources for hands-on activities that are really fun for families, I mentioned a website called Education.com. And they've got a wealth of hands-on activities, that are designed for children from preschool to fifth grade, and there are things like simple science projects, writing projects, reading projects, math activities, and they're literally hands-on things that families can do together.

Allow time for free play indoors and outdoors.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: I suggest pulling out the old game boxes, and dusting them off, and the card games, and sit on the floor, and actually play with your kids. If you give them 10 minutes of free play time, you're likely to see a lot less behavior problems down the road. And then I suggest simple walks. It could be a nature walk in the backyard, it can be anything that allows them to get some sunshine. It actually isn't good for children to spend a lot of time on screens, or in their rooms by themselves and not engaging in other activities. One of the things we are concerned about, as developmentalists, is the risk for anxiety and depression, when there is a prolonged disruption in the child's routine, and we don't want this stressful event, that is stressful for the entire country, to actually turn into a toxic stress. It doesn't have to become a toxic, dangerous stressor. It can be something that is tolerable, and manageable when your family supports you.

We don't want this stressful event, that is stressful for the entire country, to actually turn into a toxic stress. It doesn't have to become a toxic, dangerous stressor. It can be something that is tolerable, and manageable when your family supports you.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin

Take time for yourself.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: Finally, I asked parents to have a little, "Me time." Last week. I literally assigned coloring, to a mom who is caring for her aging parents, and her children who have disabilities. I had an extra coloring book, one of those really fancy mindful coloring books for adults. I got it at the dollar store. It was in my clinic room. I gave it to her, she said she had matte pencils at the house, I assigned her five minutes of coloring when everybody goes to bed and she put it in her phone. I said, "Put it in your phone now, otherwise you won't do it." Those little things.

EmbraceRace: Adiaha, Thank you for that. And Allison, I saw you nodding away. What are you telling folks?

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: I think that the message that Adiaha is providing is really, really sound, and could bare repeating, but really, really listening to those.

I think the other kind of challenge is that we're really overwhelmed with a lot of resources. That's a blessing. But if I get another email with the 300 websites that I have to look out to improve my homeschooling, I might lose my mind. I don't know if anyone else is feeling that. I think you've got to pick a source. Pick a person that you really trust. Pick one thing that feels really good. Pick something. Because I think there's another kind of overwhelmed that a lot of folks are manifesting, if they become overwhelmed with information. That is something I get to come and speak about, from a place of economic privilege, but I'm also hearing about this in terms of folks that are really struggling. So listen to Adiaha, she's the medical professional here to listen to. Pick a person, to really, focus in on.

And then I think the last point, to really raise up, is that this is the time to reach for our oxygen mask as parents, that we really have to do that. And it's really easy for that to go out the window now. You were full-time working, and now you're full-time working and full-time parenting, at home and taking care of other folks. We moved my mother in. So now we've got a a 73-year-old, a 2-year-old, a 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, some other folks. All of that's kind of happening, so you have to do something. And I really like the idea of something small. Five minutes a day. But you have to have something that's five minutes that's yours. Reading an old book, putting on a pair of socks that you really like, taking a shower, whatever it is.

This is the time to reach for our oxygen mask ... our children are really thriving when we do well. And this is such a huge stressor that impacts us as parents, that we really have to work hard to be, well - not perfect, but well. That would be the piece that I would really like to emphasize. Any small, tiny thing, that we can do, that helps us is really important.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: But this is the time to reach for our oxygen mask, and as we both believe, we understand that our children are really thriving when we do well. And this is such a huge stressor that impacts us as parents, that we really have to work hard to be, well - not perfect, but well. That would be the piece that I would really like to emphasize. Any small, tiny thing, that we can do, that helps us is really important.

EmbraceRace, Melissa: I want to say that we did our first puzzle. As a family first ever, and it was good. And then Andrew stayed up late, finishing. I thought it was for the kids and then he was up 'till 1:00.

EmbraceRace, Andrew: I need more than five minutes Allison.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: Five minutes is just a reminder for us to try that. But if we can do more, even better.

But also I think it's just the conversation about, what's actually necessary for us to be of service. If you can feel like, "Oh, I can't possibly make a time for myself in this moment." Then chances are that our stress responses are up. Our ability to actually attend, to provide, and we're also talking about doing this in the context of really, all being in the same four walls together. Some of you all have big four walls, some of us have small four walls, but that's really important for us to think about... that we have to manage our stress as much as possible. Again, not perfectly, but attend to, and some graciousness with ourselves around it.

EmbraceRace: You both work in two of the most diverse parts of the country, and your population is quite diverse, but maybe majority are people of color, I'm not sure, kids of color. But I'm wondering what you're seeing, and if there's any difference you're seeing, and how families of color are being affected? And of course that would be true for families of East Asian descent as well.

Attend to our resilience as communities of color.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: The way that I'm seeing patients right now is really via telephone. I have to say, and I see some questions around that, our teens are uniquely adapted for that. In fact, my teen clients have been like, "Finally I get to talk to you by phone." So we're FaceTiming, we're doing all that kind of stuff. So I think there's a way that the teens have really moved to that. It's been much more complicated in the context of doing play therapy with an 8, 9-year-old or a 7-year-old. But you know what, we're figuring this out. A lot more of my work at this moment to be supporting parents, and parents of color.

In terms of the question about how this is impacting populations of color, when we talk about our disproportionate over representation amongst poverty, that's where it shows up, in terms of access to resources. The community that I really serve in, and live in, is predominantly Latinx, and migrant, and undocumented. And so the ability to get help from those checks from Trump, aren't going to come into my community in the same kind of way. So those economic pieces are really particularly challenging, for a lot of the families, but then there's also a piece, and this is my big drive, which is I think, we really need to attend to our resilience as communities of color. We've been through hard things before, we've been through, maybe not this, but as say it's the only reason I'm here as a black person, is because one of my ancestors survived the Middle Passage.

So an opportunity for us to really pay attention to our resilience, our strength. Our bodies are meant to handle extraordinary stress, so that's really a place that I'm trying to emphasize that. You also mentioned something I think is important, which is for us to pay attention to the ways in which our Asian brothers and sisters and folks are being impacted, by xenophobia and by racism. And to understand that it's coming out of fear, and that there are ways that we can stop it, by joining in, and being supportive, and explicitly addressing, common misperceptions, poor use of language, as evidenced by some of our administration.

We really need to attend to our resilience as communities of color. We've been through hard things before... the only reason I'm here as a black person, is because one of my ancestors survived the Middle Passage. So [this is] an opportunity for us to really pay attention to our resilience, our strength ... I think there's a way that we can really support each other in this, and also come back to our unique resilience, as folks that know how to live through oppression, and war, and famine. There're all the people here on this webinar. Think back to your great grandfather, great grandmother. Somebody went through a thing. So let's pay attention to that.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: There are ways that we can do this that don't actually incite fear, because what none of our kids need right now is to be afraid of other people. And that's not what this is. I think there's a way that we can really support each other in this, and also come back to our unique resilience, as folks that know how to live through oppression, and war, and famine. There're all the people here on this webinar. Think back to your great grandfather, great grandmother. Somebody went through a thing. So let's pay attention to that.

EmbraceRace: I love that. And it's a moment to talk to those people - those great greats and grandparents. If they can be called or reached ...

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: I am amen-ing Allison over here in Texas. That is exactly the message I've been giving to families. Your ancestors survived the depression. We collectively survived the Great Recession, and we can survive this too. I'm so thankful for you bringing up the concept of resilience, and really recognizing your own resilience, and the resilience of your children. There's this the ability to overcome, and to bounce back.

Address racist terminology and misconceptions.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: With regards to how this pandemic has affected families of color in our region.. Houston is a very diverse region. In general, it's about 25% of the four major groups: Black, White, Latinx, and Asian American, including East and South Asians. One of the first things that happened was, our impact on our Asia town, our Chinatown, and businesses being hit because of the racist misconception, that if you go to Chinatown, you can catch coronavirus, which is not true.

I'm having colleagues, being questioned about wearing a mask, because they are East Asian, or they're Chinese American, or Japanese, or Vietnamese American. Having people say that they're afraid to even sneeze in public if they are an East Asian descent, because of the negative stereotype that is out there. That it's a really big deal. And validating the feelings of people who are experiencing that form of racism.

This isn't new of course, when it comes to infectious disease. We've got centuries of experience, of attaching infections to certain ethnic groups. When those ideas come up we need to be firm in validating the fact that it's racist and it's wrong. And teaching our children appropriate terminology. That the name of the disease is called COVID-19. It is not called the "Chinese Virus." It is not called "Kung Flu." Those are different terms that patients have told me, that they've heard, and are being teased about, and joking about.

This isn't new of course, when it comes to infectious disease. We've got centuries of experience, of attaching infections to certain ethnic groups. When those ideas come up we need to be firm in validating the fact that it's racist and it's wrong. And teaching our children appropriate terminology. This is also an important time, just like, Dr. Allison said if children are being teased, or being mistreated because of their East Asian ethnicity, for parents to bring out the ancestors, and talk about all of the positive experiences and the positive ways that their families have overcome adversity, and have contributed to this country. That's really important.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: This is also an important time, just like, Dr. Allison said, for if children are being teased, or being mistreated because of their East Asian ethnicity, for parents to bring out the ancestors, and talk about all of the positive experiences and the positive ways that their families have overcome adversity, and have contributed to this country. That's really important.

Another misconception I've heard early in the course of the illness was that black people are immune to COVID-19. That is wrong. No one is immune to COVID-19. The early misconceptions were due to the thought, that because they did not see black faces on television testing positive, then that must mean by some toss of logic, that black people can't get it. That isn't true. There is no population of people based on ethnicity, or race that is at higher risk for COVID-19. And there is no population, that is immune.

This is a brand new virus among the human population, so none of us have developed immunity toward it. It came from animals into the human population, so we're all susceptible. The people who are at most risk of course, are people with chronic health conditions, and those who are elderly, but they are the ones who are more likely to get these sickest, most severe forms of the disorder. But we're all at risk of it, and it's not based on race or ethnicity.

EmbraceRace: Totally. You both dropped some real pearls. Thank you so much, and not least this last point about pointing out the vulnerable populations. A lot's been said, and of course it's true, that across race, across the lines of ethnicity, immigration status, all of that, people will all be hit. All of the subpopulations will be hit, but not equally. We know that, that's true. That's always true and it's true here.

And it's so ironic Adiaha, the point about, people thinking that because they weren't seeing black people on television being tested, that black people might be immune. Ironic because I know that they're many doctors in many places, medical personnel who actually are concerned that black people and other populations, including some of the ones that you named, will not have equal access to the tests, when they're available to people. Unless you're in NBA or you happen to be one of the two black senators, maybe that sort of thing.

There's so much uncertainty here of course, and one major uncertainty, just how long this, "new normal" will last? What is the "new normal"? The new normal now, will be different than the "new normal" in a month, six months. Until we get this vaccine, at least. And even then of course by then, so many things will have happened. The repercussions will be profound.

So how do we, as parents, guardians, grandparents, caregivers, how do we support ourselves, each other, our children, in light of that uncertainty, of just, how this will unfold and what will be asked of us? Is it a year, or in three months are things somehow are different?

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: As far as trajectory is concerned, we have no clue. All we can do is go by what has happened in other countries thus far. The peak and the trough... the peak and the valley in China, versus South Korea, versus what's happening in Italy, versus what's happening in England, and what's happening here. We don't have a centralized, coordinated, systematic public health response, in The United States. States are left to figure out their own methods of doing it, and depending on what state you're in, the individual precincts might have to figure out their own methods. So in Texas, it's really precinct by precinct, city by city, county by county without having a coordinated effort. As a result, it's going to be really hard to control and contain the spread of COVID-19.

In addition to that, we don't have enough testing kits. Therefore, I know in our region, and in other regions, they're actually criteria for being tested, which is a first. Like if you think you've got strep throat, there are no criteria for testing strep throat. You just stick a swab down the throat, bam, test for strep throat. But when it comes to COVID-19, we don't have enough testing kits, and because we don't have enough kits, that means we're going to have to be really judicious in who we test. As a result, we will not have pure data on the epidemiology of this virus in the United States. We've learned from the data coming out of China, that about 30% of adults who test positive for COVID-19 are actually asymptomatic. That means they have no symptoms.

And about 14% of children, one study says 13%, another study found 15%- So about 14% of children who tested positive for COVID-19 are also asymptomatic. That's a lot of folks. So I know in our region, if you have no symptoms, then you don't qualify to get tested. I'm worried that we're actually under-reporting the numbers. So we have not reached the peak yet. We have not yet reached the peak. We are a few months behind other countries that are to the east of us. I have a public health background. Another thing we think about is once we reach our peak, and then we began to decline in the number of new cases, we will start to get back to our regular routine.

Will there be a second peak down the road? That's a concern because as we become very comfortable, and we're not as careful around each other, we're not as hygienic around each other, this virus is now a part of our nation. It's a part of our earth, which means that we can get infected again. So we need to be really careful and judicious, in maintaining our sense of hand-washing. My grandmother, who was an incredibly wise woman, born in 1911, she used to say, "Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."

Provide small concrete answers to children's questions.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: It's a great way of thinking about it, in terms of continuing to remain vigilant.

From the mental health standpoint, of course we all would like an answer as to when this is going to end. It'd be great. Easter, what a great, beautiful day for that to be done. And I think that's in part, because we have gotten used to, and would like to have control, and would like to be able to predict on behalf of our children.

But what we need to hold onto is, as Adiaha said, we don't know. And that's what we can tell our kids. "We don't know." And we also need to be reminded, we had been through things before, that we didn't know. How long was the war going to last? How long was, all the bad things that we can think about, going to last? I'm conceptualizing this as a natural disaster, in many different ways.

I grew up in Hawaii and in the Caribbean, so I'm used to hurricanes. So I know that when a hurricane comes, you see it, it lasts longer than you ever think it will, and then you hit the eye of the storm where you think everything's okay. And you eagerly go outside, until the other eye hits you. So we need to conceptualize this as a storm, and so that's why I'm asking very purposely, "How were we weathering the storm?" "How are we preparing?" "How are we engaging?" And also we need to be reminded, we have made it through storms before, but I cannot tell you how long the storm will last or what it's going to look like afterwards.

Small, tangible concrete. 'I'm not sure how long this is going to last, but I know that right now in this moment we're okay.' 'I know that this week, this is our plan.' 'I know that our structure is this.' We have to keep it small and concrete, because that's all that we can really offer. And you all also have to do a lot of thinking yourselves, how are you understanding what's going on? How do you make sense of this? I think this is a great time to offer up stories to our kids. "I remember when mama lived through the hurricane, this is what I did ..."

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: We also need to be prepared to rebuild after the storm. We need to rebuild our economic structure. We need to rebuild in the context of kids. So I see a lot of the questions here. "How do we..." And, "What do we say to our kids?" I really want to encourage folks that we cannot overpromise. That's not to be like, "I don't know how long it's going to last, do you?" it's not that. Small, tangible concrete. "I'm not sure how long this is the last, but I know that right now in this moment we're okay." "I know that this week, this is our plan." "I know that our structure is this." We have to keep it small and concrete, because that's all that we can really offer. And you all also have to do a lot of thinking yourselves, how are you understanding what's going on? How do you make sense of this? I think this is a great time to offer up stories to our kids.

"I remember when mama lived through the hurricane, this is what I did." "I remember when we lived through this, this is how we managed." So we really have to bring those stories of resilience back to our kids. And that's something that can be done at any level. I see a lot of questions, young kids, older kids, their developmental ability to engage with that will shift. But here's the big thing, do not over promise. Don't tell them Easter, if we don't know that this is done at Easter. We know that this is a long time, and we know that this is hard, and we're going to have big feelings about this, but we're going to make it. All the evidence that we have, is that we're going to make it. That doesn't mean that people aren't going to be sick and impacted, and struggle, and there's not going to be lost there, but again, to cultivate that sense of what we can, and to point to those early stories that you have, some other stories. We can pull on to these stories of resilience and making it through it.

We can pull on to movies, as well to kind of help them through, like Star Wars. How long was the battle? We can kind of think about how do people make it through long type of things? I know many of you all are having kids asking, "When do I get to go back?" "When do we get to go back?" And our answer very simply has to be, "I don't know yet, but what we're going to do today? And how are we going to try to make it better today?" That's how I would think about, trying to answer that kind of question, with the medical and the public health perspective, that Dr. Adiaha just offered, helps us to contextualize. This is a marathon and not a sprint, is the other way that we have to think about this.

Do not over promise [to your children]. We know that this is a long time, and we know that this is hard, and we're going to have big feelings about this, but we're going to make it. All the evidence that we have, is that we're going to make it... [We need] to cultivate that sense of what we can [do], and to point to those early stories that you have, some other stories. We can pull on to these stories of resilience and making it through it.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Community Q & A

EmbraceRace: A question from Lindsey here. "I am an interested teacher and parent. I believe kids need a sense of normalcy in schoolwork right now. My colleague disagrees. How do we strike a balance between a sense of normalcy, and simultaneously allowing kids the spaces to process this experience while being sensitive to not pathologize, or further traumatize our children and our students?"

I know you were all were talking about the importance of a schedule, and I know kids are different in terms of... and some parents are like, "Oh, they've got to be doing the school." And others are like, "Actually, no, we need to adjust."

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: I would think of it as freedom within boundaries. When I say "have a schedule" or "have structure," I'm not talking about army boot camp. I'm just talking about, having a day that's pretty predictable for a kid. So if your child responds to picture schedules, or visual schedules, just get a piece of paper and write it out. "All right, this is our morning routine. This is what time we're having breakfast, what time we're having lunch. This is what we're doing this afternoon. We're going to go collect some rocks this evening, then we're going to have dinner, we're going to read a book, we're going to play some cards as a family." Just kind of laying out what the routine is for the day. One of the things I appreciate about teachers in this area, that I'm hearing from parents, is the teacher's flexibility. When the teachers are able to log on, for those who are doing online classes.

When the kids know what time they're going to be logging on, to have their experience with their teachers online, it also provides a nice opportunity for them to see their classmates, face-to-face again, through the video chat. That can also be a nice launch point, where parents can say, "Okay, well this is the rest of our schedule for the day. This is the time for you to do homework, but then we're going to have some free play-time and go outside, and play chase or have a bear-crawl in the backyard." Well we can do that in Texas because it's hot, but if it's snowing. I don't know if you can do this in Washington.

The other thing, I've talked about with normalcy, and to help children to take the focus off of themselves, is to think about somebody else. So I've been encouraging families to have their children call older relatives. We know that that is the high-risk population, so call the aunties, and the uncles, and the abuelas who are over 70, or over 65. And check on them and say, "I've been thinking about you, and I want to know how you're doing." And if that relative is fortunate enough to know how to FaceTime, that's even better. There's also a really nice idea, since families are home. It's a project I did with my kids many years ago, but it actually could be fun now. While you're calling and Face Timing relatives, you could actually make a notebook of your family tree

I've mentioned this as an idea where kids can call relatives, take a picture of their relative, and by the end of the week or two, they've actually built their own family tree across the multiple generations of folks that they've spoken with. And have those relatives tell them stories. And that's yet another way of building their connectedness to their community, their connectedness to their families, building their own sense of character, and self-esteem, and accomplishment.

The other thing, I've talked about with normalcy, and to help children to take the focus off of themselves, is to think about somebody else. So I've been encouraging families to have their children call older relatives... And have those relatives tell them stories. And that's yet another way of building their connectedness to their community, their connectedness to their families, building their own sense of character, and self-esteem, and accomplishment.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: I think I would kind of just tap into that with the flexibility kind of idea is this notion of grace. Like this is not normal, and this is new, and there's some structures that we can put in place. So some grace for ourselves. Like I didn't want to be a seventh-grade teacher, and so I'm not great at doing that. So why would I all of a sudden overnight, become a great teacher to my kids, and be able to find curriculum... I was up all last night learn about photosynthesis again. That's not it.

That's not what I'm here to do. So some graciousness with ourselves, and some ability to do that, and also grace for our kids. So that they're learning how to make this new transition, they're watching us, and they're watching how we learn. It's flexibility and support as well. So try to think about this.

Can your children help to engage with you, and develop the schedule together? Maybe there's a way that they could actually point out: "I actually like this type of reading, I don't like this." Have their voice and choice with this, is actually key in the context of larger issues of trauma, is that we need to empower our kids to have some choices. Even littles. Get to have a little more of a choice, because what's taken out of this whole circumstance, this trauma, is choice. Think about just being graceful, not being skilled, but grace with ourselves. Be compassionate to ourselves, that we can show that, through our kids and allow them to have that too. Because we're going to toggle back and forth between "get everything done," with "not". The last thing I want to say about this, we need to understand, especially in the context of things like developmental disabilities, or challenges that our capacity to learn in this moment is changed. That our stress response is up, that we're all walking around really, really stressed out.

So our capacity to take in information, and capacity to metabolize any information, is different. Mine is, yours is, so let's have a little bit of compassion for ourselves in this. Everybody's walking around with their flight or fight system up, hypervigilant. I just got out of the store right now, and I was ready to box. So we're all showing this up in a different way. Just to think about, our bodies are responding right now, we're not walking around fully rational. So let's not have the expectation that our kids are too. Let's be flexible, and kind where we can, for this time period, because this isn't going to last forever, because nothing does.

Think about just being graceful, not being skilled, but grace with ourselves. Be compassionate to ourselves, that we can show that, through our kids and allow them to have that too... Just to think about, our bodies are responding right now, we're not walking around fully rational. So let's not have the expectation that our kids are too. Let's be flexible, and kind where we can, for this time period, because this isn't going to last forever, because nothing does.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: Dr. Allison, I just want to piggyback on what you just said about the fight, flight or freeze response taking over right now as our stress response. I have this conversation with families in clinic, almost every day, explaining what's happening in the brain when we are stressed. There are parts of our brain responsible for thinking, and problem solving, reasoning and learning. And then there are parts of our brain that I call the inner cave man or the inner cave woman. And when we're under stress, the inner cave man wakes up, and its whole goal is for you to survive. So it's looking for that saber tooth tiger, or that grizzly bear, so we can know to either fight the tiger, run from the tiger, or lay down and play dead with the tiger. When your stress response kicks in, the regions of the brain responsible for survival, actually shut down the regions of the brain responsible for learning, thinking, problem solving, and being rational.

So what Dr. Allison was saying is absolutely correct. It's neurological, because you're in survival mode. I like the fact that teachers are being flexible and giving children several days to doing this assignment. Having short times of video chat with teachers, so there's some structure, but it is not overwhelming. And then I ask parents to give their kids a variety of stuff to do. And then just some chill-out time too. But kids don't need to be in their room for five hours by themselves. You want to think about the flexibility of creating your day schedule. The other thing I'm going to ask parents to do, is to monitor their children for signs of depression, and monitor themselves and their older relatives. When we're under social isolation, where you're not having as much contact with other people, our risk for developing depression actually goes high.

So it's important to have some check-in time, and to see how folks are doing. Again, another nice reason to have your kids calling the older relatives, to check on them, calling friends that you haven't heard from in a while, those things are really important to try to reduce the risk of depression.

EmbraceRace: Those are excellent pieces of advice. One question we have is about young children, who are just deeply anxious. So, one, and I know we've touched on this before, but one person in particular says,"How do you deal with children's comments to the effect that they're afraid they're going to get sick and die, and they're afraid they're going to sicken someone else and cause them to die?"

But again, there's a whole bunch of questions related to that, including around children who are literally afraid of going outside. And another set of questions from grandparents. Adiaha, you mentioned a couple of times, yes, we could get the young ones to call elders. But of course in many, many families, not least, families of color, grandparents play a very, very significant role. In some cases, in many cases, being primary caregivers.

We know that, as you said, Adiaha, older folks are sometimes more vulnerable, more susceptible. And we have a couple people actually specifically said, "I don't have the energy, I used to have to engage, my 7-year-old grandchild, whom I'm primary caregiver for, and now of course I don't have the break, I'm homeschooling too." Do you have any advice on either front?

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: When it comes to preschoolers, developmentally, it is normal for them. They engage in magical thinking. Magical thinking is where your brain blurs fantasy from reality. We begin to develop magical thinking when we were about 2 years old as our language begins to explode, and we learn a lot of words. And then around 8 to 9 years old, it tends to go away for most folks. There're some grown folks who still have magical thinking. They think a job would just come and knock on the door magically, rather than going out and seeking employment. But for the most part, we stop believing in things like the tooth fairy and so forth, around 8, 9 years old. For a 4 or 5-year-old who says, "I'm afraid of getting sick." That would be a normal response from a 4 or, 5-year-old.

But especially a four or 5-year-old who's heard the grownups around them talking about COVID-19 a lot. That's a sign that this is something that has been very commonly spoken about, in the child's earshot, and in the child's environment. It is also common for children to think that they have the power to act on someone else. Preschoolers will blame themselves for bad things that happen to someone else.

What's important is to stick with very simple developmentally appropriate ways of talking to a child about how we can prevent ourselves from getting sick, by washing our hands, and using a tissue to blow our nose, and coughing in our arms.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: What's important is to stick with very simple developmentally appropriate ways of talking to a child about how we can prevent ourselves from getting sick, by washing our hands, and using a tissue to blow our nose, and coughing in our arms. Here's a resource, and not to overwhelm you, but the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is our national organization, has a parent website called Healthychildren.org. It is a wonderful medical website for parents, and all of the articles are written by physicians. So it is up-to-date accurate scientific information, and they have a section of articles on COVID-19, dealing with the medical component, but also how do you talk to your children about it, and how do you help them?

When it comes to grand families, that is an incredibly common, phenomenon in The United States. There are millions of children being reared by grandparents, due to a variety of circumstances, part of it being the criminal justice system, incarcerating an unprecedented number of parents, and also issues with drug abuse, and mental health disorders that our parents are succumbing to. So grandparents definitely need support at this time where they are having to rear children, that they honestly physically are just exhausted, in trying to rear. Not only that, trying to manage the needs of the adult child, who may have their own financial, or mental health, or drug abuse issues, that the grandparent may still be dealing with.

So I'm encouraging grandparents to reach out to their network to try to get some support. Maybe there's someone who can, who you trust, who is safe, that can actually give you maybe an hour or two of respite, with the children, maybe another relative who's healthy that they can go and spend some time with. You can have some respite and just take a nap, or just take a walk, but recognize your own need, for some self-care. It's really important.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: I can't really say it better. Small things to remember is, when children are asking questions, it's really normal, give them small concrete bits of information. And also, help them move into action. "If you're worried about that, let's go wash your hands and then we'll be okay." Also with littles, we can distract them. With little tiny ones like, "Hey, let's go do something." "Let's go find that rock outside." "Let's go write a letter to grandma, if you're worried." So we're teaching them how to move into action, with that, and that's what we're doing all the time.

Same thing for grandparents. I think the grandparents who are parenting, is again this notion of grace, which is that, you didn't sign up necessarily to be a full-time teacher to your grandkids. You know, what an extra hour of TV isn't going to hurt nobody if you get a chance to rest. I think that's the kind of flexibility that we have to kind of think about. I can do all the caveats about what type of TV and all that, but let's just know that we have to make it through this. This is not saying that we're going to stop raising up our kids for the next five years. We're talking about, this is an incredibly stressful time period, that we need to weather, and there's got to be some things that we try to think about to help ourselves out.

EmbraceRace: We've had a number of questions among our registrants about helping older children through this. EmbraceRace typically is dealing with middle school and younger, and then most of the conversation here has been aimed at younger children, but now more than ever, there are a lot of older children, including college age children, for example, and even older, who are coming home, and have all sorts of anxieties. So for somewhat older children, older teens, and even the young 20's, what can you say?

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: I think one thing that we need to think about teens is sometimes, we have more of a conversation with them, but let's not forget that they're still kids. And let's not forget that even though they may be really sophisticated, and talking to us and be able to use all the same words, developmentally, brain development, and what their life choices are, are different than what we're doing. Let's hold onto that. It's different. And also that they need some guidance and support about, "Gee, we've had to deal with other things before in our life that we thought threatened our ability to move on." Recession, Depression, war, Vietnam War. So again, go back to those kinds of stories.

And that was an unknown time. Let's not leave our kids isolated to try to figure that out. And also understand that even though they're 17, 18 and got a mustache, doesn't mean that they're fully grown. And so we still need to be present. This is a very scary time for many of our youth, in terms of high school commencement, and all of those kinds of things. Prom, not being able to see each other. There are small things that we can do, which is like, "Let's do a Zoom commencement. It's not the same, but it's something." "Let's think about postponing as opposed to canceling." Like, "It's going to be lit in October, if everything goes well." Let's think about moving some of these kinds of things and celebrations. Those are about, marking moments in time. Those don't have to go away, they just have to be changed.

I think this is a great time for us to be parents to our older kids, our teenagers, our early 20's, our millennials still need us. Maybe this is a place that we can redeem ourselves from our "okay boomer" time, and be able to talk about what we have survived, and what we're able to do. So that would be the way that I think about it.

This is a very scary time for many of our youth, in terms of high school commencement, and all of those kinds of things. Prom, not being able to see each other. There are small things that we can do, which is like, "Let's do a Zoom commencement. It's not the same, but it's something." "Let's think about postponing as opposed to canceling." Like, "It's going to be lit in October, if everything goes well." Let's think about moving some of these kinds of things and celebrations. Those are about, marking moments in time. Those don't have to go away, they just have to be changed.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: I really like Dr. Allison's suggestions. I spoke with one of my teens this morning, and she's a senior in high school, and she's just incredibly bummed about missing the prom, and, "Is graduation going to be canceled?" And, "Are we going to have our senior trips?" And it's really hard and I just had to acknowledge, and validate her feelings. She misses her friends. I said, "Well have you guys thought about doing a group FaceTime, so you can actually see each other?" Which is actually a very nice thing for kids to be able to do, in this time of technology. And I also encouraged her mother to have the teen to reach out to older relatives. Do something that's positive that can help someone else. If there's a way to contribute to others that could be helpful, and that could be safe for her. But acknowledging their concerns, not overwhelming them as little adults. They are not little adults. Like Dr. Allison said.

Their brains are going through a tremendous transformation, but they haven't developed all of the rational thinking, decision making, and futuristic planning, that a fully developed adult brain does. The female human adult brain, is not fully developed until age 25, and the adult male brain in humans is not fully developed until almost age 30. So our 20 somethings, really need us you all.

EmbraceRace: That's really great to keep in mind. We forget. Thank you so much. We're really early in this, and we're so appreciative to have expert friends like you guys to come on. We're still figuring it out all ourselves. So we're going to try to be patient with ourselves, and thank you everyone for coming. Thank you too, for answering so many great questions and sharing your wisdom.

Thank you, and apologies to folks who are not of course being able to do more than scratch the surface of your amazing questions. And good luck folks. Let's take care of each other.

Dr. Adiaha Spinks-Franklin: Thank you. Bye.

Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith: Thank you. Bye.

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Supporting children in the struggle against COVID-19

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In the United States and abroad, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) threatens our health, disrupts our routines, and undermines our financial and economic well-being. Diagnoses of anxiety in children were at a peak even before the coronavirus provided more cause for alarm.

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Looking for ideas for remote learning? Each week The Learning Network offers a dozen new ways for students to practice reading, writing and thinking using Times journalism - all free.

Each week we round up the best comments on our writing prompts in our Current Events Conversation. These are images from that collection.

Update: We are offering two free webinars for teachers on Wednesday, March 18, to help teachers learn more about how to get started using The Learning Network.
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Schools around the country have closed their doors and switched to remote learning in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus outbreak. If you are a teacher or parent looking for ways to keep your students reading, writing and thinking critically during these uncertain times, The Learning Network offers a dozen new writing prompts each week, all based on Times articles, photographs, illustrations, videos and graphs, about a wide array of issues, including internet memes, climate change, the #MeToo movement, racism, the 2020 election and healthy habits. All of these activities are completely free for everyone.

Here is how to get started.

Students can create a free account by pressing the "Log In" button on the top right-hand corner of the screen. They will be taken to a sign-in page that looks like this:

Please note: Students must be 13 years or older to use any part of nytimes.com in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 years or older anywhere else. If students are less than 18 years of age and would like to create an account, they must ask a parent or legal guardian to review and agree to the Times Terms of Service before registering.

Students can click on the link "Create one." Then they can click on "Continue without subscribing." When students make their first comment, they will be asked to enter a name and a location.

Examples of names include: Amy, Emilia AOSE, Payton L and Mrs. Miller's 3rd period class.

Examples of locations include: Ohio,Milbank, SD, and Hoggard High School in Wilmington, N.C.

While students don't need to have a New York Times account to access the Learning Network's many activities, they will need one if they want to submit a comment.

Students can comment via desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. To submit a comment, they should click on the comment bubble at the top of the article or the comment button at the bottom. Either way will bring them to a box where they can share their thoughts, as well as reply to other student commenters from across their school or around the world.

We encourage young people to have a civil dialogue about all sorts of topics, but if students cross a line - for example, if they use offensive language or are disrespectful to other commenters - we will reject those comments.

We follow Times commenting standards as we moderate, but we also allow for the reality that many students don't have perfect spelling or grammar or are still learning English. Our comment section is intended to be a rehearsal space - a safe place for students to practice writing and to share their ideas.

We moderate comments regularly during weekday work hours, but during other times, like nights and weekends, approval can sometimes take several hours.

We invite students to share their opinions and analysis about all sorts of issues and types of media on The Learning Network. In our Student Opinionfeature, we ask questions like: " Should Blowouts Be Allowed in Youth Sports?" and " Should the Adults in Your Life Be Worried by How Much You Use Your Phone? " About half of our questions help students develop their argument skills, and the other half invite them to share experiences and observations from their own lives. All of these prompts are inspired by Times articles.

We also invite students to respond to the many photographs and illustrations in The Times. In our Picture Prompt feature, we use a daily image to inspire four types of student writing: storytelling, argument writing, personal writing and analysis. Similarly, our What's Going On in This Picture? feature asks students to look closely at an intriguing photo and share what they see and what details support their interpretation. On Mondays, our partner organization Visual Thinking Strategies provides live moderation for this activity to strengthen students' visual literacy skills. Both of these features can be great for any student, but they're especially accessible for younger students and students who struggle with reading.

We also use other types of Times multimedia to encourage student writing and thinking. Our Film Club showcases a short documentary film from The Times - often under 10 minutes - and asks students to think about themes like race and gender identity, technology and society, and artistic and scientific exploration. And, What's Going On in This Graph? asks students to notice and wonder about a Times graph, map or chart. On Wednesdays, our partners at the American Statistical Association facilitate a live conversation for this activity to strengthen students' data literacy skills.

Finally, we also offer contests for students all year long. Right now students can submit 450-word editorials. Next month they can submit five-minute podcasts. During the summer they can participate in our 10-week-long Summer Reading Contest.

All of these activities and contests are free. They've always been.

Learning Network prompts can be used in any number of ways as a teaching tool at school or from home. Teachers often let students choose the prompts they want to respond to based on the topics they find most interesting. Other times they assign a specific prompt: for example, if they are studying a theme, like friendship, or a topic, like slavery.

Many teachers use our prompts as a standing homework assignment every night or each week. Other teachers use the prompts as a class activity to complete together. For example, in the tweet below, Adriana Diaz shares images of her class doing a What's Going On in This Picture? activity.

Since we offer so many ways for students to read, write and think, teachers can differentiate as they see fit. They might ask some students to get started with our image-based prompts, while suggesting others comment on our Student Opinion questions.

And, while we appreciate when teachers assign students to comment directly on The Learning Network, we also understand that many teachers prefer to have their students respond to our prompts in a classroom space like Google Classroom or Schoology. We want teachers to have the freedom to use our resources in the way that works best for them.

Not only do we moderate comments, but we also select comments to spotlight in a weekly roundup from our two daily writing prompts: Student Opinion questions and Picture Prompts. Teachers tell us they and their students get excited when they see their classmates' names published in The New York Times.

Here is an example of a weekly roundup: " What Students Are Saying About Fact-Checking Facebook, Making Small Talk and Being Alone."

Teachers naturally want to know what their students are saying in our online forums. The easiest way to hold students accountable is to instruct them to forward the confirmation emails they automatically receive. To do this, students need to make sure that the box "Email me when my comment is published" is checked underneath the comment box. (The check appears when students begin typing.)

For our contests, students also receive confirmation emails, which they can easily forward to teachers. And, since we celebrate many winners, runners-up and honorable mentions with each of our contests, teachers get to send out their own emails, tweets and messages when one or more of their students are selected as finalists.

At The Learning Network, we want students to have a civil discussion about the issues of our day. We want them to have an authentic audience for their writing and ideas. We believe student voice matters. Our comment section and regular contests are our way to make this happen. We hope you'll invite your students to join our community of learners.

If you have any questions about how to get your class started using The Learning Network, please use the comment section or email us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.

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Students Can Respond to Daily Writing Prompts, Inspired by The New York Times, at Home for Free

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Looking for ideas for remote learning? Each week The Learning Network offers a dozen new ways for students to practice reading, writing and thinking using Times journalism - all free. Update: We are offering two free webinars for teachers on Wednesday, March 18, to help teachers learn more about how to get started using The Learning Network.

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Last week, as schools across the nation closed their doors to slow the spread of the coronavirus, TT reached out to our community to learn what support you needed at this time. Among the most common responses was a call for trauma-informed practices to support students over the coming weeks and months.

For guidance, we reached out to our friends at the National Child Traumatic Stress Network with a series of questions. A group of researchers, psychologists and educators were quick to respond. We're grateful to Laura Danna, Dr. Jane Halladay Goldman, Dr. Jen Maze, Dr. George Ake and Dr. Isaiah Pickens for their answers, and we hope their recommendations offer some much-needed support during this difficult time.

We know that in some districts, schools have just closed, while in others, there's an expectation that classes will shift to distance learning. This change can be a challenge for educators as well as students. From a trauma-informed standpoint, what do educators need to be conscious of as they navigate this transition?

Establishing a routine and maintaining clear communication are crucial.

Maintaining and communicating predictable routines is very important. Doing so helps students to maintain a sense of psychological safety-a sense that they can manage stress or connect with someone who can help them manage stress.

It is important not to assume that students understand your routine is changing due to current events. Even if routines shift as you determine the best ways of connecting, taking the time to explain the changes and provide a predictable agenda is helpful. It will reduce student stress and increase their confidence that important adults in their lives are capable of taking care of them.

It's also important that educators ensure that the information they provide to students is digestible. Moving to remote learning and having fewer direct interactions can make assignments feel more overwhelming and daunting-particularly when several directions are given at once. Break directions down into smaller bites when necessary and encourage students to ask clarifying questions even if it appears they understand.

Finally, we can't assume students' experiences with remote learning or their understanding of a global pandemic are universal. Encourage students to lead the way in sharing what they understand and do not understand about their current situation. You can do this by asking open-ended questions, such as, "How are you feeling about not being in school?" which can provide insight without letting assumptions guide the conversation. Approach students' experiences with curiosity. Aim to clarify misinformation and connect students with other important adults (such as family) who help them feel safe.

Relationships and well-being can take priority over assignment and behavioral compliance.

In shifts to distance learning, educators will need to actively focus on maintaining attitudes of inclusivity. Now more than ever, students should feel valued and welcome regardless of their background or identity.

Remember that students may be dealing with many different home life situations while trying to maintain their academics, and there are myriad reasons they may be embarrassed to share about why they can't complete assignments. Educators should communicate that, regardless of challenges, students' efforts are appreciated.

In work with students right now, educators should let relationships be the focus. It is important to ensure students have structure and to hold high expectations. But students will fare best if they know their teachers care about their well-being just as much as their behavior and assignment compliance.

Educators can display their investment by creating relational rituals before checking on distance learning assignments with students. For example, students and educators can share one tough moment and one hopeful moment of the day, or educators and students can share one new lesson they learned about themselves during the day. Participating in these shares can help educators build and maintain connection despite the distance.

What are a few key points educators need to understand about stress, trauma and their effects? Are there specific approaches to student support they should be prioritizing during this crisis?

When people are facing stress and difficult life circumstances, it can particularly affect three areas: a sense of safety, feelings of connectedness and feelings of hope. In each of these areas, educators can make an impact.

Sense of Safety

A sense of safety is the belief that your needs-and the needs of those you care about-will be met. It is a belief that you will be protected from harm and that those around you will be safe. Educators can expect that many students' sense of safety will be compromised right now. None of us have ever seen a time like this, when institutions that provide safety and structure are closed, and the news talks about death rates and hospital bed shortages. For the many families that are experiencing or will experience significant income loss, this crisis may also mean food insecurity or an inability to pay rent and bills-all of which can severely damage a child's sense of safety.

But there are steps educators can take to support a sense of safety in children. They can:

Reach out, provide space and encourage students to connect with them or another trusted adult or counselor to talk about their safety concerns. Offer students a way to connect if there is something that they need help with or are worried about.

Encourage students to talk to friends or family members on the phone.

Help students plan some virtual playdates to distract them from their worries.

Recommend or include in lesson plans and packets some fun, free activities that kids can do at home.

Encourage families and caregivers to avoid watching the news in front of their children (as that can be upsetting), keep as much of a regular family routine as possible, and plan activities such as going for walks or hikes or playing board or video games together.

Connectedness

Connectedness refers to having relationships with others who can understand and support you. As we are practicing social distancing and have closed most public places, educators will need to get creative to help students feel connected.

To foster a sense of connectedness, educators can:

Make time to ask students about something fun they are doing right now.

Greet students by name and create a touch-free or virtual routine (similar to a handshake, a hug or a high five) to invite connection, either online or at meal pick-up.

Consider putting students together in small groups to work on projects or activities and encouraging students to work together online or by phone. These activities may include virtual puzzles or scavenger hunts. The key is to help the student feel connected to others in the class by sharing an important part of themselves that helps the class get to know them better. Foster a sense of community by highlighting each student's contribution to the group activity.

Plan activities through the use of web-conferencing sites that allow students to see, hear and interact with each other and their teacher.

Talk directly about the importance of connecting with others.

Incorporate space for play and fun activities into online lesson plans or take-home packets.

Hope

Hope is the expectation that everything will work out and the feeling that things will be all right. Right now, many people may be feeling discouraged, hopeless or angry. Adults and students may be feeling a great sense of loss for activities that will not be taking place as usual. Students particularly may be disappointed in missing out on sports, competition, performances and other important rituals of the spring semester.

To encourage a sense of hope, educators can:

Have students connect with someone in their family or community to ask a person they respect how they stayed hopeful in troubled times.

Teach about other historical times of crisis, including how these ended and communities rebounded.

Encourage students to get fresh air and to move when possible.

Share some of the many stories of hope and helping that have come out of this current crisis.

Share a positive affirmation or a strength of a student-it can go a long way right now.

Let students know that people find help in different ways, including through spiritual beliefs and practices, and encourage students to discuss things that bring them hope.

Facilitate and encourage students meeting virtually or by phone with a trusted adult who can show them a different perspective, help to identify their talents and strengths, list their options and resources, and encourage and support them.

In addition to the suggestions above, are there any activities for students (either for online classes or that students can do independently) that you recommend educators try?

Now is a time to provide opportunities for students to complete activities that affirm their competence, sense of self-worth and feelings of safety. There are many social emotional learning practices and wellness activities that teachers can encourage students to complete independently or online.

These activities can promote self-regulation when students are feeling stressed and provide a healthy sense of control over controllable aspects of an overwhelming situation. Some possible social emotional and wellness practices can include the following:

Promote self-awareness by having students review a feelings chart and share how they are feeling. To help them communicate their feelings, encourage the use of a scale, such as, "On a scale of 1-10, how bored are you feeling?" or "Are you feeling a little lonely, somewhat lonely, or very lonely?"

Recommend quick mindfulness or self-soothing exercises such as smelling a flower or completing four-corner breathing prior to completing the lesson. Four-corner breathing simply involves inhaling deeply and exhaling deeply four times. Students can complete this breathing exercise by standing up and taking one inhale and exhale breath while facing each of the four corners in a room.

Model and normalize a range of emotions by giving students opportunities to express themselves in nonverbal ways. This may include drawing a picture about how their lesson or day is going or showing the most important thing that happened to them that day. Teachers can complete this exercise first and share with students to model how to share with others in a way that feels safe and helps us feel connected.

Have students complete a virtual or long-distance appreciation or gratitude circle. Encourage students to write one thing they appreciate about classmates. Add your own, and then give each student the appreciations written about them.

Give students the chance to share what they've learned or a chance to teach their classmates. This can include having students find and teach brief self-soothing or mindfulness exercises that promote self-regulation.

Are there students in particular situations that educators should be keeping closer contact with during this period? Do you have recommendations for ways educators can reach out?

While not all families have a history of exposure to trauma, children with identified histories of trauma may be especially vulnerable to the impact of significant changes in schedule, routine and expectations that come with social distancing, canceled classes, remote learning and reliance on caregivers for academics.

Other students may also be at additional risk during this time:

students who have had anxiety;

students who have depression or suicidal ideation;

students who have learning and attention disorders;

students whose families may have lost jobs or income;

students who have loved ones particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 virus;

students who have a caregiver who is a healthcare worker or in another occupation where they are exposed to the virus or are being asked to respond in an intense way;

students who may be less supervised because of caregivers' work.

Even remotely, however, there are ways that educators can provide extra support to these students:

Educators can reach out to caregivers to check in and offer or explain the supports that they typically use in the classroom with their children.

Educators can set up individual conferences via computer or phone to check in with students and ask about their safety and worries.

Educators can and should connect with school mental health professionals to know how they can connect students and families with them when necessary.

What kinds of stressors or potential trauma will families and caregivers be facing during this time that educators should be aware of? How can educators help?

In general, it is important to consider that the stress adults might be facing during this time of uncertainty will probably be mirrored in children. Families could be dealing with high levels of stress, and they probably will be for an extensive amount of time. Educators can consider sharing messages about how families need to give themselves some space when emotions run high, and they can model how to regulate emotions to help children cope.

Educators should have an appreciation for how kids might respond to stress and consider how stress might play out by age group. Whenever possible, they should share this information with caregivers.

Educators can also play a role in promoting the message that caretakers should try their best to establish a routine, involve children in the development of their own schedules, and maintain reasonable expectations of children, knowing that some changes are just difficult to predict.

Finally, we understand that in other countries, rates of domestic violence and child abuse have increased during the COVID-19 crisis. Stress and increased isolation are risk factors for abuse. Families experiencing difficult financial issues or job loss during this time might be especially at risk. But all families will be under increased stress and isolation with varying levels of support and resources.

For more information about child trauma and child traumatic stress, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network has many resources to help educators and caretakers better understand the impact, consequences and resilience of children and families exposed to trauma. This page is a good place to start.

What steps do you recommend for educators who want to be there for their students but who might also be dealing with their own stress right now?

Practice self-kindness, and remember that it is best to take care of yourself before you try to take care of anyone else.

Take time to check in with yourself to gain insight into where you may be struggling. Once you identify the issues, work to create a plan to address the issues you can control and to work on letting go of the ones you cannot.

Utilize social supports as needed. Consider planning a virtual coffee break or lunch hour with colleagues or other educators via Zoom, where you might share strategies that are or are not working, talk about what you're cooking or watching on Netflix, and experience a much-needed sense of community

Create a routine that includes getting up at a regular time, getting ready and dressed for the day, a work schedule, some way to move your body and some breaks to connect to others.

Remember that, as adults, we are the best predictors of how our students and children are doing; they are watching and listening to us. When we take care of ourselves, we're showing them how they can take care of themselves, too.

Are there any specific resources, articles or other information you recommend?

Some of the answers above were adapted from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) publications, including:

These resources from the NCTSN expand on some of the recommendations above:

These resources from the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress can be helpful:

Educators can may find these resources from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) useful:

These resources from Substance Abuse Mental Health Services (SAMSHA) may also provide support:

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A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus

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

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Facing History: Teaching About Coronavirus

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Facing History: Teaching About Coronavirus

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Note to Teachers: News about the new coronavirus (COVID-19) has been evolving rapidly as the disease continues to spread. Stay informed about the latest information using the New York Times Coronavirus Briefing, which is updated daily, or another trusted news source. The information in this Teaching Idea was last updated March 10, 2020.

Since January, the world has been on high alert concerning the spread of the new strain of coronavirus, COVID-19. The virus, which in severe cases causes pneumonia, respiratory problems, and even death, emerged in Wuhan, China, in December and has since spread to over 100 countries across 6 continents . As more cases are reported daily, anxiety concerning the virus and our ability to contain it grows. This anxiety has been coupled with a rise in racism, xenophobia, and discrimination: in Europe and North America, many people of Asian heritage have been racially abused in public and wrongfully blamed for the spread of the virus. It's vital to ensure that young people are aware of the facts so that they understand what COVID-19 is and do not discriminate against others in a culture of heightened fear.

This Teaching Idea outlines the known facts about COVID-19 and gives students the opportunity to explore instances of discrimination related to this novel strain of coronavirus. Providing students with factually correct information and opportunities to reflect on the consequences of discrimination makes them less likely to participate in coronavirus-inspired racism and encourages them to challenge such othering if, or when, they encounter it.

1. Introduce the Facts about Coronavirus

Explain to students that since the start of the coronavirus outbreak people of Asian heritage have been the target of racist abuse in Europe and North America, while in Asia, Chinese people have been targeted and discriminated against. They have been called names, excluded from places, and blamed for the spread of the virus because people have judged them on their appearance and/or nationality, using the fact that the virus began in China as the basis for their discrimination. Inform your students that these instances of discrimination make it all the more important for students to understand the facts about COVID-19 and how it spreads, so that they can discuss it in an informed manner and so that they understand that the virus is not linked to one group of people.

First, ask students to discuss the following questions in pairs:

What do you know about coronavirus?

How has coronavirus been appearing in the news?

How are people responding to the news about coronavirus?

How does coronavirus make you feel?

Invite students to share their ideas with the class, if desired.

Next, project the following facts on the board one at a time and read them as a class using a read aloud strategy ( Note: You might choose to read some of the embedded links to enhance your own background knowledge, or share them with students who have additional questions):

The new strain of coronavirus, which is called COVID-19, first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.

Coronaviruses are a family of zoonotic viruses, which means that they can transfer between animals and humans. Scientists are not yet sure of the animal that transmitted COVID-19.

Coronaviruses get their name from corona, the Latin word for crown, because under a microscope they have crown-like spikes protruding from their surfaces.

Coronaviruses are not new-coronavirus outbreaks in the past, such as MERS and SARS, have been contained.

COVID-19 is contagious and can kill. It is very difficult to estimate how deadly the disease is at this point, but researchers believe that under 2% of people who catch the disease will be killed. The fatality rate of COVID-19 is lower than some strains of coronavirus such as SARS (10%) and MERS (34%), but higher than other strains that cause the common cold.

COVID-19 impacts people differently-some people who are infected will have no symptoms, others will only develop a cough or a fever, while others can have serious symptoms such as pneumonia.

Children appear to be much less likely to catch the new coronavirus, and if they do, they tend to have milder symptoms. The people most at risk from exposure to coronavirus are the elderly and those who have pre-existing health problems.

COVID-19 is not thought to be airborne. To protect yourself against the spread of the virus, health officials recommend washing your hands regularly and avoiding touching your eyes, nose and, mouth.

The majority of people infected with coronavirus fully recover.

There is not currently a vaccine for COVID-19. Scientists are working hard on developing a vaccine, but it is likely to take a year before one is ready.

Respond to any questions the students might have, then ask them to complete a S-I-T activity, using the information that they just read on coronaviruses and COVID-19.

Finally, lead a quick class discussion using the following questions:

Has learning the facts about coronavirus and COVID-19 changed the way you view the virus? Explain your answer.

Why is it important to find out the facts when trying to understand a new situation or something in the news?

Additional Resources: You may also choose to share one of the following resources with your students to provide additional information:

2. Explore Examples of Coronavirus-linked Racism

Explain to your students that they will be reading an article about incidents of racism that have occurred since the outbreak of the new coronavirus. You may wish to begin by outlining the scope of the racist abuse by reading the following paragraph:

All over the world, Chinese and Asian people have been subject to racism since the coronavirus outbreak. In Asia, there has been widespread anti-Chinese sentiment, also known as Sinophobia, while in countries across Europe, Australia, and North America, people with Asian heritage have been targeted with racist abuse and, in some cases, have even been assaulted. In Rome, Italy, a cafe placed a sign banning Chinese people from entering; in New York, United States, an Asian woman wearing a mask was hit and kicked on the subway; in Aberystwyth, Wales, a market trader of Tawainese heritage was asked to leave the Market Hall where she runs a stall; in the Netherlands, a university dormitory was sprayed with the phrase "Die Chinese"; in Melbourne, Australia, Asian doctors and nurses have been racially abused at the Royal Children's Hospital by parents of patients; and all over the world, Chinese restaurants have suffered enormous economic losses as people have stopped eating in them. These listed examples are just a few of the racist incidents that have been reported on news sites around the world since the outbreak of COVID-19, and they all highlight how Chinese and Asian people are being targeted because of their appearance and/or nationality.

Give students a copy of the Teen Vogue article As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Anti-Chinese Racism and read it as a class using a read aloud strategy. Then, discuss the following questions as a class:

The anxiety and fear people feel in times of crisis can lead to a focus on difference and a tendency to stigmatize or scapegoat. How has this been happening with the new coronavirus? How have people of Chinese and Asian heritage been targeted since the outbreak of coronavirus?

What damage has been caused by the "us" and "them" mentality some people have adopted in the face of the new coronavirus?

The author of the article, Sara Li, writes that while growing up in the United States, "On one hand, America was my home . . . But on the other hand, I never felt American enough." What does she mean by this? How might it feel to be treated as an outsider in the place that you grew up?

What can we all do to prevent discrimination during this outbreak?

3. Give Students the Opportunity to Consolidate Their Learning and Become Upstanders

Ask students to work in pairs and design an anti-bullying poster that discourages people from reacting to the new coronavirus with racism. Inform students that it may be useful to focus both on promoting the facts concerning COVID-19, and on the impact of coronavirus-based racism on the victims. If useful, provide your students with the following poster titles:

Find Out the Facts

Don't Discriminate

Act with Empathy

Are You "Joking" at Someone Else's Expense?

Give the students an opportunity to share their posters in a gallery walk.

4. Final Reflection

Next, ask students to respond in their journals to the following questions:

How, if at all, has this lesson impacted how you feel about coronavirus?

How has this conversation added to your thinking about what it means to take care of your community at this moment?

Whose responsibility is it to challenge coronavirus-related racism and discrimination? Explain your answer.

Give students the chance to share any ideas they feel comfortable sharing with a partner in a Think, Pair, Share before inviting some students, if they would like, to share what they wrote with the class.

Extension: Connect to History

Share with your students that racist reactions to the new coronavirus build on a long association between disease and "outsiders." In the United States, people have a history of falsely blaming immigrants for outbreaks of disease, despite the fact that "the number of 'diseased' immigrants has always been infinitesimal when compared with the number of newcomers admitted to this country." A recent report conducted in the United States reveals that immigrants on average actually have better health according to many key health indicators than the US-born population. Furthermore, many racist attacks target people who are perceived to be foreign, and it is impossible to tell by looking at a person where they were born or what their nationality is.

Show your students two historical cartoons that depict the false connection between disease and "outsiders."

Analyze the images with your students. Ask them:

What details stand out to you when you see the cartoons?

How do the cartoons show the false idea that disease is connected to foreigners?

Then, use the Connect, Extend, Challenge framework to discuss how this history can inform students' thinking about people's reactions to the new coronavirus:

How does this history connect to what you know about people's reactions to the new coronavirus today?

How do these cartoons extend or broaden your thinking about people's reactions to the new coronavirus?

How do these cartoons challenge or complicate your understanding of people's reactions to the new coronavirus?

Additional Resources

If you would like to give your students more information about the novel Coronavirus, COVID-19, here are some useful videos:

1. Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) (World Health Organization)

2. Coronavirus: Why It Might Not Be As Scary As It Sounds (BBC Newsround)

3. Coronavirus Outbreak: The Key Scientific Questions Answered (The Guardian)

To teach your students more about how coronavirus-linked racism is impacting Asians around the world, here are some useful resources:

1. Coronavirus: French Asians Hit Back at Racism with "I'm not a virus" (BBC)

2. The Coronavirus Exposes the History of Racism and "Cleanliness" (Vox)

3. What's Spreading Faster than Coronavirus in the US? Racist Assaults and Ignorant Attacks Against Asians (CNN)

4. Sinophobia: How Coronavirus Reveals the Many Ways China is Feared (BBC)

5. Coronavirus Fears Fuel Racism and Hostility, Say British-Chinese (The Guardian)

Published date:

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Coronavirus: Protect Yourself and Stand Against Racism

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Note to Teachers: News about the new coronavirus (COVID-19) has been evolving rapidly as the disease continues to spread. Stay informed about the latest information using the New York Times Coronavirus Briefing, which is updated daily, or another trusted news source. The information in this Teaching Idea was last updated March 10, 2020.

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NPR: When Xenophobia spreads like a virus

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NPR: When Xenophobia spreads like a virus

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Kids, this comic is for you.

It's based on a radio story that NPR education reporter Cory Turner did. He asked some experts what kids might want to know about the new coronavirus discovered in China.

To make this comic, we've used his interviews with Tara Powell at the University of Illinois School of Social Work, Joy Osofsky at the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and Krystal Lewis at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Print and fold a zine version of this comic here. Here are directions on how to fold it.

Malaka Gharib is an NPR editor and the author and illustrator of I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir, about being first-generation Filipino Egyptian American.

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Just For Kids: A Comic Exploring The New Coronavirus

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Kids, this comic is for you. It's based on a radio story that NPR education reporter Cory Turner did. He asked some experts what kids might want to know about the new coronavirus discovered in China.

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Today-August 26-is Women's Equality Day, an annual commemoration of the day in 1920 when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby confirmed the ratification of the 19th Amendment. This amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote, reads:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The power of the vote is undeniable, yet it is important to remember that many Americans, particularly people of color, did not enjoy this power for years after the passage of the 19th Amendment. It took until 1965 for the Voting Rights Act to secure the vote for African Americans. And it wasn't until 1970 that the act expanded to protect the vote for members of language minorities. The U.S. Congress designated August 26 as Women's Equality Day in 1971-51 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment. But the Americans with Disabilities Act, which ensured access to the polls for voters with disabilities, wouldn't pass until 1990. And today, more than six million Americans have been denied the right to vote due to criminal convictions.

Even the protections ensured by the Voting Rights Act met a setback in 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that it was no longer necessary for the Department of Justice to approve changes to voting procedures in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination. Since then, voter ID laws have increased, voter rolls have been purged, and opportunities to vote have been radically decreased as polling places have reduced their hours or closed altogether.

In honor of Women's Equality Day, Teaching Tolerance staff selected relevant texts available in our S tudent Text Library to highlight their importance today. These texts, described below, help bring alive some of the voices, themes and history of the women's rights movement. Educators can couple these diverse readings with student tasks and teaching strategies to build literacy, to ask students to demonstrate their anti-bias awareness and to encourage civic engagement. In doing so, students learn about the nuanced history of women's rights in the United States, and also reflect on how the march for full inclusion, equal opportunity and gender equity continues today.

In 1851, years before emancipation, decades before women's suffrage and a century before the modern civil rights movement, Sojourner Truth spoke with the voice of an American woman about the indignities of not being seen as one. Her witty, biting and impassioned words cut across boundaries of race, religion and class-exposing the fact that women are equal to men and, thus, deserve the same rights. Truth's speech, as powerful now as then, shows that while the struggle for equality has come a long way, it's far from over.
Scott McDaniel, technical lead
Using the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the anti-slavery movement as models, "Declaration of Sentiments" outlines the disenfranchisement and unjust circumstances for women in the United States and insists they be immediately granted all the rights and privileges afforded to full citizens. This text, signed by attendees at the Seneca Falls Conference of 1848, concludes with a statement of action to maintain that equality: "We shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object." Today, these words still hold true, and the march for women's equality continues with the recognition of injustices and the importance of collective action.
Sara Wicht, senior manager of teaching and learning
In this 1969 document, the feminist group known as Redstockings spells out its most fundamental beliefs about gender oppression and liberation. After 46 years, many of the tenets of this manifesto can still be the subjects of debate. To what extent does oppression exhibit itself on both individual and institutional levels? Is it ever possible to "repudiate" one's privilege? The document raises these questions and numerous others. "Redstockings Manifesto" works as a perfect starting place for a lively classroom discussion on the nature of oppression, class consciousness and privilege. This text will challenge older high school students to examine the philosophical considerations behind the struggle for women's equality.
Steffany Moyer, program coordinator
This historical biography depicts the courageous life of activist and suffragist Susan B. Anthony. "Susan B. Anthony" not only introduces students to Anthony's inspirational story; it tells of various injustices toward women in the United States at the turn of the century-many that relate to injustices today. This text is a great way to educate students about justice and equality and expose them to a woman who dedicated her life to making a change.
Jarah Botello, teaching and learning specialist
This article, originally published in a 2010 issue of The New York Times Upfront magazine, provides a succinct, accessible history of the women's rights movement for teens. It traces important milestones and addresses how women remain underrepresented among elected political officials in the United States today. One interviewee says, "I think the [suffragists] would have envisioned that within 90 years, you would have seen sweeping participation by women in the electoral system." This article helps students situate historical victories such as the 19th Amendment alongside present-day barriers to full gender equality. Pair "Women Get the Vote" with "The Awakening," a visual text that illustrates the nation's slow acceptance of women as fully enfranchised citizens. Only white women are pictured in the drawing, a fact that reflects the reality that many African-American women did not receive full voting rights, even after the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Maya Lindberg, writer/associate editor

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

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Teach about Native American Women Leaders

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Teach about Native American Women Leaders

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One news story that kept coming up throughout the summer and fall of 2018 was about the role of women in the 2018 midterm elections. Predicting the " women's wave" that would mark a " breakthrough moment" in our democracy, reports and articles often separated the " unprecedented number of women" on the ballot into demographic groups. They said that 2018 was the year of the Latina, the year black women are taking power, the year two Muslim women join Congress. " There's never been a Native American Congresswoman," The New York Times announced in the spring. "That could change in 2018."

On the whole, this media narrative was a good thing. Women across the country were being recognized for their willingness to engage and lauded for their commitment to run. Instead of ignoring intersectional identities, mainstream media embraced them.

But the story these articles present is incomplete-and, given the history of Native women particularly, it's our job as educators to flesh it out.

Granted, the United States Congress is a powerful body. But the language of "record numbers," "groundbreaking," and "historic" is flawed: These words ignore the long history of Native women in leadership roles.

You can push back against it by giving students a thoughtful foundation to help them understand how leaders who are women of color-and Native American women leaders, specifically-are presented in the media.

Because language and representation matter. And the profiles our students find of these women influence the ways they see other women in power. Here are a few steps you can take to ensure that your students have a sense of the broader story.

Start the conversation by directing students to the media narratives about Native American women.

Students might, for example, compare the way one woman is described in different stories. Business Insider introduces "Sharice Davids, an openly gay Native American lawyer," and her opponent, "GOP incumbent Kevin Yoder." Students can compare these descriptions to one another and to the introduction of Davids in Indian Country Today: "Sharice Davids, Ho Chunk, is running for Congress." What does each story assume its readers will think is important? What does each story assume its readers will think is unusual?

Challenge students to research Native women and leadership expectations in Indigenous communities for an essay or presentation assignment.

If you live in a community with a clearly accessible and available Indigenous nation, contact the nation and invite their cultural director or leaders to speak with your class about the role of women leaders in their current governmental and social structure.

These secondary sources can help you and your students understand this subject better:

Learn about Native women leaders from their own words.

Students can round out their understanding by turning directly to the source and learning how Native women leaders themselves have described their experiences. Here are four to start with:

LaDonna Harris. Nation: Comanche. Political and social activist, founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity. In her KNME-TV "New Mexico's Makers" interview, students will find quotes like this one: "When I got [to Washington, D.C.] and saw that women who were in government couldn't travel because it's not acceptable to go unchaperoned...Can you imagine? A woman that was in government, they couldn't climb the ladder, the federal ladder even, and I thought that was so grossly unfair. That's really what motivated me to get into the women's movement, because when you see discrimination in one form, you can't accept it in another."

Wilma Mankiller. Nation: Cherokee. First woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. In her speech "Challenges Facing 21st Century Indigenous Peoples," she says, "Cooperation has always been necessary for the survival of tribal people and even today, cooperation takes precedence over competition in more traditional communities. It's really quite miraculous that a sense of sharing and reciprocity continues in our communities into the 21st century, given the staggering amount of adversity Indigenous people have faced."

Sharice Davids. Nation: Ho Chunk. Candidate for U.S. Congress. Students might check out her campaign announcement video or her interview with The Kansas City Star on Facebook Live, during which she explains, "My lived experience has taught me how to listen better, how to be as inclusive as possible when thinking about approaches to problem-solving and leadership."

Deb Haaland. Nation: Laguna Pueblo. Candidate for U.S. Congress. In a CNN interview, she says, "We need to have good relations with our community in order to be successful." Students can also watch her campaign announcement video.

Finally, teach students to be skeptical when news outlets proclaim that "record numbers" of Native women in leadership positions is "historic" or "groundbreaking."

Talking to high school students about Native women leaders is an ideal opportunity to introduce the way that the intersections of gender, race and power for Native women-and women of color more generally-are presented in mainstream media.

When they compare contemporary media representations to their research, students should find that the headlines don't tell the full story of Indigenous women's leadership. The focus on "firsts" neglects how common it is for Native women to be leaders within their nations and communities.

Indigenous women have traditionally held leadership positions in their nations and continue to do so today. What is "historic" and "groundbreaking" is white settler American culture finally starting to pay attention.
Morris teaches writing and Native American/Indigenous Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

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Teach About Native American Women Leaders

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

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Editor's note: This piece was originally published in March 2018.

As a feminist historian and social studies educator, I like to take the month of March to refresh myself on what's new and notable in the study of women's lives. My personal ritual recently took on some added urgency last year, when the National Women's History Museum released a report on the coverage of women in K-12 state curriculum standards across the United States.

What they found was dismaying news to many women's history advocates: Despite decades of unprecedented contestation and change on all manner of gender issues, curriculum standards continue to highlight "male-oriented exceptional leadership" while "overemphasizing women's domestic roles."

The standards are not necessarily the final word on what happens in classrooms day to day. But we can all work to ensure we are doing much better than the low bar set by many state frameworks.

All young people, regardless of gender, need stories of persistent women-women from diverse backgrounds and experiences who have worked for social change, who have spoken up to make a difference and refused to be silenced in the face of disapproval. Our schools need to be places where critical questions about gender and power are asked from day one. The younger we set the table for gender equality, the better. In honor of Women's History Month, I offer these recommendations and resources for bringing gender studies to K-8 classrooms.

Diversify your biography bookshelf.

Biographies are engaging for young readers. They can inspire dreams and affirm identity. Check your own bookshelf or reading list. Young readers these days have a rainbow of women's lives to read. Architect Maya Lin, astronaut Mae Jemison, inventor Margaret Knight, naturalist Jane Goodall, poet Gabriela Mistral, preacher Sojourner Truth, photojournalist Dorothea Lange and jurist Ruth Bader Ginsburg are all the subjects of spirited new biographies for children.

But so many more stories need to be better told. History UnErased and GLSEN are two organizations working to bring more inclusive LGBTQ curriculum to schools. Biographies of transgender, gay and bisexual women-including activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and author Audre Lorde-are among their important resources. Other sources, such as Indian Country Today, provide biographies of Native American women who made history.

For young learners, biography can be an introduction to ideas like sexism, exclusion and inequality. What are the barriers well-known individuals had to face? What makes someone a good leader? What talents or accomplishments does our society value most, and what has that meant for women? Questions like these can move the dial on students' understanding of-and critical thinking about-gender and power.

Highlight collective action.

Individual stories of female accomplishment are necessary and inspiring, but they are not sufficient. Moving beyond biography, students can learn about women taking collective action for change. Younger learners readily grasp the concept of fairness: Responsive teachers can use that as an engine for social studies inquiry. Who was allowed to vote one century ago? Who was permitted to marry and be a family 20 years ago?

Posing these questions piques interest. Elementary students can explore female-led movements, such as the suffrage campaign or garment workers' uprisings, using primary source sets from the Library of Congress and the American Social History Project, among others. Older students can look at connections between movements and activists like Yuri Kochiyama and Malcolm X. They can discuss and debate the choices that leaders and activists have made in their struggles for women's equality and the points on which they disagreed.

Feature alliances between women and men.

Gender equality is everyone's responsibility. Young people need stories of men and women working together. Dolores Huerta and César Chávez were longstanding allies whose collaboration and mutual respect were critical to the farmworkers' struggle. Frederick Douglass, the towering abolitionist and intellectual, was a lifelong champion of women's equality and one of the few men who attended the Seneca Falls women's rights convention in 1848. His brilliant speech in defense of women's rights still sets a standard for men's allyship. Middle grade students can research contemporary examples of men who recognize their male privilege and work for gender equality in professional, personal and public spheres.

Bring a global perspective.

Women around the world today are at the forefront of campaigns for the environment, human rights, LGBTQ rights and Indigenous rights. They are leading crusades to decrease violence and bring an end to war. Teachers committed to teaching about equity can connect lessons about world geography or current events to gender equality and female leadership.

The Green Belt Movement of Kenya, founded by Wangari Maathai, is an ideal case study. There are a number of books, fiction and nonfiction, about her work that allow a fine opportunity for critical comparative reading. Students could also explore the website of the Nobel Women's Initiative, which educates about women working for peace, justice and equality around the globe-women such as laureate Shirin Ebadi, lawyer and human rights crusader from Iran, or peacemaker Leymah Gbowee of Liberia. Students can use this site to learn about each movement in its place and time. Studying women's experiences through a global lens presents a more diverse and inclusive view of history.

Persistent women, past and present, belong in the K-8 curriculum. Probing their stories, students gain deeper opportunities to engage with issues of gender justice-during Women's History Month and all year round.
Zeiger is a program director at Primary Source, a global education nonprofit based in Massachusetts.

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Insist on Persistent Women: Women's History in the K-8 Classroom

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Editor's note: This piece was originally published in March 2018. As a feminist historian and social studies educator, I like to take the month of March to refresh myself on what's new and notable in the study of women's lives.

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THE ISSUE OF RACISM IN THE FUNDRAISING PROFESSION - ViTreo

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I struggled with the title for this blog because I didn't want it to scare off people. When I read the title to a colleague she was shocked and questioned, "Is there really racism in the fundraising profession? Who knew?"

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Black Women who've inspired and/or challenged you!

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Black Women who've inspired and/or challenged you!

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In elementary school, my teacher made me pick cotton. She brought each student their own plant, and her goal was to make us understand how hard cotton is to pick. It has only been a couple of years since I began to tell this story in public. I kept it a secret for a couple of reasons. First, as a small child, I trusted my teacher and did not allow myself to believe that she would cause me or any other students harm. Second, after some years passed, I was ashamed that it had taken me this long to understand the impact of what happened.

I understand now that this experience is the reason why I later learned to hate family tree assignments, especially those that included pictures. How do you explain to your classmates and your teacher that your family is not missing, but the assignment will always be incomplete because you don't know their names or have pictures of them?

Michael Dumas, an assistant professor in the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Education and African American Studies department, describes school as a particularly harmful place for Black students in the article "'Losing an Arm': Schooling as a Site of Black Suffering." He notes that this suffering is the kind that "we have been least willing or able to acknowledge or give voice to."

My story and many others like it are examples of school-based racial trauma-a type of physical or emotional injury uniquely impacting Black and Brown children in school spaces. As I reflected on my own experience, I wondered whether what happened to me is still occurring in schools. And, if so, what does this mean?

Racial Trauma as Curriculum Violence

I started conducting research to find out. Every level of education has been affected by the presence of racial trauma. K-12, private, public, parochial and higher education institutions are reporting racist incidents that include the isolation, bullying, taunting, stalking, intimidation and physical assault of Black and Brown students. Although identifying these types of harm is important in capturing a realistic landscape of what school is like for many students, it leaves out what is often a more subtle aspect of racial trauma: curriculum violence.

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

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Episode 6 To see a more complete picture of the experience of enslaved people, you have to redefine resistance. Dr. Kenneth S. Greenberg offers teachers a lens to help students see the ways in which enslaved people...

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Black History Month: Celebrating Black Liberation Movements

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This Black History Month, we're encouraging educators to recognize and teach that Black history includes narratives that don't focus solely on trauma. While it's imperative to teach about the realities of racial oppression, it's just as important to engage students with the many ways Black people have consistently and powerfully resisted white supremacy.

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Islamophobia in the midst of Iran tensions

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Islamophobia in the midst of Iran tensions

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This lesson helps students explore, confront and deconstruct stereotypes targeted at Muslims. Students will learn about the impact of Islamophobia and create an anti-Islamophobia campaign to display in school.

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Disrupting Islamophobia Amid U.S.-Iran Tension

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As news breaks about increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran, your students may encounter Islamophobic comments or sentiments. These resources can help ensure that you're ready to interrupt and address Islamophobia if it appears in your classroom or school-and that you're ready to help students do the same.

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Gina Crosley-Corcoran grew up in the type of poverty Americans like to pretend doesn't exist, so it was hard for her to believe she had any privilege.

By Gina Crosley-Corcoran

Years ago, some feminist on the internet told me I was "Privileged."

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

I came from the kind of Poor that people don't want to believe still exists in this country. Have you ever spent a frigid northern Illinois winter without heat or running water? I have. At 12 years old, were you making ramen noodles in a coffee maker with water you fetched from a public bathroom? I was. Have you ever lived in a camper year-round and used a random relative's apartment as your mailing address? We did. Did you attend so many different elementary schools that you can only remember a quarter of their names? Welcome to my childhood.

So when that feminist told me I had "white privilege," I told her that my white skin didn't do shit to prevent me from experiencing poverty. Then, like any good, educated feminist would, she directed me to Peggy McIntosh's 1988 now-famous piece, " White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."

After one reads McIntosh's powerful essay, it's impossible to deny that being born with white skin in America affords people certain unearned privileges in life that people of another skin color simple are not afforded. For example:
"I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented." "When I am told about our national heritage or about 'civilization,' I am shown that people of my color made it what it is." "If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race." "I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time."
If you read through the rest of the list, you can see how white people and people of color experience the world in two very different ways. BUT LISTEN: This is not said to make white people feel guilty about their privilege. It's not your fault you were born with white skin and experience these privileges. BUT, whether you realize it or not, you DO benefit from it, and it IS your fault if you don't maintain awareness of that fact.

I do understand McIntosh's essay may rub some people the wrong way. There are several points on the list that I felt spoke more to the author's status as a middle-class person than a white person. For example:
"If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area, which I can afford and in which I would want to live." "I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me." "I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed." "If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege."
And there are so many more points in the essay where the word "race" could be substituted for the word "class" which would ultimately paint a very different picture. That is why I had such a hard time identifying with this essay for so long. When I first wrote about white privilege years ago, I demanded to know why this white woman felt that my experiences were the same as hers when no, my family most certainly could not rent housing "in an area which we could afford and want to live."

And no, I couldn't go shopping without fear in our low-income neighborhoods.

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

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

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

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

Sexual Orientation - By being born straight, every state in this country affords you privileges that non-straight folks have to fight the Supreme Court for.

Sex - By being born male, you can assume that you can walk through a parking garage without worrying you'll be raped and that a defense attorney will then blame it on what you were wearing.

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

Gender - By being born cisgendered, you aren't worried that the restroom or locker room you use will invoke public outrage.

♦◊♦

As you can see, belonging to one or more category of privilege, especially being a Straight, White, Middle-Class, Able-Bodied Male, can be like winning a lottery you didn't even know you were playing. But this is not to imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another or that people lacking in one area of privilege understand what it's like to be lacking in other areas. Race discrimination is not equal to Sex Discrimination and so forth.

And listen, recognizing privilege doesn't mean suffering guilt or shame for your lot in life. Nobody's saying that Straight, White, Middle-Class, Able-Bodied Males are all a bunch of assholes who don't work hard for what they have. Recognizing privilege simply means being aware that some people have to work much harder just to experience the things you take for granted (if they ever can experience them at all.)

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

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

Tell me, are you a white person made uncomfortable by the term "white privilege?" Does a more nuanced approach help you see your own privilege more clearly?
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This story was originally published on TheFeministBreeder.com and republished on The Good Men Project.

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Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person

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Gina Crosley-Corcoran grew up in the type of poverty Americans like to pretend doesn't exist, so it was hard for her to believe she had any privilege. By Gina Crosley-Corcoran Years ago, some feminist on the internet told me I was "Privileged." "THE F*CK!?!?" I said.

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I'm reading this over break, what are you reading, comment below

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Teaching Thanksgiving in a Socially Responsible Way

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Teaching Thanksgiving in a Socially Responsible Way

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School Thanksgiving activities often mean dressing children in "Indian" headdresses and paper feathers as they sing " My Country 'Tis of Thee" or " Mr. Turkey." Some teachers might even ask their students to draw themselves as Native Americans from the past, complete with feather-adorned headbands and buckskin clothing. These activities might seem friendly and fun, unless you are aware of how damaging this imagery is to perceptions of contemporary Native peoples. This imagery contributes to the indoctrination of American youth into a false narrative that relegates Indigenous peoples to the past and turns real human beings into costumes for a few days a year. It's not just bad pedagogy; it's socially irresponsible.

Native Americans have been speaking out and writing back against the colonialist narrative of Thanksgiving for as long as the American narrative has existed. More recently, comedian Jim Ruel (Ojibwe) includes Thanksgiving in his act ( starting at 1:40 in this clip), Dr. Debbie Reese (Nambe Pueblo) writes about children's books that "set the record straight," and Native American students speak out about what Thanksgiving means to them.

Doris Seale (Santee/Cree) and Beverly Slapin (Dakota/Cree/Abenaki) edited A Broken Flute in 2005, which includes a chapter that deconstructs the myths perpetuated about the first Thanksgiving. This chapter also includes critical reviews of many books on the market or readily available in libraries and classrooms. Providing ample evidence that many non-Native publishers, illustrators and writers are missing the mark in several critical ways, these books exemplify the ineffectiveness of good intentions, the perpetuation of misinformation and the exclusion of Native American voices and experiences.

Teaching about Thanksgiving in a socially responsible way means that educators accept the ethical obligation to provide students with accurate information and to reject traditions that sustain harmful stereotypes about Indigenous peoples. Thankfully, there are excellent online resources that can help educators interested in disrupting the hegemonic Thanksgiving story.

Challenging the dominant and inaccurate narrative about Thanksgiving, providing students with a more balanced perspective of this oft-romanticized holiday, and refusing to dress students in feathered headbands are socially responsible actions. They're actions that every teacher should undertake to benefit their students and the society their students will inherit.
Morris teaches writing and Native American/Indigenous Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

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Teaching Thanksgiving in a Socially Responsible Way

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

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Ned Blackhawk Q&A: Understanding Indigenous Enslavement

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

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

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Join Teaching Tolerance and Director Maureen Costello as we explore the role of U.S. segregation in everything from housing to employment to wealth accumulation-and the policies that made it all happen. Inspired by and including excerpts from Richard Rothstein's New York Times best-selling book The Color of Law, this webinar will delve into deliberate governmental practices that created opportunities for white Americans and excluded others. Tune in to learn why the "bootstraps theory" doesn't hold up and gain some useful tools for your classroom practice.

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Join Teaching Tolerance and Director Maureen Costello as we explore the role of U.S. segregation in everything from housing to employment to wealth accumulation-and the policies that made it all happen. Tune in to learn why the "bootstraps theory" doesn't hold up and gain some useful tools for your classroom practice.

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Live Streaming on 10/30

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Four hundred years ago, a ship carrying between 20 and 30 enslaved Africans arrived in Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. Though America did not even exist yet, their arrival marked its foundation, the beginning of the system of slavery on which the country was built. In August The New York Times Magazine marked this anniversary by launching The 1619 Project, which examines the many ways the legacy of slavery continues to shape and define life in the United States. The project has been read widely across the country, it has been discussed in the Senate, and it is changing how U.S. history is taught in schools today.

Now, please join us for an afternoon and evening of performance, panel discussions, presentations, and conversation about how history is defined, and redefined, featuring historians, journalists, and policy makers.

Speakers include: The Times Magazine staff writer and originator of The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones; National Museum of African American History and Culture curator of American Slavery Mary Elliott; Times cultural critic Wesley Morris; journalist and professor Linda Villarosa; poet Rita Dove; American historian Eric Foner, Columbia University; moral philosopher Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum; professor of public policy William A. Darity Jr., Duke University; assistant professor of history Kay Wright Lewis, Howard University; and more.

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A Symposium on Reframing History, The 1619 Project

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Four hundred years ago, a ship carrying between 20 and 30 enslaved Africans arrived in Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. Though America did not even exist yet, their arrival marked its foundation, the beginning of the system of slavery on which the country was built.

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October 22nd     3:30-5:00-Disrupting Curriculum- Voices and Choices in the Curriculum, How can we balance it all and prevent trauma

November 19th    3:30-5:00- Teaching Hard History- Teaching and learning about slavery, colonialism, marginalized communities

December 12th  - POSTPONED Teaching LGBTQ History- The stories of Audre Lorde, Bayard Rustin and Marvin Liebman and more

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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

Editor's note: On February 1, 2023, the College Board announced its finalized curriculum for an AP African American Studies course. It has removed work-present in the pilot program-by writers such as bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of this article.

We've gathered dozens of the most important pieces from our archives on race and racism in America. Find the collection here.
And if thy brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith t he LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing today. Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury By our unpaid labor and suffering, we have earned the right to the soil, many times over and over, and now we are determined to have it. done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation.
- Deuteronomy 15: 12-15

- John Locke, "Second Treatise"

- Anonymous, 1861

Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone.

I. "So That's Just One Of My Losses"

C lyde Ross was born in 1923, the seventh of 13 children, near Clarksdale, Mississippi, the home of the blues. Ross's parents owned and farmed a 40-acre tract of land, flush with cows, hogs, and mules. Ross's mother would drive to Clarksdale to do her shopping in a horse and buggy, in which she invested all the pride one might place in a Cadillac. The family owned another horse, with a red coat, which they gave to Clyde. The Ross family wanted for little, save that which all black families in the Deep South then desperately desired-the protection of the law.

In the 1920s, Jim Crow Mississippi was, in all facets of society, a kleptocracy. The majority of the people in the state were perpetually robbed of the vote-a hijacking engineered through the trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob. Between 1882 and 1968, more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state. "You and I know what's the best way to keep the nigger from voting," blustered Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi senator and a proud Klansman. "You do it the night before the election."

The state's regime partnered robbery of the franchise with robbery of the purse. Many of Mississippi's black farmers lived in debt peonage, under the sway of cotton kings who were at once their landlords, their employers, and their primary merchants. Tools and necessities were advanced against the return on the crop, which was determined by the employer. When farmers were deemed to be in debt-and they often were-the negative balance was then carried over to the next season. A man or woman who protested this arrangement did so at the risk of grave injury or death. Refusing to work meant arrest under vagrancy laws and forced labor under the state's penal system.

Well into the 20th century, black people spoke of their flight from Mississippi in much the same manner as their runagate ancestors had. In her 2010 book, The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of Eddie Earvin, a spinach picker who fled Mississippi in 1963, after being made to work at gunpoint. "You didn't talk about it or tell nobody," Earvin said. "You had to sneak away."
"Some of the land taken from black families has become a country club in Virginia," the AP reported.
When Clyde Ross was still a child, Mississippi authorities claimed his father owed $3,000 in back taxes. The elder Ross could not read. He did not have a lawyer. He did not know anyone at the local courthouse. He could not expect the police to be impartial. Effectively, the Ross family had no way to contest the claim and no protection under the law. The authorities seized the land. They seized the buggy. They took the cows, hogs, and mules. And so for the upkeep of separate but equal, the entire Ross family was reduced to sharecropping.

This was hardly unusual. In 2001, the Associated Press published a three-part investigation into the theft of black-owned land stretching back to the antebellum period. The series documented some 406 victims and 24,000 acres of land valued at tens of millions of dollars. The land was taken through means ranging from legal chicanery to terrorism. "Some of the land taken from black families has become a country club in Virginia," the AP reported, as well as "oil fields in Mississippi" and "a baseball spring training facility in Florida."

Clyde Ross was a smart child. His teacher thought he should attend a more challenging school. There was very little support for educating black people in Mississippi. But Julius Rosenwald, a part owner of Sears, Roebuck, had begun an ambitious effort to build schools for black children throughout the South. Ross's teacher believed he should attend the local Rosenwald school. It was too far for Ross to walk and get back in time to work in the fields. Local white children had a school bus. Clyde Ross did not, and thus lost the chance to better his education.

Then, when Ross was 10 years old, a group of white men demanded his only childhood possession-the horse with the red coat. "You can't have this horse. We want it," one of the white men said. They gave Ross's father $17.

"I did everything for that horse," Ross told me. "Everything. And they took him. Put him on the racetrack. I never did know what happened to him after that, but I know they didn't bring him back. So that's just one of my losses."

The losses mounted. As sharecroppers, the Ross family saw their wages treated as the landlord's slush fund. Landowners were supposed to split the profits from the cotton fields with sharecroppers. But bales would often disappear during the count, or the split might be altered on a whim. If cotton was selling for 50 cents a pound, the Ross family might get 15 cents, or only five. One year Ross's mother promised to buy him a $7 suit for a summer program at their church. She ordered the suit by mail. But that year Ross's family was paid only five cents a pound for cotton. The mailman arrived with the suit. The Rosses could not pay. The suit was sent back. Clyde Ross did not go to the church program.

It was in these early years that Ross began to understand himself as an American-he did not live under the blind decree of justice, but under the heel of a regime that elevated armed robbery to a governing principle. He thought about fighting. "Just be quiet," his father told him. "Because they'll come and kill us all."

Clyde Ross grew. He was drafted into the Army. The draft officials offered him an exemption if he stayed home and worked. He preferred to take his chances with war. He was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bothered. He could walk the streets without being harassed. He could go into a restaurant and receive service.

Ross was shipped off to Guam. He fought in World War II to save the world from tyranny. But when he returned to Clarksdale, he found that tyranny had followed him home. This was 1947, eight years before Mississippi lynched Emmett Till and tossed his broken body into the Tallahatchie River. The Great Migration, a mass exodus of 6 million African Americans that spanned most of the 20th century, was now in its second wave. The black pilgrims did not journey north simply seeking better wages and work, or bright lights and big adventures. They were fleeing the acquisitive warlords of the South. They were seeking the protection of the law.

Clyde Ross was among them. He came to Chicago in 1947 and took a job as a taster at Campbell's Soup. He made a stable wage. He married. He had children. His paycheck was his own. No Klansmen stripped him of the vote. When he walked down the street, he did not have to move because a white man was walking past. He did not have to take off his hat or avert his gaze. His journey from peonage to full citizenship seemed near-complete. Only one item was missing-a home, that final badge of entry into the sacred order of the American middle class of the Eisenhower years.

In 1961, Ross and his wife bought a house in North Lawndale, a bustling community on Chicago's West Side. North Lawndale had long been a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, but a handful of middle-class African Americans had lived there starting in the '40s. The community was anchored by the sprawling Sears, Roebuck headquarters. North Lawndale's Jewish People's Institute actively encouraged blacks to move into the neighborhood, seeking to make it a "pilot community for interracial living." In the battle for integration then being fought around the country, North Lawndale seemed to offer promising terrain. But out in the tall grass, highwaymen, nefarious as any Clarksdale kleptocrat, were lying in wait.
From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market.
Three months after Clyde Ross moved into his house, the boiler blew out. This would normally be a homeowner's responsibility, but in fact, Ross was not really a homeowner. His payments were made to the seller, not the bank. And Ross had not signed a normal mortgage. He'd bought "on contract": a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting-while offering the benefits of neither. Ross had bought his house for $27,500. The seller, not the previous homeowner but a new kind of middleman, had bought it for only $12,000 six months before selling it to Ross. In a contract sale, the seller kept the deed until the contract was paid in full-and, unlike with a normal mortgage, Ross would acquire no equity in the meantime. If he missed a single payment, he would immediately forfeit his $1,000 down payment, all his monthly payments, and the property itself.

The men who peddled contracts in North Lawndale would sell homes at inflated prices and then evict families who could not pay-taking their down payment and their monthly installments as profit. Then they'd bring in another black family, rinse, and repeat. "He loads them up with payments they can't meet," an office secretary told The Chicago Daily News of her boss, the speculator Lou Fushanis, in 1963. "Then he takes the property away from them. He's sold some of the buildings three or four times."

Ross had tried to get a legitimate mortgage in another neighborhood, but was told by a loan officer that there was no financing available. The truth was that there was no financing for people like Clyde Ross. From the 1930s through the 1960s, black people across the country were largely cut out of the legitimate home-mortgage market through means both legal and extralegal. Chicago whites employed every measure, from "restrictive covenants" to bombings, to keep their neighborhoods segregated.

Their efforts were buttressed by the federal government. In 1934, Congress created the Federal Housing Administration. The FHA insured private mortgages, causing a drop in interest rates and a decline in the size of the down payment required to buy a house. But an insured mortgage was not a possibility for Clyde Ross. The FHA had adopted a system of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. On the maps, green areas, rated "A," indicated "in demand" neighborhoods that, as one appraiser put it, lacked "a single foreigner or Negro." These neighborhoods were considered excellent prospects for insurance. Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated "D" and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. They were colored in red. Neither the percentage of black people living there nor their social class mattered. Black people were viewed as a contagion. Redlining went beyond FHA-backed loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry, which was already rife with racism, excluding black people from most legitimate means of obtaining a mortgage.

"A government offering such bounty to builders and lenders could have required compliance with a nondiscrimination policy," Charles Abrams, the urban-studies expert who helped create the New York City Housing Authority, wrote in 1955. "Instead, the FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws."

The devastating effects are cogently outlined by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro in their 1995 book, Black Wealth/White Wealth:

Locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history, African Americans who desired and were able to afford home ownership found themselves consigned to central-city communities where their investments were affected by the "self-fulfilling prophecies" of the FHA appraisers: cut off from sources of new investment[,] their homes and communities deteriorated and lost value in comparison to those homes and communities that FHA appraisers deemed desirable.

In Chicago and across the country, whites looking to achieve the American dream could rely on a legitimate credit system backed by the government. Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport. "It was like people who like to go out and shoot lions in Africa. It was the same thrill," a housing attorney told the historian Beryl Satter in her 2009 book, Family Properties. "The thrill of the chase and the kill."

The kill was profitable. At the time of his death, Lou Fushanis owned more than 600 properties, many of them in North Lawndale, and his estate was estimated to be worth $3 million. He'd made much of this money by exploiting the frustrated hopes of black migrants like Clyde Ross. During this period, according to one estimate, 85 percent of all black home buyers who bought in Chicago bought on contract. "If anybody who is well established in this business in Chicago doesn't earn $100,000 a year," a contract seller told The Saturday Evening Post in 1962, "he is loafing."

Contract sellers became rich. North Lawndale became a ghetto.

Clyde Ross still lives there. He still owns his home. He is 91, and the emblems of survival are all around him-awards for service in his community, pictures of his children in cap and gown. But when I asked him about his home in North Lawndale, I heard only anarchy.

"We were ashamed. We did not want anyone to know that we were that ignorant," Ross told me. He was sitting at his dining-room table. His glasses were as thick as his Clarksdale drawl. "I'd come out of Mississippi where there was one mess, and come up here and got in another mess. So how dumb am I? I didn't want anyone to know how dumb I was.

"When I found myself caught up in it, I said, 'How? I just left this mess. I just left no laws. And no regard. And then I come here and get cheated wide open.' I would probably want to do some harm to some people, you know, if I had been violent like some of us. I thought, 'Man, I got caught up in this stuff. I can't even take care of my kids.' I didn't have enough for my kids. You could fall through the cracks easy fighting these white people. And no law."
Blacks were herded into the sights of unscrupulous lenders who took them for money and for sport.
But fight Clyde Ross did. In 1968 he joined the newly formed Contract Buyers League -a collection of black homeowners on Chicago's South and West Sides, all of whom had been locked into the same system of predation. There was Howell Collins, whose contract called for him to pay $25,500 for a house that a speculator had bought for $14,500. There was Ruth Wells, who'd managed to pay out half her contract, expecting a mortgage, only to suddenly see an insurance bill materialize out of thin air-a requirement the seller had added without Wells's knowledge. Contract sellers used every tool at their disposal to pilfer from their clients. They scared white residents into selling low. They lied about properties' compliance with building codes, then left the buyer responsible when city inspectors arrived. They presented themselves as real-estate brokers, when in fact they were the owners. They guided their clients to lawyers who were in on the scheme.

The Contract Buyers League fought back. Members-who would eventually number more than 500-went out to the posh suburbs where the speculators lived and embarrassed them by knocking on their neighbors' doors and informing them of the details of the contract-lending trade. They refused to pay their installments, instead holding monthly payments in an escrow account. Then they brought a suit against the contract sellers, accusing them of buying properties and reselling in such a manner "to reap from members of the Negro race large and unjust profits."

Video: The Contract Buyers League

In return for the "deprivations of their rights and privileges under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments," the league demanded "prayers for relief"-payback of all moneys paid on contracts and all moneys paid for structural improvement of properties, at 6 percent interest minus a "fair, non-discriminatory" rental price for time of occupation. Moreover, the league asked the court to adjudge that the defendants had "acted willfully and maliciously and that malice is the gist of this action."

Ross and the Contract Buyers League were no longer appealing to the government simply for equality. They were no longer fleeing in hopes of a better deal elsewhere. They were charging society with a crime against their community. They wanted the crime publicly ruled as such. They wanted the crime's executors declared to be offensive to society. And they wanted restitution for the great injury brought upon them by said offenders. In 1968, Clyde Ross and the Contract Buyers League were no longer simply seeking the protection of the law. They were seeking reparations.

II. "A Difference of Kind, Not Degree"

According to the most-recent statistics, North Lawndale is now on the wrong end of virtually every socioeconomic indicator. In 1930 its population was 112,000. Today it is 36,000. The halcyon talk of "interracial living" is dead. The neighborhood is 92 percent black. Its homicide rate is 45 per 100,000-triple the rate of the city as a whole. The infant-mortality rate is 14 per 1,000-more than twice the national average. Forty-three percent of the people in North Lawndale live below the poverty line-double Chicago's overall rate. Forty-five percent of all households are on food stamps-nearly three times the rate of the city at large. Sears, Roebuck left the neighborhood in 1987, taking 1,800 jobs with it. Kids in North Lawndale need not be confused about their prospects: Cook County's Juvenile Temporary Detention Center sits directly adjacent to the neighborhood.

North Lawndale is an extreme portrait of the trends that ail black Chicago. Such is the magnitude of these ailments that it can be said that blacks and whites do not inhabit the same city. The average per capita income of Chicago's white neighborhoods is almost three times that of its black neighborhoods. When the Harvard sociologist Robert J. Sampson examined incarceration rates in Chicago in his 2012 book, Great American City, he found that a black neighborhood with one of the highest incarceration rates (West Garfield Park) had a rate more than 40 times as high as the white neighborhood with the highest rate (Clearing). "This is a staggering differential, even for community-level comparisons," Sampson writes. "A difference of kind, not degree."

In other words, Chicago's impoverished black neighborhoods-characterized by high unemployment and households headed by single parents-are not simply poor; they are "ecologically distinct." This "is not simply the same thing as low economic status," writes Sampson. "In this pattern Chicago is not alone."

The lives of black Americans are better than they were half a century ago. The humiliation of Whites Only signs are gone. Rates of black poverty have decreased. Black teen-pregnancy rates are at record lows-and the gap between black and white teen-pregnancy rates has shrunk significantly. But such progress rests on a shaky foundation, and fault lines are everywhere. The income gap between black and white households is roughly the same today as it was in 1970. Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University, studied children born from 1955 through 1970 and found that 4 percent of whites and 62 percent of blacks across America had been raised in poor neighborhoods. A generation later, the same study showed, virtually nothing had changed. And whereas whites born into affluent neighborhoods tended to remain in affluent neighborhoods, blacks tended to fall out of them.

This is not surprising. Black families, regardless of income, are significantly less wealthy than white families. The Pew Research Center estimates that white households are worth roughly 20 times as much as black households, and that whereas only 15 percent of whites have zero or negative wealth, more than a third of blacks do. Effectively, the black family in America is working without a safety net. When financial calamity strikes-a medical emergency, divorce, job loss-the fall is precipitous.

And just as black families of all incomes remain handicapped by a lack of wealth, so too do they remain handicapped by their restricted choice of neighborhood. Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Sharkey's research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000. "Blacks and whites inhabit such different neighborhoods," Sharkey writes, "that it is not possible to compare the economic outcomes of black and white children."

A national real-estate association advised not to sell to "a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education."

The implications are chilling. As a rule, poor black people do not work their way out of the ghetto-and those who do often face the horror of watching their children and grandchildren tumble back.

Even seeming evidence of progress withers under harsh light. In 2012, the Manhattan Institute cheerily noted that segregation had declined since the 1960s. And yet African Americans still remained-by far-the most segregated ethnic group in the country.

With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin. The resulting conflagration has been devastating.

One thread of thinking in the African American community holds that these depressing numbers partially stem from cultural pathologies that can be altered through individual grit and exceptionally good behavior. (In 2011, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, responding to violence among young black males, put the blame on the family: "Too many men making too many babies they don't want to take care of, and then we end up dealing with your children." Nutter turned to those presumably fatherless babies: "Pull your pants up and buy a belt, because no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt.") The thread is as old as black politics itself. It is also wrong. The kind of trenchant racism to which black people have persistently been subjected can never be defeated by making its victims more respectable. The essence of American racism is disrespect. And in the wake of the grim numbers, we see the grim inheritance.

The Contract Buyers League's suit brought by Clyde Ross and his allies took direct aim at this inheritance. The suit was rooted in Chicago's long history of segregation, which had created two housing markets-one legitimate and backed by the government, the other lawless and patrolled by predators. The suit dragged on until 1976, when the league lost a jury trial. Securing the equal protection of the law proved hard; securing reparations proved impossible. If there were any doubts about the mood of the jury, the foreman removed them by saying, when asked about the verdict, that he hoped it would help end "the mess Earl Warren made with Brown v. Board of Education and all that nonsense."
An unsegregated America might see poverty spread across the country, with no particular bias toward skin color.
The Supreme Court seems to share that sentiment. The past two decades have witnessed a rollback of the progressive legislation of the 1960s. Liberals have found themselves on the defensive. In 2008, when Barack Obama was a candidate for president, he was asked whether his daughters-Malia and Sasha-should benefit from affirmative action. He answered in the negative.

The exchange rested upon an erroneous comparison of the average American white family and the exceptional first family. In the contest of upward mobility, Barack and Michelle Obama have won. But they've won by being twice as good-and enduring twice as much. Malia and Sasha Obama enjoy privileges beyond the average white child's dreams. But that comparison is incomplete. The more telling question is how they compare with Jenna and Barbara Bush-the products of many generations of privilege, not just one. Whatever the Obama children achieve, it will be evidence of their family's singular perseverance, not of broad equality.

III. "We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony"

In 1783, the freedwoman Belinda Royall petitioned the commonwealth of Massachusetts for reparations. Belinda had been born in modern-day Ghana. She was kidnapped as a child and sold into slavery. She endured the Middle Passage and 50 years of enslavement at the hands of Isaac Royall and his son. But the junior Royall, a British loyalist, fled the country during the Revolution. Belinda, now free after half a century of labor, beseeched the nascent Massachusetts legislature:

The face of your Petitioner, is now marked with the furrows of time, and her frame bending under the oppression of years, while she, by the Laws of the Land, is denied the employment of one morsel of that immense wealth, apart whereof hath been accumilated by her own industry, and the whole augmented by her servitude.

WHEREFORE, casting herself at your feet if your honours, as to a body of men, formed for the extirpation of vassalage, for the reward of Virtue, and the just return of honest industry-she prays, that such allowance may be made her out of the Estate of Colonel Royall, as will prevent her, and her more infirm daughter, from misery in the greatest extreme, and scatter comfort over the short and downward path of their lives.

Belinda Royall was granted a pension of 15 pounds and 12 shillings, to be paid out of the estate of Isaac Royall-one of the earliest successful attempts to petition for reparations. At the time, black people in America had endured more than 150 years of enslavement, and the idea that they might be owed something in return was, if not the national consensus, at least not outrageous.

"A heavy account lies against us as a civil society for oppressions committed against people who did not injure us," wrote the Quaker John Woolman in 1769, "and that if the particular case of many individuals were fairly stated, it would appear that there was considerable due to them."

As the historian Roy E. Finkenbine has documented, at the dawn of this country, black reparations were actively considered and often effected. Quakers in New York, New England, and Baltimore went so far as to make "membership contingent upon compensating one's former slaves." In 1782, the Quaker Robert Pleasants emancipated his 78 slaves, granted them 350 acres, and later built a school on their property and provided for their education. "The doing of this justice to the injured Africans," wrote Pleasants, "would be an acceptable offering to him who 'Rules in the kingdom of men.' "

Edward Coles, a protégé of Thomas Jefferson who became a slaveholder through inheritance, took many of his slaves north and granted them a plot of land in Illinois. John Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson's, willed that all his slaves be emancipated upon his death, and that all those older than 40 be given 10 acres of land. "I give and bequeath to all my slaves their freedom," Randolph wrote, "heartily regretting that I have been the owner of one."

In his book Forever Free, Eric Foner recounts the story of a disgruntled planter reprimanding a freedman loafing on the job:

Planter: "You lazy nigger, I am losing a whole day's labor by you."

Freedman: "Massa, how many days' labor have I lost by you?"

In the 20th century, the cause of reparations was taken up by a diverse cast that included the Confederate veteran Walter R. Vaughan, who believed that reparations would be a stimulus for the South; the black activist Callie House; black-nationalist leaders like "Queen Mother" Audley Moore; and the civil-rights activist James Forman. The movement coalesced in 1987 under an umbrella organization called the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA). The NAACP endorsed reparations in 1993. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a professor at Harvard Law School, has pursued reparations claims in court.

But while the people advocating reparations have changed over time, the response from the country has remained virtually the same. "They have been taught to labor," the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1891. "They have been taught Christian civilization, and to speak the noble English language instead of some African gibberish. The account is square with the ex‑slaves."

Not exactly. Having been enslaved for 250 years, black people were not left to their own devices. They were terrorized. In the Deep South, a second slavery ruled. In the North, legislatures, mayors, civic associations, banks, and citizens all colluded to pin black people into ghettos, where they were overcrowded, overcharged, and undereducated. Businesses discriminated against them, awarding them the worst jobs and the worst wages. Police brutalized them in the streets. And the notion that black lives, black bodies, and black wealth were rightful targets remained deeply rooted in the broader society. Now we have half-stepped away from our long centuries of despoilment, promising, "Never again." But still we are haunted. It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear. The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us.

Broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay? But if the practicalities, not the justice, of reparations are the true sticking point, there has for some time been the beginnings of a solution. For the past 25 years, Congressman John Conyers Jr., who represents the Detroit area, has marked every session of Congress by introducing a bill calling for a congressional study of slavery and its lingering effects as well as recommendations for "appropriate remedies."

A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers's bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. We would support this bill, submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested.

"It's because it's black folks making the claim," Nkechi Taifa, who helped found N'COBRA, says. "People who talk about reparations are considered left lunatics. But all we are talking about is studying [reparations]. As John Conyers has said, we study everything. We study the water, the air. We can't even study the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone."

That HR 40 has never-under either Democrats or Republicans-made it to the House floor suggests our concerns are rooted not in the impracticality of reparations but in something more existential. If we conclude that the conditions in North Lawndale and black America are not inexplicable but are instead precisely what you'd expect of a community that for centuries has lived in America's crosshairs, then what are we to make of the world's oldest democracy?

One cannot escape the question by hand-waving at the past, disavowing the acts of one's ancestors, nor by citing a recent date of ancestral immigration. The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. A nation outlives its generations. We were not there when Washington crossed the Delaware, but Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze's rendering has meaning to us. We were not there when Woodrow Wilson took us into World War I, but we are still paying out the pensions. If Thomas Jefferson's genius matters, then so does his taking of Sally Hemings's body. If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

Black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000.

In 1909, President William Howard Taft told the country that "intelligent" white southerners were ready to see blacks as "useful members of the community." A week later Joseph Gordon, a black man, was lynched outside Greenwood, Mississippi. The high point of the lynching era has passed. But the memories of those robbed of their lives still live on in the lingering effects. Indeed, in America there is a strange and powerful belief that if you stab a black person 10 times, the bleeding stops and the healing begins the moment the assailant drops the knife. We believe white dominance to be a fact of the inert past, a delinquent debt that can be made to disappear if only we don't look.

There has always been another way. "It is in vain to alledge, that our ancestors brought them hither, and not we," Yale President Timothy Dwight said in 1810.

We inherit our ample patrimony with all its incumbrances; and are bound to pay the debts of our ancestors. This debt, particularly, we are bound to discharge: and, when the righteous Judge of the Universe comes to reckon with his servants, he will rigidly exact the payment at our hands. To give them liberty, and stop here, is to entail upon them a curse.

IV. "The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From"

America begins in black plunder and white democracy, two features that are not contradictory but complementary. "The men who came together to found the independent United States, dedicated to freedom and equality, either held slaves or were willing to join hands with those who did," the historian Edmund S. Morgan wrote. "None of them felt entirely comfortable about the fact, but neither did they feel responsible for it. Most of them had inherited both their slaves and their attachment to freedom from an earlier generation, and they knew the two were not unconnected."

When enslaved Africans, plundered of their bodies, plundered of their families, and plundered of their labor, were brought to the colony of Virginia in 1619, they did not initially endure the naked racism that would engulf their progeny. Some of them were freed. Some of them intermarried. Still others escaped with the white indentured servants who had suffered as they had. Some even rebelled together, allying under Nathaniel Bacon to torch Jamestown in 1676.

One hundred years later, the idea of slaves and poor whites joining forces would shock the senses, but in the early days of the English colonies, the two groups had much in common. English visitors to Virginia found that its masters "abuse their servantes with intollerable oppression and hard usage." White servants were flogged, tricked into serving beyond their contracts, and traded in much the same manner as slaves.

This "hard usage" originated in a simple fact of the New World-land was boundless but cheap labor was limited. As life spans increased in the colony, the Virginia planters found in the enslaved Africans an even more efficient source of cheap labor. Whereas indentured servants were still legal subjects of the English crown and thus entitled to certain protections, African slaves entered the colonies as aliens. Exempted from the protections of the crown, they became early America's indispensable working class-fit for maximum exploitation, capable of only minimal resistance.

For the next 250 years, American law worked to reduce black people to a class of untouchables and raise all white men to the level of citizens. In 1650, Virginia mandated that "all persons except Negroes" were to carry arms. In 1664, Maryland mandated that any Englishwoman who married a slave must live as a slave of her husband's master. In 1705, the Virginia assembly passed a law allowing for the dismemberment of unruly slaves-but forbidding masters from whipping "a Christian white servant naked, without an order from a justice of the peace." In that same law, the colony mandated that "all horses, cattle, and hogs, now belonging, or that hereafter shall belong to any slave" be seized and sold off by the local church, the profits used to support "the poor of the said parish." At that time, there would have still been people alive who could remember blacks and whites joining to burn down Jamestown only 29 years before. But at the beginning of the 18th century, two primary classes were enshrined in America.

"The two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black," John C. Calhoun, South Carolina's senior senator, declared on the Senate floor in 1848. "And all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals."

In 1860, the majority of people living in South Carolina and Mississippi, almost half of those living in Georgia, and about one-third of all Southerners were on the wrong side of Calhoun's line. The state with the largest number of enslaved Americans was Virginia, where in certain counties some 70 percent of all people labored in chains. Nearly one-fourth of all white Southerners owned slaves, and upon their backs the economic basis of America-and much of the Atlantic world-was erected. In the seven cotton states, one-third of all white income was derived from slavery. By 1840, cotton produced by slave labor constituted 59 percent of the country's exports. The web of this slave society extended north to the looms of New England, and across the Atlantic to Great Britain, where it powered a great economic transformation and altered the trajectory of world history. "Whoever says Industrial Revolution," wrote the historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, "says cotton."

The wealth accorded America by slavery was not just in what the slaves pulled from the land but in the slaves themselves. "In 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America's manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together," the Yale historian David W. Blight has noted. "Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy." The sale of these slaves-"in whose bodies that money congealed," writes Walter Johnson, a Harvard historian-generated even more ancillary wealth. Loans were taken out for purchase, to be repaid with interest. Insurance policies were drafted against the untimely death of a slave and the loss of potential profits. Slave sales were taxed and notarized. The vending of the black body and the sundering of the black family became an economy unto themselves, estimated to have brought in tens of millions of dollars to antebellum America. In 1860 there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the country.

Beneath the cold numbers lay lives divided. "I had a constant dread that Mrs. Moore, her mistress, would be in want of money and sell my dear wife," a freedman wrote, reflecting on his time in slavery. "We constantly dreaded a final separation. Our affection for each was very strong, and this made us always apprehensive of a cruel parting."

Forced partings were common in the antebellum South. A slave in some parts of the region stood a 30 percent chance of being sold in his or her lifetime. Twenty-five percent of interstate trades destroyed a first marriage and half of them destroyed a nuclear family.

When the wife and children of Henry Brown, a slave in Richmond, Virginia, were to be sold away, Brown searched for a white master who might buy his wife and children to keep the family together. He failed:

The next day, I stationed myself by the side of the road, along which the slaves, amounting to three hundred and fifty, were to pass. The purchaser of my wife was a Methodist minister, who was about starting for North Carolina. Pretty soon five waggon-loads of little children passed, and looking at the foremost one, what should I see but a little child, pointing its tiny hand towards me, exclaiming, "There's my father; I knew he would come and bid me good-bye." It was my eldest child! Soon the gang approached in which my wife was chained. I looked, and beheld her familiar face; but O, reader, that glance of agony! may God spare me ever again enduring the excruciating horror of that moment! She passed, and came near to where I stood. I seized hold of her hand, intending to bid her farewell; but words failed me; the gift of utterance had fled, and I remained speechless. I followed her for some distance, with her hand grasped in mine, as if to save her from her fate, but I could not speak, and I was obliged to turn away in silence.

In a time when telecommunications were primitive and blacks lacked freedom of movement, the parting of black families was a kind of murder. Here we find the roots of American wealth and democracy-in the for-profit destruction of the most important asset available to any people, the family. The destruction was not incidental to America's rise; it facilitated that rise. By erecting a slave society, America created the economic foundation for its great experiment in democracy. The labor strife that seeded Bacon's rebellion was suppressed. America's indispensable working class existed as property beyond the realm of politics, leaving white Americans free to trumpet their love of freedom and democratic values. Assessing antebellum democracy in Virginia, a visitor from England observed that the state's natives "can profess an unbounded love of liberty and of democracy in consequence of the mass of the people, who in other countries might become mobs, being there nearly altogether composed of their own Negro slaves."

V. The Quiet Plunder

The consequences of 250 years of enslavement, of war upon black families and black people, were profound. Like homeownership today, slave ownership was aspirational, attracting not just those who owned slaves but those who wished to. Much as homeowners today might discuss the addition of a patio or the painting of a living room, slaveholders traded tips on the best methods for breeding workers, exacting labor, and doling out punishment. Just as a homeowner today might subscribe to a magazine like This Old House, slaveholders had journals such as De Bow's Review, which recommended the best practices for wringing profits from slaves. By the dawn of the Civil War, the enslavement of black America was thought to be so foundational to the country that those who sought to end it were branded heretics worthy of death. Imagine what would happen if a president today came out in favor of taking all American homes from their owners: the reaction might well be violent.

"This country was formed for the white, not for the black man," John Wilkes Booth wrote, before killing Abraham Lincoln. "And looking upon African slavery from the same standpoint held by those noble framers of our Constitution, I for one have ever considered it one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation."

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Radical Republicans attempted to reconstruct the country upon something resembling universal equality-but they were beaten back by a campaign of "Redemption," led by White Liners, Red Shirts, and Klansmen bent on upholding a society "formed for the white, not for the black man." A wave of terrorism roiled the South. In his massive history Reconstruction, Eric Foner recounts incidents of black people being attacked for not removing their hats; for refusing to hand over a whiskey flask; for disobeying church procedures; for "using insolent language"; for disputing labor contracts; for refusing to be "tied like a slave." Sometimes the attacks were intended simply to "thin out the niggers a little."

Terrorism carried the day. Federal troops withdrew from the South in 1877. The dream of Reconstruction died. For the next century, political violence was visited upon blacks wantonly, with special treatment meted out toward black people of ambition. Black schools and churches were burned to the ground. Black voters and the political candidates who attempted to rally them were intimidated, and some were murdered. At the end of World War I, black veterans returning to their homes were assaulted for daring to wear the American uniform. The demobilization of soldiers after the war, which put white and black veterans into competition for scarce jobs, produced the Red Summer of 1919: a succession of racist pogroms against dozens of cities ranging from Longview, Texas, to Chicago to Washington, D.C. Organized white violence against blacks continued into the 1920s-in 1921 a white mob leveled Tulsa's "Black Wall Street," and in 1923 another one razed the black town of Rosewood, Florida-and virtually no one was punished.

The work of mobs was a rabid and violent rendition of prejudices that extended even into the upper reaches of American government. The New Deal is today remembered as a model for what progressive government should do-cast a broad social safety net that protects the poor and the afflicted while building the middle class. When progressives wish to express their disappointment with Barack Obama, they point to the accomplishments of Franklin Roosevelt. But these progressives rarely note that Roosevelt's New Deal, much like the democracy that produced it, rested on the foundation of Jim Crow.

"The Jim Crow South," writes Ira Katznelson, a history and political-science professor at Columbia, "was the one collaborator America's democracy could not do without." The marks of that collaboration are all over the New Deal. The omnibus programs passed under the Social Security Act in 1935 were crafted in such a way as to protect the southern way of life. Old-age insurance (Social Security proper) and unemployment insurance excluded farmworkers and domestics-jobs heavily occupied by blacks. When President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law in 1935, 65 percent of African Americans nationally and between 70 and 80 percent in the South were ineligible. The NAACP protested, calling the new American safety net "a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through."

The oft-celebrated G.I. Bill similarly failed black Americans, by mirroring the broader country's insistence on a racist housing policy. Though ostensibly color-blind, Title III of the bill, which aimed to give veterans access to low-interest home loans, left black veterans to tangle with white officials at their local Veterans Administration as well as with the same banks that had, for years, refused to grant mortgages to blacks. The historian Kathleen J. Frydl observes in her 2009 book, The GI Bill, that so many blacks were disqualified from receiving Title III benefits "that it is more accurate simply to say that blacks could not use this particular title."

In Cold War America, homeownership was seen as a means of instilling patriotism, and as a civilizing and anti-radical force. "No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist," claimed William Levitt, who pioneered the modern suburb with the development of the various Levittowns, his famous planned communities. "He has too much to do."

But the Levittowns were, with Levitt's willing acquiescence, segregated throughout their early years. Daisy and Bill Myers, the first black family to move into Levittown, Pennsylvania, were greeted with protests and a burning cross. A neighbor who opposed the family said that Bill Myers was "probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him I see $2,000 drop off the value of my house."

The neighbor had good reason to be afraid. Bill and Daisy Myers were from the other side of John C. Calhoun's dual society. If they moved next door, housing policy almost guaranteed that their neighbors' property values would decline.

Whereas shortly before the New Deal, a typical mortgage required a large down payment and full repayment within about 10 years, the creation of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation in 1933 and then the Federal Housing Administration the following year allowed banks to offer loans requiring no more than 10 percent down, amortized over 20 to 30 years. "Without federal intervention in the housing market, massive suburbanization would have been impossible," writes Thomas J. Sugrue, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. "In 1930, only 30 percent of Americans owned their own homes; by 1960, more than 60 percent were home owners. Home ownership became an emblem of American citizenship."

That emblem was not to be awarded to blacks. The American real-estate industry believed segregation to be a moral principle. As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards' code of ethics warned that "a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood ... any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values." A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesirables might include madams, bootleggers, gangsters-and "a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites."

The federal government concurred. It was the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, not a private trade association, that pioneered the practice of redlining, selectively granting loans and insisting that any property it insured be covered by a restrictive covenant-a clause in the deed forbidding the sale of the property to anyone other than whites. Millions of dollars flowed from tax coffers into segregated white neighborhoods.
One man said his black neighbor was "probably a nice guy, but every time I look at him I see $2,000 drop off the value of my house."
"For perhaps the first time, the federal government embraced the discriminatory attitudes of the marketplace," the historian Kenneth T. Jackson wrote in his 1985 book, Crabgrass Frontier, a history of suburbanization. "Previously, prejudices were personalized and individualized; FHA exhorted segregation and enshrined it as public policy. Whole areas of cities were declared ineligible for loan guarantees." Redlining was not officially outlawed until 1968, by the Fair Housing Act. By then the damage was done-and reports of redlining by banks have continued.

The federal government is premised on equal fealty from all its citizens, who in return are to receive equal treatment. But as late as the mid-20th century, this bargain was not granted to black people, who repeatedly paid a higher price for citizenship and received less in return. Plunder had been the essential feature of slavery, of the society described by Calhoun. But practically a full century after the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the plunder-quiet, systemic, submerged-continued even amidst the aims and achievements of New Deal liberals.

VI. Making The Second Ghetto

Today Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a fact that reflects assiduous planning. In the effort to uphold white supremacy at every level down to the neighborhood, Chicago-a city founded by the black fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable-has long been a pioneer. The efforts began in earnest in 1917, when the Chicago Real Estate Board, horrified by the influx of southern blacks, lobbied to zone the entire city by race. But after the Supreme Court ruled against explicit racial zoning that year, the city was forced to pursue its agenda by more-discreet means.

Like the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration initially insisted on restrictive covenants, which helped bar blacks and other ethnic undesirables from receiving federally backed home loans. By the 1940s, Chicago led the nation in the use of these restrictive covenants, and about half of all residential neighborhoods in the city were effectively off-limits to blacks.

It is common today to become misty-eyed about the old black ghetto, where doctors and lawyers lived next door to meatpackers and steelworkers, who themselves lived next door to prostitutes and the unemployed. This segregationist nostalgia ignores the actual conditions endured by the people living there-vermin and arson, for instance-and ignores the fact that the old ghetto was premised on denying black people privileges enjoyed by white Americans.

In 1948, when the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants, while permissible, were not enforceable by judicial action, Chicago had other weapons at the ready. The Illinois state legislature had already given Chicago's city council the right to approve-and thus to veto-any public housing in the city's wards. This came in handy in 1949, when a new federal housing act sent millions of tax dollars into Chicago and other cities around the country. Beginning in 1950, site selection for public housing proceeded entirely on the grounds of segregation. By the 1960s, the city had created with its vast housing projects what the historian Arnold R. Hirsch calls a "second ghetto," one larger than the old Black Belt but just as impermeable. More than 98 percent of all the family public-housing units built in Chicago between 1950 and the mid‑1960s were built in all-black neighborhoods.

Governmental embrace of segregation was driven by the virulent racism of Chicago's white citizens. White neighborhoods vulnerable to black encroachment formed block associations for the sole purpose of enforcing segregation. They lobbied fellow whites not to sell. They lobbied those blacks who did manage to buy to sell back. In 1949, a group of Englewood Catholics formed block associations intended to "keep up the neighborhood." Translation: keep black people out. And when civic engagement was not enough, when government failed, when private banks could no longer hold the line, Chicago turned to an old tool in the American repertoire-racial violence. "The pattern of terrorism is easily discernible," concluded a Chicago civic group in the 1940s. "It is at the seams of the black ghetto in all directions." On July 1 and 2 of 1946, a mob of thousands assembled in Chicago's Park Manor neighborhood, hoping to eject a black doctor who'd recently moved in. The mob pelted the house with rocks and set the garage on fire. The doctor moved away.

In 1947, after a few black veterans moved into the Fernwood section of Chicago, three nights of rioting broke out; gangs of whites yanked blacks off streetcars and beat them. Two years later, when a union meeting attended by blacks in Englewood triggered rumors that a home was being "sold to niggers," blacks (and whites thought to be sympathetic to them) were beaten in the streets. In 1951, thousands of whites in Cicero, 20 minutes or so west of downtown Chicago, attacked an apartment building that housed a single black family, throwing bricks and firebombs through the windows and setting the apartment on fire. A Cook County grand jury declined to charge the rioters-and instead indicted the family's NAACP attorney, the apartment's white owner, and the owner's attorney and rental agent, charging them with conspiring to lower property values. Two years after that, whites picketed and planted explosives in South Deering, about 30 minutes from downtown Chicago, to force blacks out.

When terrorism ultimately failed, white homeowners simply fled the neighborhood. The traditional terminology, white flight, implies a kind of natural expression of preference. In fact, white flight was a triumph of social engineering, orchestrated by the shared racist presumptions of America's public and private sectors. For should any nonracist white families decide that integration might not be so bad as a matter of principle or practicality, they still had to contend with the hard facts of American housing policy: When the mid-20th-century white homeowner claimed that the presence of a Bill and Daisy Myers decreased his property value, he was not merely engaging in racist dogma-he was accurately observing the impact of federal policy on market prices. Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived.

VII. "A Lot Of People Fell By The Way"

Speculators in North Lawndale, and at the edge of the black ghettos, knew there was money to be made off white panic. They resorted to "block-busting"-spooking whites into selling cheap before the neighborhood became black. They would hire a black woman to walk up and down the street with a stroller. Or they'd hire someone to call a number in the neighborhood looking for "Johnny Mae." Then they'd cajole whites into selling at low prices, informing them that the more blacks who moved in, the more the value of their homes would decline, so better to sell now. With these white-fled homes in hand, speculators then turned to the masses of black people who had streamed northward as part of the Great Migration, or who were desperate to escape the ghettos: the speculators would take the houses they'd just bought cheap through block-busting and sell them to blacks on contract.

To keep up with his payments and keep his heat on, Clyde Ross took a second job at the post office and then a third job delivering pizza. His wife took a job working at Marshall Field. He had to take some of his children out of private school. He was not able to be at home to supervise his children or help them with their homework. Money and time that Ross wanted to give his children went instead to enrich white speculators.

"The problem was the money," Ross told me. "Without the money, you can't move. You can't educate your kids. You can't give them the right kind of food. Can't make the house look good. They think this neighborhood is where they supposed to be. It changes their outlook. My kids were going to the best schools in this neighborhood, and I couldn't keep them in there."

Mattie Lewis came to Chicago from her native Alabama in the mid-'40s, when she was 21, persuaded by a friend who told her she could get a job as a hairdresser. Instead she was hired by Western Electric, where she worked for 41 years. I met Lewis in the home of her neighbor Ethel Weatherspoon. Both had owned homes in North Lawndale for more than 50 years. Both had bought their houses on contract. Both had been active with Clyde Ross in the Contract Buyers League's effort to garner restitution from contract sellers who'd operated in North Lawndale, banks who'd backed the scheme, and even the Federal Housing Administration. We were joined by Jack Macnamara, who'd been an organizing force in the Contract Buyers League when it was founded, in 1968. Our gathering had the feel of a reunion, because the writer James Alan McPherson had profiled the Contract Buyers League for The Atlantic back in 1972.

Weatherspoon bought her home in 1957. "Most of the whites started moving out," she told me. "'The blacks are coming. The blacks are coming.' They actually said that. They had signs up: Don't sell to blacks."

Before moving to North Lawndale, Lewis and her husband tried moving to Cicero after seeing a house advertised for sale there. "Sorry, I just sold it today," the Realtor told Lewis's husband. "I told him, 'You know they don't want you in Cicero,' " Lewis recalls. " 'They ain't going to let nobody black in Cicero.' "

In 1958, the couple bought a home in North Lawndale on contract. They were not blind to the unfairness. But Lewis, born in the teeth of Jim Crow, considered American piracy-black people keep on making it, white people keep on taking it-a fact of nature. "All I wanted was a house. And that was the only way I could get it. They weren't giving black people loans at that time," she said. "We thought, 'This is the way it is. We going to do it till we die, and they ain't never going to accept us. That's just the way it is.'

"The only way you were going to buy a home was to do it the way they wanted," she continued. "And I was determined to get me a house. If everybody else can have one, I want one too. I had worked for white people in the South. And I saw how these white people were living in the North and I thought, 'One day I'm going to live just like them.' I wanted cabinets and all these things these other people have."

White flight was not an accident-it was a triumph of racist social engineering.

Whenever she visited white co-workers at their homes, she saw the difference. "I could see we were just getting ripped off," she said. "I would see things and I would say, 'I'd like to do this at my house.' And they would say, 'Do it,' but I would think, 'I can't, because it costs us so much more.' "

I asked Lewis and Weatherspoon how they kept up on payments.

"You paid it and kept working," Lewis said of the contract. "When that payment came up, you knew you had to pay it."

"You cut down on the light bill. Cut down on your food bill," Weatherspoon interjected.

"You cut down on things for your child, that was the main thing," said Lewis. "My oldest wanted to be an artist and my other wanted to be a dancer and my other wanted to take music."

Lewis and Weatherspoon, like Ross, were able to keep their homes. The suit did not win them any remuneration. But it forced contract sellers to the table, where they allowed some members of the Contract Buyers League to move into regular mortgages or simply take over their houses outright. By then they'd been bilked for thousands. In talking with Lewis and Weatherspoon, I was seeing only part of the picture-the tiny minority who'd managed to hold on to their homes. But for all our exceptional ones, for every Barack and Michelle Obama, for every Ethel Weatherspoon or Clyde Ross, for every black survivor, there are so many thousands gone.

"A lot of people fell by the way," Lewis told me. "One woman asked me if I would keep all her china. She said, 'They ain't going to set you out.' "

VIII. "Negro Poverty is not White Poverty"

On a recent spring afternoon in North Lawndale, I visited Billy Lamar Brooks Sr. Brooks has been an activist since his youth in the Black Panther Party, when he aided the Contract Buyers League. I met him in his office at the Better Boys Foundation, a staple of North Lawndale whose mission is to direct local kids off the streets and into jobs and college. Brooks's work is personal. On June 14, 1991, his 19-year-old son, Billy Jr., was shot and killed. "These guys tried to stick him up," Brooks told me. "I suspect he could have been involved in some things ... He's always on my mind. Every day."

Brooks was not raised in the streets, though in such a neighborhood it is impossible to avoid the influence. "I was in church three or four times a week. That's where the girls were," he said, laughing. "The stark reality is still there. There's no shield from life. You got to go to school. I lived here. I went to Marshall High School. Over here were the Egyptian Cobras. Over there were the Vice Lords."

Brooks has since moved away from Chicago's West Side. But he is still working in North Lawndale. If "you got a nice house, you live in a nice neighborhood, then you are less prone to violence, because your space is not deprived," Brooks said. "You got a security point. You don't need no protection." But if "you grow up in a place like this, housing sucks. When they tore down the projects here, they left the high-rises and came to the neighborhood with that gang mentality. You don't have nothing, so you going to take something, even if it's not real. You don't have no street, but in your mind it's yours."

Video: The Guardian of North Lawndale

We walked over to a window behind his desk. A group of young black men were hanging out in front of a giant mural memorializing two black men: In Lovin Memory Quentin aka "Q," July 18, 1974 ❤ March 2, 2012. The name and face of the other man had been spray-painted over by a rival group. The men drank beer. Occasionally a car would cruise past, slow to a crawl, then stop. One of the men would approach the car and make an exchange, then the car would drive off. Brooks had known all of these young men as boys.

"That's their corner," he said.

We watched another car roll through, pause briefly, then drive off. "No respect, no shame," Brooks said. "That's what they do. From that alley to that corner. They don't go no farther than that. See the big brother there? He almost died a couple of years ago. The one drinking the beer back there ... I know all of them. And the reason they feel safe here is cause of this building, and because they too chickenshit to go anywhere. But that's their mentality. That's their block."

Brooks showed me a picture of a Little League team he had coached. He went down the row of kids, pointing out which ones were in jail, which ones were dead, and which ones were doing all right. And then he pointed out his son-"That's my boy, Billy," Brooks said. Then he wondered aloud if keeping his son with him while working in North Lawndale had hastened his death. "It's a definite connection, because he was part of what I did here. And I think maybe I shouldn't have exposed him. But then, I had to," he said, "because I wanted him with me."

From the White House on down, the myth holds that fatherhood is the great antidote to all that ails black people. But Billy Brooks Jr. had a father. Trayvon Martin had a father. Jordan Davis had a father. Adhering to middle-class norms has never shielded black people from plunder. Adhering to middle-class norms is what made Ethel Weatherspoon a lucrative target for rapacious speculators. Contract sellers did not target the very poor. They targeted black people who had worked hard enough to save a down payment and dreamed of the emblem of American citizenship-homeownership. It was not a tangle of pathology that put a target on Clyde Ross's back. It was not a culture of poverty that singled out Mattie Lewis for "the thrill of the chase and the kill." Some black people always will be twice as good. But they generally find white predation to be thrice as fast.
Is affirmative action meant to increase "diversity"? If so, it only tangentially relates to the specific problems of black people.
Liberals today mostly view racism not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore the long tradition of this country actively punishing black success-and the elevation of that punishment, in the mid-20th century, to federal policy. President Lyndon Johnson may have noted in his historic civil-rights speech at Howard University in 1965 that "Negro poverty is not white poverty." But his advisers and their successors were, and still are, loath to craft any policy that recognizes the difference.

After his speech, Johnson convened a group of civil-rights leaders, including the esteemed A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, to address the "ancient brutality." In a strategy paper, they agreed with the president that "Negro poverty is a special, and particularly destructive, form of American poverty." But when it came to specifically addressing the "particularly destructive," Rustin's group demurred, preferring to advance programs that addressed "all the poor, black and white."

The urge to use the moral force of the black struggle to address broader inequalities originates in both compassion and pragmatism. But it makes for ambiguous policy. Affirmative action's precise aims, for instance, have always proved elusive. Is it meant to make amends for the crimes heaped upon black people? Not according to the Supreme Court. In its 1978 ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court rejected "societal discrimination" as "an amorphous concept of injury that may be ageless in its reach into the past." Is affirmative action meant to increase "diversity"? If so, it only tangentially relates to the specific problems of black people-the problem of what America has taken from them over several centuries.

This confusion about affirmative action's aims, along with our inability to face up to the particular history of white-imposed black disadvantage, dates back to the policy's origins. "There is no fixed and firm definition of affirmative action," an appointee in Johnson's Department of Labor declared. "Affirmative action is anything that you have to do to get results. But this does not necessarily include preferential treatment."

Yet America was built on the preferential treatment of white people-395 years of it. Vaguely endorsing a cuddly, feel-good diversity does very little to redress this.

Today, progressives are loath to invoke white supremacy as an explanation for anything. On a practical level, the hesitation comes from the dim view the Supreme Court has taken of the reforms of the 1960s. The Voting Rights Act has been gutted. The Fair Housing Act might well be next. Affirmative action is on its last legs. In substituting a broad class struggle for an anti-racist struggle, progressives hope to assemble a coalition by changing the subject.

The politics of racial evasion are seductive. But the record is mixed. Aid to Families With Dependent Children was originally written largely to exclude blacks-yet by the 1990s it was perceived as a giveaway to blacks. The Affordable Care Act makes no mention of race, but this did not keep Rush Limbaugh from denouncing it as reparations. Moreover, the act's expansion of Medicaid was effectively made optional, meaning that many poor blacks in the former Confederate states do not benefit from it. The Affordable Care Act, like Social Security, will eventually expand its reach to those left out; in the meantime, black people will be injured.

"All that it would take to sink a new WPA program would be some skillfully packaged footage of black men leaning on shovels smoking cigarettes," the sociologist Douglas S. Massey writes. "Papering over the issue of race makes for bad social theory, bad research, and bad public policy." To ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend that the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism, is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying. The lie ignores the fact that reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same. The lie ignores the fact that closing the "achievement gap" will do nothing to close the "injury gap," in which black college graduates still suffer higher unemployment rates than white college graduates, and black job applicants without criminal records enjoy roughly the same chance of getting hired as white applicants with criminal records.

Chicago, like the country at large, embraced policies that placed black America's most energetic, ambitious, and thrifty countrymen beyond the pale of society and marked them as rightful targets for legal theft. The effects reverberate beyond the families who were robbed to the community that beholds the spectacle. Don't just picture Clyde Ross working three jobs so he could hold on to his home. Think of his North Lawndale neighbors-their children, their nephews and nieces-and consider how watching this affects them. Imagine yourself as a young black child watching your elders play by all the rules only to have their possessions tossed out in the street and to have their most sacred possession-their home-taken from them.

The message the young black boy receives from his country, Billy Brooks says, is " 'You ain't shit. You not no good. The only thing you are worth is working for us. You will never own anything. You not going to get an education. We are sending your ass to the penitentiary.' They're telling you no matter how hard you struggle, no matter what you put down, you ain't shit. 'We're going to take what you got. You will never own anything, nigger.' "

IX. Toward A New Country

When Clyde Ross was a child, his older brother Winter had a seizure. He was picked up by the authorities and delivered to Parchman Farm, a 20,000-acre state prison in the Mississippi Delta region.

"He was a gentle person," Clyde Ross says of his brother. "You know, he was good to everybody. And he started having spells, and he couldn't control himself. And they had him picked up, because they thought he was dangerous."

Built at the turn of the century, Parchman was supposed to be a progressive and reformist response to the problem of "Negro crime." In fact it was the gulag of Mississippi, an object of terror to African Americans in the Delta. In the early years of the 20th century, Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman used to amuse himself by releasing black convicts into the surrounding wilderness and hunting them down with bloodhounds. "Throughout the American South," writes David M. Oshinsky in his book Worse Than Slavery, "Parchman Farm is synonymous with punishment and brutality, as well it should be ... Parchman is the quintessential penal farm, the closest thing to slavery that survived the Civil War."

When the Ross family went to retrieve Winter, the authorities told them that Winter had died. When the Ross family asked for his body, the authorities at Parchman said they had buried him. The family never saw Winter's body.

And this was just one of their losses.

Scholars have long discussed methods by which America might make reparations to those on whose labor and exclusion the country was built. In the 1970s, the Yale Law professor Boris Bittker argued in The Case for Black Reparations that a rough price tag for reparations could be determined by multiplying the number of African Americans in the population by the difference in white and black per capita income. That number-$34 billion in 1973, when Bittker wrote his book-could be added to a reparations program each year for a decade or two. Today Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor, argues for something broader: a program of job training and public works that takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races.

To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting America's origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte.

Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country's shameful history of treating black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap. Reparations would seek to close this chasm. But as surely as the creation of the wealth gap required the cooperation of every aspect of the society, bridging it will require the same.
When we think of white supremacy, we picture Colored Only signs, but we should picture pirate flags.
Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate-the kind that HR 40 proposes-we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion-and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper-America's heritage, history, and standing in the world.

The early American economy was built on slave labor. The Capitol and the White House were built by slaves. President James K. Polk traded slaves from the Oval Office. The laments about "black pathology," the criticism of black family structures by pundits and intellectuals, ring hollow in a country whose existence was predicated on the torture of black fathers, on the rape of black mothers, on the sale of black children. An honest assessment of America's relationship to the black family reveals the country to be not its nurturer but its destroyer.

And this destruction did not end with slavery. Discriminatory laws joined the equal burden of citizenship to unequal distribution of its bounty. These laws reached their apex in the mid-20th century, when the federal government-through housing policies-engineered the wealth gap, which remains with us to this day. When we think of white supremacy, we picture Colored Only signs, but we should picture pirate flags.

On some level, we have always grasped this.

"Negro poverty is not white poverty," President Johnson said in his historic civil-rights speech.

Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences-deep, corrosive, obstinate differences-radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

We invoke the words of Jefferson and Lincoln because they say something about our legacy and our traditions. We do this because we recognize our links to the past-at least when they flatter us. But black history does not flatter American democracy; it chastens it. The popular mocking of reparations as a harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists is fear masquerading as laughter. Black nationalists have always perceived something unmentionable about America that integrationists dare not acknowledge-that white supremacy is not merely the work of hotheaded demagogues, or a matter of false consciousness, but a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.

And so we must imagine a new country. Reparations-by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences-is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely. The recovering alcoholic may well have to live with his illness for the rest of his life. But at least he is not living a drunken lie. Reparations beckons us to reject the intoxication of hubris and see America as it is-the work of fallible humans.

Won't reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say-that American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.

What I'm talking about is more than recompense for past injustices-more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I'm talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling "patriotism" while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history.

X. "There Will Be No 'Reparations' From Germany"

We are not the first to be summoned to such a challenge.

In 1952, when West Germany began the process of making amends for the Holocaust, it did so under conditions that should be instructive to us. Resistance was violent. Very few Germans believed that Jews were entitled to anything. Only 5 percent of West Germans surveyed reported feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and only 29 percent believed that Jews were owed restitution from the German people.

"The rest," the historian Tony Judt wrote in his 2005 book, Postwar, "were divided between those (some two-fifths of respondents) who thought that only people 'who really committed something' were responsible and should pay, and those (21 percent) who thought 'that the Jews themselves were partly responsible for what happened to them during the Third Reich.' "

Germany's unwillingness to squarely face its history went beyond polls. Movies that suggested a societal responsibility for the Holocaust beyond Hitler were banned. "The German soldier fought bravely and honorably for his homeland," claimed President Eisenhower, endorsing the Teutonic national myth. Judt wrote, "Throughout the fifties West German officialdom encouraged a comfortable view of the German past in which the Wehrmacht was heroic, while Nazis were in a minority and properly punished."

Konrad Adenauer, the postwar German chancellor, was in favor of reparations, but his own party was divided, and he was able to get an agreement passed only with the votes of the Social Democratic opposition.
"If I could take German property without sitting down with them for even a minute but go in with jeeps and machine guns," said David Ben-Gurion, "I would do that."
Among the Jews of Israel, reparations provoked violent and venomous reactions ranging from denunciation to assassination plots. On January 7, 1952, as the Knesset-the Israeli parliament-convened to discuss the prospect of a reparations agreement with West Germany, Menachem Begin, the future prime minister of Israel, stood in front of a large crowd, inveighing against the country that had plundered the lives, labor, and property of his people. Begin claimed that all Germans were Nazis and guilty of murder. His condemnations then spread to his own young state. He urged the crowd to stop paying taxes and claimed that the nascent Israeli nation characterized the fight over whether or not to accept reparations as a "war to the death." When alerted that the police watching the gathering were carrying tear gas, allegedly of German manufacture, Begin yelled, "The same gases that asphyxiated our parents!"

Begin then led the crowd in an oath to never forget the victims of the Shoah, lest "my right hand lose its cunning" and "my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." He took the crowd through the streets toward the Knesset. From the rooftops, police repelled the crowd with tear gas and smoke bombs. But the wind shifted, and the gas blew back toward the Knesset, billowing through windows shattered by rocks. In the chaos, Begin and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion exchanged insults. Two hundred civilians and 140 police officers were wounded. Nearly 400 people were arrested. Knesset business was halted.

Begin then addressed the chamber with a fiery speech condemning the actions the legislature was about to take. "Today you arrested hundreds," he said. "Tomorrow you may arrest thousands. No matter, they will go, they will sit in prison. We will sit there with them. If necessary, we will be killed with them. But there will be no 'reparations' from Germany."

Survivors of the Holocaust feared laundering the reputation of Germany with money, and mortgaging the memory of their dead. Beyond that, there was a taste for revenge. "My soul would be at rest if I knew there would be 6 million German dead to match the 6 million Jews," said Meir Dworzecki, who'd survived the concentration camps of Estonia.

Ben-Gurion countered this sentiment, not by repudiating vengeance but with cold calculation: "If I could take German property without sitting down with them for even a minute but go in with jeeps and machine guns to the warehouses and take it, I would do that-if, for instance, we had the ability to send a hundred divisions and tell them, 'Take it.' But we can't do that."

The reparations conversation set off a wave of bomb attempts by Israeli militants. One was aimed at the foreign ministry in Tel Aviv. Another was aimed at Chancellor Adenauer himself. And one was aimed at the port of Haifa, where the goods bought with reparations money were arriving. West Germany ultimately agreed to pay Israel 3.45 billion deutsche marks, or more than $7 billion in today's dollars. Individual reparations claims followed-for psychological trauma, for offense to Jewish honor, for halting law careers, for life insurance, for time spent in concentration camps. Seventeen percent of funds went toward purchasing ships. "By the end of 1961, these reparations vessels constituted two-thirds of the Israeli merchant fleet," writes the Israeli historian Tom Segev in his book The Seventh Million. "From 1953 to 1963, the reparations money funded about a third of the total investment in Israel's electrical system, which tripled its capacity, and nearly half the total investment in the railways."

Israel's GNP tripled during the 12 years of the agreement. The Bank of Israel attributed 15 percent of this growth, along with 45,000 jobs, to investments made with reparations money. But Segev argues that the impact went far beyond that. Reparations "had indisputable psychological and political importance," he writes.

Reparations could not make up for the murder perpetrated by the Nazis. But they did launch Germany's reckoning with itself, and perhaps provided a road map for how a great civilization might make itself worthy of the name.

Assessing the reparations agreement, David Ben-Gurion said:

For the first time in the history of relations between people, a precedent has been created by which a great State, as a result of moral pressure alone, takes it upon itself to pay compensation to the victims of the government that preceded it. For the first time in the history of a people that has been persecuted, oppressed, plundered and despoiled for hundreds of years in the countries of Europe, a persecutor and despoiler has been obliged to return part of his spoils and has even undertaken to make collective reparation as partial compensation for material losses.

Something more than moral pressure calls America to reparations. We cannot escape our history. All of our solutions to the great problems of health care, education, housing, and economic inequality are troubled by what must go unspoken. "The reason black people are so far behind now is not because of now," Clyde Ross told me. "It's because of then." In the early 2000s, Charles Ogletree went to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to meet with the survivors of the 1921 race riot that had devastated "Black Wall Street." The past was not the past to them. "It was amazing seeing these black women and men who were crippled, blind, in wheelchairs," Ogletree told me. "I had no idea who they were and why they wanted to see me. They said, 'We want you to represent us in this lawsuit.' "

A commission authorized by the Oklahoma legislature produced a report affirming that the riot, the knowledge of which had been suppressed for years, had happened. But the lawsuit ultimately failed, in 2004. Similar suits pushed against corporations such as Aetna (which insured slaves) and Lehman Brothers (whose co-founding partner owned them) also have thus far failed. These results are dispiriting, but the crime with which reparations activists charge the country implicates more than just a few towns or corporations. The crime indicts the American people themselves, at every level, and in nearly every configuration. A crime that implicates the entire American people deserves its hearing in the legislative body that represents them.

John Conyers's HR 40 is the vehicle for that hearing. No one can know what would come out of such a debate. Perhaps no number can fully capture the multi-century plunder of black people in America. Perhaps the number is so large that it can't be imagined, let alone calculated and dispensed. But I believe that wrestling publicly with these questions matters as much as-if not more than-the specific answers that might be produced. An America that asks what it owes its most vulnerable citizens is improved and humane. An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future. More important than any single check cut to any African American, the payment of reparations would represent America's maturation out of the childhood myth of its innocence into a wisdom worthy of its founders.

In 2010, Jacob S. Rugh, then a doctoral candidate at Princeton, and the sociologist Douglas S. Massey published a study of the recent foreclosure crisis. Among its drivers, they found an old foe: segregation. Black home buyers-even after controlling for factors like creditworthiness-were still more likely than white home buyers to be steered toward subprime loans. Decades of racist housing policies by the American government, along with decades of racist housing practices by American businesses, had conspired to concentrate African Americans in the same neighborhoods. As in North Lawndale half a century earlier, these neighborhoods were filled with people who had been cut off from mainstream financial institutions. When subprime lenders went looking for prey, they found black people waiting like ducks in a pen.
"Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches."
"High levels of segregation create a natural market for subprime lending," Rugh and Massey write, "and cause riskier mortgages, and thus foreclosures, to accumulate disproportionately in racially segregated cities' minority neighborhoods."

Plunder in the past made plunder in the present efficient. The banks of America understood this. In 2005, Wells Fargo promoted a series of Wealth Building Strategies seminars. Dubbing itself "the nation's leading originator of home loans to ethnic minority customers," the bank enrolled black public figures in an ostensible effort to educate blacks on building "generational wealth." But the "wealth building" seminars were a front for wealth theft. In 2010, the Justice Department filed a discrimination suit against Wells Fargo alleging that the bank had shunted blacks into predatory loans regardless of their creditworthiness. This was not magic or coincidence or misfortune. It was racism reifying itself. According to The New York Times, affidavits found loan officers referring to their black customers as "mud people" and to their subprime products as "ghetto loans."

"We just went right after them," Beth Jacobson, a former Wells Fargo loan officer, told The Times. "Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans."

In 2011, Bank of America agreed to pay $355 million to settle charges of discrimination against its Countrywide unit. The following year, Wells Fargo settled its discrimination suit for more than $175 million. But the damage had been done. In 2009, half the properties in Baltimore whose owners had been granted loans by Wells Fargo between 2005 and 2008 were vacant; 71 percent of these properties were in predominantly black neighborhoods.
​​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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products of many generations of privilege

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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

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James Baldwin’s thoughts on his nephew’s future—in a country with a terrible history of racism— first appeared in The Progressive magazine in 1962. Over 50 years later his words are as powerful as ever.

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Sourcing the Imagination:  Teaching Ta-Nehisi

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Sourcing the Imagination:  Teaching Ta-Nehisi

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Implicit bias happens in the unconscious brain. It happens on auto-pilot. We are primed to look for things, for example what is safe or dangerous. Quite often, we don't see what we aren't looking for. We very quickly make associations and assumptions from priming. This is necessary for survival. But, what happens when we make these associations and and assumptions about people?

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What is implicit bias? NYT/POV’s Saleem Reshamwala unscrews the lid on the unfair effects of our subconscious.

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You're watching a video of a needle piercing an anonymous hand, sinking slowly into the web between the thumb and index finger. You wince as you imagine the pain that the other person must feel, and for good reason. As you watch, you nervous system essentially duplicates the experience, responding as if you were vicariously feeling the pain yourself. This is typical of what happens when people see others in pain, but Italian scientist Alessio Avenanti has found an important exception to the rule. Racial bias can negate this ability to feel the pain of someone from a different ethnic group.

Avenanti recruited white and black Italian volunteers and asked them to watch videos of a stranger's hand being poked. When people watch such scenes, it's actually possible to measure their brain's empathic tendencies. By simulating how the prick would feel, the brain activates the neurons of the observer's hand in roughly the same place. These neurons become less excitable in the future. By checking their sensitivity, Avenanti could measure the effect that the video had on his recruits

He found the hallmarks of an empathic response only when the hands in the videos were prodded by a needle rather than a blunt piece of plastic, and only when he took measurements at the same part of the hand. But most interestingly of all, he found that the recruits (both white and black) only responded empathetically when they saw hands that were the same skin tone as their own. If the hands belonged to a different ethnic group, the volunteers were unmoved by the pain they saw.

So are we all just naturally and worryingly prejudiced? Far from it - Avenanti actually thinks that empathy is the default state, which only later gets disrupted by racial biases. He repeated his experiment using brightly coloured violet hands, which clearly didn't belong to any known ethnic group. Despite the hands' weird hues, when they were poked with needles, the recruits all showed a strong empathic response, reacting as they would to hands of their own skin tone.

The purple-hand experiment is a vital part of Avenanti's study. Other scientists have suggested that people are less responsive to the pain of other ethnic groups, simply because their skin tones are less familiar and harder to identify with. But what could be more unfamiliar and lessidentifiable than a violet hand? It's strong evidence that the lack of empathy from the first experiment stems not from mere novelty, but from racial biases.

Avenanti also found that the stronger these biases are, the weaker their empathic response. Each of his recruits did an ' Implicit Association Test ', which looks for hidden biases by measuring how easily people make positive or negative connections between different ethnic groups. For example, white Italians are typically quicker to associate positive words with the term "Italian" and negative ones with the term "African". And the faster they make those connections, the greater the differences in their responses to the stabbed black and white hands.

The recruit's bodies betrayed their prejudices in other ways. On seeing the penetrating needles, their skins became moist and better at conducting electricity, a reflexive sign of emotional arousal. The needles evoked the same effect regardless of the hand they pierced, but the response was longer in coming if the hand belonged to a different ethnic group.

All in all, Avenanti says when we see pain befall a person from our own racial group, it immediately triggers resonant activity in our own nervous system. When we see the same event happening to someone of a different race, these simulations are weaker and take longer to form.

It's a sad state of affairs but probably not an unpredictable one. After all, other studies have found that racial prejudices can make us dehumanise members of a different ethnic group. But more promisingly, Avenanti's experiments suggest that things don't have to be this way. Our default reaction, freed from the shackles of prejudice, is empathy with our fellow people, even if they do have freaky violet hands.

Reference: Current Biology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.03.071
More on race:
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Racial bias weakens our ability to feel someone else's pain - Not Exactly Rocket Science

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You're watching a video of a needle piercing an anonymous hand, sinking slowly into the web between the thumb and index finger. You wince as you imagine the pain that the other person must feel, and for good reason. As you watch, you nervous system essentially duplicates the experience, responding as if you were vicariously ...

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In Thursday's DEI meeting we discussed Implicit Bias and strategies for disrupting. This tool can be used to disrupt a process or system.

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Preliminary Information

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

We ask these questions because the IAT can be more valuable if you also describe your own self-understanding of the attitude or stereotype that the IAT measures. We would also like to compare differences between people and groups.

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Note: This site is designed for adults, aged 18 or older.

Data Privacy: Data exchanged with this site are protected by SSL encryption. Project Implicit uses the same secure hypertext transfer protocol (HTTPS) that banks use to securely transfer credit card information. This provides strong security for data transfer to and from our website. IP addresses are routinely recorded, but are completely confidential. For research purposes, data without directly identifying information is made publicly available. You can find more information on our Data Privacy page.

Important disclaimer: In reporting to you results of any IAT test that you take, we will mention possible interpretations that have a basis in research done (at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Yale University) with these tests. However, these Universities, as well as the individual researchers who have contributed to this site, make no claim for the validity of these suggested interpretations. If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further. You may prefer to examine general information about the IAT before deciding whether or not to proceed.

If you have questions about the study, please contact Project Implicit at questions@projectimplicit.net. To obtain more information about the study, ask questions about the research procedures, express concerns about your participation, or report illness, injury or other problems, please contact:

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I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed I am aware of the possibility of encountering interpretations of my IAT test performance with which I may not agree. Knowing this, I wish to proceed using a touchscreen OR using a keyboard.

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

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Brandt Jean, Botham Jean's younger brother, hugs former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger after she was sentenced to 10 years in jail in Botham Jean's killing. (Tom Fox/Pool/Dallas Morning News/AP)

In a high-profile case this week, former police officer Amber Guyger, who is white, was found guilty of the murder of Botham Jean, a black man, in his Dallas home.

On Wednesday, the same day Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Brandt Jean, Botham's younger brother, made a victim impact statement in the courtroom and then sealed his words with a gesture.

" If you are truly sorry," he said. "I know I can speak for myself, I forgive you."

Brandt is a Christian, and his brother professed to be one. He urged Guyger to turn to Jesus.

"I think giving your life to Christ would be the best thing that Botham would want for you," he said.

Brandt went so far as to say that he didn't want Guyger to face jail time for the 2018 shooting in the Dallas apartment complex where both Botham and she lived. He pleaded with the judge to let him hug his brother's murderer, a request the judge granted.

The courtroom embrace - the grieving brother of a black man wrapping his arms around the white female former officer who had killed his brother - instantly went viral.
Amber Guyger was hugged by her victim's brother and a judge, igniting a debate about forgiveness and race
Some viewed Brandt's actions as a stunning example of forgiveness, a moment of grace and tenderness that briefly bridged the chasm between races and provided an example for all to emulate. Although Christians of different backgrounds shared a variety of responses, this moment was especially celebrated by white Christians. It seems to indicate a desire to hastily move on from the wrong done and offer a perfect picture of reconciliation.

Perhaps, with just the right amount of compassion, some believe we can erase the color line. But when another black man has been murdered by a person charged to "serve and protect," forgiveness should neither be demanded nor assumed.

A society built around white superiority is also built around white innocence - an assumption of the intrinsic moral virtue of all white people and the purity of their intentions regardless of impact. White innocence assumes black forgiveness.

So people are celebrating Brandt's gesture of forgiveness. Such a sentiment is praised as an admirable example of Christian faith in action.
Perspective | His murder was put on Facebook. But his family's message of forgiveness could be his legacy.
Of course, Jesus urges his followers to forgive.

"Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. ... For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you." (Matthew 6:12, 14).

From a certain perspective, Brandt is simply following the dictates of his conscience and his faith. But what must be understood is that when tragedies such as the murder of a black man by a white police officer occur, they aren't just felt by one black person. The black community feels the impact.

If white people expect all black people to extend forgiveness as quickly as Brandt Jean did, then they understand neither black people nor black pain.

Black grief is a community project. It is felt widely but dealt with individually. Some go to therapy. Some participate in demonstrations. Others write op-eds. Everyone is entitled to their own process.

As Brandt stated, he speaks for himself.

No one should expect swift mercy from every black person. And the risk of offering such speedy forgiveness is that not nearly enough attention is given to the injustice itself.

What is lost in the tearful embrace between a murdered man's brother and the killer are the words of Botham's mother.

"There is much to be done by the city of Dallas," she said. "The corruption that we saw during this process must stop."

Instant absolution minimizes the magnitude of injustice. It distracts attention from the systemic change needed to prevent such tragedies from occurring.

The same Bible that urges forgiveness also urges justice.

"Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." (Isaiah 1:17).

Black forgiveness as a response to white racism is an act of faith in God and of self-preservation. With all that black people have endured over four centuries of racial oppression, forgiveness protects the heart from the consuming heat of hatred. It ensures that people who have been wounded don't have to constantly relive the injury. The act of forgiveness honors God, who forgives undeserving people, when someone extends it to someone else who is similarly undeserving.

No one should mistake black forgiveness, whenever and if ever it is offered, for complacency with racial injustice. No one should assume that a public act of mercy on the part of one black person eclipses the demands for change from an entire community.

Black forgiveness is costly. It requires us to absorb wrongdoing even as we continue to work for justice. Black forgiveness becomes cheapened when we take it for granted.

Black forgiveness is admirable when it is freely given and not demanded or expected. And the best response to black forgiveness is to prevent the harm that makes it necessary in the first place.
Jemar Tisby is the president of the Witness: A Black Christian Collective and co-host of the "Pass the Mic" podcast. He is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Mississippi and the author of "The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church's Complicity in Racism." Follow him on Twitter: @JemarTisby.

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Perspective | White Christians, do not cheapen the hug and message of forgiveness from Botham Jean's brother

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In a high-profile case this week, former police officer Amber Guyger, who is white, was found guilty of the murder of Botham Jean, a black man, in his Dallas home. On Wednesday, the same day Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Brandt Jean, Botham's younger brother, made a victim impact statement in the courtroom and then sealed his words with a gesture.

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Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.*
Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, and disability). The visual and verbal messages young children absorb from books (and other media) heavily influence their ideas about themselves and others. Depending on the quality of the book, they can reinforce (or undermine) children's affirmative self-concept, teach accurate (or misleading) information about people of various identities, and foster positive (or negative) attitudes about diversity. Children's books teach children about who is important, who matters, who is even visible. Consequently, carefully choosing quality children's books is an indispensable educational and child-rearing task.

It is important to offer young children a range of books about people like them and their family - as well as about people who are different from them and their family. All of the books should be accurate and appealing to young children. Fortunately, there are some good anti-bias children's books, which are available as a result of the ongoing activism of many individuals and groups over many years. However, while choices have improved over past decades, the lack of quality multicultural kid's books currently being published has frustrated many communities. The number of children of color in the United States continues to rise, but the number of books published by or about people of color stays the same or even decreases.

Check the Illustrations

Look for Stereotypes: A stereotype is an oversimplified generalization about a particular identity group (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, ability/disability), which usually carries derogatory, inaccurate messages and applies them to ALL people in the group. Stereotypes dehumanize people. So, too, does misinformation. ( See Box 1 below for a list of common, harmful stereotypes).

Unfortunately, all of us absorb socially prevailing stereotypes about a range of people, even if we do not consciously subscribe to them. To alert you to stereotypes in children's books, as well as other media, it is useful to list all the stereotypes you know about various groups of people as precondition for critically reviewing children's books. The books you choose should depict people compassionately and as real human beings. Also consider if images depict all people as genuine individuals with distinctive (rather than stereotypical) features. Books containing stereotypes require you to engage children in critical thinking, but should probably be eliminated from your collection.

BOX 1: Common Harmful/Undermining Stereotypes

Strong, independent girls and women are "manlike"

Book-loving or nonathletic boys and men are "effeminate"

Latino men talk funny, are lazy, gang members, or wear oversize sombreros

Latina women are earth mothers or subservient

African American men are gang members, oversexed, or underemployed

African American women are too independent, oversexed, or "welfare moms"

Arab and/or Muslim men are terrorists

Arab and/or Muslim women are voiceless and passive

All Muslims are Arab / All Arabs are Muslim

American Indians live in teepees, carry bows and arrows, or are half-naked in winter

American Indians were only significant in the past (read)

Disabled people are not independent or are to be pitied

Disabled people must "overcome" their disabilities rather than just live with their disabilities

LGBTQ+ people are invisible

Poor people are invisible

Poor people are depicted as passively needing help from others

AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islanders) are depicted as the "model minority"

AAPI are exotic or their food is exotic/abnormal

All AAPI know martial arts or are meek and compliant

AAPI are portrayed with slanted eyes or just lines to represent eyes

Jewish people are all Zionists (read)

Jewish people are wealthy and yield undue influence in the financial and political world

Look for Tokenism: This is the "one only" message. Regularly seeing only "one" person of any group in a book teaches young children about who is more or less important. Examples of tokenism include books with only one African American child among many white children or having only one book about children with disabilities among many other books. Tokenism also becomes stereotypical. It only allows children to see one view of a group of people, rather than the diversity that exists among all groups.

Look for Invisibility: What children do not see in their books also teaches them about who matters and who doesn't in our society. Invisibility in their storybooks - as well as in textbooks as they get older - undermines children's affirmative sense of themselves and reinforces prejudiced ideas about people who are not seen (See Box 2 for examples of groups who tend to be invisible). The booklists on this website include a great variety of books with groups who are often excluded. (The titles are vetted by Teaching for Change.)

BOX 2: Examples of Groups of People Who Are Often Invisible in Children's Books or Mainstream Media

Families who live in rural areas

Blue-collar workers

Musicians, artists, and writers

Families with two dads or two moms

Single mothers or fathers

Homeless families

Families with an incarcerated parent

People of Middle Eastern descent

Families who practice Islam

Transgender adults and children

Check the Story Line and the Relationships Between People

Even if a book shows visual diversity, the story line may carry biases related to how it handles power relationships among people of various identities. Are whites or male characters the central figures with people of color or female characters in essentially supporting roles? To gain acceptance and/or approval does a child of color, a girl, or child with a disability have to exhibit extraordinary qualities or be the one to understand, forgive, or change? Are the achievements of girls and women based on their own initiative and intelligence, or are they due to their looks or relationship with boys/men?

Are people of color, women, low-income families, or people with disabilities depicted as needing help or in passive roles, while whites, men, and "able-bodied" people are in leadership and action roles? How are problems presented, conceived, and resolved? Who typically causes a problem and who resolves it? Your book collection needs a balance of different people in "doer" roles.

Look at Messages About Different Lifestyles

Do the lives of people of color or people living in poverty in the story contrast unfavorably with the norm of white, middle-class suburban life? Are negative value judgments implied about ways of life that differ from the dominant culture or economic class (e.g., people are to be pitied, or the story is about one person who "gets out" of the less desirable way of life)? Do images and information go beyond oversimplification and offer genuine insights into the lifestyle of the characters in the story? Does the setting reflect current life - or past assumptions about life? Does your book collection depict diversity among people within a specific racial/ethnic group, such as a range of family structures, living environments, socioeconomic conditions and types of work, and male/female roles within the family? (Remember that every racial/ethnic group has diversity, including people who self-identify as white).

Consider the Effects on Children's Self and Social Identities

In addition to specific books, also examine your book collection. Do your books reinforce or counteract messages that teach children to feel inferior or superior because of their skin color, gender, family income, able-bodiedness, or type of family structure? At school, will all of the children you serve see themselves and their family's way of life reflected in your book collection? Will all children of color, including those with mixed heritage, girls, and children from the many types of family structures, children living in poverty, and children with disabilities see one or more characters with whom they can readily and positively identify? If they are visible in your book collection, are the illustrations and information accurate and respectful? Does your overall collection balance the backgrounds of all the children in your program? Does it also show diversity within the social indentity groups to which the children belong (e.g., a range of ways to be female and male, families reflecting different kinds of jobs within a racial/ethnic group). Does your book collection also include a balance between diversity within your classroom and beyond your classroom?

At home, does your book collection reflect diversity among the groups to which your family belongs? Does it have stories about people like you who have contributed to creating a more just world? Does it also include a range of books showing diversity beyond your family and neighborhood?

Look for Books About Children and Adults Engaging in Actions for Change

To fully develop a strong sense of self and a disposition toward cooperation and fairness, children need to know how to stand up for themselves and others when faced with unfairness. They also need to know about people from all social identity groups who have - and are currently - working for justice for all. In addition to previous criteria, here are more items to consider: The story line should be about children and adults working together, rather than perpetrating the myth that change happens because of special, individual people who do it by themselves. Does your book collection include a balance of people who have made important and honored contributions to American life as well as the world community - and not just the traditional white, male "heroes?" Do some of your books about important people include struggles for justice? Do they show people who were/are poor or from racial/ethnic groups of color? Are people with disabilities engaged in these struggles for justice?

Consider the Author's or Illustrator's Background and Perspective

All authors write from a cultural as well as from a personal context. In the past, most children's books were by authors and illustrators who were white and members of the middle class. As a result, a single cultural and class perspective dominated children's literature. There are now excellent books by people of color from a range of backgrounds - although not nearly enough. Consider the biographical material on the jacket flap or back of the book. What qualifies the author or illustrator to deal with the subject? If the book is not about people or events similar to the author or illustrator's background, what specifically recommends them as creators of the book? What is the author's attitude toward her/his story characters? Are the images accurate and do the illustrators respectfully render the people in the story? Do you have books reflecting a balanced range of author and illustrator identities and experiences?

Watch for Loaded Words

A word is loaded when it in any way demeans or makes people invisible because of any of their identities. One example is the generic use of the word "man" to stand for women as well as men (although the opposite never occurs). This traditional terminology is now questioned by many because of its sexist implications. Here are some examples of ways to avoid sexist language: community instead of brotherhood; firefighters inserted of firemen; human family instead of family of man; ancestors instead of forefathers; chairperson instead of chairman. Examples of adjectives applied to people of color that carry racist messages include: "savage," "primitive," "superstitious," "backward," "inscrutable" and "treacherous." Always consider the context in which a word is used and to whom it applies.

Look at the Copyright Date

Copyright dates indicate the publication year, not the time of its writing, which might be two to three years before the copyright date. Although a recent copyright date is no guarantee of a book's relevance or sensitivity, copyright dates are useful information. More children's books began to reflect the reality of a pluralistic society and nonsexist and non-ableist perspectives in the 1970s. Since then, the range of accurate, respectful, and caring books reflecting diversity has increased significantly (unfortunately the diversity of books published in the United States still does not accurately reflect the actual diversity of the people living here). When considering new books for your collection, begin with most recently published ones and then continue with descending copyright dates.

Assess the Appeal of the Story and Illustrations to Young Children

Although these guidelines focus on the messages about diversity and equality reflected in children's books, it is also important to take quality into account. Be sure the book is a "good read." If children find the story or illustrations boring, a book will not hold their attention, even if the book adds a specific kind of diversity you need. Check for active, interesting story lines where different kinds of people are integral to the people in the story, not the main topic. For example, in A Chair for My Mother, a young child tries to save money to get a comfortable chair for her waitress mother. Although the book shows a single parent, working-class family, and a resourceful girl, it is not didactic. Also look for illustrations that are colorful and recognizable to young children. Although they enjoy a range of styles, illustrations that are too subdued or abstract may not hold their attention.

Check for age appropriateness. Most booksellers list any picture book as appropriate for early childhood even if the story line is really for primary grade children. Sometimes a book for older children will work if you simplify the story or "tell" the story rather than read it. In some cases, this is the only way to get books that present specific groups of children (e.g., stories with Cambodian children or children with learning disabilities). Some additional issues to consider:

Many children's books use animal characters instead of people and there are some excellent books that explore diversity with animal characters (e.g., And Tango Makes Three or A Coyote Solstice Tale). Children enjoy these. However, such books are not a substitute for exploring issues of diversity and anti-bias fairness with people as the main characters.

Some early childhood teachers wonder if it is necessary for every book in their collection to show diversity. Every book needs to be accurate, caring, and respectful. However, you will want individual books about specific kinds of people (e.g., a biracial family or a family with adopted children). Diversity becomes essential in the balance of your book collection, where you want to avoid invisibility or tokenism of any group.

Folk and fairy tales have long been a mainstay of children's literature. In the cultures from which they come, folk and fairy tales were used to teach important lessons and values related to their culture of origin. Children love them in their original versions - not their commercially sanitized adaptations. However, folk and fairy tales also carry messages that convey sexism, classism, and racism and must be used thoughtfully as part of introducing young children to diversity and anti-bias values of quality and fairness.

Overuse of folk tales to "teach" about a specific ethnic/cultural group leads to misinformation and confusion. They are about animals and occasionally people from a mythical past and are designed to teach core values and beliefs in their culture of origin. They are not about how people actually live in contemporary society - and that is what young children need to understand. Information and images about how people really live now is what enables young children to build connections to people who are from different cultures while countering stereotypes that children have already absorbed (e.g., how American Indians really live).

Finally there is the somewhat sensitive issue of what to do about "classic" or "well-beloved" children's books. Many of these are wonderful as children's literature, but unfortunately they often convey values of sexism, racism, ableism, or even colonialism. People who love the books that pose this dilemma argue that it is OK to use them because they "reflect their times," which they imply somehow excuses their biased messages. For example, I adored the Babar series of books as a young child and was unpleasantly shocked to realize as an adult how much the images and story lines reflected messages of European colonialism in Africa. I chose not to use them with my own children, wanting them to learn accurate information about how people in Africa really live. Not sharing childhood favorites may sadden some, but it is far better than the harm caused by reinforcing messages of racism and colonialism.
In a nutshell - as you choose books or critically examine your current book selection, always keep in mind the power of books - their words and their images - to nurture or, conversely, to undermine a child's sense of self, positive attitude toward others, and motivation to act for fairness.
Additional Resources

Louise Derman-Sparks is an internationally respected anti-bias educator and author (along with Julie Olsen Edwards) of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. She has co-authored several additional books with Dr. Carol Brunson Day (Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism), the ABC Task Force ( Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children), Dr. Patricia Ramsey (What If All the Kids Are White?), and Dr. John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan ( Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change). She speaks throughout the United States and abroad, and served on the NAEYC Governing Board from 1998 to 2001. Louise has a lifelong commitment to building a more just society for all people. Her children Douglass and Holly, now grown, were her inspiration. A Pacific Oaks College faculty member for 33 years - when its mission and pedagogy reflected anti-bias education principles - Louise is now retired.
*In 1980, the Council on Interracial Books for Children published the book Guidelines for Selecting Bias-Free Textbooks and Storybooks. A shorter version of the book in pamphlet form, "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," followed. One of the first guides written for teachers and families, it became an invaluable tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Both the book and pamphlet have been out of print for several years. Rethinking Schools published their adaptation of the original Guidelines in 1994.

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Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books - Social Justice Books

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By Louise Derman-Sparks Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.* Children's books continue to be an invaluable source of information and values. They reflect the attitudes in our society about diversity, power relationships among different groups of people, and various social identities (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender, [...]

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I Am Not A Monster: Schizophrenia | Cecilia McGough | TEDxPSU

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Taking the attendance at the beginning of class may seem a routine if not mundane task to many educators. But to students, their name can be a powerful link to their identity. Pronouncing students' names correctly - during attendance, a classroom activity, or any other time of the school day - should always be a priority for any classroom teacher.

Names holds ancestral and historical significance for many minority, immigrant and English learning students. Names bring stories, which students are often forced to adapt to an "Americanized" context.

That transition, however, is often painful and forces many students to take on names that are not their own.

Yee Wan was only 17 years old when she moved to the United States from Mainland China. After enrolling in the bilingual program at her school, she was faced with the overwhelming and unfair decision over whether she would keep her native name or change it to something more "Americanized." Why? So that educators would not struggle over the pronunciation. Wan later realized she had no choice but to take up the name her ESL teacher thought suited her. Her new name would be Winnie.

Years later, Wan sits as the current president of the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) and her personal experiences became the impetus for a campaign launched this year to spotlight the importance of student names. A collaboration between the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) and NABE, My Name, My Identity is calling attention to the potential negative effects of a mispronounced name and the ways schools and communities can defuse the problem.

"Mispronouncing a student's name truly negates his or her identity, which, in turn, can hinder academic progress," says Wan, who also serves as director of multilingual education services at SCCOE.

'A Tiny Act of Bigotry'

Overlooking or downplaying the significance of getting a name right, explains Rita Kohli, assistant professor of education at the University of California at Riverside, is one of those "microagressions" that can emerge in a classroom and seriously undermine learning.

"Names have incredible significance to families, with so much thought, meaning and culture woven into them," Kohli says. "When the child enter school and teachers - consciously or not - mispronounce, disregard or change the name, they are in a sense disregarding the family and culture of the students as well."

"A tiny act of bigotry," is how former teacher and education blogger Jennifer Gonzalez succinctly put it in 2014. In a post titled "How We Pronounce Students' Names and Why It Matters," Gonzalez wrote, "Whether you intend to or not, what you're communicating is this: Your name is different. Foreign. Weird. It's not worth my time to get it right."

The effects can be long-lasting. In 2012, Kohli and Daniel Solorzano examined the issue in a study called "Teachers, Please Learn Our Names!: Racial Microagressions and the K-12 Classrooms." They found that the failure to pronounce a name correctly impacts the world view and social emotional well-being of students, which, of course, is linked to learning.

When a teacher- consciously or not - mispronounces, disregards or changes the name, they are in a sense disregarding the family and culture of the students as well" - Rita Kohli, University of California at Riverside

"Students often felt shame, embarrassment and that their name was a burden," Kohli says. "They often began to shy away from their language, culture and families."

Kohli points out that most educators are not doing so out of disrespect, but tend to be confined by a monocultural viewpoint that makes it "more challenging to center cultures outside of their own." Consequently, certain names sound unfamiliar and fall far outside their comfort zone.

Showing respect, however, doesn't necessarily require that an educator nails the pronounciation on the first attempt. "We can't say every sound or name in the world, but it is how we respond that matters," says Kohli.

Learn From the Mistake

At Iroqouis High School in Jefferson County, KY, where Mollie Robertson teaches math, English Language Learners will soon comprise almost one-third of the student population. For Robertson, every educator has an obligation to to promote equity and respect in the classroom.

"All students should have the opportunity to learn in a safe environment," Robertson says. "To fully accept and respect a student, you must at a minimum know how to pronounce their name."

Robertson adds that it's okay to make an error, "but it is not okay to ignore the mistake and not learn from it."

That's where My Name My Identity comes in. On the campaign's web site, teachers can access various resources on how to honor their students' names. The campaign looks beyond the classroom to ask all community members to make a pledge honoring their neighbors' and co-workers' identities. Students and their families are also invited to share the significance behind their name on the My Name, My Identity Facebook page, or by tweeting @mynamemyid.

While the focal point of the campaign is students' names, "My Name, My Identity" is about building a positive, inclusive school culture. With the teaching force still overwhelmingly White, the ability of educators with diverse classrooms to respect their students' identity is critical, says Kohli.

"All teachers need to reflect upon and interrogate their biases and any deficit thinking they may have. See the cultural wealth of students and families, and approach teaching and learning through the lens and culture of students and their communities."
Photos: Associated Press (Top) My Name, My Identity (Bottom)

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The Lasting Impact of Mispronouncing Students' Names

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Taking the attendance at the beginning of class may seem a routine if not mundane task to many educators. But to students, their name can be a powerful link to their identity. Pronouncing students' names correctly - during attendance, a classroom activity, or any other time of the school day - should always be a priority for any classroom teacher.

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First Person

Before the 2018-19 school year, I would have told you that I was an "enlightened" white educator, conscious of the privilege I hold in the classroom, sensitive to my students of color, and seasoned in addressing issues of race, identity, and power.

After all, I would have said, I attended a majority-Black high school in the Midwest, studied abroad in South Africa in college, and have lived and worked in urban communities of color for 15 years. I teach in the Boston Public Schools, in a middle school with an overwhelming majority of students of color. I would have said, "Come on, I'm all set, I've got this."

But during the last school year, I had to grapple with a question I thought I had settled, a question my students posed to me: "Mr. Turner, are you racist?"

It started in October, when a colleague came up to me in the hallway during my prep period and said, "Hey, can I talk with you? In private if we can."

"Sure, Zhané. Everything okay?" Zhané Burton, a young Black woman, was a Citizen Schools fellow and the partner teacher in my classroom. (Citizen Schools provides academic support and extended learning time by placing AmeriCorps members and volunteers in schools that need extra resources.)

"I want to let you know that some students have been complaining about a few things you said recently," Zhané said. "They are saying that you are racist."

Tough Realizations

Ouch. My heart started pounding and my chair suddenly felt very uncomfortable. She described two recent occasions that had upset my students.

The first time was just before a whole-class field trip. I was giving the standard debrief to each class, telling them the dress code, schedule, what to bring, etc. I included my usual rejoinder about behavior: "Remember that you are representatives of our school, your families, and our neighborhood, and people at the museum may judge us accordingly."

A student raised her hand and asked, "What do you mean, judge us?" I had my answer ready, having had this conversation before. "I mean, people at the museum will see students from Roxbury, mostly students of color, and they will form an opinion about all students who look like you. I don't agree with it, I don't like it, but that's the way it is. So, act in a way that represents yourselves well."

The other time was in a discussion of what careers students were interested in pursuing. Most students gave typical answers I hear every year, like, "nurse," "baseball player," or "doctor." But a Cape Verdean student named Franco said, "engineer." I paused for a moment. "That's great, Franco!" I said, "There aren't many people of color in that career. You'll be a pioneer. Good for you! Who else?"

Zhané assured me that she knew my intentions were good, but that my students didn't see it that way.

"I know you're not racist, and I told the students that I would have said the same thing to them," she said. "But they're not used to hearing that kind of thing from a white teacher. I realize you had good intentions, but their truth is more important than your intent."

From Denial to Acceptance

The rest of the day was a blur. I started out defensive: "Of course I'm not racist! I chose to teach in a mostly Black and Latinx school. I've worked and lived here almost as long as they have. Don't they know who I am!?" As I walked to my car, I was angry. "These kids don't know what they're talking about. They are the ones making this a racial thing. Or maybe they're just trying to test me, and distract me from teaching!"

As I ate dinner, I was thinking of strategies to placate them: "I need to fix this. But how do I convince them I'm not racist?" By bedtime, guilt set in. I felt like a failure. My comments seemed tone deaf at best, and racist at worst. I wondered what else I might have said that had such an impact on students.

After sleeping on it, and talking with my wife, who also teaches in Boston, I realized I had an opportunity. We could change the usual script and have an authentic dialogue on race. I also realized that I could not do this alone; I needed to look beyond my limited perspective. I set aside my arrogant view that "I have this all handled," and really listened to what Zhané and my students were telling me.

I re-read parts of an influential book on race in America, Stamped from the Beginning, by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. I called Sam, a friend who teaches in a New York City Public school in the Bronx, and is a white man who does anti-racist organizing. We talked about the continual practice of this work. He recommended I read an essay on white fragility by Robin DiAngelo, and I saw myself in her descriptions of how white people often avoid confronting racism. I also talked more with Zhané, and with other teachers in my school.

As I discussed, reflected, and read, I began to see this from my students' perspective. Their teachers have been white women or white men, with few exceptions. They get to 8th grade, and their white male history teacher, in the second month of school, implies that white people would form judgments about their entire racial community if they didn't behave well in a museum (a white space). Most of my students have probably heard negative stereotypes about their racial identities from other white teachers before, and are sensitive to them. From their position, anger and rebellion were appropriate reactions; pushing back was a healthy response.

The more I thought about it, the clearer it was: What I said to students in those two instances was inappropriate and insensitive. My intentions were irrelevant. What mattered was the impact on my students. Did I really need to bring up race? Couldn't I have expressed high expectations without referring to racial identity? The pain I caused my students was what I needed to address-and repair.

Working on Solutions

I decided to take a comprehensive approach. One conversation, in isolation, was not going to make a lasting difference in my students' experience, or in my teaching. Over the next several weeks, I listened to what my students said, and from their interests and questions, wrote a unit on identity, race, and power. We defined what a racist idea means, directly from Dr. Kendi's work, and put the definition up in the classroom: "Racism: any concept that regards one racial group as inferior or superior to another racial group in any way." And on the same poster: "Anti-Racism: the idea that all racial groups are equal."

Students practiced identifying racist ideas by reading statements made by national political figures, and asking, "Is this a racist idea? What makes it racist?" We followed up with class discussions and writing prompts, to work through ideas together. It took time, repetition, mistakes, and re-do's-I had to constantly check my ego, and remind myself, "This is about them, not you. Slow down and listen with empathy."

Over time, the culture in my classroom shifted. Students began to see that I truly cared, and while I wasn't perfect, they could tell I was trying. The greatest compliment came in April, when students in one class stopped my lesson to call me out on something I said that offended them. They trusted me enough to directly confront my mistake, and give me the chance to apologize. Thankfully, I was able to hear them, apologize, and earn their trust back. This kind of confrontation happened a few more times that spring, and each time, we were able to reconcile, repair, and move on.

I've been so fortunate to have a colleague my students could confide in, Zhané, and that she had the courage to come to me last fall. When she took the risk of telling me about their discomfort, she put students first.

While last year was one of my most difficult years of teaching, it has changed my perspective forever. I now see that as a white educator in a class of mostly students of color, I need to build stronger relationships and trust with my students earlier in the year. They may have had overtly or covertly racist teachers in the past, and be on edge, waiting for me to say something that invalidates or puts down their identities.

I learned that I have to be responsible for my identity-which means thinking about how my students will interpret what I say, and understanding that as a white, middle-class man, I've had the privilege of not having to be aware of how my identity may influence the way people hear me. I need to be willing to learn as much from my students as they learn from me. That is the empathetic, supportive, anti-racist teacher that I want to be, and that our students deserve.

In the end, it turns out my students didn't need me to say anything to convince them that I wasn't racist. They needed me to listen with empathy, ask questions, and help them develop and practice the language to analyze issues of race on their own.

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'Mr. Turner, Are You Racist?' A White Teacher Grapples With His Privilege

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First Person Before the 2018-19 school year, I would have told you that I was an "enlightened" white educator, conscious of the privilege I hold in the classroom, sensitive to my students of color, and seasoned in addressing issues of race, identity, and power.

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Good statements for girls & women to practice

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Good statements for girls & women to practice

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Administrators at Fox Chapel Middle School in Spring Hill, Florida recently fired a teacher who gave her sixth graders an assignment asking them to consider how "comfortable" they would be in the company of various people. Some of the 41 scenarios identified these "others" in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

For example:

Your new roommate is a Palestinian and Muslim.

A group of young Black men are walking toward you on the street.

The young man sitting next to you on the airplane is an Arab.

Your new suitemates are Mexican.

Your assigned lab partner is a fundamentalist Christian.

Many Fox Hill students and parents were upset. "They're kids. Let kids be kids. Why are they asking kids these questions?" one mother to a seventh-grade student wondered. "I just don't think it's something that needs to be brought in school."

Another parent said this: "I just think that sometimes kids are just too young to start that at this age, and in school."

Such sentiments are familiar - and deeply misguided. In the United States, a lot of us believe that children, especially White children, are racial innocents - completely naive, curiously fragile with respect to the realities of race, or both. The truth is that well before their teen years, the vast majority of children are well aware of prevailing biases, and most kids, of all racial stripes, have taken on a bunch of their own.

Researchers have been studying the development of racial and ethnic biases in children for a long time, and we know quite a bit. We know that within a few months of birth, babies prefer own-race faces, probably because most are surrounded by people who look like them. Sometime during the preschool years, however, this relatively innocent pull toward the familiar morphs into something else.

By age five, Black and Hispanic children show no preference toward their own group compared to Whites. On the other hand, White kids remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness. By the start of kindergarten, "children begin to show many of the same implicit racial attitudes that adults in our culture hold. Children have already learned to associate some groups with higher status, or more positive value, than others."

So, with reference to the doubtless well-meaning mom quoted earlier, the crucial question isn't "Why bring issues of racial, ethnic, religious and other kinds of bias into our schools?" It's "how do we constructively engage the harmful biases we know pervade our schools and just about everywhere else? And what can we do to shape our children's racial attitudes before and as they emerge?"

In that regard, research and experience offer some promising guidance to parents, guardians, teachers, and to all of us who care for or about children. These guidelines were developed by members of the EmbraceRace team, and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Develop racial cultural literacy by learning about and respecting others.Study and talk about the histories and experiences of groups we call African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Whites, among others. Be sure your child understands that every racial and ethnic group includes people who believe different things and behave in different ways. There is more diversity within racial groups than across them.

Be honest with your child, in age-appropriate ways, about bigotry and oppression.Children are amazing at noticing patterns, including racial patterns (who lives in their neighborhood versus their friends' neighborhoods, for example). Help them make sense of those patterns, and recognize that bigotry and oppression are sometimes a big part of those explanations. Be sure your child knows that the struggle for racial fairness is still happening and that your family can take part in that struggle.

"Lift up the freedom fighters": Tell stories of resistance and resilience. Every big story of racial oppression is also a story about people fighting back and "speaking truth to power." Teach your child those parts of the story too. Include women, children and young adults among the "freedom fighters" in the stories you tell.

Teach your children to be "upstanders" for racial justice.Help your child understand what it means to be, and how to be, a change agent. Whenever possible, connect the conversations you're having to the change you and your child want to see, and to ways to bring about that change.

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Your 5-year-old is already racially biased. Here's what you can do about it.

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Administrators at Fox Chapel Middle School in Spring Hill, Florida recently fired a teacher who gave her sixth graders an assignment asking them to consider how "comfortable" they would be in the company of various people. Some of the 41 scenarios identified these "others" in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

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

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CLOSE

Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur.

They're two of the most familiar - and important - days on the Jewish religious calendar, but did you know that the two events are strongly connected? And what do these special days actually represent?

Here's what we know.

When is Rosh Hashanah in 2019?

This year, Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on Sunday, Sept. 29, and ends two days later at sunset on Tuesday, Oct. 1. It's the start of the Jewish month of Tishrei, or Tishri, which falls in September or October, according to the Gregorian calendar. It's the first month of the civil year for Jews or the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year. Some years, Rosh Hashanah can start in early September or as late as early October.

What is Rosh Hashanah?

First, it marks the start of the Jewish New Year, as stated in the Bible (Leviticus 23:23-31).

While some ancient cultures, such as the Celts, celebrated the start of a new year during the spring equinox because it was the time of planting, Semitic cultures in the Near East celebrated the new year in the fall, after the harvest was gathered. The name of Rosh Hashanah can be translated as "first" or "head of the year." It is also sometimes called "The Feast of Trumpets."

Secondly, Rosh Hashanah is a celebration of creation. It is sometimes called the "birthday of the world" and is considered to also be the time when God made his covenant with man by creating Adam and Eve.

Lastly, Rosh Hashanah marks the start of the Jewish High Holy Days leading up to Yom Kippur. It marks the beginning of the 10 "Days of Awe," in which Jews focus their attentions on repentance and reflection leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, considered to be holiest day of the Jewish year. Traditionally, the blood of an animal was sacrificed as a way to remove sin or defilement.

According to tradition, the names of the righteous are written in the Book of Life and names of the wicked are written in the Book of Death. For everyone else - most people - you have 10 days to repent before your fate is sealed in one of the two books.

Why does it last for two days?

Religious holidays normally last for one day. But not Rosh Hashanah.

It's actually called yoma arichta - translated as "a long day" - because the 48-hour period when Rosh Hashanah is observed is actually considered to be one extended day. It's the only Jewish holiday that is two days long both outside and inside Israel.

Ancient Jews relied on a calendar based on actual cycles of the moon, not one arbitrarily set. Thus, the key to determining the first day of each month was the sighting of the new moon. It was so important that it required confirmation by two or more witnesses.

Because of difficulties in determining the new moon (it could be obscured by clouds, etc.) and the slowness with which news once traveled Jewish leaders living outside Israel decided Rosh Hashanah would be celebrated over two days to ensure it was celebrated on the appropriate day. Jewish leaders inside Israel had less difficulty determining the start of the holiday - but still celebrate it over two days for consistency.

How is Rosh Hashanah celebrated?

Unlike the festive celebrations of New Year in other faiths, the Jewish New Year is a time of reflection on one's actions of the past year and sincere repentance for those sins.

However, it also is a time to share meals and prayer with family and friends. That includes special treats such as apples or challah bread dipped in honey (to symbolize one's wish for a sweet new year to come); prayer services and Torah readings on both mornings of Rosh Hashanah that include repeated blasts from a ram's horn, called a shofar; and the lighting of candles in the evenings with appropriate blessings.

The shofar signifies the presence of God and is a powerful symbol of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to show obedience to God by reminding us of the ram that was provided in Isaac's place.

Special food also is eaten during Rosh Hashanah.

That may include pomegranate fruit, as people wish for blessings in the new year as plentiful as the seeds of a pomegranate. The pomegranate's 613 seeds also symbolize the 613 "mitzvot,"or commandments, in the Torah.

Round challah bread baked with raisins inside is also popular during the holiday.

Some people also will traditionally eat the head of a fish or a ram to symbolize the "head of the year." Fish is also eaten because it is a symbol of fertility and abundance.

However, people avoid bitter foods during Rosh Hashanah to avoid having a bitter year.

Why are prayers said next to a body of water during Rosh Hashanah?

On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Jews may be seen praying near a body of water, such as a lake, river or sea while performing the Tashlich ceremony.

Traditionally, pieces of break or other food are tossed into the water to symbolize the "casting off" of sins. Just as the food is carried away, so are one's sins.

The practice, which began in the Middle Ages, was inspired by a verse from the prophet Micah (Micah: 7:19):

God will take us back in love

God will cover up our iniquities

You (God) will hurl all our sins

Into the depths of the sea.

Can you work on Rosh Hashanah?

Rosh Hashanah is meant to be a day of rest, not labor. The Torah expressly forbids one to do any work on Rosh Hashanah, as well as other major Jewish holy days.

The religious laws governing behavior on Rosh Hashanah can be complex.

It is permissible to cook on Rosh Hashanah, although there are certain important restrictions. Carrying items is also permitted - if the items are required for the holiday.

Orthodox Jews prohibit driving on the holiday. Reform and more liberal-minded Jews do not object to driving on the holiday. Orthodox Jews also forbid the lighting of a stove from scratch, although adjusting an existing flame on a stove is OK. That's why Orthodox Jews will keep a candle burning for 24 hours a day during Rosh Hashanah.

What are Rosh Hashanah greetings?

If you're not sure how to greet someone on Rosh Hashanah, you could just say "Shanah Tovah," which means "good year" in Hebrew. The word "u'metuka" - meaning "and sweet" - is sometimes added to the end of that phrase as in "good and sweet year."
Follow Dwight Adams on Twitter: @hdwightadams.
Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/27/rosh-hashanah-and-yom-kippur-what-know-these-jewish-holidays/3795732002/

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Rosh Hashanah 2019: When it starts and what this Jewish celebration really means

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CLOSE Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. They're two of the most familiar - and important - days on the Jewish religious calendar, but did you know that the two events are strongly connected? And what do these special days actually represent? Here's what we know. This year, Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on Sunday, Sept.

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In this week's DEI meeting we discussed terms to know in order to have productive discussions around equity. Please pay close attention to the definition of Racism = prejudice + power.

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Cultural Appropriation:  My Culture is NOT a costume

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Cultural Appropriation:  My Culture is NOT a costume

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My Culture Is NOT A Costume | Teen Vogue

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60 Empowering Books Starring Latina Mighty Girls

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60 Empowering Books Starring Latina Mighty Girls

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A Mighty Girl's top picks of girl-empowering books for celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month!
"The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever." - Sonia Sotomayor, first United States Supreme Court Justice of Hispanic heritage
Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! Every year, from September 15 to October 15, Americans celebrate the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America. To recognize this special month, we've put together a selection of our favorite books for children and teens starring Latina Mighty Girls!

In the first section of this blog post, we share books about real-life Latina role models throughout history, while in the second part, we feature fictional stories about Latina girls and women. For more reading recommendations for this month, you can also discover many bilingual Spanish/English books for young readers in our blog post, 25 Bilingual Spanish/English Picture Books Starring Mighty Girls. We hope these empowering titles will help all kids learn more about the diverse contributions and rich cultural traditions of Hispanic Mighty Girls!

For more books about diverse Mighty Girl from around the world, visit our extensive Multicultural Fiction Collection.

Books About Real-Life Latina role models

Fictional Stories About Hispanic Mighty Girls

Help keep A Mighty Girl growing in the years ahead!

If you discover books or other resources via this post that you would like to purchase, please use the "Buy at Amazon" and other links found on every A Mighty Girl product page. By doing so, at no added cost to you, you help to support the site and allow us to continue providing you with wonderful girl-empowering resources. We appreciate your support!

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60 Empowering Books Starring Latina Mighty Girls

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A Mighty Girl's top picks of girl-empowering books for celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month!

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When it comes to her well-established career as an anti-racist educator, Robin DiAngelo says, "I kind of fell into it." Years of deep learning, research and mentorship from colleagues of color led her not only to understand that her whiteness has meaning-but also to become really good at explaining this to other white people.

The New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism sat down with Teaching Tolerance to discuss why working against one's own fragility is a necessary part of white anti-racist work-and why good intentions don't matter.

In a nutshell, what is white fragility?

Well, when I coined that term, the fragility part was meant to capture how little it takes to upset white people racially. For a lot of white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will cause great umbrage. Certainly generalizing about white people will. Right now, me saying "white people," as if our race had meaning, and as if I could know anything about somebody just because they're white, will cause a lot of white people to erupt in defensiveness. And I think of it as a kind of weaponized defensiveness. Weaponized tears. Weaponized hurt feelings. And in that way, I think white fragility actually functions as a kind of white racial bullying.

We white people make it so difficult for people of color to talk to us about our inevitable-but often unaware-racist patterns and assumptions that, most of the time, they don't. People of color working and living in primarily white environments take home way more daily indignities and slights and microaggressions than they bother talking to us about because their experience consistently is that it's not going to go well. In fact, they're going to risk more punishment, not less. They're going to now have to take care of the white person's upset feelings. They're going to be seen as a troublemaker. The white person is going to withdraw, defend, explain, insist it had to have been a misunderstanding.

And who is the primary audience for this book?

My audience is the average, well-intended white person who sees themselves as open-minded, and yet cannot answer the question: "What does it mean to be white?"

I think white progressives can be the most challenging because we tend to be so certain that it isn't us. And that certitude is problematic. It doesn't allow for humility, and, to be direct, it's quite arrogant. So we don't tend to be receptive at all. ... I think the worst fear of a well-intended white person is that we would accidentally say something racist. But then how do we respond when someone lets us know, "Hey, you just accidentally said something racist"? We respond with, "How dare you. No, I didn't!"

So, to the degree that our identities are very attached to this idea of being free of racism, we're actually going to resist any of the critical examination that we need to be engaged in for our entire lives. Because every moment that I push against the socialization that I've received into a white supremacist culture, that culture is pushing right back at me. And that pressure is seductive. It's comfortable. There are social rewards for not challenging racism. [White] people perceive you as easier to get along with when you maintain white solidarity.

In the book, you talk about the danger of assuming good intentions. Can you say a little bit about why assuming good intentions can actually be dangerous or harmful?

I think intentions are irrelevant. It's nice to know you had good intentions, but the impact of what you did was harmful. And we need to let go of our intentions and attend to the impact, to focus on that.

A lot of groups that come together to have these discussions generate a list of guidelines or ground rules. And if we really looked critically at those, I think we would see that mostly they're about maintaining white comfort. They presume a lack of differential power in the space. But power relations are always at play, and people are in different power positions in that room. So the very things that might make a white person feel comfortable may be exactly what says to a person of color, "Do not be authentic; do not be yourself. Do not show your emotions. Do not get upset. Do not be angry." ...

There's a question that's never failed me in this work to uncover how racism keeps reproducing itself despite all of the evidence we like to give for why it couldn't be us. And that question isn't, "Is this true or is this false: Was the person's intention good or not?" We're never going to be able to come to an agreement on intentions. You cannot prove somebody's intentions. They might not even know their intentions. And if they weren't good, they're probably not going to admit that. The question I ask is, "How does this function?" The impact of the action is what is relevant.

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What's My Complicity? Talking White Fragility With Robin DiAngelo

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When it comes to her well-established career as an anti-racist educator, Robin DiAngelo says, "I kind of fell into it." Years of deep learning, research and mentorship from colleagues of color led her not only to understand that her whiteness has meaning-but also to become really good at explaining this to other white people.

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Sept. 23rd- Sept. 27th

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Support

Listen closely to the LGBTQ students at your school, and let them take the lead. If you're an educator try our educator guide to learn ways to participate!

Join the Conversation

LGBTQ students, what do you need from your allies? Share on social media using #MyAllies, and snap a selfie with our #MyAllies sign!

Organize

Run an Ally 101 workshop, or create your own plans! You can use this letter from GLSEN and this letter from the ACLU when planning.

Spread the Word

Share about Ally Week online with all your friends and educators! Post on social media to encourage them to register their participation.

Learn

We can all recognize our privilege, keep learning, and take action to be better allies to each other, uplifting the most marginalized voices.If you're an educator check out our actions we've listed specifically for educators looking to be allies to LGBTQ students and all their intersecting identities.

Teach

Ally Week is an opportunity for K-12 students and educators in the LGBTQ community to lead the conversation on what they need from their allies in school. It's a time to begin the school year with a focus on visibility, affirmation, and solidarity with students, educators, and LGBTQ-headed families in your school community. Ally Week is a perfect time to include our lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school in your curriculum.

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Support Listen closely to the LGBTQ students at your school, and let them take the lead. If you're an educator try our educator guide to learn ways to participate! Join the Conversation LGBTQ students, what do you need from your allies? Share on social media using #MyAllies, and snap a selfie with our #MyAllies sign!

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Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month

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Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month

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In Mexican-American communities, National Hispanic Heritage Month begins with the shout that marks the start of the Mexican Revolution-the grito heard around the world. In the border town that raised me, crimson red and earthy green flank the image of the eagle with the serpent in its clutches. Folks donning these national colors, holding in one hand and an agua fresca in the other, celebrate Mexican Independence Day each year on September 16th. This same scene unfolds throughout the United States with different foods, different colors depending on the specific Hispanic community. Each celebration is undeniably unique.

As we celebrate and honor the heritage of our students throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, we must also do the important work of understanding how and why the distinct histories of a multinational, multicultural and multilingual group of communities were consolidated into Hispanic heritage in the first place.

As someone who falls under the definition of Hispanic, the way I personally identify shifts. Sometimes, I'm Latinx or Mexican American. Other times, I note that I'm a non-black Latinx person. Almost always, I will identify myself as Xicana. Understanding the history behind these shifting identifications-and particularly the history of the word Hispanic-can help us better understand the challenges this term has created.

Becoming Hispanic

Well into the 1970s, before we were Hispanic, we were marked by our own nationalities or our ancestral identities. In Texas communities like El Paso, we were Chicanos, Mexicanos or Tejanos. In New York City, folks were often Puerto Ricans or Cubans.

1980 marked the first year that the U.S. Census offered Hispanic as an option for describing ethnic identity on the short form, the form that went to all households. The form offered a list of those who might choose to identify as " Spanish/Hispanic," including people who identified as "Mexican," "Mexican-Amer.," "Chicano," "Puerto Rican," "Cuban" or "other Spanish/Hispanic."

Federal recognition of a single Hispanic ethnic identity was a strategic goal of Hispanic community organizers, who hoped to create a collective identity that people from a group of countries colonized by Spain could use to exert political and economic power. In a discussion of her book Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New America, Cristina Mora notes, "Organizations and institutions invest in keeping these terms as broad as possible." Media companies like Univision therefore supported recognitions that would allow them to appeal to a wider consumer market in the United States.

The idea was to leverage this power to address shared concerns, improving the material conditions of communities that shared ancestral geography and, in some instances, the Spanish language. In many ways, the adoption of a broad, Hispanic identity helped organizers achieve these goals. It is undeniable that there is economic benefit and political power in the use of Hispanic.

But we can't discount the perhaps-unintentional effects of this intentional effort. We must ask, "Which communities within the spectrum of Hispanic people have seen benefits from this broad, consolidated identity? What has happened in communities that haven't seen the benefits? For whom have conditions remained stagnant or even deteriorated?"

And, perhaps most critically, "Who gains from erasing specific experiences of individual people and diverse cultural identities within the Hispanic community?"

Ethnic Homogenization Is Anti-black

In the attempt to build political power through pan-ethnic solidarity, particularly vulnerable populations have been excluded from the benefits of that power. In the most extreme cases, Hispanic identity has been used by some to uphold and excuse anti-black violence. We might remember the conversations that unfolded during the George Zimmerman trial. Commentators often conflated ethnic and racial identity to argue that Zimmerman couldn't be racist because he's "Hispanic, not white."

In the past few years, the exploration of anti-blackness in Hispanic communities has entered the mainstream. Organizations like the National Latina Institute and publications such as Everyday Feminism articulate the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in Hispanic communities and name strategies for dismantling this oppression within our own families and beyond. Less visible in this mainstream conversation is the argument put forth by Afro-Latinx organizers, artists and writers themselves.

When visualizing those most affected by the national debate on immigration, for example, more often than not we picture the face of a non-black person. To do so is to ignore those who share both blackness and Hispanic identities. In this case, the homogenization of the groups that are supposed to be represented by the word Hispanic has obscured the experiences of Hispanic people who are also black.

During my first year of teaching in the predominantly Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights, New York, I witnessed the necessity of honoring the specific identities of Afro-Latinx students. Both my students and I were considered Hispanic under the definition put forth by the Census Bureau, but there were stark differences in our experiences of Latinidad because of our racial identities.

In the Classroom

There is no perfect pathway or absolute language for recognizing both the shared and unique experiences within Hispanic communities. However, one way to start is to make space for the unmaking of the word Hispanic. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, here are some ways to do so:

Dispel the mainstream myth of a homogenous Hispanic identity by discussing the racial spectrum of experience held under the term Hispanic.

Discuss the contention around the words Hispanic and Latinx. Explain that these terms are not universally accepted.

Ask Latinx and Hispanic students (or their families) how they identify themselves before assigning these labels to them. Ask all students (or their families) their racial or ethnic identities before assigning labels to them.

Highlight the work of organizations, like Undocublack, that expand the traditional imagery of an immigrant.

Explain that Hispanic history is Black history. Listen to the stories of Afro-Latinx communities.

Explore the creation of the word Hispanic as a category in the U.S. Census.

Resist highlighting exclusively Mexican history, culture, events or people.

Prepare your own understandings of racial and ethnic identities, including the differences between the terms Hispanic and Latinx.

Familiarize yourself with U.S. Latinx civil rights history.

Bernal-Martinez is TT's Teaching and Learning Specialist and a Xicana documentary artist and educator.

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Unmaking "Hispanic": Teaching the Creation of Hispanic Identity

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In Mexican-American communities, National Hispanic Heritage Month begins with the shout that marks the start of the Mexican Revolution-the grito heard around the world. In the border town that raised me, crimson red and earthy green flank the image of the eagle with the serpent in its clutches.

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The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture 

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The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture 

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Greek and Roman statues were often painted, but assumptions about race and aesthetics have suppressed this truth. Now scholars are making a color correction.

Mark Abbe was ambushed by color in 2000, while working on an archeological dig in the ancient Greek city of Aphrodisias, in present-day Turkey. At the time, he was a graduate student at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, and, like most people, he thought of Greek and Roman statues as objects of pure white marble. The gods, heroes, and nymphs displayed in museums look that way, as do neoclassical monuments and statuary, from the Jefferson Memorial to the Caesar perched outside his palace in Las Vegas.

Aphrodisias was home to a thriving cadre of high-end artists until the seventh century A.D., when an earthquake caused it to fall into ruin. In 1961, archeologists began systematically excavating the city, storing thousands of sculptural fragments in depots. When Abbe arrived there, several decades later, he started poking around the depots and was astonished to find that many statues had flecks of color: red pigment on lips, black pigment on coils of hair, mirrorlike gilding on limbs. For centuries, archeologists and museum curators had been scrubbing away these traces of color before presenting statues and architectural reliefs to the public. "Imagine you've got an intact lower body of a nude male statue lying there on the depot floor, covered in dust," Abbe said. "You look at it up close, and you realize the whole thing is covered in bits of gold leaf. Oh, my God! The visual appearance of these things was just totally different from what I'd seen in the standard textbooks-which had only black-and-white plates, in any case." For Abbe, who is now a professor of ancient art at the University of Georgia, the idea that the ancients disdained bright color "is the most common misconception about Western aesthetics in the history of Western art." It is, he said, "a lie we all hold dear."

In the early nineteen-eighties, Vinzenz Brinkmann had a similar epiphany while pursuing a master's degree in classics and archeology from Ludwig Maximilian University, in Munich. As part of an effort to determine what kinds of tool marks could be found on Greek marble sculpture, he devised a special lamp that shines obliquely on an object, highlighting its surface relief. When he began scrutinizing sculptures with the lamp, he told me, he "quite immediately understood" that, while there was little sign of tool marks on the statues, there was significant evidence of polychromy-all-over color. He, too, was taken aback by the knowledge that a fundamental aspect of Greek statuary "had been so excluded" from study. He said, "It started as an obsession for me that has never ended."

Brinkmann soon realized that his discovery hardly required a special lamp: if you were looking at an ancient Greek or Roman sculpture up close, some of the pigment "was easy to see, even with the naked eye." Westerners had been engaged in an act of collective blindness. "It turns out that vision is heavily subjective," he told me. "You need to transform your eye into an objective tool in order to overcome this powerful imprint"-a tendency to equate whiteness with beauty, taste, and classical ideals, and to see color as alien, sensual, and garish.

One afternoon this summer, Marco Leona, who runs the scientific-research department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gave me a tour of the Greek and Roman galleries. He pointed out a Greek vase, from the third century B.C., that depicts an artist painting a statue. Leona said, of polychromy, "It's like the best-kept secret that's not even a secret." Jan Stubbe Østergaard, a former curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum, in Copenhagen, and the founder of an international research network on polychromy, told me, "Saying you've seen these sculptures when you've seen only the white marble is comparable to somebody coming from the beach and saying they've seen a whale because there was a skeleton on the beach."

In the nineteen-nineties, Brinkmann and his wife, Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann, who is an art historian and an archeologist, began re-creating Greek and Roman sculptures in plaster, painted with an approximation of their original colors. Palettes were determined by identifying specks of remaining pigment, and by studying "shadows"-minute surface variations that betray the type of paint applied to the stone. The result of this effort was a touring exhibition called " Gods in Color. " Versions of the show, which was launched in 2003, have been seen by three million museumgoers in twenty-eight cities, including Istanbul and Athens.

The replicas often deliver a shock. A Trojan archer, from approximately 500 B.C., wears tight pants with a harlequin pattern that is as boldly colored as Missoni leggings. A lion that once stood guard over a tomb in Corinth, in the sixth century B.C., has an azurite mane and an ochre body, calling to mind Mayan or Aztec artifacts. There are also reconstructions of naked figures in bronze, which have a disarming fleshiness: copper lips and nipples, luxuriant black beards, wiry swirls of dark pubic hair. (Classical bronze figures were often blinged out with gemstones for the eyes and with contrasting metals that highlighted anatomical details or dripping wounds.) Throughout the exhibition, the colored replicas are juxtaposed with white plaster casts of marble pieces-fakes that look like what we think of as the real thing.

For many people, the colors are jarring because their tones seem too gaudy or opaque. In 2008, Fabio Barry, an art historian who is now at Stanford, complained that a boldly colored re-creation of a statue of the Emperor Augustus at the Vatican Museum looked "like a cross-dresser trying to hail a taxi." Barry told me, in an e-mail, that he still found the colors unduly lurid: "The various scholars reconstructing the polychromy of statuary always seemed to resort to the most saturated hue of the color they had detected, and I suspected that they even took a sort of iconoclastic pride in this-that the traditional idea of all-whiteness was so cherished that they were going to really make their point that it was colorful."

But some of the disorientation among viewers comes from seeing polychromy at all. Østergaard, who put on two exhibitions at the Glyptotek which featured painted reconstructions, said that, to many visitors, the objects "look tasteless." He went on, "But it's too late for that! The challenge is for us to try and understand the ancient Greeks and Romans-not to tell them they got it wrong."

Lately, this obscure academic debate about ancient sculpture has taken on an unexpected moral and political urgency. Last year, a University of Iowa classics professor, Sarah Bond, published two essays, one in the online arts journal Hyperallergic and one in Forbes, arguing that it was time we all accepted that ancient sculpture was not pure white-and neither were the people of the ancient world. One false notion, she said, had reinforced the other. For classical scholars, it is a given that the Roman Empire-which, at its height, stretched from North Africa to Scotland-was ethnically diverse. In the Forbes essay, Bond notes, "Although Romans generally differentiated people on their cultural and ethnic background rather than the color of their skin, ancient sources do occasionally mention skin tone and artists tried to convey the color of their flesh." Depictions of darker skin can be seen on ancient vases, in small terra-cotta figures, and in the Fayum portraits, a remarkable trove of naturalistic paintings from the imperial Roman province of Egypt, which are among the few paintings on wood that survive from that period. These near-life-size portraits, which were painted on funerary objects, present their subjects with an array of skin tones, from olive green to deep brown, testifying to a complex intermingling of Greek, Roman, and local Egyptian populations. (The Fayum portraits have been widely dispersed among museums.)

Bond told me that she'd been moved to write her essays when a racist group, Identity Evropa, started putting up posters on college campuses, including Iowa's, that presented classical white marble statues as emblems of white nationalism. After the publication of her essays, she received a stream of hate messages online. She is not the only classicist who has been targeted by the so-called alt-right. Some white supremacists have been drawn to classical studies out of a desire to affirm what they imagine to be an unblemished lineage of white Western culture extending back to ancient Greece. When they are told that their understanding of classical history is flawed, they often get testy.

Earlier this year, the BBC and Netflix broadcast "Troy: Fall of a City," a miniseries in which the Homeric hero Achilles is played by a British actor of Ghanaian descent. The casting decision elicited a backlash in right-wing publications. Online commenters insisted that the "real" Achilles was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and that someone with skin as dark as the actor's surely would have been a slave. It's true that Homer describes the hair of Achilles as xanthos, a word often used to characterize objects that we would call yellow, but Achilles is fictional, so imaginative license in casting seems perfectly acceptable. Moreover, several scholars explained online that, though ancient Greeks and Romans certainly noticed skin color, they did not practice systematic racism. They owned slaves, but this population was drawn from a wide range of conquered peoples, including Gauls and Germans.

Nor did the Greeks conceive of race the way we do. Some of the ancients' racial theories were derived from the Hippocratic idea of the humors. Rebecca Futo Kennedy, a classicist at Denison University, who writes on race and ethnicity, told me, "Cold weather made you stupid but also courageous, so that was what people from the Far North were supposed to be like. And the people they called Ethiopians were thought of as very smart but cowardly. It comes out of the medical tradition. In the North, you have plenty of thick blood. Whereas, in the South, you're being desiccated by the sun, and you have to think about how to conserve your blood." Pale skin on a woman was considered a sign of beauty and refinement, because it showed that she was privileged enough not to have to work outdoors. But a man with pale skin was considered unmasculine: bronzed skin was associated with the heroes who fought on battlefields and competed as athletes, naked, in amphitheatres.

In an essay for the online magazine Aeon, Tim Whitmarsh, a professor of Greek culture at the University of Cambridge, writes that the Greeks "would have been staggered" by the suggestion that they were "white." Not only do our modern notions of race clash with the thinking of the ancient past; so do our terms for colors, as is clear to anyone who has tried to conceive what a "wine-dark sea" actually looked like. In the Odyssey, Whitmarsh points out, the goddess Athena is said to have restored Odysseus to godlike good looks in this way: "He became black-skinned again and the hairs became blue around his chin." On the Web site Pharos, which was founded, last year, in part to counter white-supremacist interpretations of the ancient world, a recent essay notes, "Although there is a persistent, racist preference for lighter skin over darker skin in the contemporary world, the ancient Greeks considered darker skin" for men to be "more beautiful and a sign of physical and moral superiority."

Last year, high-school students participating in a summer program at the risd Museum, in Providence, were so fascinated to learn about polychromy in classical statuary that they made a coloring book allowing gallery visitors to create brightly hued versions of the objects on display. Christina Alderman, who runs the program, told me, "The moment they found out that the statues were originally painted, I just lost them to that idea. They were, like, 'Wait, are you serious? I've played video games set in ancient times, and all I see are white sculptures. I watch movies and that's all I see.' It was a real human response-they kind of felt they'd been lied to."

The idealization of white marble is an aesthetic born of a mistake. Over the millennia, as sculptures and architecture were subjected to the elements, their paint wore off. Buried objects retained more color, but often pigments were hidden beneath accretions of dirt and calcite, and were brushed away in cleanings. In the eighteen-eighties, Russell Sturgis, an American art critic, visited the Acropolis, in Athens, and described what happened after objects were unearthed: "The color of all these soon began to fall and vanish. The beautiful statue first described lay on a table in the museum on the Acropolis in May, 1883, and already some of its color had been shaken off; for as it lay it was surrounded by a little deposit of green, red and black powder which had fallen from it." Paint that survived was sometimes concealed in recesses: between strands of hair, or inside navels, nostrils, and mouths.

In time, though, a fantasy took hold. Scholars argued that Greek and Roman artists had left their buildings and sculptures bare as a pointed gesture-it both confirmed their superior rationality and distinguished their aesthetic from non-Western art. Acceptance of this view was made easier by the fact that ancient Egyptian sculptures looked very different: they tended to retain brilliant surface color, because the dry climate and the sand in which they were interred did not result in the same kind of erosion. But, as Østergaard put it to me, "nobody has a problem hailing Nefertiti as a spectacular piece of world art, and nobody says that it's unfortunate that it's painted. Because it's not Western, it's perfectly O.K. for it to be polychrome. But let's not have it in our part of the world, because we're different, aren't we?"

Starting in the Renaissance, artists made sculpture and architecture that exalted form over color, in homage to what they thought Greek and Roman art had looked like. In the eighteenth century, Johann Winckelmann, the German scholar who is often called the father of art history, contended that "the whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is," and that "color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty." When the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were first excavated, in the mid-eighteenth century, Winckelmann saw some of their artifacts in Naples, and noticed color on them. But he found a way around that discomfiting observation, claiming that a statue of Artemis with red hair, red sandals, and a red quiver strap must have been not Greek but Etruscan-the product of an earlier civilization that was considered less sophisticated. He later concluded, however, that the Artemis probably was Greek. (It is now thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original.) Østergaard and Brinkmann believe that Winckelmann's thinking was evolving, and that he might eventually have embraced polychromy, had he not died in 1768, at the age of fifty, after being stabbed by a fellow-traveller at an inn in Trieste.

The cult of unpainted sculpture continued to permeate Europe, buttressing the equation of whiteness with beauty. In Germany, Goethe declared that "savage nations, uneducated people, and children have a great predilection for vivid colors." He also noted that "people of refinement avoid vivid colors in their dress and the objects that are about them."

In the nineteenth century, a series of major excavations should have toppled the monochrome myth. In Rome, the architect Gottfried Semper used scaffolding to examine Trajan's Column, and reported finding myriad traces of color. Victorian excavations of the Acropolis turned up some painted reliefs, sculptures, and marble gutters. The Augustus of Prima Porta and the Alexander Sarcophagus retained bold hues when they were discovered, as contemporaneous paintings of them confirm.

In a catalogue essay for an 1892 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the classical scholar Alfred Emerson said of polychromy that "literary testimony and the evidence of archeology are too strong and uniform to admit of quibble or doubt." Nevertheless, Emerson continued, "so strong was the deference for the Antique, learned from the Italian masters of the Renaissance, that the accidental destruction of the ancient coloring" had been "exalted into a special merit, and ridiculously associated with the ideal qualities of the highest art"-from "lofty serenity" to "unsullied purity."

This ardor for whiteness was so intense that the evidence didn't stand a chance. Scholars who continued to discuss polychromy were often dismissed. Auguste Rodin is supposed to have pounded his chest and said, "I feel it here that they were never colored." Sculpture and painting had become increasingly independent disciplines, and artists who tried to merge the two were met with scorn. In the eighteen-fifties, when the British artist John Gibson, a proponent of polychromy, showed his delicate "Tinted Venus"-the goddess's body is mostly white, but she has muted golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes-a titillated reviewer described the figure as "a naked, impudent Englishwoman."

As the artist and critic David Batchelor writes in his 2000 book, " Chromophobia," at a certain point ignorance becomes willful denial-a kind of "negative hallucination" in which we refuse to see what is before our eyes. Mark Abbe, who has become the leading American scholar of ancient Greek and Roman polychromy, believes that, when such a delusion persists, you have to ask yourself, " Cui bono?"-"Who benefits?" He told me, "If we weren't benefitting, we wouldn't be so invested in it. We benefit from a whole range of assumptions about cultural, ethnic, and racial superiority. We benefit in terms of the core identity of Western civilization, that sense of the West as more rational-the Greek miracle and all that. And I'm not saying there's no truth to the idea that something singular happened in Greece and Rome, but we can do better and see the ancient past on a broader cultural horizon."

In the twentieth century, appreciation for ancient polychromy and decoration went further into eclipse-largely on aesthetic, rather than racial, grounds. Modernism lauded the abstraction of white forms and derided earthy verisimilitude in sculpture. In a 1920 essay titled "Purism," the architect Le Corbusier wrote, "Let us leave to the clothes-dyers the sensory jubilation of the paint tube." In Italy and Germany, Fascist artists created white marble statuary of idealized bodies. After the Second World War, European architects sought a neutral common heritage by promoting the modest virtues of spare white spaces, such as the parliamentary building in Bonn.

Over the centuries, many art restorers and dealers felt obliged to vigorously scrub Greek and Roman objects, so as to enhance their marmoreal gleam-and their collectibility. Mark Bradley, a classicist at the University of Nottingham, believes that in some cases restorers were merely trying to remove residue left by oil lamps that had lit galleries before the advent of electricity. But, he noted in an e-mail, many museums propagated "an enduring Renaissance conspiracy" to "eradicate traces of paint." In the nineteen-thirties, restorers at the British Museum polished the Elgin marbles, the most treasured sculptures from the Acropolis, until they were as white and shiny as pearls.

One day in July, Abbe was in Bloomington, Indiana, peering at two Roman busts: one of the militaristic Emperor Septimius Severus and one of his learned wife, Julia Domna. The busts belong to Indiana University's Eskenazi Museum, which is closed for renovation, and Abbe was examining them in a storage facility. The sculptures, made from a creamy white marble, appeared to have negligible speckles and stains. But Abbe knew better. He had examined their surfaces with a powerful microscope and with infrared and UV light, and had discovered rich purples, blues, and pinks.

In 2007, Giovanni Verri, who now teaches conservation at the Courtauld Institute, in London, figured out how to confirm the presence of an ancient pigment known as Egyptian blue. It has a remarkable capacity for luminescence under infrared light, and Verri found that in digital photographs taken under such light it glistened like ice crystals. Abbe had seen these sparkles on the two Roman busts. Now he was planning to take samples of the pigments he'd detected, so that they could be chemically analyzed.

A conservation scientist from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Gregory Dale Smith, would undertake the extraction of the samples, the largest of which would be the size of the period at the end of this sentence. He would use an array of fantastical tools, including an eye surgeon's scalpel, a tungsten needle with a tip six microns wide, and a brush with a single bristle, made from the hair of a deer. Smith, who arrived at the storage facility later that afternoon, told me that he had skipped coffee that day-he needed to have the steadiest of hands.

Julie Van Voorhis, an art-history professor at Indiana who is researching the busts, had joined Abbe and me, along with Juliet Graver Istrabadi, the ancient-art curator from the Eskenazi Museum. For a while, the four of us stood in a polite semicircle and gazed at the statues, as though we were guests at their party and they were about to give a toast.

Abbe told me, "From basically 1960 to 2000, people were just, like, 'Yeah, the color's there, but you can't do anything with it-there's not enough there, it's too fragmentary.' " But in recent years it's become easier to detect many colors, using noninvasive technologies such as X-ray fluorescence analysis (which can identify the elements in pigments). Ancient organic dyes-such as Tyrian purple, made from the glands of sea snails-are harder to identify, but scholars have had some success using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, which measures molecular vibrations. Armed with these technologies, curators and conservators are starting to "reëxcavate in our own museums," as one scholar put it to me-taking objects that were presumed to be colorless and looking at them anew.

Abbe, who is forty-five, tall, and slim, was wearing a dapper dark suit and a narrow floral tie. He has a springy energy that reminded me of an actor playing a brainy young inventor. He told me that, when he first examines a sculpture for signs of polychromy, he looks at it for hours, aided by a device that involves a magnifying glass and an L.E.D. light affixed to a headband. He gave me one to put on; it looked like a dorky version of a miner's lamp. "I try to convince everyone that they need to buy these for when they go to museums," he said. (He advises people who actually do wear the device in galleries to put their hands behind their backs while peering closely at objects, so that guards don't freak out.)

As I walked around the busts, he told me, "You can get much closer. Once your eyes are properly adjusted, you can go in and see details." I leaned in and looked at the emperor's cloak; tiny teardrop shapes, in the deep purplish blue of old ink stains, swam into view on a white surface.

"So blue and white is the base layer," Abbe said over my shoulder. "And the white part seems to be painted with lead white, one of the most opaque whites. And then they're washing that over with a paint pigment that seems to have a number of elements-it seems to have Egyptian blue in it, and it seems to have a mercury-rich red pigment, probably cinnabar. That's a good example of how they're layering."

Abbe and Van Voorhis are interested in finding out not just which colors the ancients favored but what techniques they used to apply paint: how sculptors polished stone surfaces in preparation for pigment, how they added highlights and shading to faces. Learning more about these methods will help scholars create more nuanced facsimiles, and will also illuminate how painting and sculpting worked in tandem in the ancient world. Skeptics of polychromy question why Greek and Roman artists would have sculpted with such beautiful materials-Parian marble, which was commonly used, has a prized translucence-and then painted over the surface, or bedazzled it with gilt and jewels. But if painters and sculptors worked together as partners, with an understanding of how tactically applied color could enhance a work's luminosity, polychromy makes more aesthetic sense.

Abbe said, "We have this wonderful anecdote from Praxiteles, the Greek sculptor from the fourth century B.C. When he's asked which of his sculptures he liked the best, he names those that the premier painter of the day, Nicias, 'applied his hand to.' " He noted that, in the ancient Roman Empire, statues would not have been sequestered in art galleries-they would have been on the streets and in people's homes. Figures that were deftly painted would have looked eerily lifelike, particularly in low and flickering light. "There's a real aesthetic, especially in the Roman period, for the visual trick," he said. "When you went into a place, the divide between what was sculpture and what was actual life was fluid, and highly theatrical. You go to a dinner party in Pompeii, and there are statues of nude homoerotic youths, in the old, noble Greek tradition. And then there are actual slave boys that look just like those well-tanned bronzes, and at first they're standing still. And then they move, the same way the sculptures seem to move in the reflections of pools and fountains. So, you know, you've had a little bit to drink, and you're negotiating this-"

Van Voorhis joined in the reverie: "You're calling over your slave boy, but it happens to be a statue. And then the slave boy comes from the other side and refills your cup."

At one point, Abbe said, "The modern art gallery, you could say, kills these things-transforms them into something they're not."

One of the advantages of establishing scientific methods to prove that classical objects were polychrome is that they provide archeologists with a protocol-a formal way to look for color before cleaning an artifact. Significant Greek and Roman finds are still being made. Abbe noted that a set of Roman historical friezes recently found in Nicomedia, Turkey, are "awash in purple."

Abbe and Van Voorhis lamented that, even now, such objects are sometimes mercilessly cleaned. "Remember how they would hose statues down in the courtyard?" Van Voorhis asked Abbe, recalling an excavation in Turkey that they'd both worked on.

"Like you'd hose down your wheelbarrow," Abbe said. At times, he added, the impulse to clean is less about a dislike of color and more about "the excitement of discovery": "You want to see what you've got. Archeology is a slow business. Then, imagine, it's the last day, and you finally find something. The first thing you want to do is make it legible." This impulse, he said, must be checked: "You should treat a discovery like a medical situation. Treat it like triage. What you want to do is stabilize the patient. Less is more. Take the thing, wrap it up in something like neutral cotton gauze, and put it on a shelf in a stable place. Then call us, and we will come and do the micro-excavation of the surface." This process needs to happen relatively quickly, because, after extraction, the soil clinging to an object dries, and "the paint layers literally delaminate with it," leaving a denuded object and "a painting in reverse" adhering to scattered flakes of soil.

As we examined the bust of Julia, Van Voorhis pointed out a tendril of hair peeking out from under her wig. This made it clear that she was wearing the wig for fashion, not to cover up baldness. Her face was so carefully modelled that you could see where her cheek was beginning to sag slightly. She had horizontal creases encircling her neck-Venus rings, I learned they were called-and a delightful unibrow, both of which connoted desirability. All this humanizing detail had been conveyed purely through form. I wondered if Abbe ever regretted having to see such sculptures, in his mind's eye, saturated in the bright colors that many people find kitschy.

The first time I saw a statue that had been painted to approximate ancient polychromy, I was in Nashville, of all places. In 1897, a full-scale replica of the Parthenon was erected in a city park there, and inside it is an enormous statue of Athena. To my eye, the figure, which was painted and gilded in the two-thousands, looked awful: her golden robes had a blinding shimmer, her eyes were a doll-like blue, and her lips could have beckoned from a lipstick ad. It reminded me of a Jeff Koons piece that revels in its tackiness. Yet Abbe assured me that the colorized Athena was consistent with the aesthetics of the lost original, from the fifth century B.C.

Some of the painted replicas that I saw subsequently seemed more subtle and persuasive. Nevertheless, as much as I thought that it was important to acknowledge polychromy, I still sometimes preferred the ghostly elegance of white marble.

When I shared this feeling with Abbe, he said, "We can have our cake and eat it, too. We can still look at these things and admire them as monochromatic, neoclassical works. We can also recover the ancient aesthetics and correct an untruth." He promised that not even the most fervent champion of polychromy was going to start slathering contemporary paint on ancient objects.

So how should we represent the colors of the classical world in museums? The reality-television, big-reveal style of the "Gods in Color" exhibition is certainly effective at upending our preconceptions. As Østergaard said, "A physical object right next to an original gives the public a real 'Aha!' moment. It's spectacularly successful as a means of communication."

But Abbe, like many scholars I talked to, wasn't crazy about the reconstructions in "Gods in Color." He found the hues too flat and opaque, and noted that plaster, which most of the replicas are made from, absorbs paint in a way that marble does not. He was also bothered by the fact that the statues "all look fundamentally the same, whereas styles would have differed enormously."

The Brinkmanns have made several replicas in synthetic and real marble-an expensive undertaking-and these do reflect light somewhat better than the plaster models. Cecilie Brøns, who currently heads a project at the Glyptotek called Tracking Colour, which is investigating all the museum's ancient pieces for traces of color, admires the Brinkmanns' reconstructions but said she worries that museumgoers accept them too literally. The replicas were best appreciated as interpretations, she said, adding, "Reconstructions can be difficult to explain to the public-that these are not exact copies, that we can never know exactly how they looked."

Giovanni Verri, of the Courtauld Institute, told me, "Knowing the particular pigments and the painting materials is useful, but it's not the sum of the painting. There is the technique component-the style, the sensibility." To paint exactly as an ancient painter did would require a psychic form of time travel. "We have so much knowledge that those painters would not have had," he said. "We have experienced two thousand years of history, and art history, that would be extremely difficult to forget."

Verri, like Abbe and others in the field, believes that digital reproductions-computer animations and the like-can offer advantages that physical ones do not. They can be revised as new information becomes available, and they can also show multiple possibilities of how an object might have looked. Verri created such a digital reproduction a few years ago, after he spent time investigating the traces of polychromy on the Treu Head-an idealized female figure, sculpted in the second century A.D., that is in the collection of the British Museum. Verri performed what he called "a digital face transplant." He identified pigments that had originally covered the sculpture: Egyptian blue mixed into pinkish skin tones and the whites of the eyes; yellow and red ochre in the hair; rose-colored madder lake for the lips. He also studied and mimicked the sophisticated painting techniques used in the Fayum portraits. The result is refined and naturalistic.

When the Eskenazi Museum reopens, in a year or two, it will host a special exhibition featuring the busts of Severus and Julia. To show the original polychromy, Abbe and Van Voorhis have considered projecting colored light on the statues for part of the day. (A set of friezes at the Ara Pacis museum, in Rome, have been presented this way, to pleasing effect.) Another idea is to present a video animation in which the color gradually appears on the two Roman busts, suggesting how successive layers of paint might have been applied.

Abbe and Van Voorhis will have to engage in some speculation, particularly when it comes to hair color and skin tone. They have no reason to believe that there wasn't pigment on the skin or hair of the busts, but they have not found any traces of it. "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," Abbe wrote to me, in an e-mail. "Classic neoclassical assumption!"

Later, in another e-mail, Abbe pointed out that much of the Roman élite "came from diverse-looking stock-Berber, Arab, Transylvanian, Danubian, Spanish, etc." He also noted that sculptures of African people from the ancient world were sometimes carved from black stones, such as basalt, and then painted with reddish-brown pigments to create a lifelike effect. One such example, at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, in Hamburg, is the head of a young boy, from the first century B.C.; patches of mahogany-colored paint can still be seen on the nose and the cheeks.

Severus and Julia were Romans, but neither was of Italic descent. Severus was of Berber origin, from an élite family in Libya. Julia came from a priestly family in Emesa, Syria. A panel painting of the couple, known as the Berlin Tondo, has survived: Severus has a chestnut-brown complexion and a grizzled gray beard; Julia is paler, with dark hair and eyes. The Tondo will help guide Abbe and Van Voorhis in their work on the busts, just as the Fayum portraits aided Verri.

The easiest, and cheapest, way for museums to address the fact of polychromy is to say more about it in their labelling. One day in July, Gina Borromeo, the curator of ancient art at the risd Museum, walked me through the Greek and Roman galleries, and pointed out a label that she'd written in 2009: "The surviving traces of reddish pigment, still visible in the hair of this figure, reflect the fact that most ancient statues were originally quite vividly painted." But Borromeo believes that nothing can match the power of displaying a polychrome work that has retained its original hues. In 2016, she successfully lobbied to acquire an Etruscan urn that still has much of its original color.

Vinzenz Brinkmann, who now heads the antiquities department of the Liebieghaus sculpture collection, in Frankfurt, told me that viewing classical sculptures in color does far more than expand your notion of what such objects originally looked like; it helps you understand that "everything that seems to be so clearly and firmly set is not always so clearly and firmly set." In other words, he said, seeing these colors affects people's understanding of themselves. With a small chuckle, he added, "And, for us, this is beautiful." ♦

This article appears in the print edition of the October 29, 2018, issue, with the headline "Color Blind."

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The Myth of Whiteness in Classical Sculpture

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Mark Abbe was ambushed by color in 2000, while working on an archeological dig in the ancient Greek city of Aphrodisias, in present-day Turkey. At the time, he was a graduate student at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, and, like most people, he thought of Greek and Roman statues as objects of pure white marble.

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Disrupt the Literacy Canon for Racial Justice

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Disrupt the Literacy Canon for Racial Justice

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Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture

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Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture

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In 2012 a nongendered pronoun dropped into Swedish discourse. Today it's widely used-and it's nudging people to see the world a little differently.

For a question with so much riding on it-does using politically correct language actually make a person less of a jerk?-the test was deceptively simple.

Here's what you do: Show people a sketch of a cartoon person-circle-for-head, ovals for arms and body-with a dotted line linking it to an equally cartoony thing, a balloon-animal dog. Over the person's head loom two thought bubbles, a round one containing three question marks and a jagged one with three exclamation points. That's it. And the test is, describe what's happening.

Importantly, the people being tested, upwards of 2,000 of them, were all native speakers of Swedish, an old language that has learned a new trick. Like English, Swedish used two pronouns to indicate the gender of a person, hon (she) and han (he). But in 2012, a new word dropped into Swedish discourse: hen, a nongendered pronoun that could replace either or both.

So this was the real test. Would native-speaker Swedes, seven years after getting a new pronoun plugged into their language, be more likely to assume this androgynous cartoon was a man? A woman? Either, or neither? Now that they had a word for it, a nonbinary option, would they think to use it?

And they did. Not only did the Swedish speakers use the nonbinary option to describe the, let's face it, nonbinary human, but in other surveys they deployed hen (as well as han, but the feminine hon, too) to describe people in stories when their genders weren't specified. Now, it's true the researchers don't have comparable tests from before 2012, before hen. So this result is, as UCLA political psychologist Efrén Pérez says, merely suggestive. Still, though, "this word has no biological associations. It's from scratch. And it's performing the way some proponents argued it would," says Pérez, coauthor of a paper describing these tests in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "These language changes can nudge people in directions some folks find normatively worthy."

This is the implicit promise of letting people choose their pronouns, and of having some of those pronouns be disconnected from gender. Sure, it's good to find language that accommodates people's identities, especially if that identity doesn't fit the binary masculine/feminine split. But more than that, new words (and maybe old words with new uses, like singular they/them, but more on that in a bit) can incept that new idea into everyone -the binary isn't the end of the story, masculine isn't the default, and people should be able to decouple action and concepts from gender. "Most people don't have ready-made attitudes on most things we think are important. If your language nudges you in some direction, it should have some nontrivial effect on your opinion," says Pérez. "You could boil it down to, how does the language you speak affect how you see the world?"

Languages handle pronouns and gender in different ways. Some avoid gender altogether, some gender just the pronouns, others inflect the nouns, too. Certain languages even use masculine words or forms as plurals or generics-like "all mankind," for example, as a stand-in for all people. That's called androcentrism, the idea that men also represent everyone. And over the years, linguists and other social scientists have come up with a few ideas to combat it-to neutralize androcentric terminology and concepts. You can pare down pairs of masculine and feminine words with the same meaning to just one-aviator and aviatrix to pilot, waiter and waitress to waiter, author and authoress to author. You could make up new words and terms-firefighter, mail carrier, police officer. In pronoun land, that'd be ideas like ze or e. Or you could do what English seems to be trending toward, which is to take a nongendered, plural, third-person pronoun- they -and repurpose it as singular.

The Swedes went big. In 2012 Jesper Lundquist wrote a children's book, Kivi and the Monster Dog, that referred to the main character with, as others had proposed, the neologized pronoun hen, essentially borrowed from neighboring Finland's nongendered pronoun hän. Lundquist, his publisher, and a linguist working on gender followed up with an editorial in a big newspaper saying that life should imitate art. Drama ensued; people argued. What-about-the-children got deployed. A newspaper banned hen. An entertainment magazine mandated it. The Swedish Language Council, the quasi-final authority on Swedish, came out against. Finally, two years after the kids' book came out, the Swedish Language Council reversed itself. Hen was now, for real, Swedish.

Now the word has snuggled into Swedish society. It's common in the media. People report knowing about it and using it. It still has opposition-from people who don't believe humans can have a nonbinary gender identity, and from grammatical originalists (with a soupçon of folks who wish nonbinary people could have their own pronoun in addition to a nongendered pronoun for everyone else). But their numbers are declining.

But, OMG, just because a language metabolizes a new word doesn't mean it changes how people think or feel. So that's what Pérez and his partner, Margit Tavits at Washington University in St. Louis, wanted to check. After years of henning and hawing, had people changed their ways? The hypothesis is that having hen would help people build a more equitable society. So when Tavits and Pérez got their results, they hypothesized that the newly available pronoun had, in their parlance, decreased the mental bias toward men and enhanced the salience of women, LGBTQ, and nonbinary people. It also lent support to an old, controversial idea in linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as linguistic determinism-the words you have at your disposal frame how you see the world. "One possibility, and it's speculative, is that it'd be sort of like encouraging people in the US to use 'they' as gender-neutral," Pérez says. "It would be weird at first, but if we integrated it into our grammatical toolkit, the novelty wears off. That's part of what I think is happening in Sweden."

It's almost certainly true that time sands the edges off of new syntax and grammar. When William Safire wrote an "On Language" column for The New York Times about the still-nascent honorific Ms. in 1984, he was grudging at best. Marvel Comics had introduced Ms. (now Captain) Marvel, and there was even a feminist magazine called Ms. The influential Safire still groused, but he had an insurmountable problem. Geraldine Ferraro was running for vice president, and the Times' inviolable house style insisted on an honorific. But it couldn't be Miss. Ferraro was married. But she'd kept her own last name, so she couldn't be Mrs. Ferraro. So Safire capitulated under duress. By 2009, when the new "On Language" columnist Ben Zimmer returned to the subject, the ruling on usage wasn't even a question. Zimmer traced its origins back to 1901, acknowledged that it was part of the landscape of American English, and didn't even bother subtweeting Safire.

In surveys about resistance to nongendered language, people often say they can't get past how weird the new usages or words seem, no matter how old the precedents might be. Just as happened with Ms., if they becomes the nonbinary pronoun of choice in English, eventually its quirks-bound to happen when you try to make a plural singular-will lose their apparent quirkiness. We'll get used to it.

Except even so, it turns out that they is no hen. Are no hen. Whatever. They might not perform up to hen's specs. Old terms bring some baggage. In one study-looking at English and Swedish words and speakers-68 percent of English-speaking respondents associated they with the masculine gender, compared to a 50-50 split with ze. "In Swedish, we saw that 'she/he,' writing them together, produced equivalent amounts of male and female perception, and 'hen' also did that," says Marie Gustafsson Sendén, a psychologist at Stockholm University who studies the new lingo. In English, though, they and even the seemingly neutral the person were associated with a masculine bias. "You can reframe a word if you do a lot of work with it," Sendén says. "But a smart new word might be more efficient."

Whether or not they or some newer term becomes English's mainstream nongendered pronoun, what all this research suggests is that deferring to people's preferred pronouns is more than mere "political correctness" or social-media performance. It's a way of giving people new, more inclusive ways of seeing the world. "The work we have here suggests that it's more likely that matters in subtle ways," Pérez says. "You perceive not different realities, but you place more or less emphasis on different things."

New language, then, can become a useful tool for changing how people deal with each other. Think of it as the opposite of censorship-instead of trying to delete ideas from culture, new words can contribute them. "I'm second-generation Mexican American. It's a very male-centered way of life, especially for the immigrants who came here. Culture dies hard sometimes," Pérez says. "How can you shift people's viewpoints on these red-meat issues? The answer can't be, wait 'til the culture dies out or wait for a new generation."

But if you recognize that one way culture entrains gender ideas is through language itself, that gives you a lever, among many, to nudge in the direction of change. "If you're trying to man all stations, this is one thing you can do," Pérez says.

"Wait," I say. "You mean 'staff all stations,' right?"

Pérez laughs. "That was second-generation me," he says.

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Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture

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In 2012 a nongendered pronoun dropped into Swedish discourse. Today it's widely used-and it's nudging people to see the world a little differently. For a question with so much riding on it-does using politically correct language actually make a person less of a jerk?-the test was deceptively simple.

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Queer America: An Exploration of the history of sexual identity and gender...

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Queer America: An Exploration of the history of sexual identity and gender...

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Without LGBTQ history, there is no American history. From Learning for Justice and hosts Leila Rupp and John D’Emilio, Queer America takes listeners on a journey that spans from Harlem to the Frontier West, revealing stories of LGBTQ life we should have learned in school.

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Shelly Tochluk and Christine Saxman have been investigating White supremacist organizations and their tactics for recruiting White youth. Join us for a discussion about the importance of having explicit conversations about race and what teachers and parents can do to support White students.

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Shelly Tochluk and Christine Saxman have been investigating White supremacist organizations and their tactics for recruiting White youth. Join us for a discussion about the importance of having explicit conversations about race and what teachers and parents can do to support White students.

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#TheEdCollabGathering #7

☟⬇︎ Watch HERE ⬇︎☟
LIVE STREAM WILL APPEAR HERE ON APRIL 21ST
Tricia Ebarvia has been teaching English at Conestoga High School outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 2001. She currently teaches ninth grade World Literature as well as AP English Language & Composition and AP Seminar. As an educator with 15 years of experience, she believes that developing a love of learning begins with a love of reading-a love she tries to foster each day in the classroom. She also believes that developing student voice is not only an important skill in writing, but a necessary one for students to become engaged, informed citizens. In addition to teaching, she serves as a Co-Director for the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project (PAWLP), a site of the National Writing Project (NWP), and contributes bi-monthly to the "From the Classroom" column on the PAWLP website and monthly to MovingWriters.org.

Dr. Kimberly Parker is an English teacher at The Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School in Cambridge, MA. During her 14 years as an educator, Kim has worked successfully to address an achievement gap among struggling readers. She hopes her work in Cambridge helps other educators see the "potential in their historically underserved students." Throughout her career as a teacher and through myriad leadership roles, Dr. Parker has been an advocate for classroom educators and sees her most powerful role as an educator who helps students grow their love of reading and find a book they'll be able to connect with.

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S2018 Session 2, Workshop 5: Teach This, Not That: Disrupting Texts in the Secondary Classroom, 3-12 |

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TheEdCollabGathering #7 LIVE STREAM WILL APPEAR HERE ON APRIL 21ST Tricia Ebarvia has been teaching English at Conestoga High School outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania since 2001. She currently teaches ninth grade World Literature as well as AP English Language & Composition and AP Seminar.

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

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The 1619 Project Curriculum in Lesson Plan Grouping - The 1619 Project, inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation’s foundational date. Here you wil…

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Historian Ed Baptist provides context on the creation and enforcement of a U.S. racial binary that endures today, as well as Black resistance as a force for political change. And Aisha White urges educators to ask themselves, "What did you learn about race when you were younger?" before they engage with children. She argues that self-reflection and ongoing education are vital tools to combat the fallacy of ignoring students' racialized experiences.

People from all corners of public life are telling teachers to stop discussions about race and racism in the classroom, but keeping the truth of the world from students simply doesn't work. English teacher Matthew Kay urges educators to create brave spaces instead. He provides examples of classroom strategies for engaging with students at the intersections of race, literature and lived experience. Hint: it involves vulnerability, accountability and quality affirmations.

This season, we're examining the century between the Civil War and the modern civil rights movement to understand how systemic racism and slavery persisted and evolved after emancipation-and how Black Americans still developed strong institutions during this time. Co-hosts Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Bethany Jay discuss how students need to grasp this history to understand injustices many of them face today, from voter suppression to mass incarceration.

In 2015, Coach Steve Bandura loaded the Anderson Monarchs, a Little League baseball team from Philadelphia, onto a 1947 Flxible Clipper Bus for a barnstorming tour back in time. Bandura and the players recount lessons learned while visiting historic civil rights sites, meeting veteran activists and playing baseball along the way. And historian Derrick E. White, co-host of The Black Athlete podcast, explores the intersection of sports and civil rights history.

The civil rights movement offers critical context for understanding the systemic police violence, voter suppression efforts, 'law and order' rhetoric and criminalization of activism we see today. It also helps us understand the strategies activists use to fight these injustices. Historians Shannon King and Nishani Frazier explain how they use 21st-century Black activism to teach the movement's history-and how they use the movement to help students better understand the contemporary Black freedom struggle.

The history of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense can help us understand the transition from civil rights to Black Power and contemporary issues like mass incarceration. From the Ten-Point Platform to survival programs, historian Robyn C. Spencer outlines key aspects of the party's revolutionary ideology, grassroots activism and community service. And historian Jakobi Williams joins to share valuable classroom insights.

Historian Clarence Lang joins us for a conversation about Malcolm X. We discuss his commitment to Black pride and self-determination and his rejection of the white gaze and the myth of American exceptionalism. Learn how teaching about the life and works of Malcolm X can illuminate the universe of possibilities of the civil rights movement-and the diversity of ideology, strategy and political thought within the Black freedom struggle.

In this episode, we talk with movement veteran Courtland Cox about lessons from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and his own development as a young organizer of the Emmett Till generation. We join Karlyn Forner and John B. Gartrell to tour the resources available through SNCC Digital Gateway. And we hear from student organizer Kaia Woodford about the lessons from the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements that inform her activism today.

Oral histories, historic sites, archives and museums expand students' understanding of the past. They fill in gaps in our textbooks-complementing what's included and capturing what's not. This episode highlights online oral history collections including the Civil Rights History Project. It offers recommendations for students conducting their own oral histories. And it explores resources from the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Teaching civil rights history to young learners creates both opportunities and challenges. The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and the subsequent Freedom Schools offer important lessons for helping elementary students to understand the civil rights movement. In this episode, we explore community-based strategies and activities for bringing the Black freedom struggle into your classroom.

If you're finding this podcast useful, please support us by taking our 10 question Listener Survey. And stay tuned! More episodes are on the way. In the meantime, if you're looking for ways to talk with students about the relationship between the hard history of white supremacy and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Learning for Justice resources can help you lead student-responsive, historically grounded discussions about the recent violence.

From the hard work of organizing to the reality of everyday life under Jim Crow, films and literature can bring historical context to life for students. In this episode, we recommend several "must use" films, books, poems and plays for teaching the civil rights movement. We also discuss strategies for incorporating these works across the curricula and for turning even problematic texts into grist for meaningful critical discussions.

Everyone thinks they know the story, but the real history of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott is even better. This episode details the events that set the stage for Ms. Parks' civil disobedience. You'll meet the leaders and organizations who transformed a moment of activism into a 13-month campaign. And you'll learn about the community that held fast in the face of legal and political attacks, economic coercion, intimidation and violence.

To fully understand the United States today, we have to comprehend the central role that slavery played in our nation's past. That legacy is also the foundation for understanding the civil rights movement and its place within the history of the Black freedom struggle. This episode is a special look back at our first season. It explores and expands on the 10 Key Concepts that ground Learning for Justice's K-12 frameworks for teaching the hard history of American slavery.

You cannot teach the civil rights movement without talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But it's critical that students deconstruct the mythology surrounding the movement's most iconic figure to learn about the man, not just the hero. The real Dr. King held beliefs that evolved over time. A complex man, he was part of a much larger movement-one that shaped him as much as he shaped it.

The civil rights movement was never strictly a Southern phenomenon. To better understand the Jim Crow North, we explore discrimination and Black protest in places like Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland and New York. To examine the Black Freedom Movement beyond the South, we examine the Black-led fights to gain access to decent housing, secure quality education and end police brutality in these cities.

Armed resistance and nonviolent direct action co-existed throughout the civil rights era. In this episode, three historians confront some comfortable assumptions about nonviolence and self-defense. Wesley Hogan examines the evolution, value and limitations of nonviolence in the movement. Christopher Strain offers a three-part strategy for rethinking this false dichotomy in the classroom. And Akinyele Umoja offers insights about armed resistance from his research in Mississippi.

Alice Qannik Glenn is the host of Coffee and Quaq and assistant producer of The Forgotten Slavery of our Ancestors. This short, classroom-ready film offers an introduction to the history of Indigenous enslavement on land that is currently the United States. This new resource from Learning for Justice features an extensive group of experts, many of whom will be familiar to listeners from Season 2.

Jim Crow was more than signs and separation. It was a system of terror and violence created to control the labor and regulate the behavior of Black people. In this episode, historian Stephen Berrey unpacks the mechanics of racial oppression, the actions white people took-in and beyond the South-to maintain white supremacy, and the everyday ways Black people fought back. And the directors of the film An Outrage join ELA-teacher Ahmariah Jackson to discuss teaching the racial terror of lynching.

Music chronicles the history of the civil rights struggle: The events, tactics and emotions of the movement are documented in songs of the era. From The Freedom Singers to Sam Cooke, historian Charles L. Hughes explains how your students can use music for both historical insight and evidence in the classroom.

Students don't enter our classrooms as blank slates. When it comes to the civil rights movement, we often have to help our students unlearn what they think they know while we're teaching them what actually happened. The people were more complex, the strategies more complicated and the stakes more dangerous than we like to remember. In this episode, historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez demonstrate the value of teaching the movement from the grassroots up.

Teaching the civil rights movement accurately and effectively requires deconstructing the myths and misconceptions around it. Most people are familiar with a very specific version of the movement that exaggerates government support and denies the existence and persistence of racism outside the South. Julian Bond called this the "Master Narrative." It celebrates sanitized icons and downplays grassroots organizing. And it overhypes nonviolence while disparaging self-defense and Black Power. In this episode, we talk with historian Nishani Frazier and social studies teacher Adam Sanchez about how to separate fact from fiction in your civil rights teaching.

The systems that enabled and perpetuated African and Indigenous enslavement in what is now the U.S. have much in common, and their histories tell us a great deal about the present. Professors Bethany Jay and Steven Oliver join us to talk about connections between the first two seasons and how to teach them, and we preview what's to come in season three.

In this special call-in episode, listeners share their stories and questions from throughout season 2-including teaching remotely, working with families and stakeholders, and incorporating social justice into subjects like math and science. As educators, we're strongest when we support each other. And you'll hear great suggestions from fellow teachers, like these resources we discuss from Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

It's time for our first call-in show! We know things are chaotic for you and every other educator right now. We feel it too, so this seems like the perfect time to talk. Pick up the phone and dial 888-59-STORY (888-597-8679). Our lines are open until Sunday night, April 19. Teaching hard history is even harder right now, so let's talk about resources you can use if you're teaching virtually. Ask us your questions; tell us your stories. And let us know how you're doing.

Indian Removal was a brutal and complicated effort that textbooks often simplify. It is also inseparably related to slavery. Enslavers seeking profit drove demand for Indigenous lands, displacing hundreds of thousands of Indigenous people. Some of these Indigenous people participated in chattel slavery. Focusing on the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, this episode pulls the lens back to show how Removal and enslavement must be taught together. This story must be told if we're going to understand the full hard history of American enslavement.

The Americas were built on the lands, labor and lives of Indigenous peoples. Despite being erased from history textbooks after the so-called first Thanksgiving, Indigenous peoples did not disappear. Colonial settlers relied on the cooperation, exploitation and forced labor of their Native neighbors to survive and thrive in what became North America. Focusing on New England, historian Margaret Newell introduces us to the Charter Generation of systematically enslaved people across this continent.

From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project collected stories from people who had been enslaved. The WPA Slave Narrative Collection at the Library of Congress is a valuable resource; these oral histories are also problematic. Interpreting these narratives within literary and historical context, students can develop primary source literacy. Historian Cynthia Lynn Lyerly outlines unique insights these texts can add to your curriculum.

To better understand the United States' past and present, we need to better understand Indigenous identities-and classrooms play a huge role. This starts with examining what's missing from our social studies, history, civics and government curricula. Throughout this episode, we reference the K-5 Framework for Teaching Hard History as we shed light on key topics like sovereignty, land and erasure.

Educators can no longer ignore our country's history of Indigenous enslavement. Our students need a fuller understanding of the pivotal history of slavery to comprehend the present and develop a vision for our nation's future. In this mid-season recap, we highlight key lessons about this consequential part of American history-along with teaching strategies and resources-through the voices of leading scholars and educators featured so far.

Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the forced labor and bondage of Indigenous peoples was integral to the economic and political history of what became the Southwestern United States. Historian and author Andrés Reséndez outlines the significance of silver mining, Indigenous enslavement and resistance in the history of New Mexico and Latin America. We examine how, as white settlers moved west, so-called "free soil" states like California continued to institutionalize coerced labor.
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A hundred years before the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia, Europeans introduced the commercial practice of enslavement in "The New World." And for the next 400 years, millions of Indigenous people throughout the Americas were enslaved through several forms of forced labor and bondage. Historian and author Andrés Reséndez calls this "The Other Slavery," and his work is changing our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade.
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Andrés Reséndez is the author of The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. His work has changed conventional wisdom about the institution of slavery in the Atlantic world. Over the next two episodes, host Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Reséndez will discuss key turning points in this history-exploring how it expands our understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and the lasting legacy of colonialism, which continues to reverberate in our communities. Be sure to join us.
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Each autumn, Thanksgiving brings a disturbing amount of inaccurate information and troubling myths into classrooms across the United States. Most students don't learn much about the history of Native nations-and even less about Indigenous peoples today. Dr. Debbie Reese explains what to look for and what to avoid (or teach with a critical lens) when selecting children's books by and about Indigenous people. She also recommends specific books to counter common misconceptions in your classroom.
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Children's books are often the primary way young students are exposed to the history of American slavery. But many books about slavery sugarcoat oppression. Professor Ebony Elizabeth Thomas examines what we should consider when it comes to how children's books portray African Americans and Indigenous people, their cultures and the effects of enslavement. She also explains why it's crucial to create "a balance of narratives" when selecting books about marginalized and underrepresented communities.
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For elementary teachers approaching the topic of slavery, it can be tempting to focus only on heroes and avoid explaining oppression. But teachers' omissions speak as loudly as what they choose to include. And what children learn in the early grades has broad consequences for the rest of their education. Dr. Kate Shuster guides us through the new Teaching Hard History K-5 framework from Learning for Justice. We also learn how four elementary teachers are beginning to use it in their classrooms.
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Understanding Indigenous enslavement expands our conception of slavery in what is now the United States. It spread across the entire continent and affected millions of people of different backgrounds. If we define slavery too narrowly, we can fail to see its persistence over time and even its modern-day permutations. Historian Christina Snyder examines the Civil War, Lincoln and emancipation with Indigenous people in mind.
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Millions of Indigenous people lived in North America before European colonial powers invaded. Along with an insatiable desire for free labor, Europeans brought a system of slavery that significantly differed from the historical practices of enslavement among Native nations. Historian Christina Snyder tells the story of what happened when these worlds collided. European concepts of bondage transformed the way Native nations interacted with each other, resulted in the enslavement and death of millions of Indigenous people, and sparked widespread resistance by Native nations.
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The Smithsonian's Eduardo Díaz and Renée Gokey discuss the importance of learning about Indigenous enslavement. And former Teaching Tolerance Director Maureen Costello explains all of the program's classroom resources available for teaching this history, including a first-of-its-kind K-5 framework.
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We're turning our attention to the enslavement of Indigenous people, spending more time with teachers in the classroom and adding support for K-5 educators. Tune in next week for more advice about teaching the history and long legacy of American slavery.
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Download the transcript for all of season 1 here.

Historian Bethany Jay returns - answering questions from educators across the country. Host Hasan Kwame Jeffries and the co-editor of Understanding and Teaching American Slavery confront teacher anxieties and counter misconceptions in our season finale.
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From elementary to high school, YA literature can introduce fundamental themes and information about slavery, especially when paired with primary sources. John H. Bickford shows how to capitalize on the strengths and weaknesses of trade books about slavery.
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Using the present to explore the past. Tamara Spears and Jordan Lanfair suggest a Social Studies unit about Resistance & Kanye West, and a set of English Language Arts lessons examining holidays to understand the legacy of American slavery.
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How it's done. Tamara Spears teaches middle school Social Studies in New York and Jordan Lanfair is a high school English Language Arts teacher in Chicago. Each has been developing additional lessons about slavery for years. They share their experiences.
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Over the next few episodes, we're bringing Season One to a close. Tune in for stories from the classroom, guidance for elementary teachers and language arts classes. And answers to questions from listeners like you.
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Enslavement didn't end with Emancipation. Historian James Brewer Stewart discusses modern-day slavery happening across the world-and right here in the U.S.-showing educators how to connect the past with the present.
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A listener's question leads to a meaningful moment. And now we want more! Take a listen, then email us to tell us your story about teaching hard history for an upcoming, special episode.
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At James Madison's Montpelier, the legacy of enslaved people isn't silenced-and their descendants have a voice. Christian Cotz, Price Thomas and Dr. Patrice Preston Grimes explain how that happened, and why it's important.
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In the United States, justice was never blind. Historian Paul Finkelman goes beyond legal jargon to illustrate how slavery was entangled with the opinions of the Court-and encoded into the Constitution itself.
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Constitutional historian Paul Finkelman explains the deeply racist bargains the founding fathers struck in order to unify the country under one document and discusses what students need to know about how slavery defined America after the Revolution.
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Film historian Ron Briley returns with more documentary, feature film and miniseries suggestions for history and English instructors. From Ken Burns to Black Panther, this episode offers background and strategies for incorporating pop culture into classroom lessons.
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Film has long shaped our nation's historical memory, for good and bad. Film historian Ron Briley offers ways to responsibly use films in the classroom to reframe the typical narrative of American slavery and Reconstruction.
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Most students leave school thinking enslaved people lived like characters in Gone With the Wind. Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens reveals the remarkable diversity of lived experiences within slavery and explains the gap between what scholars and students know.
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To see a more complete picture of the experience of enslaved people, you have to redefine resistance. Dr. Kenneth S. Greenberg offers teachers a lens to help students see the ways in which enslaved people fought back against the brutality of slavery.
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Students learning about slavery often ask, "Why didn't enslaved people just run away or revolt?" Lindsay Anne Randall offers a lesson in "Process Drama"-a method teachers can use to answer this question, build empathy and offer perspective.
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In many ways, the U.S. has fallen short of its ideals. How can we explain this to students-particularly in the context of discussing slavery? Professor Steven Thurston Oliver has this advice for teachers: Face your fears.
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Follow the money. Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara explains why American slavery couldn't have existed without a national commercial infrastructure that supported and benefited from the labor of enslaved people.
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Dr. Bethany Jay is back to talk about teaching the end of the Civil War, and how enslaved people's participation in the war helped subvert the institution of slavery.
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What really caused the Civil War? In this episode, Salem State University Professor Bethany Jay offers tips for teaching lesser-known history that clarifies this question and cuts through our cloudy national understanding of the Confederacy.
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What we don't know about American history hurts us all. Teaching Hard History begins with the long and brutal legacy of chattel slavery and reaches through the victories of and violent responses to the civil rights movement to the present day.

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DEI in Fundraising- Questions to Consider

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DEI in Fundraising- Questions to Consider

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As a Community Foundation Boulder County board member, I've been in many different discussions about equity over the last couple of years. That's because many foundations around the country, including the Denver Foundation and the Community Foundation Boulder County, have been exploring in depth what a real focus on equity could look like in their communities.

As a nonprofit professional and volunteer for 30 years, I've generally thought of myself as someone who is walking the road towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. I'm learning all the time on my journey. But at my core I believe that the inclusion of people from different backgrounds, races, economic circumstances, sexual orientations, and ages makes our organizations stronger. Better. More sustainable.

I've always felt like our sector had good intentions in that direction, too. But progress has been glacial.

How many times (and for how many years) have you heard board members say how hard it is to find people of color that want to serve in their ranks? Or an executive director lament how hard it is to hire diversity on to their staff? Or a fundraiser say that they just can't attract donors of color? They might really want the different perspective or they might just want to tick a box, but clearly just wanting it to happen isn't the solution.

It's not enough for nonprofits to want to diversify. It's not even enough to invite people in an attempt to include them. People of diverse backgrounds have to be comfortable walking through the door. They have to see themselves there. Not as guests or tokens. But as much a part of the organization as anyone else. Our organizations will have to change to make that happen.

And while most nonprofits espouse a vision of equity where all people have the opportunity to thrive, there are significant barriers to entry, especially for people of color, when it comes to nonprofit employment, leadership, and involvement.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in environmentalism, where I started my career. Board members, staff leadership, and donors in the environmental sector have been predominately white for decades because there are very few pathways to connect people of color with the movement. It's been a great setback for the environmental cause as it only now seems to realize how much stronger it could be with more diversity within its ranks.

And in fundraising - where I've spent so much of my career - many of the tried and true practices reinforce systems of inequity in our society and hold them in place across the nonprofit spectrum, despite the changing times.

We fundraisers might talk about including people of color, but my experience is that most of these efforts are abandoned before they get started. They take too long, are too expensive, or people don't know where to begin.

The system has been set up to fail in this area. As fundraisers, our performance incentives are to make as much money as possible with as little expense as possible. Our boards and leadership are clamoring for higher and higher return on investment.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion might be separately articulated in organizational goals, but these principles don't figure into that ROI calculation. Change that might cost more in the short term is not rewarded.

In fact, many of the successful techniques of fundraising developed over time are exclusive and meant to be that way.

Giving clubs, high-end events, expensive donor walls - all are trying to make the donor feel like part of an exclusive club, part of an inner circle.

The long-tested and proven method of capital campaign fundraising is to cultivate a small group of the largest donors first, in a "quiet phase", bestowing naming rights on those who give big.

Through these methods, we cultivate donors who often look alike and have shared experiences of privilege, sometimes creating a donor base that is one-dimensional and literally a world away from the front line work of the organization. (This very white donor base is also aging rapidly.)

Think about the theory behind the donor pyramid. It's hard to deny that it is hierarchical, and represents a power dynamic that really isn't so equitable. The more people give, the more attention they receive.

Look, I'm not saying that we should throw these fundraising principles out. Fundraising has been tested endlessly and has been successful for many years in raising money for world-changing impact. At Front Range Source, we still believe in efficiency and effectiveness. We are devoted to bringing best practices of fundraising to organizations so that they can raise the money to realize their vision.

But we are devoted to learning, to authenticity, and to sustainability, too. Fundraising will have to evolve to meet changing demographics, social norms, economic patterns, and problems. It will need to be more diverse, more equitable, and more inclusive to meet the challenges of the future.

So, we are asking ourselves these questions:

How can we - as fundraisers - influence the way our organizations integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into their DNA?

How can we change our hiring, management, and leadership cultivation in fundraising so that people of color see themselves in our fundraising operations?

How can we adapt fundraising cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship methods to build relationships with people outside of our usual circles?

And how can we change our organizational evaluation systems so that the long-term investments of time and resources inherent in these questions are measured and valued?

Are you thinking about this, too? Are there ways that you are seeing fundraising through the kaleidoscope of diversity, equity and inclusion? Send us your ideas. We'd love to learn from you.

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Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Fundraising: Questions to Consider | Front Range Source

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As a Community Foundation Boulder County board member, I've been in many different discussions about equity over the last couple of years. That's because many foundations around the country, including the Denver Foundation and the Community Foundation Boulder County, have been exploring in depth what a real focus on equity could look like in their communities.

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How Marginalized Families are Pushed out of PTAs

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How Marginalized Families are Pushed out of PTAs

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Parents with socioeconomic resources are more likely to exert influence on school officials.

Rogelio V. Solis / AP

When Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park, Maryland, told parents in the fall of 2014 that it would allow students to use Chromebooks as a way to bridge the digital divide between low-income families and affluent families, there were mixed reactions. The plan was aimed at helping students become more adept at using technology, but the affluent parents, most of whom were white, were apprehensive about their children getting more screen time.

Alison Risso, then the president of the school's PTA, said she was frustrated by the complaints those parents expressed at a meeting. "Everyone who could pay for that Chromebook with the money in their pockets was in the room," Risso said. As Risso recalled, one parent said to her, "I don't need my daughter to learn to make a PowerPoint."

At Rolling Terrace, 68 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch. Sixty-three percent of its population is Hispanic, 15 percent is black, and another 15 percent is white. But the parents of that sliver of the student population that is white and affluent-most of whom were drawn to the school's Spanish-immersion program-have outsize influence over what happens in the school.

Risso explained to parents why it was important for the lower-income children to have access to the Chromebooks. Many of the school's parents-mostly low-income people of color who didn't attend the PTA meeting-were excited about the computers.

Despite the differences in priorities, the school's parents are expected to make decisions as a community. That kind of unity rarely happens in gentrifying neighborhoods, however. When white, affluent parents come into a school that has a high percentage of less-affluent students of color, the more advantaged group tends to take over parent organizations and unintentionally marginalize the parent community that was already there. Ultimately, Rolling Terrace proceeded with its plan to use Chromebooks, but not all such issues are resolved in ways that give low-income parents a voice.

That's unfortunate because parental engagement can greatly improve adolescents' academic and emotional functioning, according to a 2014 study published in Child Development. A substantial body of research also indicates that parent involvement at home and school is an important factor in improving young children's literacy and math skills. PTA membership was also associated with student achievement in a 2006 School Community Journal study authored by researchers at the University of West Florida.

Allyson Criner Brown, the associate director at the nonprofit Teaching for Change, said she has seen small groups of advantaged parents, many of them members of parent organizations, wield great influence on school policy. They often push for programs that would benefit their own children and not necessarily the kids of less means. When these parents don't get what they want, they often make calls to someone higher up than the principal, such as the superintendent, to flex their muscle-something lower-income parents rarely do.

The influence of the PTA depends a lot on the given school's culture and in part on how big a role parents play in fundraising. It can be challenging for a busy principal to seek input from parent groups, especially when those organizations aren't financially supporting a cash-strapped school.

"If the principal knows that the PTA is not a source for fundraising, depending on the principal they might not go to the PTA and ask parents if [a particular project] is a priority," said Alexandra Freidus, doctoral candidate in urban education at New York University. In wealthy or socioeconomically diverse communities, on the other hand, "principals frequently count on parents to fill in budget gaps. Those parents are much more likely to think they have the right to tell principals what they think, to believe their opinions matters to the school, and they're much more likely to be a dominant voice." And while it's true that kids of all backgrounds benefit from attending integrated schools, affluent and white parents tend to think they're the ones bringing value to their school, according to research released earlier this year.

The imbalance of power has become especially clear in recent years as parents with means in gentrifying neighborhoods look for schools that will enrich their kids' lives-schools with diverse student populations, for example, and supplemental-learning opportunities. Schools serving high numbers of poor children often offer Spanish-immersion or gifted-and-talented programs that attract affluent families, which often bring with them the ability to fundraise. (Although Spanish-immersion programs were initially meant to serve children who spoke Spanish at home and were still learning English, they have become increasingly popular across the country with non-Latino parents whose children speak primarily or only English at home, according to a 2015 dissertation for the City University of New York's urban-education program.) But the ability can also mean wealthy families wield disproportionate influence on campus and in the PTA.

According to Freidus, the current body of research on parent engagement in gentrifying schools shows that schools tends to accommodate those parents' interests and concerns. Freidus analyzed a decade of posts in a listserv for parents new to the school and neighborhood and discovered how quickly one unidentified Brooklyn school and its ostensible priorities evolved as the student population became whiter and more affluent. The percentage of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch fell from 90 percent in the 2003-04 school year to 65 percent in the 2011-12 year. At the same time, the school spent much of its resources on the playground and other facilities rather than efforts to get classroom computers and support for the student prom.

Criner Brown said she has seen similar issues play out in Washington, D.C., schools. In some cases, according to Criner Brown, white and affluent parents begin advocating for their children before they even attend the school. "Yes, it is parent advocacy, but a more forceful and entitled version that is more of a demand than a request," she said.

* * *

Kelly Wickham Hurst, an education advocate and former guidance dean at Lincoln Magnet School in Springfield, Illinois, said PTAs rarely discuss race directly, instead using words that "refer to race while not referring to race" out of fear that they'd otherwise appear racist. When disadvantaged parents do try to speak up, they're often dismissed by other parents or by administrators, Wickham Hurst said. Parents of color, she said, bring up concerns about testing and how to help students who are underperforming, but are sometimes brushed off. As one parent spoke, she recalled, a white PTO member who is considered an education expert by parents because she works in the district, sighed and rolled her eyes.

A mother of color also told Wickham Hurst that she and another nonwhite parent were dropping out of the PTO because their concerns were always left in the "parking lot" to be discussed another time-time that never came. "I've been cussed out many times in my career by a very frustrated parent who has never been listened to in school systems who would like to be heard but they never say it in the 'right way,'" said Wickham Hurst, adding that black parents tell her they never hear from the school unless it's about student discipline. Students of color are suspended at disproportionate rates, with some studies indicating teacher bias plays a role in determining discipline.

Alina Adams, the author of Getting Into NYC Kindergarten, works with many parents of color who are trying to get their children into New York City-area elementary schools; she also helps parents adjust to the schools once they're there. According to Adams, many parents of color express concern that they won't be listened to at the school. "[Reluctance to speak up] gets magnified when it's someone of a different race than you or different ethnicity or different economic background," she said. "Maybe you don't speak English so well and you feel intimidated by that. How do I challenge this person on this issue when I know that she's a lawyer and I [just] have a high-school diploma?"

The data bears out some of Adams's points about disadvantaged parents' lack of involvement. Lower educational levels are a factor in their limited engagement, as is having a lower socioeconomic status and being an underrepresented minority, a 2013 study on Parental Readiness Empowerment Programs shows. Meanwhile, a 2014 paper that analyzed black parents at an urban middle school found that perceptions of racism and hostile parent-teacher interactions were significant barriers to their engagement at school.

Meanwhile, Myra Rivera-Blanco, the fundraising co-chair of the Rolling Terrace PTA, said that Latino parents tend to ask different questions about family engagement because, culturally, they see school participation differently. "I get questions about how things work rather than complaints about why things are happening," she said. Many Latino parents believe they should trust the school to handle their child's education appropriately and are less inclined to question teachers and administrators.

Rivera-Blanco is the main contact for many Latino families as one of few Latina members of the PTA; she also serves as the de facto translator at meetings. Rivera-Blanco said many of the school's lower-income parents don't have access to laptops and even cell phones, which makes communication especially difficult.

When schools are cash-strapped, the priorities of the members of the parent organization often become the priorities of the school as a whole. Rivera-Blanco says she sees this dynamic play out often at Rolling Terrace with the Spanish-immersion program, which is populated largely by students with means. For example, parents of kids in the program ensure that its teachers receive gift cards at the beginning of the year and during Teacher Appreciation Week to pay for supplies. "There are parents in our school that can't put enough cents together to get a coat much less give their teacher their supply list," Rivera-Blanco said. "That imbalance is huge. You can walk into a classroom and know which is a Spanish-immersion classroom and which one isn't."

The history of the PTA shows that these race and class dynamics have always been an issue. Christine A. Woyshner explores this context in her 2009 book The National PTA, Race, and Civic Engagement, 1897-1970, exploring how white affluent women who founded what is today known as the National PTA used their influence to achieve reforms. The "black PTA," or the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, on the other hand, was more concerned with ensuring their schools had the basics.

Parent organizations could improve their outreach to low-income parents and parents of color through various means. Experts on parent engagement suggest encouraging parents of color and low-income parents to work together to avoid feeling isolated and using co-chairs to ensure that both advantaged newcomers and disadvantaged have opportunities to influence school policy.

Karen Mapp, a senior lecturer on education at Harvard who has conducted research on family engagement, said that one of the most important factors in whether disadvantaged-parent voices are heard is whether a school leader decides to make inclusion a priority. Mapp pointed to Boston's William W.Henderson School, where the former principal made it a priority to ensure that the school reached out to all parents and fostered trustful relationships that in turn made parents participate more often in school activities.

Halley Potter, a fellow at the Century Foundation, pointed out that some charter schools, such as Blackstone Valley Prep Academy in Rhode Island, have co-chairs and require that a seat on the PTA be assigned to a bilingual parent to help ensure all parents' concerns are acknowledged. When asked what she thought of the path to diverse parent engagement in schools where students are separated by gifted-and-talented programs and general education, Potter said it's hard to bridge that divide. Unless every classroom in the school is diverse, the parents' goals are usually too different. "It's very hard in those situations to create an equitable school engagement and school governance model because ideally what you want in an integrated school is people are fighting together for all of their children," Potter said. A model where all students are challenged and their particular talents are developed through similar approaches to gifted classes, otherwise known as a "schoolwide-enrichment model," may be the best way to pursue true diversity, she said.

Parents, teachers, and administrators should state their goals clearly and work on fostering trust between low-income parents and parents of color, according to a 2013 paper from SEDL out of the Institutes for Research and the U.S. Department of Education. Schools could also increase communication through home visits, such as those made at William W. Henderson School.

As Potter said of Blackstone Valley Prep Academy, school administrators have to do more than hope families will get along. "They had to make sure that they were intentional about shared leadership," Potter said.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Casey Quinlan is an education reporter at ThinkProgress. Her writing has appeared in The Establishment, Dame, The Toast, and Bitch.

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Why Marginalized Families Lose in PTA Politics

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Parents with socioeconomic resources are more likely to exert influence on school officials. When Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park, Maryland, told parents in the fall of 2014 that it would allow students to use Chromebooks as a way to bridge the digital divide between low-income families and affluent families, there were mixed reactions.

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Strong communication between school staff and families is important in any school and has special relevance for schools committed to anti-bias education.

Communication built on misinformation, assumptions or stereotypes can create distance between schools, families and students. If handled with respect and cultural sensitivity, however, school-family communication provides an opportunity to live out the values of inclusiveness and equity, which are at the heart of anti-bias education. The following guidelines can help schools avoid communication pitfalls and support teacher-family relationships built on respect:

Assume good intentions, and approach all families as partners who want the best for their children.

Invite parents or guardians to share knowledge about their students' lives, interests, hopes and struggles.

Invite parents or guardians to share information about family cultures and traditions.

Recognize and respect differences in family structures.

Recognize the role that identity and background may play in shaping relationships between teachers and families.

Bring a sense of self-reflectiveness and cultural humility to all conversations and interactions.

View linguistic, cultural and family diversity as strengths.

In addition to setting a tone of respect and inclusivity, strong communication with families also offers teachers an opportunity to invite family involvement and share curricular goals, materials and resources.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Attending to culturally sensitive communication supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Identity and Diversity. Culturally relevant family engagement strategies communicate to students that their family identities are understood and valued. It also demonstrates respect for families with a diverse range of backgrounds and structures.

Strategies

Inclusive Terminology and Materials

Positive communication can be as simple as using inclusive language when writing and speaking to families. For example, instead of sending home a note that opens, "Dear Parents," use a greeting such as "Dear Families." All communication should be checked for assumptions about household resources, family traditions, cultural practices, political affiliations or other life circumstances. For instance, instead of asking for "mother's name" and "father's name" on a form, have a space for "names of parents/guardians."

Recognition of Key Relationships

Teachers should make a point of learning the central figures in each student's life-including those who may not be legal parents or guardians-and involving them as appropriate. This may include welcoming stepparents, parental partners (regardless of gender) or extended family members.

Use of Home Languages

Because language plays a crucial role in families' lives, teachers should communicate with parents in their home languages as much as possible. Whenever possible, family materials should be provided in students' home languages. When translation is needed, a school-provided translator should be employed, as asking students to translate can put them in an awkward position.

Beginning-of-the-Year Questionnaires or Conversations

Teachers can gather valuable information about students by connecting with parents and guardians early in the school year. Asking family members about students' strengths, challenges and lives outside of school-as well as about their own hopes and fears- provides important background, sets a collaborative tone and allows classroom practice to reflect student identities.

Incorporating family and community knowledge enhances student learning. Students possess tremendous experiential wisdom on issues related to identity, culture, history and justice. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, cousins, neighbors and community leaders frequently have stories to share about their lives and perspectives.

Family and community wisdom can put a personal face on historical or sociological material and help demystify unfamiliar topics, such as LGBT identity or living with a disability. Hearing from real people who have lived through eras of change or participated in social justice movements can provide inspiration as well as information.

Students also carry knowledge of their families and communities inside themselves. Making room to share this knowledge supports the development of student identities.

Family assignments must be envisioned and explained in a culturally sensitive manner. A seemingly harmless activity, such as creating a family tree, can marginalize students whose biological relations are distant or unknown. Such assignments can be modified to recognize the key relationships in students' lives. Other ways to incorporate family and community wisdom into the curriculum include community surveys, student conversations with family members, interviews, guest speakers, video projects, art projects, memoir or other family-based writing, oral histories, learning from family members' professional experiences, and incorporating family or cultural perspectives into the analysis of texts.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Drawing on students' family and community wisdom supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Identity and Diversity. By listening to the stories of their own families and communities, students can deepen their sense of self and make personal connections with historical, literary and sociological material. Hearing about different classmates' families and communities can also foster new perspectives on their own experiences and expand their understanding of other groups, cultures and communities.

Strategies

Family Interviews

Students can interview family members on a variety of issues such as historical events or eras, family experiences of justice or injustice, evolving cultural norms, social movements and identity. Interview format, questions and reporting practices should be customized based on grade level and educational goals.

Guest Speakers

Family and community members can visit the class to speak about a range of topics. Their connections to these issues may be personal, professional or both.

Community Research

Conducting community-based research can deepen students' understanding of social justice issues. This research might include opinion surveys or needs assessments, community interviews, visits to local sites or Internet research about community history.

As students learn and grow together over the course of weeks, months and years, parents and guardians can learn along with them. Strong connections give families the opportunity to support one another in nurturing their children's identities and values, adding richness to the work of anti-bias and social justice education.

There are lots of ways to bring families together, including in-school or community-based events, group email lists and social media. Teachers, school administrators, students, or parents and guardians can coordinate appropriate family connections based on the students' age and the composition of the community. Elementary school students, for example, may be more likely than high school students to enjoy attending events with their families. A given activity may resonate with some cultural communities more than others (though it might be good to offer "stretch" events as well). And some communities will have access to the technology and skills needed to support online interaction, while others will not.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Building connections among families supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Identity and Diversity. This practice deepens students' awareness of the personal and cultural contexts that shape personal experience. It also provides a "learning lab" for introducing different family structures and traditions. Making the curriculum more visible to classroom families helps generate support for anti-bias education work and provides opportunities for families to work with their children on social justice issues. These connections can also foster diverse relationships that echo and strengthen key messages from the curriculum.

Strategies

Family Events

Events that bring students and families together include family potlucks or picnics; family affinity events (e.g., for families from a certain cultural or ethnic group, for LGBT families, for families of color, for adoptive families); showcases of student work; student or community performances; film nights; game nights; and cultural or multicultural events.

Parent/Guardian Education Programs

Educational programming supports community building and engages family members. Possible programs include films, speakers or discussions for parents and guardians on topics such as bullying prevention, identity development, racial experiences, gender expression, sexuality, learning differences and family diversity. Events may stand alone or be part of an ongoing series.

Family Service/Engagement Projects

Service projects can include family action days at the local food bank, working together on neighborhood political and social issues, attending community events such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations or LGBT Pride events, and fundraising projects for community causes.

Pooling Resources and Sharing Support

In addition to organizing or publicizing formal events, teachers can encourage families to connect informally to share information and resources and to support one another in times of need (e.g., the birth of a new baby or a death in the family). The school can foster this type of support by naming it as an explicit priority and creating a user-friendly contact list or online directory.

All local communities have valuable resources that can enhance teaching and learning on social justice topics, even if these resources are not always explicit or obvious. They include events, people, places and organizations.

Events. Cultural and community celebrations, commemorations, political actions, artistic events, performances, student conferences and community education events.

People. Elders, artists, musicians, researchers, community leaders, policymakers, journalists, advocates, local historians, cultural workers and everyday people who have experienced and worked on social justice issues.

Places. Museums, cultural centers, libraries, neighborhood landmarks, and sites of historical interest or struggle.

Organizations. Formal or informal groups engaged in relevant cultural, artistic, social or political projects.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Drawing on local resources supports all four anti-bias domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. Witnessing marginalization, power dynamics and activism in their own communities strengthens personal connections with these curricular concepts. At a broader level, schools benefit from community connections and partnerships, and communities benefit when citizens are educated in matters of equity and justice.

Strategies

Classroom or School Presentations

Individuals or organizational representatives can be invited to speak about how their life or work experiences relate to social justice themes.

Neighborhood Explorations

Social-movement-based history and cultural knowledge often connect to specific cities and neighborhoods. For example, certain New York City neighborhoods offer windows into the lives of different immigrant groups during the 19th and 20th centuries. Montgomery, Ala., houses landmarks and monuments from the civil rights era. Visiting sites like these can add richness to students' curricular experiences. Neighborhood explorations can also be paired with classroom or school presentations.

Connecting with Community Organizations

Most cities and towns have local organizations that engage in cultural activities, community service efforts or social justice advocacy. Many of these organizations are happy to partner with schools, provide students with information and offer opportunities for students to participate in their projects.

A core component of anti-bias education is learning to take action against exclusion, prejudice and discrimination; it can be especially powerful for students to do this in their own schools and local communities.

Consider the following tips for ensuring that community engagement efforts reflect anti-bias values:

Create a community action project that addresses real needs. Community organizations can help articulate these needs and suggest ways to maximize students' time and talents.

Draw on students' knowledge of and personal connection to the issues involved. The more specific the project, the better.

Include a strong research component that ensures students' efforts to increase their knowledge and understanding are not simply based on what they already know.

Incorporate reflection about student attitudes to ensure the project doesn't reinforce assumptions or stereotypes about specific people or communities.

Provide writing prompts to help students consider personal changes they can make to challenge bias, exclusion and injustice.

Study the broader social context surrounding the community problem. Intervene if students "blame the victim" for challenges beyond individual control.

Use texts to spark student reflection about community challenges and issues.

Work "with," not "for," individuals or groups the class wants to support.

Connection to Anti-bias Education

Expecting students to engage directly with community issues and problems supports two of the four anti-bias domains: Justice and Action.

Strategies

Personal Action Plan

After reading about prejudice or discrimination, the Personal Action Plan assignment asks students to reflect on these issues in their own surroundings and explore how they might help make their school and community more welcoming, inclusive and equitable. The Personal Action Plan can focus on one particular topic (e.g., name-calling and bullying, peer culture, diversity of gender expression or LGBT issues), or it can be more general. Plans should focus on acts of personal change, and students should share their plans with classmates to build accountability for implementation.

"Fighting for Fairness" Letters

The Fairness Letter Project (Live Oak School, San Francisco, Calif.) asks students to identify an instance of unfairness in their school or community, research the issue and write an advocacy letter to a person or organization with power to change the situation. In addition to developing issue-based analysis and critical writing skills, this project requires students to evaluate how change happens and where they can best channel their efforts for maximum impact.

Student-Designed Community Projects

Any social justice issue could inspire an individual or group project designed to support local people. Possible projects include designing a public service announcement, conducting a survey or opinion poll, providing direct service through a community agency, creating a workshop or event or hosting a justice-themed art show.

Ongoing Partnerships with Community Organizations

Semester- or year-long community partnerships offer students a chance to establish continuity and deeper connections with particular issues, populations or projects. A partnership spanning multiple years gives each class a chance to build on previous classes' work, multiplying the impact.

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Strong communication between school staff and families is important in any school and has special relevance for schools committed to anti-bias education. Communication built on misinformation, assumptions or stereotypes can create distance between schools, families and students.

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Despite the diverse coalition of activists who fought for its passage, the 19th Amendment didn't bring voting equality to all women. Women's Equality Day offers an opportunity to correct the record and explore how a whitewashed version of history is sustained and supported to this day.

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At our first meeting, we listened to the beginning of this podcast.  Please finish and post discussion below.  What was the unintended impact of Brown vs. Board? What does this mean for educators now?

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it's an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of "whiteness" come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels ne

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Resources for LGBTQ and Gender Inclusive Schools | Welcoming Schools

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How can educators intervene when students tease boys who like pink? What is the best way to support LGBTQ families? Find tips to intervene in bullying and more.

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Responding to Attacks in El Paso and Dayton

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We join you in mourning those lost to violence this weekend. Like many of you, we're feeling angry, exhausted and heartbroken. We take some solace in offering these resources for supporting your students and communities and for doing what you can to fight hate before it turns violent.

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Speaking Up Against Racism about Coronavirus

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Speaking Up Against Racism about Coronavirus

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A conversation about coronavirus is happening among young people right now, and the focus isn't solely on health. When reports of this novel virus-first detected in China in December of 2019-started spreading to other countries, racialized fear began to manifest in public discourse.

Since the virus began to spread, people who identify as Asian American or Pacific Islander (AAPI) have been subjected to racist comments and jokes online or in person, and to isolating behavior from those who are afraid of catching the virus.

Times like these remind us that we must continuously disrupt and address issues of hate and bias, which often find their way into schools.

It's important to get ahead of harmful discourse because we know students are watching or listening to this rhetoric online and on social media. Many children spend hours a day on devices, so information-and misinformation-is likely in the hands of most of your students.

What Our Students Are Hearing

So we can assume our students are seeing posts like this one from a college student who considered dropping a class because "only Asians" were in the classrooms, stating, "I hope I don't catch coronavirus."

They may also observe the racist tropes that falsely point to Chinese people's eating habits as the cause of the spread of the virus.

And these messages don't come only from misinformed youth or social media trolls. For example, the University of California at Berkley apologized after an official Instagram account shared a post that was supposed to inform students about the virus. Instead, it listed xenophobia when "interacting with someone who might be from Asia" among "common" or "normal" reactions to anxiety around the illness.

Anti-Chinese sentiment and any racist or xenophobic rhetoric about the AAPI community is not new. Associating this marginalized group of people with disease is also not new.

Educators need to understand the historical context as they prepare to address this narrative in the classroom or other school spaces.

The Historical Context

Members of the AAPI community are targets right now because public health events have always been racialized. Pandemics that originate in areas populated by mostly people of color get more scrutiny, such as SARS in China or Ebola in West Africa. However, when pandemics occur in the United States and other western countries, such as the novel H1N1, citizens in those countries were not viewed as innately diseased. Many people die yearly from the flu, but Westerners aren't seen as suspicious.

Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States related to disease goes back to when Chinese people began immigrating here. In efforts to bar Chinese workers from entering the country in the late 1800s, white labor unions argued that Chinese people carried diseases that were more virulent than those found in white people.

In the same way junk science was used to justify enslaving Africans, junk science about people from Asia was used to justify laws leading to exclusion and exploitation of Asian immigrants. It solidified fear and phobia against Chinese people. The " yellow peril " narrative was born. It's a racist term that plays on the idea that Asian people would disrupt or harm Westerners' way of life.

These racist tropes are directly tied to the oppression of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States. They were used to justify the Page Act of 1875, which restricted East Asian women from immigrating to the U.S. And they served, in part, as justification for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned most Chinese people from immigrating to the U.S.

Coupled with racist tropes about health and culture, these laws led to racist violence against Asian Americans. The remnants of that legacy remain in public discourse today.

Interrupting Racism

Educators have a responsibility to interrupt any anti-AAPI and xenophobic narratives. Since students may be exposed to racist posts on social media or racist comments about the coronavirus, you might hear some of this discourse in your classroom or throughout the school building. It is imperative that you interrupt it every time it occurs.

Right now, it's important to have a heightened sense of what your students are saying in spaces inside and outside of the classroom. Respond immediately to any news of a student repeating racist or xenophobic language. It's also vital to attend to any students or colleagues who have been harmed by anti-AAPI speech or rhetoric.

Our Responding to Hate and Bias at School guide can help you address issues at any phase of a hate or bias incident.

Educating Students

Because you won't always catch xenophobic or racist comments as they occur, it's important to equip students with the historical context and relevant skills to discern when something is biased and how they can respond.

Our Speak Up at School guide provides resources to help both educators and students tackle discussions about bias and stereotypes. helps guide educators in facilitating critical conversations.

Even if no incident has occurred yet in your school or classroom, you must still be proactive. Create a welcoming and hate-free environment by ensuring that students can identify hate and bias and then encouraging them to disrupt it. Teachers can use our lessons about upstanders, which show students how to respond to hate speech.

This is also an important time to emphasize the necessity of digital literacy, as students may become aware of hateful or biased speech online. Students must learn how to glean credible news sources and spot biased reporting. Spend time going through the pitfalls of the internet and help sharpen their digital literacy skills with lessons and activities.

Even if your students do not represent the identities likely to be harmed by racist comments around the coronavirus, or you believe they're not spreading misinformation and repeating racist tropes, exploring anti-AAPI rhetoric around the virus is still worthy of critical conversations in the classroom.

The truth is all students are affected by hate and bias. It's up to educators to protect those who are targeted by it and give students and other adults the tools to stop perpetrating harm in the future.

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Speaking Up Against Racism Around the Coronavirus

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A conversation about coronavirus is happening among young people right now, and the focus isn't solely on health. When reports of this novel virus-first detected in China in December of 2019-started spreading to other countries, racialized fear began to manifest in public discourse.

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Helping Children Cope with Stress regarding Coronavirus

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Helping Children Cope with Stress regarding Coronavirus