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I am thinking because so many resources are for more than one group we might indicate the audience at the end -- like movies or menus

Everyone / Elem / MS / HS / Educator / Parents

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Rowan University’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, is sponsoring a five-part virtual series to address the national unrest that has followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police.

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Rowan University’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, is sponsoring a five-part virtual series to address the national unrest that has followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police.

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Rowan University's Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in collaboration with the divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, is sponsoring a five-part virtual series to address the national unrest that has followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police.

The series, which is open to all members of the Rowan community and the public, will also address the conditions that led to Mr. Floyd's slaying and will look forward to solutions that could help resolve racially charged issues - in particular, the treatment of blacks by some police - that continue to roil America.

The We Are Not Ok: Injustice, Action, and Healing Series will focus on educating, supporting and providing resources in light of Mr. Floyd's slaying and the reaction to it. Each session will offer an opportunity for participants to voice concerns and contribute to the development of action plans that lead to sustainable change.

"Universities are not exempt from facing issues that plague our society and threaten our democracy," wrote Dr. Monika Williams Shealey, senior vice president for the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, this week on Facebook. "We've heard the stories and watched the videos that documented the deaths of Ahmad Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd and we are watching the aftermath playing out in cities all over the country. We hear the calls for justice and Rowan University is responding by hosting a series of virtual discussions aimed at identifying the root causes and persistence of systemic racism and oppression in this country."

Please join us for all five sessions:
The Match that Lit the Flame: Unpacking Systemic Racism, Policing, and Resistance 3 p.m. Thursday
This session will increase awareness and understanding of the historical context of systemic racism, policing and resistance in America. Participants will develop tools to critically examine recent events within a historical and socio-political context, leaving the session with strategies and resources to help facilitate individual and collective progress.
I Can't Breathe: Discussion of Racial Battle Fatigue, Trauma, and Self-Care 3 p.m. Monday, June 8
Centered on the voices of students, faculty, and staff of color in an effort to increase awareness and understanding of racial battle fatigue and trauma participants in this session will explore coping mechanisms that improve their overall well-being and strategies that facilitate collective care.
Speaking Truth to Power through Pedagogy: Anti-Racist Teaching in Higher Education 3 p.m. Thursday, June 11
This session will build upon faculty members' awareness of systemic racism while exploring anti-racist pedagogy and its application across disciplines. Participants will engage in critical self-reflection in order to effectively implement anti-racist pedagogy in their classroom. Finally, they will explore critical components to designing an anti-racist course and professional approach: incorporating the topics of race and inequality into course content, teaching from an anti-racist pedagogical approach, anti-racist organizing within the campus and linking our efforts to the surrounding community. Participants will leave this session with strategies and resources to develop anti-racist learning outcomes, classroom culture and dynamics, classroom strategies, methods, and assessment.
White People Do Something: A dialogue on Whiteness and Allyship 3 p.m. Friday, June 12
This session will critique the ways in which white people continue to benefit from systemic oppression. Participants will explore strategies for abandoning white guilt in order to re-center the needs of people of color. Participants will develop a toolkit of anti-racist resources and action items to effect social change.
Where Do We Go From Here? Navigating Campus and Community 3 p.m. Monday, June 15
The final program in this series will provide participants an opportunity to engage in problem-solving strategies in collaboration with key community constituents. Participants will be provided a tool to facilitate their action planning.

For more information, visit www.Rowan.Edu/DEI.

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Rowan series addresses racism, historical context and paths forward

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Rowan University's Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in collaboration with the divisions of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, is sponsoring a five-part virtual series to address the national unrest that has followed the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police.

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A free download of this book is available until June 19 at dottirpress.

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Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham

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Click on the Covers to Learn More!
from Booklist Books

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Mackin has an entire list dedicated to this topic. Log into your Mackin account and search by list. I just received an email about it today. Let me know if you didn't get it and I'll forward it.

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Summer Reading: Over 40 Books on Race, Racism, and the Black American Experience to Read Now, as Recommended by Rutgers-Newark Faculty

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In these socially charged times, one of the most important things in the fight against systemic racism and our own internal biases is education. Faculty at Rutgers University-Newark teach and work at one of the most diverse university in the United States, and their research covers race and bias from across a wide range of disciplines in the arts, humanities, sciences, business and law. We put out a general call asking for book recommendations on the black experience in America, and the response was immediate and overwhelming. Below, our faculty recommend their current and classic favorites and tell us why we should read them now.

Most Recommended:

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

In the Castle of My Skin, George Lamming

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

These books were named multiple times as essential reading. The Color of Law is a "hard-hitting and sobering book [that] traces the role of local, state and federal housing policies in segregating the races in the United States," says Tom McCabe, who teaches a History of Newark course at RU-N. "If you ever wondered how your neighborhood came to be all-white, all-black-or-brown, or if you ever wondered the same about your schools, read this book," adds Belinda Edmondson, acting chair of African American and African Studies.

Melissa Valle, an assistant professor in Sociology says From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation "provide[s] much needed structural analyses and context for this latest spate of uprisings around the country. Lamming's novel, In the Castle of My Skin, is "A powerful story about the relation between the UK and its Caribbean colonies," says Sadia Abbas, associate professor of English. And finally, Mark Krasovic, says The Fire Next Time, is a classic for reasons including "the stunning beauty of its language in the face of ugliness and its constant reminder of our interconnected fates, whether they ultimately be liberatory or destructive."

Full Reading List

Recommends:

"A powerful story about the relation between the UK and its Caribbean colonies and the ways in which race structures experience in the colony and the colonial center. Characterized by Lamming's densely suggestive storytelling and analytical style."

"Professor Judy is originally from Minneapolis. The book brings together critical theory, the suppressed Muslim history of american slavery, antiblack racism and the philosophical tradition. It's a significant and brilliant contribution to several disciplines and a profound meditation on language, thought and the possibilities of different varieties of signification."

"A powerful and slily brilliant modernist text about race, poverty and disability."

"The first volume of Moten's trilogy, consent not to be a single being, this book is a collection of brillliant and anarchic, brilliantly anarchic, deeply thoughtful essays aesthetics, politics, life and blackness."
Recommends:
Recommends:

"This collection of essays by writer, cultural critic and Emerson College professor Jabari Asim explores our contemporary moment of emergency as an afterlife, marshaling the past to shed light on the present. Asim salvages hope through a focus on black resilience and black survival. The collection was a finalist for PEN's Art of the Essay award last year. Asim has also written children's books about African-American history."

"This is the first and only substantive history of the U.S. Border Patrol, by UCLA African-American Studies professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, who won a MacArthur Genius Award last year. Just as interrogating the history of policing in the United States is key to understanding black lives and Black Lives Matter, knowing the history of how our borders are policed is key to understanding the lives of immigrants and racialized Others in the United States."

"Minneapolis-based author and scholar Erika Lee provides a tragically timely genealogy of hate directed at "aliens" in American society, beginning with Ben Franklin and ending with Trump's travel bans. Lee is director of the Immigration Resource Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Her comprehensive narrative shows how a nation of immigrants is, paradoxically, also a nation of xenophobia."

Recommends:

"It's easy to read and provides useful background."

"Provides theoretical background, comparative perspective."

"This is a great novel by a major writer."
Recommends:

If you ever wondered how your neighborhood came to be all-white, all-black-or-brown, or if you ever wondered the same about your schools, read this book.

"It argues that the reason we, the residents of the richest country on earth, find ourselves in a pandemic without enough hospital beds or indeed (for 10 percent of the population) without even healthcare; or with barely enough unemployment insurance policies to cover the masses of suddenly unemployed people, is because in the United States the white majority would rather shrink the social welfare net than pay into any system that supports "undeserving" people of color."

"It examines recent US history to argue that the segregation that plagues our cities and contributes to the kind of explosive racial strife we are currently experiencing is the result of decades of consistent anti-integration local, state and federal policies in housing and education. If you ever wondered how your neighborhood came to be all-white, all-black-or-brown, or if you ever wondered the same about your schools, read this book."

"This book builds on the argument, first advanced by Trinidadian historian (and eventually prime minister) Eric Williams that slavery and capitalism are intrinsically linked by illustrating how slavery did not simply contribute to but actually provided the foundation for America's present wealth. In so doing it refutes the belief that African Americans are somehow marginal or play a supporting role in the creation of this country's wealth when their ancestors provided the very basis of it."

"It links the present injustices--the systematic incarceration of mostly African American men, the denial of voting rights to ex-felons who are disproportionately African American--to the nation's shameful "Jim Crow" era of the past century, arguing that the segregation era has never ended, only resulted in (to paraphrase Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man) a more efficient blinding."

"A classic."
Recommends:
"My main advice is that what is needed right now, above all, in this era of COVID-19 and BLM, is class-conscious antiracist literature that points to the material interests that most people in the 99% share when it comes to eradicating racism. Some poems by Langston Hughes in the 1930s are particularly powerful and accessible e.g., "Always the Same"; "Open Letter to the South"; "White Man!"; "Rising Waters" -- and there are plenty more.

"A novel that explores the need for antiracist class consciousness among working-class whites in the South."

Two short stories: "A Party Down at the Square", Ralph Ellison, and "Like a Winding Sheet", Ann Petry

"These two stories from the 1930s have worked for me time and again in the classroom. This last short story is just wonderul for the way it links the alienation of labor to sexist and racist ideology and practice."
Recommends:
"This is a comprehensive review article by one of the premier social psychology researchers of this topic. In it, Fiske distinguishes between the three anti-social tendencies, between motivated prejudice and prejudice that arises from mental short-cuts (automatic processes), and between overt, conscious expressions of prejudice and more subtle, implicit forms of prejudice."

"This book, although a bit old, provides an excellent review of what it feels like to be stigmatized--as well as why stigmatization happens. Chapters discuss how stigmas affect the way one is treated, how it restricts relations with others and limits one's own public behaviors, and how it affects one's own sense of self. This is a text I go back to often."

"This is a somewhat unconventional choice, but it may be an important part of the total story. Fogelman tries to understand the motives and characters of people who overcame their prejudices and did so at a crucial time under the most trying of circumstances. Knowing how and why prejudices are overcome may provide some markers on our way out of the current difficulties."

Recommends:

"I recommend this for so many reasons, including the stunning beauty of its language in the face of ugliness and its constant reminder of our interconnected fates, whether they ultimately be liberatory or destructive."

"Read this for its chronicle of the life of one of our nation's most remarkable thinkers and organizers, for its detailing of her 'radical democratic vision,' and for its conviction that there is no shortcut around that vision in our search for peace and justice."

Recommends:

"This book makes connections between the founding organizations and publications of intersectional black feminism in the 1970s, the radical abolitionism of Harriet Tubman and leaders of the Movement for Black Lives today... The book recounts how Black queer feminists, survivors of violence, have historically and recently organized themselves to demand freedom. As Yamahtta-Taylor's title suggests, this primer shows how to get free by drawing on lessons from history and responding with alacrity, passion, and creativity to violence and crisis."

"Cathy Park Hong recalls the long history of Anti-Asian racism and incarceration in the United States. This precisely written anti-racist manifesto addresses complex feelings of guilt, shame, and rage through readings of the brilliant Afro-Latino standup comic Richard Pryor; meditations on migrating while Asian; and unflinching assessments of quotidian, startlingly normalized racist violence that characterizes the United States from the 1882 race-based Chinese Exclusion Act through the first decades of the twenty-first century."

"The first generation of formerly enslaved Hispanic Caribbean migrants arriving in New York and South Florida in the 1870s organized themselves into clubs that gave them a voice in a revolutionary political party, created a self-funded voluntary night school, and created newspapers where they published their opinions and engaged in interpretation, critique and debate.

Members of this tight-knit Afro-Latinx community eventually founded the Schomburg Collection... at a time of extreme anti-black racial terror and Supreme Court decisions that made racial segregation and exclusion from full citizenship the law of the land. These Afro-Latinx thinkers offer a model for how to get organized to bring about change that is relevant during the economic and policing fallout of the COVID19 global pandemic."

Recommends:

"Part history, part memoir this page-turner lays bare a 1970s racial murder in North Carolina, and it also eloquently elicits a time and place in America that seems like it was a long time ago, but it wasn't. Tyson experienced these events and tries to make sense of them through the lens of the humanist-historian."

"A New Journalism account of the Newark Rebellion of 1967, Ron Porambo's book is a years-long investigation of institutional racism and corruption that spread from the top of city and state governments to local police forces in the state's largest city."

"This hard-hitting and sobering book traces the role of local, state and federal housing policies in segregating the races in the United States. Rothstein, who spoke at the HLLC a year or so ago, details how the government and our courts upheld racist policies to maintain the separation of whites and blacks."

Recommends:

Recommends:

We can counteract our own prejudices. The first step is to turn a hidden bias into a visible one.

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji

"A deep dive into the origins of implicit bias for all readers by the two researchers who put implicit bias on the map with their ground-breaking work. A take-home message is that we may not have much power to eradicate our own prejudices, but we can counteract them. The first step is to turn a hidden bias into a visible one."

"Dr. Eberhardt makes a connection between implicit bias and system racism. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society, including law enforcement. And she also offers us tools to address it."
Recommends:
"This book makes the critical distinction between race, which is a construct, and racism, which is a real and devastating set of behaviors that create oppression and distort democracy. Progress will not be possible until the nation recognizes and acts upon the fact that racism, not 'race,' is our biggest problem. Racecraft can be read in tandem with Melissa L. Cooper's brilliant intellectual history Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Island, Race, and the American Imagination. Cooper's book details how white Americans created a 'racial' identity for African Americans from Georgia's coastal islands, and how black Sapelo Islanders understood their own history and identity as one of struggle against oppression. It thereby shows the critical distinction between 'making race' and 'fighting racism' in U.S. life."

"Muhammad's study of Progressive-era Philadelphia shows how easy it was for white "experts" to manipulate seemingly neutral statistics about crime to support their belief that African Americans were inherently criminal."

"White Americans' ongoing economic exploitation and cultural denigration of African Americans has been strongly facilitated by residential segregation. Rothstein's comprehensive study details the multiple ways that U.S. laws at the local, state and federal level have consistently buttressed segregation. He demonstrates how at least some Americans have demonstrated a willingness to live in integrated communities, only to have their efforts thwarted by often obscure forms of institutionally racist laws. Until these laws are exposed and replaced by policies facilitating integration and fairness, segregation and its attendant evils will remain a primary support for the American racism."

"This book examines the famous power outage and subsequent looting that hit New York City in the summer of 1977 through multiple perspectives, but makes the fundamental point that looting and civil unrest is ultimately caused by a maldistribution of power."
Recommends:

In Darkness and Confusion, Ann Petry, a 1947 short story about the Harlem Riot of 1943 which appears in Petry's 1971 collection.

The Movement: Documentary of a Struggle for Equality, Lorraine Hansberry - a book-length brochure by the Civil Rights group, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) with text by Lorraine Hansberry.

"The Riot" Gwendolyn Brooks - a series of three poems about the Chicago Riots of 1968.

The three books that I've chosen are lesser-known works by authors renowned for championing racial and gender justice. As importantly, they were written as Ann Petry, Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks engaged with the respective social justice movements of their time and how they as black women turned their words into being witnesses to and weapons to injustice.

Recommends:

"I would recommend Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell because it is such an important read of the condition of racism through a legal and political lens but with such narrative creativity. Books like this that are rich and provocative yet nontraditional and accessible invite vigorous discussion. Plus he's just so smart about so much. And We Are Not Saved is equally good for similar reasons."

Recommends:

"All three books provide much needed structural analyses and context for this latest spate of uprisings around the country. Taylor focuses specifically on the Black Lives Matter movement and the purposes of these kinds of protests. Hill uses high-profile and controversial cases of State violence similar to the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (e.g., the police killings of people like Mike Brown, Kathryn Johnston and Freddie Gray, as well as the poisoning of the water in Flint, MI) to demonstrate that such cases are "a symptom of a deeper American problem," and that at the root of each case "is a more fundamental set of economic conditions, political arrangements, and power relations that transform everyday citizens into casualties of an increasingly intense war on the vulnerable" (p.xxii). Davis provides insights into what a just future could and should look like and the need for a radical re-imagining of the criminal justice system that abolishes prisons."

Recommends:

"These books constitute serious scholarship that combines historical sense with uncompromising anti-racism. Each places the question of race in historical, political and ideological contexts in the United States while avoiding the perils of race reductionism or reducing racism to a question of perception or individual prejudice. Required reading to enable effective anti-racism in the context of broad emancipatory politics in the United States."
Recommends:
"Typically, when we think of racism, our focus is on major events that generally receive widespread news coverage. However, racism also occurs in everyday, mundane situations such as those that occur in the marketplace. It is in this context that we often see what researchers describe as microaggressions, microassaults, implicit racism, etc. This research-based book provides not only empirical evidence of marketplace discrimination, but it also examines the legal issues and historical contexts of such marketplace phenomena."

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Summer Reading: Over 40 Books on Race, Racism, and the Black American Experience to Read Now, as Recommended by Rutgers-Newark Faculty

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In these socially charged times, one of the most important things in the fight against systemic racism and our own internal biases is edu

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In 2015, people looking for historical children's literature might have found the New York Times review of the newly released title A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat-a review that praised the book's "abundant charms." A few months later, by the time the book appeared on the Times ' list of the "Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2015," more measured appraisals of the book had already begun to make news.

Central to criticism of the text was its portrayal of an enslaved woman and little girl on a South Carolina plantation. The book includes an illustration of enslaved people smiling as they pick blackberries and hiding in a closet to "lick the bowl clean" after serving dessert to their enslavers. One illustration incorporates words into a drawing of the little girl whisking cream: "Beat beat. Beat beat. Beat beat."

Children's books have the power to inspire and uplift. They can transform young readers. And because of this, they can be an ideal way for students to connect with and learn about history. But what do we do when authors misrepresent that history? What do we do when the stories get it wrong?

When and How Stories Fail Us

Authors of children's books about slavery face a fundamental challenge: How do they depict characters who are enslaved-a condition defined by violence, deprivation, family separation and lifelong servitude-within a literary genre known for happy endings?

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, an associate professor in University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, has compiled a database of children's books about slavery. Surveying more than 170 texts, Thomas and her researchers found that these books often misrepresent or even rewrite history-even if the author is well intentioned. And they do so in largely predictable ways.

One common choice, Thomas says, is to temper the lived experiences of enslaved characters. Often, the departure from history is dramatic. A Fine Dessert isn't alone in its representation of #SlaveryWithASmile. Some books go so far as to erase enslaved characters entirely, focusing instead on celebrating white abolitionists or other accomplices.

During a 2018 talk at the Lapidus Center, Thomas discussed the wordless, illustrated children's book Unspoken, A Story From the Underground Railroad. It's about a white girl who assists a fugitive from slavery. This story about the Underground Railroad, Thomas points out, includes no representation of people who were actually enslaved.

But perhaps even more problematic is the question on the book's back cover: "What would you do if you had the chance to help a person find freedom?" Asking readers to identify with white abolitionists rather than black or Native people escaping enslavement, the question is based on the assumption that most of the text's readers will be white. Thomas says these ideas about the audience for children's literature are pervasive throughout publishing.

Perhaps it's this assumption that prevents publishers from recognizing the damage of popular, common stereotypes, like illustrations of smiling enslaved people, working cheerfully. Even when intended to humanize enslaved characters, Thomas says, these images could inadvertently send a troubling message: "that slavery wasn't all that bad."

When enslaved characters do make it into the spotlight, she explains, they're often represented as "heroic or transcendent," triumphing over slavery. Protagonists are fictional characters or real-life figures who escaped bondage, people like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, rather than one of the millions of people who were born and died enslaved.

John H. Bickford, a children's literature scholar at Eastern Illinois University, agrees. He describes this as what some scholars call a pattern of exceptionalism. In his survey of more than 40 children's books, he says, characters escaped or gained freedom "in every book save two."

"This distortion ... cannot be overstated," he wrote in a 2014 article, noting that escaping from enslavement was extremely dangerous and highly uncommon. "There's a huge gap between what historians understand and trade book authors' narratives."

Thomas explains that this focus on freedom can send a dangerous message: "that no matter how traumatic and violent our collective national past might have been, the United States has always been a land of freedom, opportunity and equality under the law for everyone, if they just work hard enough."

Many children's books about slavery, she argues, are less about teaching children our nation's history and more about "absolving the nation for what actually happened." All too often, stories about slavery are framed within a false narrative of continuous racial progress and the enduring American Dream. Reaching for a happy ending, they leave the truth of slavery behind.

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Lies My Bookshelf Told Me: Slavery in Children's Literature

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In 2015, people looking for historical children's literature might have found the New York Times review of the newly released title A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat-a review that praised the book's "abundant charms." A few months later, by the time the book appeared on the Times ' list of the "Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2015," more measured appraisals of the book had already begun to make news.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Talking about race, although hard, is necessary. We are here to provide tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversation.

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Teaching Channel Guide to Educating for Democracy
Offering youth opportunities to take informed action enables them to develop civic knowledge, build civic skills, gain experience working with others, and deepen their civic commitments. Now, in the digital era, youth can draw on digital media and online platforms to respond to issues of shared concern and mobilize others to bring about change in a variety of ways.

Educators can play a key role in supporting youth to analyze issues fully in order to identify relevant and effective tactics and strategies for action, as well as learning the skills needed to tap into the power of digital media to participate in a variety of ways. Explore the resources on this page to learn more about ways you can help your students take action.
Scholar Activism Engaging in Work that Matters
Tch Laureate Geneviève Debose Akinnagbe teaches ELA at Bronx Studio School for Writers and Artists (BSSWA) in New York City, a secondary school where teachers refer to their students as "Scholar-Activists." She's developed a unit on Scholar Activism for her middle school students where they researched community issues they care about, shared solutions, and connected with a range of community members.

In these two videos, teachers engage their students in an action project.
Watch video >
The first portion of this Deeper Learning video (up to 8:45) shows students taking action through project-based learning with an authentic audience.
Watch video > Digital Civics Classroom Resources Digital Media and Struggles for Justice

Grant Writing: Blending Literature and Community

This Deeper Learning video profiles two students taking action about coastal pollution and raising awareness via social media.

The resources in the ACTION module invite students to carefully consider a broad range of possible tactics and strategies they can take in responding to issues they care about. Students are also invited to extend their definition of what it means to take civic action in the digital age.

Take a look at this video produced by the Black Youth Project that explores what it means to take action in the digital age. You can share this video with your students and utilize the accompanying curriculum resources.

In this video, Sarah Brown Wessling asks her high school students to write a grant proposal for a community organization that will address a social issue of concern and present it to a panel of community members. Check out this blog for her students' reflections on their projects.

To learn more about grant writing, check out this applicable course from our sister company, Learners Edge: Course 5085: Get That Grant! Grant Writing for Teachers.

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Teaching Channel Guide to Educating for Democracy What are effective ways to take action in the digital age? Offering youth opportunities to take informed action enables them to develop civic knowledge, build civic skills, gain experience working with others, and deepen their civic commitments.

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We have all seen the images of fires burning in my hometown of Minneapolis. Pain and outrage have overflowed in protests resulting from the police killing of George Floyd on Monday of this week. Officer Derek Chauvin, who kept his knee on Floyd's neck, despite his outcry that he couldn't breathe and that they were going to kill him, has now been taken into custody, charged with murder and manslaughter.

I'm pained on at least three different levels.

My first level is prideful shame, mostly affecting my surface layers. My shame stems from growing up in Minneapolis and wanting to retain the belief of my youth in "Minnesota nice," the idea that "everyone here gets treated fairly." I've known for a long time that the reality is inequitable, but what's got me ashamed is my own resistance to acknowledging that Minneapolis is diseased in the same way as the rest of our country. There are deep structural fractures in the fabric of our society; none of us should be surprised when that fabric tears in predictable ways. My blind spot of Minnesota provincialism will heal, perhaps without leaving a scar. But even as it heals, I want to draw a lesson: recognizing the dangers still to come and the damages already branded into history is incumbent on all of us, no matter where we live or the color of our skin.

My second pain is a painful and blistering outrage that wounds the underlying layers of my being. I'm a white Jewish man, and I respect that my outrage is at a remove from that of the nation's black communities. But I am heartbroken that we as a nation are failing: despite our best intentions, despite decades-long commitment to ally-ship, we are still in this moment. Our society has allowed a legacy of slave-holding to be passed to law enforcement. Slaveholders believed that they could own the bodies of the enslaved, and so could "discipline" them even to death. This is a legacy that leaped over a failed Reconstruction Era and passed into a century of racial terror lynchings. Now, contemporary police departments also must cope with this inheritance. I'm outraged that so many witness this without bearing witness to it; we all participate in it, even if only through our failure to effectively insist on change and progress. It's an ugly scar we continue to bear.

Finally, I am frightened through and beneath my skin, down through the layers so that the nerves are deadened. This fright means that our souls-all of our souls-are unhealably damaged. We've suffered this too often, and my fright is that society has become inured to police violence directed at black men and women and others who hold less institutional power. It frightens me that, while "black lives matter" initially provoked critical conversations, now too many think of it as just another slogan to which society as a whole need not respond. I am frightened to my core that we'll look back 50 years from now and realize we didn't do enough to halt the targeting of black men by law enforcement. I'm not sure our country can withstand that future.

What's needed here and now is a healthy infusion of our best selves. Can we identify the healthiest part of our social fabric and graft it over the rifts we see? Let every one of us resolutely summon up our integrity-which I believe is our strength-and insist on justice in this case and beyond:

Today, officials arrested and charged the officer; now, let's hold a trial steeped in justice.

We must hold law enforcement accountable, as this California scorecard attempts to do.

We must train law enforcement much more rigorously, so that both unconscious bias, overt bigotry and systemic racism become infrequent or non-existent.

We must root out those law enforcement officers unable or unwilling to see that they have no right beyond arrest.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?"

Let's start hearing right now. We must understand the lesson that our nation's inequities affect and implicate all of us. It is not someone else's job to make it better. Thank you for being a part of this community that is working so hard to do that.

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Facing History and CEO Roger Brooks on the need for examining the killing of George Floyd.

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

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

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Learning for Justice | Education Resources

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

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Being Sensitive to Trauma

Discussion of the following topics may be traumatic for students. Educators are encouraged to seek guidance in trauma-informed practices in preparation for discussions related to these topics. Learn more from these resources and those below.

Articles and Resources About Current Events

The following resources and updates address the events and aftermath following the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

Multimedia / social media
Kojo For Kids: Jason Reynolds Talks About Racism And The Protests
Best-selling YA author Jason Reynolds has grappled with racism personally and in his writing. The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature also recently co-authored a book for young people on fighting racism: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. Public radio host Kojo Nnamdi, based at WAMU in Washington, DC, asked Jason Reynolds to join this edition of Kojo For Kids to help listenders understand what has led to the tensions we've seen over the last week, and to talk about why racism persists and what we can do to build a less racist society.
A Conversation about Racism: ALL AMERICAN BOYS, Five Years Later
This summer marks the 5th anniversary of All American Boys. Join authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely for a very special "In Conversation" from The Author Village. Registration costs $10.00 and 100% of the authors' proceeds will go to Black Visions Collective Minnesota.

Authors Organize Kit Lit Rally for Black Lives on Facebook ( School Library Journal)

Kwame Alexander, Jason Reynolds, and Jacqueline Woodson have organized a Kit Lit Rally for Black Lives on The Brown Bookshelf Facebook page on Thursday June 4 at 7 p.m. EDT. There will be two separate 45-minute conversations, one for young people and a second for parents, educators, and librarians.

How to Talk About Violence with Students

Understanding the impact of racism and violence on mental health

Tips for talking about violence

Talking about tough topics in the news

Note: If you are connecting with your students remotely, this resource guide for virtual circles of concern offers tips for managing conversations about difficult topics in distance learning settings.

Classroom Resources

Teaching about racism and violence

Resources: Racism and violence

Resources: More about race and racism

Talking About Race (National Museum of African American History and Culture)

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture has just launched Talking About Race, a new online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society, from the economy and politics to the broader American culture. The online portal provides digital tools, online exercises, video instructions, scholarly articles and more than 100 multi-media resources tailored for educators, parents and caregivers-and individuals committed to racial equality. The museum moved up the launch date due to the number of racially charged incidents in recent weeks.

Articles and multimedia

Reflecting on perspective

Culturally responsive practice

This collection of culturally responsive resources include a wide range of topics related to honoring students' identities and experiences, addressing bias in schools and classrooms, and digging into the hard work of personal reflection and action.

Recommended Reading

Books for students

Talking about race

Racial injustice and violence

These books can serve as powerful mirrors and windows alike. While the majority of these books are written for a young adult audience, the first book is written for children. These books can also provide valuable perspectives for adults.

Read more in the following:

Finding diverse books: Mirrors and windows

Books and resources for adults

Race and racism
Books Additional resources

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Talking About Racism and Violence with Students: Resources for Educators

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Discussion of the following topics may be traumatic for students. Educators are encouraged to seek guidance in trauma-informed practices in preparation for discussions related to these topics. Learn more from these resources and those below. The following resources and updates address the events and aftermath following the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

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Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi Keynote Conversation | SLJ Day of Dialog 2020

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Discovery Education's new channel with resources curated by K-5, 6-8,  9-12, & Educators.  Requires Google  Sign-In (westorangeschools.org)

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BrainPOP's Antiracism Resources
Let's Talk About it
BrainPOP's selection of free resources to help engage kids in difficult but essential antiracist conversations

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Click on the Covers to Learn More! from Booklist Books

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National Black Lives Matter at School is an organization struggling for liberation and racial justice in education for Black youth, educators, and all youth of color. We are a Black-led and multi-ethnoracial collective of educators, parents, organizers, youth, and community folx who are committed to creating a more just world so that all people may be able to access their full humanity. We work to address racial justice in education by promoting restorative justice, advocating for mental health support, increasing Black teaching staff, ending police presence in schools, and mandating Black history and ethnic studies. We encourage all educators, students, parents, unions, and community organizations to join our annual week of action during the first week of February each year.​

Our collective is guided by core principles that are grounded in a Black Feminist framework. Political views that have brought us together in doing this work, deep revolutionary transformational politics, opposition to neoliberalism, corporate reforms in education, defend and transform unions, Black Queer feminist anticapitalist politics, abolitionist politics and approach to restorative and transformative justice.

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National coalition organizing for racial justice in education.

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These movies offer jumping-off points for conversations about injustice. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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The latest in the Ordinary Terrible Things series, a white child sees TV coverage of a police shooting-and has some questions.

"A much-needed title that provides a strong foundation for critical discussions of white people and racism, particularly for young audiences. Recommended for all collections.
-Ashleigh Williams, School Library Journal, starred review

"A necessary children's book about whiteness, white supremacy, and resistance. Important, accessible, needed." - Kirkus

"Anastasia Higginbotham knows something that far too many of us have forgotten: Children are smart. Children are observant. Children understand fairness and justice. and they have an immense capacity for engaging with the "difficult" topics that we grown-ups too often try to avoid. I am in love with Not My Idea, and with Higginbotham's direct, radical, compassionate approach to talking about whiteness, racism, and the need to tell painful but important truths. As a white parent working to raise conscious, loving, anti-racist humans, I cannot wait to share it with my kids."
- Kate Schatz, NYT-bestselling author of Rad American Women A-Z, Rad Women Worldwide, and Rad Girls Can

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The latest in the Ordinary Terrible Things series, a white child sees TV coverage of a police shooting-and has some questions. "A much-needed title that provides a strong foundation for critical discussions of white people and racism, particularly for young audiences.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Research shows that many people feel they do not have the information needed to discuss race in a way that is candid, safe and respectful of other viewpoints and experiences.

"The portal offers a wealth of resources to inform and guide discussions-videos, role-playing exercises, targeted questions and more, said Crew." "We hope that people will use this site to become more comfortable about engaging in honest dialogue and self-reflection."

Talking About Race builds upon decades of work by the museum's educators. It is the result of extensive research, studies, consultations, and educational resources from these fields: history, education, psychology and human development. It includes published research from leading experts, activists, historians, and thought leaders on race, equity, and inclusion, including Brené Brown, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Robin DiAngelo, Julie Olsen Edwards, Jerry Kang, Ibram X Kendi, Enid Lee, Audre Lorde, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Tim Wise.

Phase one of the portal features eight foundational subjects including:

Being Anti-Racist: a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily.

Bias: the inclination or prejudice toward or against something or someone.

Community Building: connecting and engaging with others doing anti-racism work and exploring issues of race.

Historical Foundations of Race: how race, white privilege, and anti-blackness are woven into the very fabric of American society.

Race and Racial Identity: how societies use race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression.

Self-Care: caring for one's mental, emotional, and physical health to sustain the work of dismantling racism.

Social Identities and Systems of Oppression: systems built around the ideology that some groups are superior to others.

Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.

Explore Talking About Race at nmaahc.si.edu/talkingaboutrace. The portal is free and does not require a registration or sign-up to use. Talking About Race is generously supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies.
Download Images for Media Use Social Media Toolkit
About the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Since opening September 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has welcomed more than 7 million visitors. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the nearly 400,000 square-foot museum is the nation's largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. For more information about the museum, visit, follow @NMAAHC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture Releases "Talking About Race" Web Portal

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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture today launched Talking About Race, a new online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society, from the economy and politics to the broader American culture.

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"I believe in the power of Facing History."

-Durias D., Facing History Alum

"I went to a Facing History workshop and it opened my eyes."

-Tareeq R., Educator

Facing History & Ourselves
uses lessons of history
to challenge teachers
and their students
to stand up to bigotry and hate.

Facing History & Ourselves is more than our name. It is an active and continuous process that calls on each of us to connect the choices of the past to those we face today. To build a more just and equitable future, we must face our history in all its complexity, Are you ready to face history with us?

Learn how you can experience Facing History

Facing History has thousands of research-based resources and professional learning events to support Social Studies and English Language Arts education.

Not in the United States?

Sign Up

And hopefully, they will always remember what happened to us and make sure that it won't happen again.

Sonia Weitz, Holocaust survivor and poet

Sign up to download the PDF version of our textbook, Holocaust and Human Behavior.

Facing History students are 94% more likely than their peers to report that their class motivated them to learn.

92% of Facing History teachers agree that Facing History helps their students stand up for what they believe even when others disagree.

91% of elective teachers agree or strongly agree that their Facing History course promoted their students' abilities to ground reading, writing, and speaking in evidence from text.

Demand for our work is greater than ever. Make a 100% tax-deductible donation today and you'll help us reach even more teachers and students around the world, giving them the tools to stand up to bigotry and hate.

Gift Amount

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Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate.

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‘Just Mercy’ Is Streaming for Free This Month to Educate Viewers on Systemic Racism

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Just Mercy, a 2019 film about civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, is available to stream for free through the end of June, reports William Earl for . Viewers can watch the movie on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Google Play and Amazon.

Warner Bros. announced the free rental amid widespread protests sparked by a Minneapolis police officer's killing of 46-year-old George Floyd.

"We believe in the power of story," says the entertainment conglomerate in a statement posted on Twitter. "Our film Just Mercy, based on the life work of civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, is one resource we can humbly offer to those who are interested in learning more about the systemic racism that plagues our society. ... To actively be part of the change our country is so desperately seeking, we encourage you to learn more about our past and the countless injustices that have led us to where we are today."

Directed by Daniel Cretton and based on Stevenson's book of the same name, the movie tells the story of one of Stevenson's (Michael B. Jordan) first cases as a young lawyer. In 1989, he traveled to Monroeville, Alabama, in hopes of overturning the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), an innocent black man who spent six years on death row for the murder of an 18-year-old white woman. An almost entirely white jury convicted McMillian on the basis of flimsy evidence raised by a white sheriff and district attorney, wrote Andrew Lapin for NPR in 2019.

Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit organization focused on criminal justice, prison reform and racial justice. EJI has argued multiple cases in front of the Supreme Court, including a ruling that banned mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles, and has successfully challenged many death row convictions, according to its website.

As Chris Hedges reported for Smithsonian magazine in 2012, Stevenson was 16 when four juveniles murdered his grandfather in Philadelphia.

"Losing a loved one is traumatic, painful and disorienting," Stevenson said to Smithsonian. Still, he added, the experience, as well as friends' and family members' subsequent encounters with violence, "reinforced for me the primacy of responding to the conditions of hopelessness and despair that create crime."

As protesters call for an end to systemic racism and police brutality around the country, other companies are making work by black intellectuals and creatives more easily accessible, too. During the month of June, the Criterion Channel, a streaming service for classic and independent films, has lifted its paywall on a select number of titles by black filmmakers. Viewers can now stream Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, Maya Angelou's Down in the Delta, Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason and Kathleen Collins' Losing Ground, among other films, for free, reports Ryan Lattanzio for . On Spotify, users can also listen to the entire audiobook of Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped From the Beginning, a comprehensive history of American racism, reports Emily Martin for

For more educational resources, check out Smithsonian magazine's list of 158 articles, podcasts, videos and websites that catalog the history of anti-black violence and inequality in the United States.

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'Just Mercy' Is Streaming for Free This Month to Educate Viewers on Systemic Racism

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Just Mercy, a 2019 film about civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, is available to stream for free through the end of June, reports William Earl for . Viewers can watch the movie on multiple platforms, including YouTube, Google Play and Amazon. Warner Bros.

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Tell Me Who You Are Authors take the TED stage to talk about the need for teaching racial literacy

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Tell Me Who You Are Authors take the TED stage to talk about the need for teaching racial literacy

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo: What it takes to be racially literate

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Over the last year, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo traveled to all 50 US states, collecting personal stories about race and intersectionality. Now they're on a mission to equip every American with the tools to understand, navigate and improve a world structured by racial division.

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Before even completing their own high school educations, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo set out to transform curriculums throughout the U.S. by tackling a huge missing piece: racial literacy.

Even though Vulchi and Guo, who are Indian American and Chinese-American respectively, had their own distinct experiences with race and racism, they realized they didn't have any meaningful conversations or learning around race until their sophomore years. They identified two divides: a "heart gap: an inability to understand each of our experiences, to fiercely and unapologetically be compassionate beyond lip service," and a "mind gap: an inability to understand the larger, systemic ways in which racism operates."

So they aimed to provide educators with a way to bridge those conversations in the classroom. In 2017, Vulchi and Guo developed The Classroom Index with help from Princeton University's African American studies department.

The text won them a book deal with Penguin Random House, which helped them fund their book Tell Me Who You Are. Guo and Vulchi took a gap year after graduating from high school, traveling across the U.S. to collect 500 stories on race and culture. The duo submitted the manuscript on the same day they moved into their college dorms. The pair also created CHOOSE, a nonprofit aimed at legislative change at the national level to mandate racial literacy curriculum guidelines in K-12 education.

"We need to each begin by learning in our own local communities, bridging the gaps between our own hearts and minds to become racially literate. Once we all do, we will be that much closer to living in spaces and systems that fight and care equally for all of us. Then, none of us will be able to remain distant," they said in a 2017 TED talk, adding, "Sorry, mom and dad, college can wait."

Kaley LaQuea is an award-winning print and digital journalist who's been creating content since 2008. She's passionate about economic, environmental and social justice. She has an unhealthy relationship with caffeine and two cats: Totoro and Mononoke.

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Tell Me Who You Are: Two High School Students Take Charge on Racial Literacy - ParentsTogether

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Before even completing their own high school educations, Priya Vulchi and Winona Guo set out to transform curriculums throughout the U.S. by tackling a huge missing piece: racial literacy. Even though Vulchi and Guo, who are Indian American and Chinese-American respectively, had their own distinct experiences with race and racism, they realized they didn't have any meaningful conversations or learning around race until their sophomore years.

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Don't Just Read About Racism - Read About Black People Living

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Don't Just Read About Racism - Read About Black People Living

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Author Nic Stone tells how in this Cosmopolitan article

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In the Margins Social Justice Book Awards -- 2020

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In the Margins Social Justice Book Awards -- 2020

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In the Margins Mission Statement:
To seek out and highlight fiction and non-fiction titles of high-interest appeal for male or female readers, ages 9-21, who may fit into one or all of the following categories that identify with:
– *BIPOC youth
– youth from a street culture
– youth in restrictive custody
– youth who are reluctant readers

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This memoir covers the wrongful treatment the criminal justice system subjected Albert Woodfox to as a man who spent over four decades in Louisiana's Angola prison, one of this nation's most notoriously known state prisons. Woodfox spent most of these years in solidarity confinement as part of the Angola 3 who were wrongfully convicted for the murder of a CO (corrections officer) while in jail for lesser crimes. To keep from going insane, Woodfox credits the unwavering friendship with his two wrongly convicted Panther comrades Robert King and Herman Wallace and his ability to channel his anger into educating himself, which aided his transformation into a leader amongst the prisoners. The committee strongly believes "this memoir serves as a strong tool of advocacy against an unjust criminal justice sentence that turns a blind eye to the disproportionality of solitary confinement in states such as Louisiana where 20 percent of more than 2700 inmates have been in solitary confinement for more than a year."

Abdur-Rahman, Dr. Kevin H. Solving the Riddle. February 2019. Page Publishing, Inc. Paperback. $16.95. 192 pages. 9781644621165. Older Teens and Adults. This journey takes you through Dr. Abdur-Rahman's life as a person condemned for life as one of the biggest drug dealers in Philly, from changing to being redeemed back into society after a long prison term and rehabilitation as a major society behavior changer in Philadelphia during the late 1980's to mid 1990's . In Solving the Riddle he discusses in detail how to avoid the pitfalls of an ill society, its negative influences, and dysfunctional situations by giving healthy information to our at-risk population. Dr. Abdur-Rahman's book also privides preventive ideas for professionals working in the field of delinquency prevention.

Grunenwald, Jill. Reading Behind Bars. July 2019. Skyhorse. Paperback $25.99. 360 pages. 9781510737068. New Adults and Older. In this personal narrative of her first year job experience as a certified librarian in a an Ohio men's prison, Graunenwald makes you sometimes laugh and other times think deeply about the humanity of those patrons who live behind bars. As she adapted to the security measures for the new lockup environment she worked in, she grew into a better understanding of how libraries offered a brief escape for those in lockup which was neutral, open for access, and free of the rigors of life on the cell block.

Kotlowitz, Alex. American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. Nan A. Talese. Hardback $27.95. 304 pages. 9780385538800. Adults. In 2018 there were 2948 shooting victims in Chicago. The book looks into the ongoing epidemic of senseless shootings in urban Chicago. Kotlowitz does a great job of gaining the trust of some of the people who are the victims or perpetrators who live in these violent communities which are essentially war zones. After gaining the trust of these residents he got an up close look at the psychological toll this dreadful violence has taken on the victims and their families.

Marie, Jozanne. Beautiful: Unashamed & Unafraid. April 2019. Savio Republic. Paperback $18.00. 9781642931204. New Adults and Older. This book tells the courageous story about a young lady of Jamaican decent who was experienced sexual assault from the age of 6-16 years of age by her own biological father. It goes in detail why sexual molestation is seldom talked about and how in our society this subject is often treated as taboo. Her nightmare started with her teen mother wanting to kill her when she was a baby; it progressed into her being violated sexually, mentally, and physically by her father; and peeked with her being coerced into having an abortion at age 16. This is a must read book to help others understand how to better sustain the fortitude needed for overcoming the trauma of rape abuse, how to talk about it openly, and how to forgive in order to heal.

Minor, Cornelius. We Got This. November 2018. Heinemann. Paperback $25.63. 160 pages. 9780325098142. Adults. Educating our students in these drastic times has become more and more difficult. In his book "We Got This," Minor shines a beacon of hope on the quest to strengthen teacher to student connections. He discusses how to carefully listen to students as the best way to prepare for teaching so as to not make students feel disenfranchised. This book contains points on equity issues and offers strategies for offsetting inequity.

Other 2020 Nominations and Awards

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TOP ADVOCACY/SOCIAL JUSTICE TITLEWoodfox, Albert. Solitary. March 2019. Grove Press. Hardback $26.00 320 pages. 978080212080. Adults. This memoir covers the wrongful treatment the criminal justice system subjected Albert Woodfox to as a man who spent over four decades in Louisiana's Angola prison, one of this nation's most notoriouslyknown state prisons.

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BrainPOP's Antiracism Resources
Let's Talk About it
BrainPOP's selection of free resources to help engage kids in difficult but essential antiracist conversations

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Click on the Covers to Learn More!
from Booklist Books

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Across the globe, individuals and societies are confronting profound questions about identity, membership, and living with difference.

This collection provides structured activities for making connections to current events and discussing sensitive topics in a safe and reflective classroom. The lessons examine examples of division and intolerance, as well as powerful cases of individuals and communities working together and standing up to hate. Use this collection to help your students:

Recognize and discuss both explicit and implicit manifestations of antisemitism, racism, and xenophobia

Improve their critical thinking and news literacy skills

Develop empathy and a sense of civic responsibility

Identify concrete ways that young people can participate in nurturing a civil society and a stronger democracy

These resources can be used together or separately, depending on your students' need and class time. Whether you choose to teach one lesson or all three, it is important to use these resources within a classroom context that fosters civil discourse and student reflection.

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This collection provides structured activities for making connections to current events and discussing sensitive topics in a safe and reflective classroom. The lessons examine examples of division and intolerance, as well as powerful cases of individuals and communities working together and standing up to hate.

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Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards
This guide provides all the materials required to
facilitate a professional development training
introducing educators to the Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards.

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How we define who is like "us" and who is not is an important issue. Questions of sameness and difference are a big part of an individual's identity formation, but they take on even greater significance when applied to groups and nations.

Some argue that categorizing people into groups is natural and part of the way humans try to make sense of their world. For example, should skin color, culture, or national origin be markers of identity? What about differences in gender, religion, or sexual orientation? How should people decide which differences to emphasize and what to do with those differences?

Facing History teaches how categorizing people as "other" has been used in the past as the basis for segregation, apartheid, and . Studying these histories raises essential questions about citizenship, integration, and the consequences of how individuals, groups, and nations define their collective identities. This site offers readings that will help educators to address current issues of diversity and difference.

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How we define who is like "us" and who is not is an important issue. Questions of sameness and difference are a big part of an individual's identity formation, but they take on even greater significance when applied to groups and nations.

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National Black Lives Matter at School is an organization struggling for liberation and racial justice in education for Black youth, educators, and all youth of color. We are a Black-led and multi-ethnoracial collective of educators, parents, organizers, youth, and community folx who are committed to creating a more just world so that all people may be able to access their full humanity. We work to address racial justice in education by promoting restorative justice, advocating for mental health support, increasing Black teaching staff, ending police presence in schools, and mandating Black history and ethnic studies. We encourage all educators, students, parents, unions, and community organizations to join our annual week of action during the first week of February each year.​

Our collective is guided by core principles that are grounded in a Black Feminist framework. Political views that have brought us together in doing this work, deep revolutionary transformational politics, opposition to neoliberalism, corporate reforms in education, defend and transform unions, Black Queer feminist anticapitalist politics, abolitionist politics and approach to restorative and transformative justice.

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National coalition organizing for racial justice in education.

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About the Brown Bookshelf - The Brown Bookshelf

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The Brown Bookshelf is designed to push awareness of the myriad Black voices writing for young readers. Our flagship initiative is 28 Days Later, a month-long showcase of the best in Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult novels written and illustrated by Black creators. You can read more abou…

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These movies offer jumping-off points for conversations about injustice. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic

These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020. I've witnessed video footage of Ahmaud Arbery shot and killed while jogging, George Floyd murdered by the police, and Christian Cooper harassed while bird watching in Central Park. As we think about the next generation of adults we are influencing, particularly our White students, now more than ever, we need to teach more than kindness.

As an equity advocate, I have lots of conversations about culturally responsive teaching and multicultural education. Not too long ago while I was consulting with an elementary school principal she said, "Multicultural Education is nice, but we are well over 90% White at my school."

A common myth regarding multicultural education is that it is about helping students of color see themselves within the content. But multicultural education is about more than just race: It refers to any form of learning or teaching that incorporates the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds ( Glossary of Education Reform). And even if the majority of your students are White, it doesn't mean we shouldn't teach from a multicultural perspective.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating for a bunch of Kumbaya moments in the classroom. This is not a post about how we need to teach students to embrace diversity and love each other. It's about the influence we can and should have on our students. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings taught us that we teach what we value. Therefore, we are part of the problem if we refuse to teach about antiracism and speak out against police brutality. Our students look up to us as adults, and many of our students mimic our behavior. If we are silent around social justice matters, we send a loud message to our students about where we stand as these issues impact many of the communities we serve.

In fact, we need to go beyond multicultural education. In this 2017 interview, Zaretta Hammond differentiates between multicultural education and social justice education, which provides "a lens for the student, really being able to look at the world and seeing where things aren't fair or where injustice exists." To ensure the changes our society is hurting for, we need to give our White students both multicultural and social justice education. Additionally, Dr. James Banks, the father of multicultural education, advocates for educators to teach our students about social and civic action. Ensuring that students engage in multiple perspectives without coupling their learning with civic engagement does not complete the process of developing socially just citizens who are willing to take a stance against the mistreatment of others. We need to help our students find ways they can take action in response to what they have learned.

Going back to the principal I was speaking with about whether there was a need for multicultural education at her school, I was thinking, "This is why multicultural and social justice education is so important!" Even with her assumptions that because there wasn't a lot of racial representation at her school, does that mean the small percentage of students of color don't matter to her? If that's the case, what would her teachers say? Would they support her sentiments?

Why Multicultural Education is 100% Relevant in All-White Schools

"Whiteness" is Complex

When someone asks why multicultural education is needed at a predominately White school, an assumption is being made that White people are a homogenous group. But White people are as heterogeneous as other racial and ethnic groups: there's socioeconomic status, gender and sexual orientation, identity, religion, language, age, and disability, to name a few. All of those represent different cultures. Sometimes, when you're in a dominant culture and used to things being a certain way, you don't necessarily think about your ancestry or heritage and how things have changed over time. And because conditions have changed over time, it may appear that Whiteness is Whiteness, but there are so many different cultures embedded within that broad category.

I think it's essential that we help teach our White students about their ancestors and the origins of when their families first arrived in the United States. The languages, the cultures, the traditions, all those things don't necessarily have to be lost. They can be retrieved.

Let's go back to the 1790s, where the first census was started. With the first US Census, they classified race. The classifying of race allowed those in power to determine or allow a few rights: Who gets the right to get jobs? Who gets the right to marry? Who gets the right to own property? That's how the social construct of race started.

Above is a view of Europeans, or some of the first immigrants, who were coming from various countries. And if you look at the picture, they're White people, right? But they're coming from multiple countries. At this time, there were several languages represented. You had folks that came from Italy, Germany, Russia, England, and so on. There were all types of cultures coming into the United States.

There were also various forms of religions represented when the Europeans began to arrive in the US. In Russia, you had the Orthodox church. In England, you had the Anglican church. When they first came, they weren't willing to give up their culture and become this one White race. They held onto their traditions, values, and beliefs. But we see that over time, things have changed to where White supremacy and racial hierarchies began to form. Today, there are a lot of families who have European origins that may not necessarily speak the language from their original land of ancestry because those things might have been lost over generations.

Multicultural Literacy Is a Separate and Necessary Literacy

The concept of "literacy" is broad. Still, it can be divided into many different sub-categories. One of these is multicultural literacy, the ability to uncover biases relating to culture, and the skills to view the world through different cultural perspectives.

Dr. Robin DiAngelo says, "Historically reinforced ideologies such as individualism and color-blindness have left many White people racially illiterate but racially conscious when perceiving other racialized groups." So because they're in the dominant culture, they don't necessarily have to think about race, but they'll maybe notice racial issues that are not related to Whiteness.

In other words, maybe they might notice police brutality in a Black community. Perhaps they might see issues of race with Islamophobia and discrimination. But we want our students to do more than notice; responding to issues of racism, prejudice, and discrimination is essential.

Having literacy in this area is also key for equipping White students to participate more actively in conversations about racial justice. If they are not regularly exposed to these conversations, they are less likely to speak up on this topic. White friends and colleagues tell me all the time that they want to say something when racism and equity come up, but they often hold back because they don't know what to say or are afraid to say the wrong thing. With a higher level of multicultural literacy, our students will build more confidence.

What We've Been Doing Isn't Enough

Although multicultural education certainly isn't new, it's clear that what we've been doing up to this point hasn't been enough.

As recently as a few weeks ago, there have been instances of White people utilizing the police as a means to address their encounters with people of color. The underlying issue of racism is apparent in many of these instances. Discussing current events and helping White students understand why they should also be upset at discrimination and racism may prevent a continuous cycle of White people remaining silent and complicit when issues happen that do not directly impact them.

These conversations are essential to have. It's also critical to teach students about becoming allies and co-conspirators, especially at the middle and high school levels. It might be a little bit difficult with your first and second graders, and maybe your kindergartners, but I think there are some messages you could still portray to your students even at that age.

What Can Multicultural Education Teach Our White Students?

We've already established multicultural education goes beyond race. There's so much within the concept of "culture," and we must help our White students understand how race can impact them and how they can actively use whatever privilege they have to reduce issues of racism, discrimination, and bigotry.

1. Understanding Their Own Cultural and Ethnic Background

It's not uncommon for White people to say, Oh, I'm just White. I don't have a culture. We need to teach our White students about what their cultural background is and their ethnic backgrounds so they can understand and think about their language and religions going back to their ancestry. Lessons on their culture may help them start to understand how privilege and White supremacy began. So begin with going back and taking some time to help your students understand that. You can also work with students by exploring community history and cultural influence.

One of the things you can teach your students, your White students, is in history. Many White immigrants have been accused of marginalizing other White immigrants. For example, the Irish and Italians were mistreated, discriminated, and marginalized against by other White immigrants. If we can teach our White students how their ancestors might have perpetuated that oppression or perhaps were part of that oppression against each other, maybe that will help them understand a little bit how in 2020, oppression continues to exist to those who are not included in the dominant culture. They can kind of see how the "haves" and the "have nots" happened back then. One of the things we want to do is help students relate items from their background knowledge and be able to bring those to light.

2. Studying Implicit Bias in Everyday Language

Another thing we can do is discuss everyday language. How are words associated with white and black used? Words such as blackmail, blackballed, or blacklisted have different connotations than words like white labeled or whitelisted. We can have students examine how these words may spark negative perceptions based on their meanings and associations.

Consider how words such as "alien" or "immigrant" may trigger the thoughts of someone of Mexican descent. These types of stereotypes in our language may trigger our Latinx community. The same rule applies to phrases like "You should speak up more, you're so quiet" to an Asian student.

The language we use every day may not seem significant because of the implicit biases we have developed in our lives. The words we use daily are influenced by how we were raised, our social circle, and the media. We may not notice how some of the words we use may have adverse effects on particular groups of people (stereotypes, derogatory language, etc.). We can teach students about implicit bias and how to overcome bias in our language usage.

3. Examining Representation in Curriculum and Beyond

Let's take a look at our school curriculum. Have your students investigate how various cultural groups are represented in the school's curriculum. Lead these discussions with your students and have them understand it because a lot of times, that's not a thing we think about. When we are discussing representation in the school's curriculum, allow opportunities for a dialogue beyond heterosexual, cisgender, Christian-based educational norms. Instead, talk about subjects that aren't reflected, such as disabilities, and how they are depicted in the curriculum. How are people from the LGBTQ community portrayed or even acknowledged in the content? Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of a single story. We need to make sure that we can bring in various perspectives in our curriculum and instruction.

If students find minimal to no representation of certain groups in the curriculum, discuss ways to bring in a variety of multicultural perspectives. The website We Need Diverse Books is an excellent resource for building a more inclusive classroom library, and Milner published an article that discusses developing a multicultural curriculum for an all-White classroom.

From there, you can expand your communications by discussing popular culture and how various groups are represented in multiple media outlets such as the news, music, movies, and social media. Have them study or research certain groups and how the articles that come up and the titles of those articles. What do the reports say versus other articles about various groups?

4. Understanding and Recognizing Privilege

A combination of multicultural and social justice education can help students see the trouble with implicit racism and how even though they are not doing anything actively racist, they are still benefiting from a legacy of racism. Calling the cops to say that "an African American man is threatening me and my dog" is a result of White privilege. Knowing that Black people have historically been mistreated by law enforcement and using that knowledge to one's advantage is inhumane.

Teaching White students about power and privilege may be a touchy subject for some as White guilt and fragility may seep into the mindset of White teachers and students. However, we must learn to "disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." Starting at a young age, we can help our students learn to understand that not everyone has access and the same opportunities as others. Students as young as six years old can learn about race and class. And this work doesn't have to be limited to social studies class. We can embed these principles in all subjects, including mathematics.

5. Dismantling Racism

It is not enough to teach White children to embrace racial and cultural diversity. We've got to go beyond cultural competency. "Children must also develop individual and group identities that will recognize and resist the false notions of superiority and racial entitlement" (Derman-Sparks, Ramsey, and Edwards, 2011). Because today we have to teach our students how to be antiracist and how to work to dismantle racism actively.

Invest in meaningful dialogue that brings awareness to issues impacting both local and global communities. Additionally, a social justice-minded educator teaches their students to develop their own socio-cultural consciousness and advocacy skills so they can advocate for themselves and others.

For elementary students, that action may include students committing to do more than not bully or laugh at each other. They may also commit to bystander intervention by stepping in and helping their peers who they see are being mistreated. We can help our students take a stance instead of just teaching them to be kind to each other and not engage in activities that include mistreating others.

For secondary students, action may include writing their school board about their concerns and calls for change. A strong student group organized with a mission and objectives goes a long way toward challenging institutional practices that are unjust toward certain groups. On local and national scales, have students engage in lessons that address mass incarceration, police brutality, civil rights, immigration, racism, healthcare disparities, unequal pay issues, trauma, suicide, drug abuse, and women's rights, and privilege.

Sometimes we teach our students how to be kind to others, embrace diversity, and respect differences. We can go beyond that by teaching our White students how to be antiracist actively and do their part to support advocacy towards social justice and reform. The foundation for teaching our students how to engage in these practices actively is by helping students understand their White racial identity and positionality in society. From there, students may have a better understanding of the need for a multicultural approach in education and what they can do to find their voice and role in creating a socially just society.

Additional Resources
Framing Brave Conversations About Race and Ethnicity 8 Ways Teachers Can Address White Supremacy in the Classroom Teaching About Racism, Antisemitism and White Supremacy How Does Race Affect a Student's Math Education? Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Diversity Equity and Inclusion Activity for Project Based Learning Racism No Way: Anti-racism Activities, Years 3-12 How Should I Talk About Race in My Mostly White Classroom?
Learn more from Sheldon Eakins on his website, the Leading Equity Center, where he offers resources, courses, and his podcast, the Leading Equity Podcast.

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Why White Students Need Multicultural and Social Justice Education

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020. I've witnessed video footage of Ahmaud Arbery shot and killed while jogging, George Floyd murdered by the police, and Christian Cooper harassed while bird watching in Central Park.

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Research shows that many people feel they do not have the information needed to discuss race in a way that is candid, safe and respectful of other viewpoints and experiences.

"The portal offers a wealth of resources to inform and guide discussions-videos, role-playing exercises, targeted questions and more, said Crew." "We hope that people will use this site to become more comfortable about engaging in honest dialogue and self-reflection."

Talking About Race builds upon decades of work by the museum's educators. It is the result of extensive research, studies, consultations, and educational resources from these fields: history, education, psychology and human development. It includes published research from leading experts, activists, historians, and thought leaders on race, equity, and inclusion, including Brené Brown, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Robin DiAngelo, Julie Olsen Edwards, Jerry Kang, Ibram X Kendi, Enid Lee, Audre Lorde, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Tim Wise.

Phase one of the portal features eight foundational subjects including:

Being Anti-Racist: a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily.

Bias: the inclination or prejudice toward or against something or someone.

Community Building: connecting and engaging with others doing anti-racism work and exploring issues of race.

Historical Foundations of Race: how race, white privilege, and anti-blackness are woven into the very fabric of American society.

Race and Racial Identity: how societies use race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression.

Self-Care: caring for one's mental, emotional, and physical health to sustain the work of dismantling racism.

Social Identities and Systems of Oppression: systems built around the ideology that some groups are superior to others.

Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.

Explore Talking About Race at nmaahc.si.edu/talkingaboutrace. The portal is free and does not require a registration or sign-up to use. Talking About Race is generously supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies.
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Since opening September 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has welcomed more than 7 million visitors. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the nearly 400,000 square-foot museum is the nation's largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. For more information about the museum, visit, follow @NMAAHC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture Releases "Talking About Race" Web Portal

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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture today launched Talking About Race, a new online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society, from the economy and politics to the broader American culture.

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"Write. Right. Rite." Series by Jason Reynolds

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According to Reynolds, the "Write. Right. Rite." is all about learning the ritual of "authentic"-not to be confused with "correct" or "exact"-expression. Throughout the series, Reynolds shares his passion for storytelling while discussing topics like creativity, connection, and imagination. At the end of each video, Reynolds shares a prompt that encourages young people to work toward a specific idea. The activities are fun-filled and some are more challenging than others, but Reynolds always makes sure to include brainstorming "get-you-going" questions.

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On January 13, 2020, Jason Reynolds was announced as the seventh National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Learn more about Jason and his activities as National Ambassador through this guide.

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Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham

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About the Brown Bookshelf - The Brown Bookshelf

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The Brown Bookshelf is designed to push awareness of the myriad Black voices writing for young readers. Our flagship initiative is 28 Days Later, a month-long showcase of the best in Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult novels written and illustrated by Black creators. You can read more abou…

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Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic

These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020. I've witnessed video footage of Ahmaud Arbery shot and killed while jogging, George Floyd murdered by the police, and Christian Cooper harassed while bird watching in Central Park. As we think about the next generation of adults we are influencing, particularly our White students, now more than ever, we need to teach more than kindness.

As an equity advocate, I have lots of conversations about culturally responsive teaching and multicultural education. Not too long ago while I was consulting with an elementary school principal she said, "Multicultural Education is nice, but we are well over 90% White at my school."

A common myth regarding multicultural education is that it is about helping students of color see themselves within the content. But multicultural education is about more than just race: It refers to any form of learning or teaching that incorporates the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds ( Glossary of Education Reform). And even if the majority of your students are White, it doesn't mean we shouldn't teach from a multicultural perspective.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating for a bunch of Kumbaya moments in the classroom. This is not a post about how we need to teach students to embrace diversity and love each other. It's about the influence we can and should have on our students. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings taught us that we teach what we value. Therefore, we are part of the problem if we refuse to teach about antiracism and speak out against police brutality. Our students look up to us as adults, and many of our students mimic our behavior. If we are silent around social justice matters, we send a loud message to our students about where we stand as these issues impact many of the communities we serve.

In fact, we need to go beyond multicultural education. In this 2017 interview, Zaretta Hammond differentiates between multicultural education and social justice education, which provides "a lens for the student, really being able to look at the world and seeing where things aren't fair or where injustice exists." To ensure the changes our society is hurting for, we need to give our White students both multicultural and social justice education. Additionally, Dr. James Banks, the father of multicultural education, advocates for educators to teach our students about social and civic action. Ensuring that students engage in multiple perspectives without coupling their learning with civic engagement does not complete the process of developing socially just citizens who are willing to take a stance against the mistreatment of others. We need to help our students find ways they can take action in response to what they have learned.

Going back to the principal I was speaking with about whether there was a need for multicultural education at her school, I was thinking, "This is why multicultural and social justice education is so important!" Even with her assumptions that because there wasn't a lot of racial representation at her school, does that mean the small percentage of students of color don't matter to her? If that's the case, what would her teachers say? Would they support her sentiments?

Why Multicultural Education is 100% Relevant in All-White Schools

"Whiteness" is Complex

When someone asks why multicultural education is needed at a predominately White school, an assumption is being made that White people are a homogenous group. But White people are as heterogeneous as other racial and ethnic groups: there's socioeconomic status, gender and sexual orientation, identity, religion, language, age, and disability, to name a few. All of those represent different cultures. Sometimes, when you're in a dominant culture and used to things being a certain way, you don't necessarily think about your ancestry or heritage and how things have changed over time. And because conditions have changed over time, it may appear that Whiteness is Whiteness, but there are so many different cultures embedded within that broad category.

I think it's essential that we help teach our White students about their ancestors and the origins of when their families first arrived in the United States. The languages, the cultures, the traditions, all those things don't necessarily have to be lost. They can be retrieved.

Let's go back to the 1790s, where the first census was started. With the first US Census, they classified race. The classifying of race allowed those in power to determine or allow a few rights: Who gets the right to get jobs? Who gets the right to marry? Who gets the right to own property? That's how the social construct of race started.

Above is a view of Europeans, or some of the first immigrants, who were coming from various countries. And if you look at the picture, they're White people, right? But they're coming from multiple countries. At this time, there were several languages represented. You had folks that came from Italy, Germany, Russia, England, and so on. There were all types of cultures coming into the United States.

There were also various forms of religions represented when the Europeans began to arrive in the US. In Russia, you had the Orthodox church. In England, you had the Anglican church. When they first came, they weren't willing to give up their culture and become this one White race. They held onto their traditions, values, and beliefs. But we see that over time, things have changed to where White supremacy and racial hierarchies began to form. Today, there are a lot of families who have European origins that may not necessarily speak the language from their original land of ancestry because those things might have been lost over generations.

Multicultural Literacy Is a Separate and Necessary Literacy

The concept of "literacy" is broad. Still, it can be divided into many different sub-categories. One of these is multicultural literacy, the ability to uncover biases relating to culture, and the skills to view the world through different cultural perspectives.

Dr. Robin DiAngelo says, "Historically reinforced ideologies such as individualism and color-blindness have left many White people racially illiterate but racially conscious when perceiving other racialized groups." So because they're in the dominant culture, they don't necessarily have to think about race, but they'll maybe notice racial issues that are not related to Whiteness.

In other words, maybe they might notice police brutality in a Black community. Perhaps they might see issues of race with Islamophobia and discrimination. But we want our students to do more than notice; responding to issues of racism, prejudice, and discrimination is essential.

Having literacy in this area is also key for equipping White students to participate more actively in conversations about racial justice. If they are not regularly exposed to these conversations, they are less likely to speak up on this topic. White friends and colleagues tell me all the time that they want to say something when racism and equity come up, but they often hold back because they don't know what to say or are afraid to say the wrong thing. With a higher level of multicultural literacy, our students will build more confidence.

What We've Been Doing Isn't Enough

Although multicultural education certainly isn't new, it's clear that what we've been doing up to this point hasn't been enough.

As recently as a few weeks ago, there have been instances of White people utilizing the police as a means to address their encounters with people of color. The underlying issue of racism is apparent in many of these instances. Discussing current events and helping White students understand why they should also be upset at discrimination and racism may prevent a continuous cycle of White people remaining silent and complicit when issues happen that do not directly impact them.

These conversations are essential to have. It's also critical to teach students about becoming allies and co-conspirators, especially at the middle and high school levels. It might be a little bit difficult with your first and second graders, and maybe your kindergartners, but I think there are some messages you could still portray to your students even at that age.

What Can Multicultural Education Teach Our White Students?

We've already established multicultural education goes beyond race. There's so much within the concept of "culture," and we must help our White students understand how race can impact them and how they can actively use whatever privilege they have to reduce issues of racism, discrimination, and bigotry.

1. Understanding Their Own Cultural and Ethnic Background

It's not uncommon for White people to say, Oh, I'm just White. I don't have a culture. We need to teach our White students about what their cultural background is and their ethnic backgrounds so they can understand and think about their language and religions going back to their ancestry. Lessons on their culture may help them start to understand how privilege and White supremacy began. So begin with going back and taking some time to help your students understand that. You can also work with students by exploring community history and cultural influence.

One of the things you can teach your students, your White students, is in history. Many White immigrants have been accused of marginalizing other White immigrants. For example, the Irish and Italians were mistreated, discriminated, and marginalized against by other White immigrants. If we can teach our White students how their ancestors might have perpetuated that oppression or perhaps were part of that oppression against each other, maybe that will help them understand a little bit how in 2020, oppression continues to exist to those who are not included in the dominant culture. They can kind of see how the "haves" and the "have nots" happened back then. One of the things we want to do is help students relate items from their background knowledge and be able to bring those to light.

2. Studying Implicit Bias in Everyday Language

Another thing we can do is discuss everyday language. How are words associated with white and black used? Words such as blackmail, blackballed, or blacklisted have different connotations than words like white labeled or whitelisted. We can have students examine how these words may spark negative perceptions based on their meanings and associations.

Consider how words such as "alien" or "immigrant" may trigger the thoughts of someone of Mexican descent. These types of stereotypes in our language may trigger our Latinx community. The same rule applies to phrases like "You should speak up more, you're so quiet" to an Asian student.

The language we use every day may not seem significant because of the implicit biases we have developed in our lives. The words we use daily are influenced by how we were raised, our social circle, and the media. We may not notice how some of the words we use may have adverse effects on particular groups of people (stereotypes, derogatory language, etc.). We can teach students about implicit bias and how to overcome bias in our language usage.

3. Examining Representation in Curriculum and Beyond

Let's take a look at our school curriculum. Have your students investigate how various cultural groups are represented in the school's curriculum. Lead these discussions with your students and have them understand it because a lot of times, that's not a thing we think about. When we are discussing representation in the school's curriculum, allow opportunities for a dialogue beyond heterosexual, cisgender, Christian-based educational norms. Instead, talk about subjects that aren't reflected, such as disabilities, and how they are depicted in the curriculum. How are people from the LGBTQ community portrayed or even acknowledged in the content? Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of a single story. We need to make sure that we can bring in various perspectives in our curriculum and instruction.

If students find minimal to no representation of certain groups in the curriculum, discuss ways to bring in a variety of multicultural perspectives. The website We Need Diverse Books is an excellent resource for building a more inclusive classroom library, and Milner published an article that discusses developing a multicultural curriculum for an all-White classroom.

From there, you can expand your communications by discussing popular culture and how various groups are represented in multiple media outlets such as the news, music, movies, and social media. Have them study or research certain groups and how the articles that come up and the titles of those articles. What do the reports say versus other articles about various groups?

4. Understanding and Recognizing Privilege

A combination of multicultural and social justice education can help students see the trouble with implicit racism and how even though they are not doing anything actively racist, they are still benefiting from a legacy of racism. Calling the cops to say that "an African American man is threatening me and my dog" is a result of White privilege. Knowing that Black people have historically been mistreated by law enforcement and using that knowledge to one's advantage is inhumane.

Teaching White students about power and privilege may be a touchy subject for some as White guilt and fragility may seep into the mindset of White teachers and students. However, we must learn to "disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." Starting at a young age, we can help our students learn to understand that not everyone has access and the same opportunities as others. Students as young as six years old can learn about race and class. And this work doesn't have to be limited to social studies class. We can embed these principles in all subjects, including mathematics.

5. Dismantling Racism

It is not enough to teach White children to embrace racial and cultural diversity. We've got to go beyond cultural competency. "Children must also develop individual and group identities that will recognize and resist the false notions of superiority and racial entitlement" (Derman-Sparks, Ramsey, and Edwards, 2011). Because today we have to teach our students how to be antiracist and how to work to dismantle racism actively.

Invest in meaningful dialogue that brings awareness to issues impacting both local and global communities. Additionally, a social justice-minded educator teaches their students to develop their own socio-cultural consciousness and advocacy skills so they can advocate for themselves and others.

For elementary students, that action may include students committing to do more than not bully or laugh at each other. They may also commit to bystander intervention by stepping in and helping their peers who they see are being mistreated. We can help our students take a stance instead of just teaching them to be kind to each other and not engage in activities that include mistreating others.

For secondary students, action may include writing their school board about their concerns and calls for change. A strong student group organized with a mission and objectives goes a long way toward challenging institutional practices that are unjust toward certain groups. On local and national scales, have students engage in lessons that address mass incarceration, police brutality, civil rights, immigration, racism, healthcare disparities, unequal pay issues, trauma, suicide, drug abuse, and women's rights, and privilege.

Sometimes we teach our students how to be kind to others, embrace diversity, and respect differences. We can go beyond that by teaching our White students how to be antiracist actively and do their part to support advocacy towards social justice and reform. The foundation for teaching our students how to engage in these practices actively is by helping students understand their White racial identity and positionality in society. From there, students may have a better understanding of the need for a multicultural approach in education and what they can do to find their voice and role in creating a socially just society.

Additional Resources
Framing Brave Conversations About Race and Ethnicity 8 Ways Teachers Can Address White Supremacy in the Classroom Teaching About Racism, Antisemitism and White Supremacy How Does Race Affect a Student's Math Education? Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Diversity Equity and Inclusion Activity for Project Based Learning Racism No Way: Anti-racism Activities, Years 3-12 How Should I Talk About Race in My Mostly White Classroom?
Learn more from Sheldon Eakins on his website, the Leading Equity Center, where he offers resources, courses, and his podcast, the Leading Equity Podcast.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

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Why White Students Need Multicultural and Social Justice Education

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020. I've witnessed video footage of Ahmaud Arbery shot and killed while jogging, George Floyd murdered by the police, and Christian Cooper harassed while bird watching in Central Park.

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A free download of this book is available until June 19 at dottirpress.

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Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham

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BrainPOP's Antiracism Resources
Let's Talk About it
BrainPOP's selection of free resources to help engage kids in difficult but essential antiracist conversations

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Tips for Talking to Young Kids About Race

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Tips for Talking to Young Kids About Race

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tips for talking to young_kids_racial_injustice

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4 Steps to Help Kids Push Back Against White Nationalism

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4 Steps to Help Kids Push Back Against White Nationalism

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How to Talk with Kids About Racism and Racial Violence

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It starts with checking in on yourself, and then listening deeply. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic

These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020. I've witnessed video footage of Ahmaud Arbery shot and killed while jogging, George Floyd murdered by the police, and Christian Cooper harassed while bird watching in Central Park. As we think about the next generation of adults we are influencing, particularly our White students, now more than ever, we need to teach more than kindness.

As an equity advocate, I have lots of conversations about culturally responsive teaching and multicultural education. Not too long ago while I was consulting with an elementary school principal she said, "Multicultural Education is nice, but we are well over 90% White at my school."

A common myth regarding multicultural education is that it is about helping students of color see themselves within the content. But multicultural education is about more than just race: It refers to any form of learning or teaching that incorporates the histories, texts, values, beliefs, and perspectives of people from different cultural backgrounds ( Glossary of Education Reform). And even if the majority of your students are White, it doesn't mean we shouldn't teach from a multicultural perspective.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not advocating for a bunch of Kumbaya moments in the classroom. This is not a post about how we need to teach students to embrace diversity and love each other. It's about the influence we can and should have on our students. Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings taught us that we teach what we value. Therefore, we are part of the problem if we refuse to teach about antiracism and speak out against police brutality. Our students look up to us as adults, and many of our students mimic our behavior. If we are silent around social justice matters, we send a loud message to our students about where we stand as these issues impact many of the communities we serve.

In fact, we need to go beyond multicultural education. In this 2017 interview, Zaretta Hammond differentiates between multicultural education and social justice education, which provides "a lens for the student, really being able to look at the world and seeing where things aren't fair or where injustice exists." To ensure the changes our society is hurting for, we need to give our White students both multicultural and social justice education. Additionally, Dr. James Banks, the father of multicultural education, advocates for educators to teach our students about social and civic action. Ensuring that students engage in multiple perspectives without coupling their learning with civic engagement does not complete the process of developing socially just citizens who are willing to take a stance against the mistreatment of others. We need to help our students find ways they can take action in response to what they have learned.

Going back to the principal I was speaking with about whether there was a need for multicultural education at her school, I was thinking, "This is why multicultural and social justice education is so important!" Even with her assumptions that because there wasn't a lot of racial representation at her school, does that mean the small percentage of students of color don't matter to her? If that's the case, what would her teachers say? Would they support her sentiments?

Why Multicultural Education is 100% Relevant in All-White Schools

"Whiteness" is Complex

When someone asks why multicultural education is needed at a predominately White school, an assumption is being made that White people are a homogenous group. But White people are as heterogeneous as other racial and ethnic groups: there's socioeconomic status, gender and sexual orientation, identity, religion, language, age, and disability, to name a few. All of those represent different cultures. Sometimes, when you're in a dominant culture and used to things being a certain way, you don't necessarily think about your ancestry or heritage and how things have changed over time. And because conditions have changed over time, it may appear that Whiteness is Whiteness, but there are so many different cultures embedded within that broad category.

I think it's essential that we help teach our White students about their ancestors and the origins of when their families first arrived in the United States. The languages, the cultures, the traditions, all those things don't necessarily have to be lost. They can be retrieved.

Let's go back to the 1790s, where the first census was started. With the first US Census, they classified race. The classifying of race allowed those in power to determine or allow a few rights: Who gets the right to get jobs? Who gets the right to marry? Who gets the right to own property? That's how the social construct of race started.

Above is a view of Europeans, or some of the first immigrants, who were coming from various countries. And if you look at the picture, they're White people, right? But they're coming from multiple countries. At this time, there were several languages represented. You had folks that came from Italy, Germany, Russia, England, and so on. There were all types of cultures coming into the United States.

There were also various forms of religions represented when the Europeans began to arrive in the US. In Russia, you had the Orthodox church. In England, you had the Anglican church. When they first came, they weren't willing to give up their culture and become this one White race. They held onto their traditions, values, and beliefs. But we see that over time, things have changed to where White supremacy and racial hierarchies began to form. Today, there are a lot of families who have European origins that may not necessarily speak the language from their original land of ancestry because those things might have been lost over generations.

Multicultural Literacy Is a Separate and Necessary Literacy

The concept of "literacy" is broad. Still, it can be divided into many different sub-categories. One of these is multicultural literacy, the ability to uncover biases relating to culture, and the skills to view the world through different cultural perspectives.

Dr. Robin DiAngelo says, "Historically reinforced ideologies such as individualism and color-blindness have left many White people racially illiterate but racially conscious when perceiving other racialized groups." So because they're in the dominant culture, they don't necessarily have to think about race, but they'll maybe notice racial issues that are not related to Whiteness.

In other words, maybe they might notice police brutality in a Black community. Perhaps they might see issues of race with Islamophobia and discrimination. But we want our students to do more than notice; responding to issues of racism, prejudice, and discrimination is essential.

Having literacy in this area is also key for equipping White students to participate more actively in conversations about racial justice. If they are not regularly exposed to these conversations, they are less likely to speak up on this topic. White friends and colleagues tell me all the time that they want to say something when racism and equity come up, but they often hold back because they don't know what to say or are afraid to say the wrong thing. With a higher level of multicultural literacy, our students will build more confidence.

What We've Been Doing Isn't Enough

Although multicultural education certainly isn't new, it's clear that what we've been doing up to this point hasn't been enough.

As recently as a few weeks ago, there have been instances of White people utilizing the police as a means to address their encounters with people of color. The underlying issue of racism is apparent in many of these instances. Discussing current events and helping White students understand why they should also be upset at discrimination and racism may prevent a continuous cycle of White people remaining silent and complicit when issues happen that do not directly impact them.

These conversations are essential to have. It's also critical to teach students about becoming allies and co-conspirators, especially at the middle and high school levels. It might be a little bit difficult with your first and second graders, and maybe your kindergartners, but I think there are some messages you could still portray to your students even at that age.

What Can Multicultural Education Teach Our White Students?

We've already established multicultural education goes beyond race. There's so much within the concept of "culture," and we must help our White students understand how race can impact them and how they can actively use whatever privilege they have to reduce issues of racism, discrimination, and bigotry.

1. Understanding Their Own Cultural and Ethnic Background

It's not uncommon for White people to say, Oh, I'm just White. I don't have a culture. We need to teach our White students about what their cultural background is and their ethnic backgrounds so they can understand and think about their language and religions going back to their ancestry. Lessons on their culture may help them start to understand how privilege and White supremacy began. So begin with going back and taking some time to help your students understand that. You can also work with students by exploring community history and cultural influence.

One of the things you can teach your students, your White students, is in history. Many White immigrants have been accused of marginalizing other White immigrants. For example, the Irish and Italians were mistreated, discriminated, and marginalized against by other White immigrants. If we can teach our White students how their ancestors might have perpetuated that oppression or perhaps were part of that oppression against each other, maybe that will help them understand a little bit how in 2020, oppression continues to exist to those who are not included in the dominant culture. They can kind of see how the "haves" and the "have nots" happened back then. One of the things we want to do is help students relate items from their background knowledge and be able to bring those to light.

2. Studying Implicit Bias in Everyday Language

Another thing we can do is discuss everyday language. How are words associated with white and black used? Words such as blackmail, blackballed, or blacklisted have different connotations than words like white labeled or whitelisted. We can have students examine how these words may spark negative perceptions based on their meanings and associations.

Consider how words such as "alien" or "immigrant" may trigger the thoughts of someone of Mexican descent. These types of stereotypes in our language may trigger our Latinx community. The same rule applies to phrases like "You should speak up more, you're so quiet" to an Asian student.

The language we use every day may not seem significant because of the implicit biases we have developed in our lives. The words we use daily are influenced by how we were raised, our social circle, and the media. We may not notice how some of the words we use may have adverse effects on particular groups of people (stereotypes, derogatory language, etc.). We can teach students about implicit bias and how to overcome bias in our language usage.

3. Examining Representation in Curriculum and Beyond

Let's take a look at our school curriculum. Have your students investigate how various cultural groups are represented in the school's curriculum. Lead these discussions with your students and have them understand it because a lot of times, that's not a thing we think about. When we are discussing representation in the school's curriculum, allow opportunities for a dialogue beyond heterosexual, cisgender, Christian-based educational norms. Instead, talk about subjects that aren't reflected, such as disabilities, and how they are depicted in the curriculum. How are people from the LGBTQ community portrayed or even acknowledged in the content? Chimamanda Adichie talks about the danger of a single story. We need to make sure that we can bring in various perspectives in our curriculum and instruction.

If students find minimal to no representation of certain groups in the curriculum, discuss ways to bring in a variety of multicultural perspectives. The website We Need Diverse Books is an excellent resource for building a more inclusive classroom library, and Milner published an article that discusses developing a multicultural curriculum for an all-White classroom.

From there, you can expand your communications by discussing popular culture and how various groups are represented in multiple media outlets such as the news, music, movies, and social media. Have them study or research certain groups and how the articles that come up and the titles of those articles. What do the reports say versus other articles about various groups?

4. Understanding and Recognizing Privilege

A combination of multicultural and social justice education can help students see the trouble with implicit racism and how even though they are not doing anything actively racist, they are still benefiting from a legacy of racism. Calling the cops to say that "an African American man is threatening me and my dog" is a result of White privilege. Knowing that Black people have historically been mistreated by law enforcement and using that knowledge to one's advantage is inhumane.

Teaching White students about power and privilege may be a touchy subject for some as White guilt and fragility may seep into the mindset of White teachers and students. However, we must learn to "disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." Starting at a young age, we can help our students learn to understand that not everyone has access and the same opportunities as others. Students as young as six years old can learn about race and class. And this work doesn't have to be limited to social studies class. We can embed these principles in all subjects, including mathematics.

5. Dismantling Racism

It is not enough to teach White children to embrace racial and cultural diversity. We've got to go beyond cultural competency. "Children must also develop individual and group identities that will recognize and resist the false notions of superiority and racial entitlement" (Derman-Sparks, Ramsey, and Edwards, 2011). Because today we have to teach our students how to be antiracist and how to work to dismantle racism actively.

Invest in meaningful dialogue that brings awareness to issues impacting both local and global communities. Additionally, a social justice-minded educator teaches their students to develop their own socio-cultural consciousness and advocacy skills so they can advocate for themselves and others.

For elementary students, that action may include students committing to do more than not bully or laugh at each other. They may also commit to bystander intervention by stepping in and helping their peers who they see are being mistreated. We can help our students take a stance instead of just teaching them to be kind to each other and not engage in activities that include mistreating others.

For secondary students, action may include writing their school board about their concerns and calls for change. A strong student group organized with a mission and objectives goes a long way toward challenging institutional practices that are unjust toward certain groups. On local and national scales, have students engage in lessons that address mass incarceration, police brutality, civil rights, immigration, racism, healthcare disparities, unequal pay issues, trauma, suicide, drug abuse, and women's rights, and privilege.

Sometimes we teach our students how to be kind to others, embrace diversity, and respect differences. We can go beyond that by teaching our White students how to be antiracist actively and do their part to support advocacy towards social justice and reform. The foundation for teaching our students how to engage in these practices actively is by helping students understand their White racial identity and positionality in society. From there, students may have a better understanding of the need for a multicultural approach in education and what they can do to find their voice and role in creating a socially just society.

Additional Resources
Framing Brave Conversations About Race and Ethnicity 8 Ways Teachers Can Address White Supremacy in the Classroom Teaching About Racism, Antisemitism and White Supremacy How Does Race Affect a Student's Math Education? Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America Diversity Equity and Inclusion Activity for Project Based Learning Racism No Way: Anti-racism Activities, Years 3-12 How Should I Talk About Race in My Mostly White Classroom?
Learn more from Sheldon Eakins on his website, the Leading Equity Center, where he offers resources, courses, and his podcast, the Leading Equity Podcast.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

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Why White Students Need Multicultural and Social Justice Education

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Sponsored by PowerSchool and ViewSonic These last few weeks have been especially difficult for me as the news continues to reflect that racism still exists in 2020. I've witnessed video footage of Ahmaud Arbery shot and killed while jogging, George Floyd murdered by the police, and Christian Cooper harassed while bird watching in Central Park.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Research shows that many people feel they do not have the information needed to discuss race in a way that is candid, safe and respectful of other viewpoints and experiences.

"The portal offers a wealth of resources to inform and guide discussions-videos, role-playing exercises, targeted questions and more, said Crew." "We hope that people will use this site to become more comfortable about engaging in honest dialogue and self-reflection."

Talking About Race builds upon decades of work by the museum's educators. It is the result of extensive research, studies, consultations, and educational resources from these fields: history, education, psychology and human development. It includes published research from leading experts, activists, historians, and thought leaders on race, equity, and inclusion, including Brené Brown, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Robin DiAngelo, Julie Olsen Edwards, Jerry Kang, Ibram X Kendi, Enid Lee, Audre Lorde, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Tim Wise.

Phase one of the portal features eight foundational subjects including:

Being Anti-Racist: a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily.

Bias: the inclination or prejudice toward or against something or someone.

Community Building: connecting and engaging with others doing anti-racism work and exploring issues of race.

Historical Foundations of Race: how race, white privilege, and anti-blackness are woven into the very fabric of American society.

Race and Racial Identity: how societies use race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression.

Self-Care: caring for one's mental, emotional, and physical health to sustain the work of dismantling racism.

Social Identities and Systems of Oppression: systems built around the ideology that some groups are superior to others.

Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.

Explore Talking About Race at nmaahc.si.edu/talkingaboutrace. The portal is free and does not require a registration or sign-up to use. Talking About Race is generously supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies.
Download Images for Media Use Social Media Toolkit
About the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Since opening September 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has welcomed more than 7 million visitors. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the nearly 400,000 square-foot museum is the nation's largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. For more information about the museum, visit, follow @NMAAHC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture Releases "Talking About Race" Web Portal

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The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture today launched Talking About Race, a new online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society, from the economy and politics to the broader American culture.

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Child Mind Institute With protests over the violent deaths of black Americans dominating the news, it’s understandable that many kids are feeling scared, confused or angry about the situation. We discuss how parents can help children process what they’re seeing and manage their feelings.
Find resources for parents, educators, and caregivers at https://childmind.org

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Racism and Violence: How to Help Kids Handle the News

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KQED Learn is a free platform for middle and high school students to tackle big issues and build their media literacy and critical thinking skills in a supportive environment.

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Youth Media Challenges ask students to explore how they see themselves, share their view of the world, or envision a better future. Choose from a range of standards-aligned, media-making projects across content areas that help reach your learning objectives and engage students at the same time.

All challenges come with ready-to-use curriculum and every student submission is published on the KQED Youth Media Showcase. Select submissions will be aired on KQED broadcasts and shared with PBS and NPR member stations around the country.

Explore the 7 current challenges or browse all published student submissions.

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Youth Media Challenges ask students to explore how they see themselves, share their view of the world, or envision a better future. Choose from a range of standards-aligned, media-making projects across content areas that help reach your learning objectives and engage students at the same time.

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In the Margins Social Justice Book Awards -- 2020

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In the Margins Social Justice Book Awards -- 2020

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In the Margins Mission Statement:
To seek out and highlight fiction and non-fiction titles of high-interest appeal for male or female readers, ages 9-21, who may fit into one or all of the following categories that identify with:
– *BIPOC youth
– youth from a street culture
– youth in restrictive custody
– youth who are reluctant readers

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This memoir covers the wrongful treatment the criminal justice system subjected Albert Woodfox to as a man who spent over four decades in Louisiana's Angola prison, one of this nation's most notoriously known state prisons. Woodfox spent most of these years in solidarity confinement as part of the Angola 3 who were wrongfully convicted for the murder of a CO (corrections officer) while in jail for lesser crimes. To keep from going insane, Woodfox credits the unwavering friendship with his two wrongly convicted Panther comrades Robert King and Herman Wallace and his ability to channel his anger into educating himself, which aided his transformation into a leader amongst the prisoners. The committee strongly believes "this memoir serves as a strong tool of advocacy against an unjust criminal justice sentence that turns a blind eye to the disproportionality of solitary confinement in states such as Louisiana where 20 percent of more than 2700 inmates have been in solitary confinement for more than a year."

Abdur-Rahman, Dr. Kevin H. Solving the Riddle. February 2019. Page Publishing, Inc. Paperback. $16.95. 192 pages. 9781644621165. Older Teens and Adults. This journey takes you through Dr. Abdur-Rahman's life as a person condemned for life as one of the biggest drug dealers in Philly, from changing to being redeemed back into society after a long prison term and rehabilitation as a major society behavior changer in Philadelphia during the late 1980's to mid 1990's . In Solving the Riddle he discusses in detail how to avoid the pitfalls of an ill society, its negative influences, and dysfunctional situations by giving healthy information to our at-risk population. Dr. Abdur-Rahman's book also privides preventive ideas for professionals working in the field of delinquency prevention.

Grunenwald, Jill. Reading Behind Bars. July 2019. Skyhorse. Paperback $25.99. 360 pages. 9781510737068. New Adults and Older. In this personal narrative of her first year job experience as a certified librarian in a an Ohio men's prison, Graunenwald makes you sometimes laugh and other times think deeply about the humanity of those patrons who live behind bars. As she adapted to the security measures for the new lockup environment she worked in, she grew into a better understanding of how libraries offered a brief escape for those in lockup which was neutral, open for access, and free of the rigors of life on the cell block.

Kotlowitz, Alex. American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. Nan A. Talese. Hardback $27.95. 304 pages. 9780385538800. Adults. In 2018 there were 2948 shooting victims in Chicago. The book looks into the ongoing epidemic of senseless shootings in urban Chicago. Kotlowitz does a great job of gaining the trust of some of the people who are the victims or perpetrators who live in these violent communities which are essentially war zones. After gaining the trust of these residents he got an up close look at the psychological toll this dreadful violence has taken on the victims and their families.

Marie, Jozanne. Beautiful: Unashamed & Unafraid. April 2019. Savio Republic. Paperback $18.00. 9781642931204. New Adults and Older. This book tells the courageous story about a young lady of Jamaican decent who was experienced sexual assault from the age of 6-16 years of age by her own biological father. It goes in detail why sexual molestation is seldom talked about and how in our society this subject is often treated as taboo. Her nightmare started with her teen mother wanting to kill her when she was a baby; it progressed into her being violated sexually, mentally, and physically by her father; and peeked with her being coerced into having an abortion at age 16. This is a must read book to help others understand how to better sustain the fortitude needed for overcoming the trauma of rape abuse, how to talk about it openly, and how to forgive in order to heal.

Minor, Cornelius. We Got This. November 2018. Heinemann. Paperback $25.63. 160 pages. 9780325098142. Adults. Educating our students in these drastic times has become more and more difficult. In his book "We Got This," Minor shines a beacon of hope on the quest to strengthen teacher to student connections. He discusses how to carefully listen to students as the best way to prepare for teaching so as to not make students feel disenfranchised. This book contains points on equity issues and offers strategies for offsetting inequity.

Other 2020 Nominations and Awards

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TOP ADVOCACY/SOCIAL JUSTICE TITLEWoodfox, Albert. Solitary. March 2019. Grove Press. Hardback $26.00 320 pages. 978080212080. Adults. This memoir covers the wrongful treatment the criminal justice system subjected Albert Woodfox to as a man who spent over four decades in Louisiana's Angola prison, one of this nation's most notoriouslyknown state prisons.

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Revisit these sites for updated material on racial literacy

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Revisit these sites for updated material on racial literacy

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NJASL Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Resources - Wakelet

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This collection of resources was developed by NJASL to provide avenues for people to explore issues of racism and social justice and to create opportunities for learning for educators, students and parents. If you would like to contribute to this resource please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/KukbAqsyrkTHWa9L9.