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Diversity Baseline Survey 2.0 (Children's Lit.)

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Diversity Baseline Survey 2.0 (Children's Lit.)

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The Diversity Baseline Survey (DBS 2.0) was created by Lee & Low Books with co-authors Laura M. Jiménez, PhD, Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and Betsy Beckert, graduate student in the Language and Literacy Department of Wheelock College of Education & Human Development

Lee & Low Books released the first Diversity Baseline Survey ( DBS 1.0) in 2015. Before the DBS, people suspected publishing had a diversity problem, but without hard numbers, the extent of that problem was anyone's guess. Our goal was to survey publishing houses and review journals regarding the racial, gender, sexual orientation, and ability makeup of their employees; establish concrete statistics about the diversity of the publishing workforce; and then build on this information by reissuing the survey every four years. Through these long-term efforts, we would be able to track what progress our industry shows over time in improving representation and inclusion.

Why does diversity in publishing matter? The book industry has the power to shape culture in big and small ways. The people behind the books serve as gatekeepers, who can make a huge difference in determining which stories are amplified and which are shut out. If the people who work in publishing are not a diverse group, how can diverse voices truly be represented in its books?

The results of DBS 1.0 were stark. 79 percent of respondents identified as White. 78 percent were women. 88 percent were straight. 92 percent were non-disabled. At a time when readers of all backgrounds were demanding to see themselves in books, the publishing industry came nowhere near to reflecting the rich diversity of the United States.

The Last Four Years

The numbers provided by DBS 1.0 contributed to a sense of urgency that has resulted in more diverse books being published in the marketplace today-at least on the children's book side. It is now 2020, and many powerful cultural events, changes, and movements have taken place in the four years since the first survey.
● Donald Trump was elected President.
● The#MeToo movement spread virally after sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
● Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, both featuring POC leads and majority-POC casts, broke major box office records.

Within our industry, too, important conversations have changed the landscape:
● Corinne Duyvis coined the term #ownvoices to highlight books where the creator and main character share some form of marginalization.
● Beth Phelan created#DVpit to help diverse creators pitch their work to agents and editors.
● Four educators of color founded#DisruptTexts to question the books commonly taught in high schools.
● Problematic books were canceled, re-illustrated, or rewritten, while The Hate U Give and other diverse titles became New York Times bestsellers.
● Authors of color became more vocal about their place in the industry and their exhaustion with the diversity conversation
● Drag Queen Story Hour started in San Francisco.
● The Romance Writers Association was forced to reckon with its own biases.

After all this . . . has the publishing workforce actually become more inclusive?

Diversity Baseline Survey 2019 Results

Methodology and Response Rate
We expanded the DBS 2.0 to include a larger sample set than the original survey, including members of the Association of University Presses (AUP) as well as literary agents. In 2015, there were 3,706 responses to the survey. In 2019, we received 7,893 responses, showing a 112 percent increase in responses from DBS 1.0 to DBS 2.0.

Like the first survey, DBS 2.0 took a year to complete, beginning in January 2019. Reaching out to companies and trying to connect with decision-makers took the most time. Some companies took a lot of convincing; others agreed to participate and then dropped out for myriad reasons. Ultimately, 153 companies participated, including all of the Big Five publishers, eight review journals, forty-seven trade publishers, thirty-five university presses, and sixty-three literary agencies of all sizes from across North America. You can see the full list of participants here.

The Diversity Baseline Survey (DBS 2.0) was sent to 2,609 reviewer employees, 17,100 trade publishing employees, 1,528 university press employees, and 516 literary agents for a total of 21,753 surveys deployed. DBS 2.0 had a response rate of 36.2 percent. The survey was sent to both children's and adult divisions of each company.

The DBS was sent out directly from each participating company's internal contact person. To ensure the integrity of the data, we worked with a professional survey company called Toluna that administrated and deployed the survey for us. The surveys were completely anonymous, and companies did not have direct access to the results.

All data was analyzed and aggregated by a small team at Boston University consisting of Laura M. Jiménez, PhD (Lead) and Betsy Beckert, a graduate student in the Language and Literacy Department of Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. The team at Boston University ensured the anonymity of individual respondents, and they were the only ones with access to the raw data. Excerpts from Laura Jiménez about the statistics have been included below and are indicated by " ".

Note: DBS 1.0 was deployed in 2015 and released in January 2016. DBS 2.0 followed a similar pattern and was deployed in 2019 and released to the public in January 2020.

Notes and Analysis: What the Numbers Tell Us

The Industry Overall

Race: According to the survey, 76 percent of publishing staff, review journal staff, and literary agents are White. The rest are comprised of people who self-report as Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (7 percent); Hispanic/Latino/Mexican (6 percent); Black/African American (5 percent); and biracial/multiracial (3 percent). Native Americans and Middle Easterners each comprise less than 1 percent of publishing staff.

The 2015 survey reported that overall, 79 percent of people who work in publishing self-report as White. Given the sample size difference, this 3 percent change in White employees does not meet the bar for statistically significant change. There is no discernible change to any of the other racial categories. In other words, the field is just as White today as it was four years ago. "

Creating the list of ethnicities for a survey such as this is challenging. We received feedback from DBS 1.0 that some of the race categories were too broad or that subcategories should be separated out, e.g. Asian Pacific Islanders within the Asian American category. But we wanted to be able to compare data as well as to avoid any chance of compromising any individual's personal identifiable information (PII), so we stuck with the racial breakdowns we offered in the first survey, which was based on the US census, with a few adjustments.

Gender: The survey reveals that publishing is about 74 percent cis women and 23 percent cis men. " The 2015 survey reported that overall, 78 percent of people who work in publishing self-report as cis women. The current survey has 74 percent of the respondents self-reporting as cis women. Given the sample size difference, this 4 percent change in cis women does meet the bar for statistically significant change. These numbers may help explain why some feel that book publishing caters more to female readers. Among executive and board member positions this disparity evened out somewhat, with approximately 38 percent of executives and board members identifying as cis men. This reflects the reality that males still ascend to positions of power more easily, even in female-dominated industries.

Concerning our gender question, we had significant input from various experts (listed in credits on the last slide) who helped us vet the choices for this question. Even so, the gender question reveals that about 97 percent of publishing staff identify as cis men or women, meaning that they identify with the genders they were assigned at birth. How does this compare with the general population? We don't really know. That being said, the small number of genderfluid, non-binary, genderqueer, trans man, trans woman, and intersex people in publishing points to the need for publishers to make sure that books on these topics are examined for cultural and scientific accuracy by experts before they are published. We have a separate article on the need for targeted expert readers that relates to this issue. (Note: After receiving feedback regarding the wording of "woman/cis woman" and "man/cis man" in the survey, the terminology has been corrected to "cis woman" and "cis man" respectively in the infographic.)

Sexual Orientation: According to the survey, about 81 percent of publishing staff identify as straight or heterosexual. This category saw the most change over the course of the study. In the initial survey, 88 percent of the respondents self-reported as straight. This survey saw a statistically significant negative change in the number of respondents that self-reported straight at 81 percent. The change can be largely attributed to the number that identified as bi and pansexual, 10 percent. Not surprisingly, most of these are White women, but that again is most likely attributed to the fact that the field is overwhelmingly White women. There was a slight drop in gay representation to 4 percent, and lesbian to 2 percent, with asexual holding at 1 percent.

During the planning of DBS 1.0, we debated internally whether to include a survey question on sexual orientation, since it is a question that human resources departments cannot ask their employees. We ultimately decided that if we did not acknowledge this aspect of diversity, this segment of the workforce would remain uncounted and invisible. Four years later, as the current administration calls for the removal of LGBTQ data collection in the next census, including LGBTQ representation in our survey seems more critical than ever.

Disability : We received good input from disability advocate Ace Ratcliff on the wording choices for this question. This input may have led more people to self-identify as having a disability in DBS 2.0. " There is a statistically significant change from 4 percent self-reporting a disability in 2015 to 11 percent reporting a disability in 2019. The clear majority of disabilities are mental illness (45 percent), physical disability (22 percent), and chronic illness (20 percent). There is a high co-morbidity within this data of mental illness and chronic illness co-occurring. We did some initial investigation into this phenomenon, and these findings are consistent with mental health and medical findings. Although this is not the focus of this survey, we took this to signify that this data is falling into line with other, more established research strands.

One hypothesis for this growth is that it is not growth at all, but a change in the way the field, and our society in general, views mental-health issues. In other words, the field of survey respondents may have experienced an uptick in mental health-issues, but this data is also consistent with national surveys that find more people are seeking out and identifying as experiencing mental-health issues. " In a subsequent blog post, we will share more detailed data related to the disability question.

Departmental Observations

The DBS 2.0 results offer the opportunity to filter responses by department, giving us a better picture of how inclusive (or homogenous) various publishing departments are in relation to each other. Space constraints prevent us from discussing every department, but we wanted to highlight the data for some of the departments that play a significant role in shaping which books are published and how they get into the world: executive positions, editorial, sales, marketing and publicity, reviewers, and literary agents. We also included interns, to provide a glimpse at what our industry's future workforce may look like.

Data for these departments can be found in the slideshow above, and data from the previous study (for comparison) can be found here. A few interesting observations:
● More diversity at the top: The Executive Level saw some fairly significant changes in its numbers, with the percentage of people identifying as White dropping from 86 percent in 2015 to 78 percent today. In addition, the percentage of people identifying as straight dropped from 89 percent to 82 percent and the percentage of people with a disability increased from 4 percent to 10 percent. This is good news, since true change in company culture almost always requires buy-in from the very top.
● Editorial is even more White than before: The percentage of people in Editorial who self-identified as White increased from 82 percent to 85 percent. So, even though more diverse books are being published now, it's fair to assume that the large majority of them are still being acquired and edited by White people.
● Marketing & Publicity is more racially diverse than other departments: Of the departments we address in the slideshow above, Marketing & Publicity is the area with the lowest percentage of White employees (74 percent), although it is less diverse than other departments in the other areas we surveyed.
● More people identify as disabled in book reviewing than in other areas of the publishing industry: Nineteen percent of book reviewers identify as having a disability, while in most other areas of the publishing industry, the number is closer to 10 percent. This trend is in line with data from DBS 1.0. Perhaps this is because reviewers are able to work freelance or remotely, without the constrictions of a 9-5 desk job in New York, which is notoriously inaccessible for those with disabilities.
● Literary agent demographics are in line with the rest of publishing: We did not include literary agents in the first DBS, but their inclusion has not really impacted the numbers because their demographics match the rest of the industry: mostly White, straight cis women who are not disabled.
● Interns are significantly more diverse than the industry as a whole: Of the interns surveyed in 2019, 49 percent identify as BIPOC; 49 percent are on the LGBTQIA spectrum; and 22 percent identify as having a disability. These numbers are a dramatic departure from the overall industry numbers and signal a new, more representative generation of entry-level publishing staff. The question is whether many of these interns will be retained and promoted, or whether they will burn out or leave publishing for other reasons before their presence can truly change the industry.
● Comparing apples to apples, there's still no change: For those who wonder how much the inclusion of literary agents and university presses may have skewed the data, our last data slide removes these segments for a true apples-to-apples comparison to DBS 1.0. The largest change is in the sexual orientation category, which dropped from 88 percent straight/heterosexual to 82 percent. No other category changed by more than 4 percent.

What's next?

Although our baseline numbers have not shown a compelling change, in all cases there was change. As in other industries, increasing diversity in the publishing workforce is a challenge, and change has been slow in coming. But DBS 2.0 did have some positive takeaways. Only three of the Big Five publishers took part in DBS 1.0, so it is a sign of solidarity that all five participated this time. The addition of literary agents and university presses contributed to a bigger pool of participants and gave us a clearer picture of who makes up the industry.

The efforts to make the book community a more inclusive one is an ongoing-oftentimes herculean-struggle, conducted predominately by people of color. The encouraging numbers in the intern section indicate that publishing is trying to reach out to diverse populations. But keeping diverse employees engaged and believing they have a home in this industry is another matter. Without a clear career path and the promise of opportunities for a bright future, retention will continue to be a serious problem, and the needle will not move.

The world has changed a great deal from just four years ago. With so many diverse causes that run parallel to one another that sometimes it can be hard to keep in mind common goals. But until we all start to care about equity, we will not make progress, and any gains the industry makes will continue to be not statistically significant. So, the same questions that we asked four years ago bear repeating: How can company cultures be more welcoming for diverse staff? Do diverse staff members feel comfortable voicing their opinions? Are systems in place to make sure all staff are trained and well versed in diversity issues? And some newer questions to ponder: Have recent conversations on bias and privilege changed your perspective on the systemic problems that exist in society today? Has your empathy grown or receded toward diverse causes in the last four years?

The world is a diverse one. Publishing needs to accurately reflect the world as it is, from the books we publish to the people working in every facet of this business. A lot has happened in four years, and not all of it for the better. Four years from now, what will the next baseline survey show us? And what will those numbers tell us about ourselves?
For permission to reprint or press inquiries, please contact Hannah Ehrlich at dbs [AT] leeandlow [DOT] com

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Where Is the Diversity in Publishing? The 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey Results

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The Diversity Baseline Survey (DBS 2.0) was created by Lee & Low Books with co-authors Laura M. Jiménez, PhD, Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and Betsy Beckert, graduate student in the Language and Literacy Department of Wheelock College of Education & Human Development Lee & Low Books released the first Diversity Baseline Survey ( DBS 1.0) in 2015.

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Are You Planning on Doing A Land Acknowledgment? 

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Are You Planning on Doing A Land Acknowledgment? 

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By Dr. Debbie Reese

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This post on Land Acknowledgements is long over-due. I promised to do it last year, but one thing after another meant I put it off. This morning (Saturday, March 9, 2019) I did a twitter thread about land acknowledgements, and am pasting that thread here. There's more to say, but I hope this is helpful.

7) Listen to Hayden King's 12) I've got links to lists of books by Native writers, here: I'd love to see ppl who do Land Acknowledgements in California say "hey everybody, 13) And, I'd love to see people in California who are doing Land Acknowledgements say "hey everybody, let's look critically at the mission projects teachers are doing..." Start by reading 19) Some of you might have taken a DNA test and in your head and heart, think that validates your family story, but it doesn't. To understand why it doesn't, read Kim Tallbear's work. Start with her article, 20) Most of the mainstream media does a terrible job reporting on Native issues. They can flail about as they've done for hundreds of years, or they can take a look at the 21) There are 22) Do you listen to podcasts as you drive, walk, or exercise? Subscribe to And 23) And give a listen to 24) One issue you could address in your land acknowledgement is mascots. There are far more than you may know. Zoom in on this
1) More and more I am seeing people in the US talk about doing a Land Acknowledgement at their meeting, conference, or event.
2) If you're wondering what a Land Acknowledgement is, it is opening remarks that say the land that the event is on is (or was) the homeland of a specific Native Nation. It is meant to create awareness.
3) At first glance, cool, right? Progressive-minded, right? They have a lot of appeal, for sure. But... that is where they can go wrong.
4) I've seen scripts that people write that a presenter/speaker can use. The use of it is well-meaning, but we all know about good intentions, right?
5) If you do one because you think you should, but that's as far as you go with it in your own thinking or what you impart to others, you're just doing it as a box-checked sort of thing that is no good.
6) If you're not mindful of what you are doing, then, you are turning a land acknowledgement into a token. It becomes an empty gesture to "honor" Native people. It becomes this century's mascot.
He makes many excellent points. Listen and share it! He's Anishinaabe.
8) If you're going to do one, you gotta do some research! If, for example, you are in Oklahoma, you might want to acknowledge one of the 39 tribal nations there today, but you know (right?) that many of them are there because of the Indian Removal Act.
9) How might you incorporate that history into your acknowledgement?'I regret it' about his reflections on a land acknowledgement he helped draft at his university.
10) Find out what the nation(s) you are naming in your acknowledgement are doing, today. Tell your audience about it. Tell them how they can support that nation's work. See? That means you have to do some research so your Land Acknowledgement is meaningful.
11) Annoying fact: lot of people think children's literature is not worthy of the same kind of study that English departments give to bks for the adult market. But you know that people want their kids to read! In your Land Acknowledgement, recommend a book by a Native writer!

14) And, wouldn't it be terrific if Land Acknowledgements in California and Alaska and Georgia included "let's think about the impact the gold rush had on Indigenous people..."
15) In other words: do some work before doing a Land Acknowledgement. Make it meaningful. Give your audience a task.
16) And when you speak those words... don't do it in a somber tone. You're not in church! When you're teaching, you don't speak in a reverent, prayer like way. Don't do it for a Land Acknowledgement, either.
17) By this point in this thread, some of you are wondering what to do. How, you might wonder, can you 'get it right' (or close to right)? Best Books ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS is not a good book." Because it isn't.
Teaching the Truth about California Missions. 18) Most of you have a lifetime of unlearning to do. Some of you have a family story about a Native ancestor and you think that puts you in a place to say this or that about an issue, but if you don't know more than just "Native ancestor", you're probably relying on stereotypes.

'There is no DNA test to prove you're Native American' (link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129554-400-there-is-no-dna-test-to-prove-youre-native-american/) Get her book, too. And follow her on Twitter. resources developed by the Native American Journalists Association. resources available from the American Indian Library Association, too: All My Relations: (link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/all-my-relations-podcast/id1454424563?mt=2) Media Indigena. Henceforward. interactive map. Note on Oct 30: the interactive map is offline for revisions.

25) And if you want to incorporate something about why mascots are unacceptable, start by reading 26) Get a copy of Daniel Heath Justice's Stephanie Fryberg's research.
WHY INDIGENOUS LITERATURES MATTER. It doesn't matter what YOU teach... we all read, buy, and share books... Daniel's book will help you a lot.

28) Make sure you read the articles there, and take a look at the teacher's guide, too! Here's the link that will take you right to theIn August, I was at the
That's it for now...
---Back to add one more tweet---

This is a great resource for doing land acknowledgements. map. Read the disclaimer that pops up when you go to the map. ---Update on Oct 30, 2019---
Indian Ed for All conference, held on the Pala homelands in California. There were several excellent presentations but my reason for doing this update today is because some of the most powerful remarks came from Dr. Joely Proudfit. She's the chair of the American Indian Studies at Cal State San Marcos, and the director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center. She said a few things about Land Acknowledgements that prompt me to add what I'm saying next.
When the acknowledgement is a "thank you" it suggests that you (the speaker) are replying to someone. Is it a specific person in a tribal nation? Or, is it Native peoples in the abstract as in no-longer-here? If it is the former, name that person. If it is the latter, reconsider saying it because it comes off as prayer-like.
When you say you're a guest on a specific nation's homeland, it implies that you were invited. Were you, in fact, invited to be there by someone of that nation?

Some people say "uninvited guest" but doesn't the word "guest" embody invited?

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Are you planning to do a Land Acknowledgement?

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This post on Land Acknowledgements is long over-due. I promised to do it last year, but one thing after another meant I put it off. This morning (Saturday, March 9, 2019) I did a twitter thread about land acknowledgements, and am pasting that thread here. There's more to say, but I hope this is helpful.

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Image: up//root: A We Here Intervention.
Welcome
Thank you for coming to this site/page and reading these words. We - Joyce, Sofia and Jorge - are thrilled to begin our time as the editors for up//root. Before we move towards our purpose, vision, intentions, and submission criteria, we need to acknowledge the lands on which we write this editorial introduction. We write this while on the colonized lands of the Gabrielino/Tongva, Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, and Comanche, and Wampanoag peoples. As we acknowledge their stewardship of the land, each of us has taken a step towards solidarity with the Indigenous peoples on whose land we inhabit. These actions include becoming an annual patron and community supporter for Nalgona Positivity Pride(1), calling the National Resource Committee leadership to protect the Mashpee Reservation and pass HR 312, and pressuring the University of Texas Austin Archaeological Research Laboratory to return Indigenous ancestral remains. As you read this, we strongly encourage you, if you have not already, to research the Indigenous lands you occupy and see how you can contribute time, energy, or financially towards the needs of the lands and the peoples of the land.

We need to express our deep appreciation to Jennifer (Jenny) A. Ferretti and Nicole Cooke, who launched a previous We Here publication via Medium in 2016. Their labor and energies, along with those of the authors, established a strong foundation and created a necessary pathway to the kind of knowledge-making we deserve - made by us, for us, and us, not simply about us. They will continue on as advisors, in addition to the other We Here administrators, Jennifer Brown and Charlotte Roh. In the near future, we will launch a call for an undergraduate or master's student to join the advisory board, and possibly an additional editor.

As we believe every new project should begin this way, we need to acknowledge our own identities and how we arrived here at this time and space together. Joyce (they/them/theirs) is currently a fat, queer, genderqueer, and non-disabled middle-class, Filipinx/Texan, born in the U.S. of immigrant parents, married, and a brand spankin' new parent. Jorge (he/him/his) is a light Brown mixed man of color - Mexican, Black American - that presently is a cis-hetero, non-disabled, lower-middle class U.S. citizen. Sofia (she/her/hers) is a straight, cisgender, able-bodied, middle-class, married Chinese American woman of color, and born of immigrant parents in NYC. Together, we recognize that we benefit from our proximity to whiteness. We claim these identities both to say how we identify and how people may view us, which is necessarily the lens through which we engage, observe, and move through the world.

We recognize that we do not represent all Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), even those who may share some or all of our identities. One of the discussions we had as an editorial team was specifically centered around whether and how this publication could claim to represent the knowledge, labor, and experiences of BIPOC without the many different intersections of identity represented on the editorial board. First, we know, as you do, that it is nearly impossible to represent each and every one of those intersections on the editorial board; we would never get this project off the ground. At this stage, we want to create the media space through which BIPOC can publish their artistic expressions, narratives, perspectives, or research. As an editorial team of three, we do not and cannot provide all the representation we might want at this time. All we can do for now is examine our own privileges and positionalities and be transparent about where we're coming from in our roles as the inaugural editors for this publication. All this said, we welcome and encourage BIPOC to contact the editors if you have concerns and/or would like to further discuss representation as it relates to up//root.

This is how we are choosing to begin the project, but we are consciously giving ourselves a term limit of three (3) years to open up space for new folx to guide and further develop this publication. In the third and final year of our editorial leadership, we will invite the new editors (selection process tbd) to work with us and learn our processes and structures as we transition to the new editorial board, which will no doubt bring a unique light and creative dimension towards the vision of up//root.
Origin Story
The genesis of how the three of us got in community with one another begins with a book. Jorge and Sofia are in the process of co-editing a volume of works by BIPOC in archives and libraries that is intended to create a Critical Race Theory of LIS (to be published in 2021 by the MIT Press). They, very intentionally, tried to make the process as full of care towards their contributors as possible, even as they knew that would create more labor for them. This is labor they wanted to do and cared about doing; this is the care that the three of us were never extended in predominantly white spaces and which we implicitly understand is necessary for any BIPOC being asked for their labor. Jorge and Sofia knew this was a project they wanted to expand. In the early stage of the project, Joyce noted Jorge and Sofia's approach and expressed gratitude for the intentional care with which they supported the contributors.

Over the past several years, Joyce became more aware of the insidiousness associated with producing knowledge within academia and the detrimental costs of that intellectual and emotional labor as a POC navigating predominantly white (read: oppressive) educational spaces of a super-white field. With the knowledge of their adjacent-to-privilege position in the academy, Joyce recognized that, as an educator-in-training, it was an issue of ethics to explicitly address harm caused in educational environments. This extends to the ways in which we conduct research, publish, and build upon the intellectual, practical, and creative work of BIPOC. Upon a year spent on intense healing from the trauma of their experiences in academia, Joyce finally decided to seek collaborators for a long overdue project on knowledge production for/by BIPOC that is rooted in antiracist, anti-oppressive understandings and sustained through perpetual reflection and practice. As we find ourselves continuing to navigate an oppressive system by which the "value" of our contributions are measured and rewarded according to standards shaped by the purveyors of whiteness, Joyce envisions a publishing community that intentionally honors the contributions of BIPOC and respects the processes through which we create, collaborate, research, write, and live.

Separately, Joyce and Sofia contacted Jenny to see if the We Here administrators were open to building a We Here publication with our considerations in mind. In our initial meeting with the advisory board, we found ourselves all on the same page, in solidarity.
Purpose
"We Here is a supportive community/space for library and archive workers and library and information science students who are Black + Indigenous + and Persons of Color (BIPOC). Some of the ways in which We Here can be described is as a support group, collaboration network, and mentorship platform." [2]

In reflecting the purpose and values of We Here, this publication is meant to be a supportive media space for our community of BIPOC working/studying in, researching, or otherwise impacting, the library and archives fields. up//root is a space for Black + Indigenous + Persons of Color to share their research and meditations on their knowledge, experiences and ways of being in libraries and archives. It is meant as a place for collaboration, growth, learning, understanding, and community, grounded in criticality, antiracism, and anti-oppression.
Vision(s) From Ahead
This vision for this publication space did not come to us from the past or from the ancestors. It arrived from a future just ahead. We saw, heard, and felt it in our dreams. It is defined by its unapologetic focus on centering, honoring, and extending the intersectional knowledge created by Black, Indigenous and People of Color towards liberatory practices and imaginaries in libraries, archives, and education.

Underneath that definition, as editors, is our commitment to mutuality, and to providing an ethic of connection, support, care, and imagination with artists, students, practitioners, and scholars in the process of making. In that being in relation and building together, we are determined and committed to guiding the critical work of BIPOC in reaching the world in ways that are sustaining, generative, and that hold the work gently, lovingly. This is one of the pathways in the direction of other ways of living and being.

Guiding our vision is a deep need and desire for a publication space that highlights work that is truthful and uncompromising - insurgent critiques in search of freedom and devastating celebrations of joy, fresh with light. Justice-centered work rooted in the strength, hope and wisdom of BIPOC - that calls our names and shows up, and out, for us. Work that move us closer together, to be one another's witnesses and daringly imagines positive social transformation for our collective futures and present.
Our Intentions
It is imperative for the collective growth of library and information science/studies (LIS) to sustain a publication that proactively acknowledges and honors the lived experiences of BIPOC as an earnest, bold way of producing knowledge. As BIPOC, we have built a wealth of first-hand knowledge that drives our creativity and/or informs our practice, the ways we conduct research and develop scholarship, and how we engage with white and BIPOC colleagues and faculty in environments that were not designed for us. We demand a publishing team that truly understands the challenges of navigating libraries, archives, and educational environments as BIPOC and is sensitive to the concerns of would-be contributors who are compelled to share their research, practice, creative works, and/or hard truths in order to cultivate knowledge, support other BIPOC to advance their careers, research agendas, and/or studies while maintaining their mental, physical, and spiritual health. As co-editors of up//root, we want to build a liberatory media space that centers BIPOC and uplifts the community's intellectual and creative contributions. It is through love, care, light, and strength that we aim to collectively nurture this important publishing community. We choose to begin with a true ethic of care that embodies the world we want to see and build.

As we center the rich, informative work of BIPOC in LIS, we acknowledge that what is considered legitimateknowledge production in LIS is rooted in white supremacy and centers the cis, patriarchal, colonial gaze. LIS journals operate in stern accordance with the oppressive (ableist, classist, racist) parameters of publishing. Such publications do not center nor explicitly serve what is important for BIPOC in LIS (and therefore for all of LIS) to thrive as we develop robust ways of producing knowledge that inform our practice and scholarship. Current LIS publications are not interested in this key work unless it directly serves white interests (See Bell, 1980 "interest convergence").

Following the lead of the administrators and participating members of the We Here collective, it is our intention as the inaugural editors of up//root to do the work that our institutions and the LIS professions as a whole are not doing (read: refuse to do). In an emancipatory spirit, it is our intention through this endeavor to build and sustain a media space that unapologetically centers, uplifts, and financially compensates for theresearch and creative works of Black, Indigenous, and Persons Of Color.

We here.

In solidarity and light,

Joyce, Sofia, Jorge
Look out for:

Rolling submissions for both an open call and a themed issue open on Monday, Feb 10

Call for peer reviewers open on Feb 10

Call for undergrad/master's student to join the advisory board TBD

Our website

ENDNOTES
[1] Nalgona Positivity Pride is a Xicana-indigenous body-positive organization based in Los Angeles that "focuses on uncovering the impacts of colonialism, social oppression, historical trauma and its role in impairing relationships indigenous-descent people have with food and body-image. NPP's goal is to help people of color and indigenous descent folks find education and resources for self-empowering, resistance, and healing."

[2] We Here Safe Space Agreement/Code of Conduct, May 14, 2018.

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Welcome Thank you for coming to this site/page and reading these words. We - Joyce, Sofia and Jorge - are thrilled to begin our time as the editors for up//root. Before we move towards our purpose, vision, intentions, and submission criteria, we need to acknowledge the lands on which we write this editorial introduction.

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Paul Gorski: Avoiding Racial Equity Detours

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Paul Gorski: Avoiding Racial Equity Detours

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Hollaback! Together We Have the Power to End Harassment

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Happy Friday Hollas! We've had so much going on this week. Whether it's in the office, around the country or around the world, our feminist revolution is always under way. FROM HOLLABACK HQ This Tuesday, Debjani did a training of trainers at Boston University's School of Public Health. This week, Emily and Tamar were at the Obama Foundation Summit! Debjani did a digital workshop ... Continued

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Hollaback! Together We Have the Power to End Harassment

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Happy Friday Hollas! We've had so much going on this week. Whether it's in the office, around the country or around the world, our feminist revolution is always under way. FROM HOLLABACK HQ This Tuesday, Debjani did a training of trainers at Boston University's School of Public Health.

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Ibram X. Kendi on the solution for America's "metastatic" racism

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"There are so many ways to get this right, they had to lookfor a way to get this wrong."

That's author L.L. McKinney's response to Barnes & Noble's "Diverse Editions" campaign. McKinney's most recent book, A Dream So Dark, is a sequel to A Blade So Black, a contemporary retelling of Alice in Wonderland with a black female lead.

The bookselling chain announced this month that they were going to release classic books with new covers that reimagined protagonists as characters of color. These included Frankenstein, Peter Pan and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde among others - almost all books by white authors, about characters presumed to be white.

Black authors took to Twitter to express their criticism of the project, many of them, including McKinney, calling it "literary blackface."

Barnes & Noble released a statement on Twitter on Wednesday, the day the book covers were supposed to be displayed at their Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan, saying they were no longer going forward with the campaign.

It's still a story by a white author, featuring a white character, told via the white gaze. And none of this has changed within the contents of the story itself.

In the statement, the chain said "it was a project inspired by outwork with schools and was created in part to raise awareness and discussion during Black History Month, in which Barnes & Noble stores nationally will continue to highlight a wide selection of books to celebrate black history and great literature from writers of color."

But what was supposed to be a celebration of diversity to kick off Black History Month turned into a moment where black writers weren't actually part of that celebration.

Out of the 12 books chosen for the campaign, only one was written by a black author - The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas.

"It's still a story by a white author, featuring a white character, told via the white gaze," McKinney says. "And none of this has changed within the contents of the story itself. They're essentially just slapping a cover on it to 'celebrate diversity.' But a lot of us felt that you're just trying to cash in on the fact that it's Black History Month, and now all of a sudden, black faces and brown faces will sell books. Just maybe one, two years ago, people were saying in meetings, 'Yeah, you can't put black people on covers. It's not going to sell the book.'"

Interview Highlights
On what Barnes & Noble could have done instead
Feature black people, that's the beginning and end of it. If you're wanting to put a spin on classics, feature classics that are by black and brown authors. Like Zora Neale Hurston. Toni Morrison. Give their covers updates and put them on your tables. Or if you want to do this thing where you connect to the ideas of the classic canon, we are out there writing reimaginings and retellings and putting ourselves in the narratives of these stories. Like Pride & Prejudice. Like Alice in Wonderland. Like Wizard of Oz. We're doing that, so feature those books if that's the angle you want to go.
On diversity in book publishing
No one thinks they're capable of making mistakes at this level. Especially mistakes like this. Because if you did think that that was a thing that could happen, you would have things in place and people in place to be able to prevent it from happening, right? I've been that person, you know, that one black voice, that one person of color in the room or maybe there are two or three of us who says, maybe this isn't a good idea. But then we're shouted down or talked over, so it rolls out. This definitely says that there were no people of color in the room to make those decisions. And if they were, no one listened to them.
On representation

Feature black people, that's the beginning and end of it. If you're wanting to put a spin on classics, feature classics that are by black and brown authors.

I am of the camp of if you want good representation, you let those people speak for themselves. You set up the microphone, you check the levels, you get everything together, and then you get out of the way. Especially if you're someone who has the resources to do that. And then we can take it from there. That's what I think good representation is. It mostly comes from within the communities that are attempting to be represented because nobody knows it like us, right?

There are people who do do the work and they take the care and they show the research and they're very sensitive to the nature, not only of the representation, but the context around the bad representation that has come before it. Cause you're not just representing us in that moment, right? You're fighting against this narrative that has been developed for decades and people don't even take that into account. They're just like, "Oh, well, you know, let me write this down and get this out there." And maybe I don't play into, you know, this sharp thing that people are aware of right now, but you miss the connotation of like maybe minstrelsy you know, from decades ago, that's still very much felt in our community. So I think that good representation happens when we're allowed to take the mic.
This story was produced for radio by Justine Kenin and adapted for the Web by Brianna Scott.

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Author L.L. McKinney: Barnes & Noble 'Diverse Editions' Are 'Literary Blackface'

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"There are so many ways to get this right, they had to lookfor a way to get this wrong." That's author L.L. McKinney's response to Barnes & Noble's "Diverse Editions" campaign. McKinney's most recent book, A Dream So Dark, is a sequel to A Blade So Black , a contemporary retelling of Alice in Wonderland with a black female lead.

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Featured
October 8, 2019

Featured
August 28, 2019

Featured
August 23, 2019

Oct 16, 2019
Fairbanks, AK 99701

Oct 20, 2019 - Oct 25, 2019
Albuquerque Convention Center, Albuquerque, NM

Embassy of Tribal Nations
1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 466-7767, Fax: (202) 466-7797

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Featured October 8, 2019 Featured August 28, 2019 Featured August 23, 2019 Oct 16, 2019 Fairbanks, AK 99701 Oct 20, 2019 - Oct 25, 2019 Albuquerque Convention Center, Albuquerque, NM Embassy of Tribal Nations 1516 P Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 Phone: (202) 466-7767, Fax: (202) 466-7797

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Let's start at the very beginning... a very good place to start. OK, cut the singing and let's start finding books.

We are looking for Jewish books for children and teens that are being published this spring from January 1- May 30, 2020. We'll do a fall list later in the year.

Here are titles that have come to our attention. If you know of others not listed here, please tell us about them in the comments. The book must have Jewish content and be published in 2020 for ages 0-18.

Picture Books
TitleAuthorJudah Touro Didn't Want to Be FamousAdes, AudreyBuen Shabbat, Shabbat ShalomAroeste, SarahSweet Tamales for PurimBietz, Barbara FosterI Love MatzahBiniashvili, FreideleMy Sister is SleepingBusheri, DeboraNo Steps BehindGottesfeld, JeffLilah Tov Good NightGundersheimer, BenAlligator SederHickman, JessicaThe Generous FishJules, JacquelineHard Hat Cat!Kiffel-Alcheh, JamieYou're the Cheese in My BlintzKimmelman, LeslieWorse and Worse on Noah's ArkKimmelman, LeslieClar...

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Let's start at the very beginning... a very good place to start. OK, cut the singing and let's start finding books. We are looking for Jewish books for children and teens that are being published this spring from January 1- May 30, 2020. We'll do a fall list later in the year.

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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We all know libraries and their services are supposed to be available to everyone. It's even in Wisconsin law that public libraries have to be accessible to people with "special needs."

But how can we predict which special needs we need to accommodate? ... or which unique combinations of barriers and assets people will need us to address?

The Inclusive Services Assessment and Guide for Wisconsin Public Libraries is meant to be your roadmap for these issues. To see what we mean by this, watch this short video about how one library navigated inclusive services.

As you can see from the video, inclusion is not a one-size-fits-all concept, nor a complete-and-move-on challenge. The checklist and supporting resources found in the guide are meant to help individual libraries evaluate current services as well as plan for the future.

The Inclusive Services Assessment and Guide was designed by Wisconsin public library and system staff for Wisconsin public library directors, staff, and boards with the intent to foster inclusive library environments where everyone is safe, welcomed, and respected. This resource was developed to support libraries in implementing the Inclusive Services Statement. In addition, this resource intentionally complements the 2018 Wisconsin Public Library Standards.

For more information, visit: https://dpi.wi.gov/pld/inclusive-services

Written by: Tessa Michaelson Schmidt
Public Library Development Team

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The Inclusive Services Assessment and Guide

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We all know libraries and their services are supposed to be available to everyone. It's even in Wisconsin law that public libraries have to be accessible to people with "special needs." But how can we predict which special needs we need to accommodate? ...

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Of interest to Illinois: Div. & Social Justice in Youth Librarian RAILS Networking Group

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Of interest to Illinois: Div. & Social Justice in Youth Librarian RAILS Networking Group

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Are you interested in meeting with like-minded Youth Services library staff to discuss topics of diversity of all kinds - including hiring diverse presenters, advocating for inclusive programming (disability-friendly programming, Pride events), evaluating materials for respectful and accurate representation, selecting diverse titles for storytimes and more? Come to the inaugural meeting of Diversity and Social Justice in Youth Services.

Event Coordinator: Steffanie Baseley
Email: sbaseley@mchenrylibrary.org
Phone: 815-385-0036

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Diversity and Social Justice in Youth Services Networking Group

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Are you interested in meeting with like-minded Youth Services library staff to discuss topics of diversity of all kinds - including hiring diverse presenters, advocating for inclusive programming (disability-friendly programming, Pride events), evaluating materials for respectful and accurate representation, selecting diverse titles for storytimes and more?

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First Tuesdays: Let's Talk About Race in Storytimes

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Decolonizing the Imagination by Zetta Elliott

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Decolonizing the Imagination by Zetta Elliott

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The door is a place, real, imaginary and imagined. As islands and dark continents are. It is a place which exists or existed. The door out of which Africans were captured, loaded onto ships heading for the New World. It was the door of a million exits multiplied. It is a door many of us wish never existed. It is a door which makes the word door impossible and dangerous, cunning and disagreeable.

-Dionne Brand, A Map to the Door of No Return

I am an immigrant. I grew up in a former British colony, dreaming of magical wardrobes and secret gardens. Doors figured rather prominently in my imagination, and books were indeed windows into other worlds. They were not, however, much of a mirror for my young black female self. I learned early on that only white children had wonderful adventures in distant lands; only white children were magically transported through time and space; only white children found the buried key that unlocked their own private Eden.

Perhaps the one benefit of being so completely excluded from the literary realm was that I had to develop the capacity to dream myself into existence. My imagination went into overdrive trying to picture a girl like me living inside my beloved books. By the time I was twelve, I had discovered Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and the Brontë sisters. I started high school that same year, and my essays took on a formal tone and were sprinkled with archaic words (such as gaoler for jailer). When asked to make a picture book in my senior creative writing class, I wrote a story about a white family that neglects its youngest member; when little Violet goes outside to play with the wind, she grabs hold of a neighbor's kite and is swept away.

Looking back on those days now, I marvel at the girl I once was. Why would a plump, brown-skinned girl with an Afro embark on a quest to read all the books she could find by Frances Hodgson Burnett? Was I an Anglophile in training, or was my taste in books (and music, and clothes) a way of rejecting popular representations of blackness, which fit me just as poorly (if at all)? Up until grade three I started each school day by singing "God Save the Queen," so perhaps my taste in literature was the inevitable result of Canada's colonial legacy.

Whatever the reason, I have since made peace with my past self. I accept my own hybridity, which is too often reduced to the fact that I am mixed-race. (There is a common misperception that mixed-race people exist solely for the purpose of bridging the racial divide.) I am an educator, so I do have a professional obligation to teach others to respect and value difference. As a writer, however, I have a somewhat different mission. Unlike our unfortunate president, who is attacked whenever he dares to broach the topic of race (and even when he does not), my goal isn't racial reconciliation. Instead it is to expose and explore what Canadian writer Dionne Brand calls "the fissure between the past and the present"; with my writing I aim to reveal "a rupture in history, a rupture in the quality of being...a physical rupture, a rupture of geography." Brand explains:

That fissure is represented in the Door of No Return: that place where our ancestors departed one world for another; the Old World for the New. The place where all names were forgotten and all beginnings recast. In some desolate sense it was the creation place of Blacks in the New World Diaspora at the same time that it signified the end of traceable beginnings.

Migration is in my blood. When he was fifteen, my father migrated to Canada from a small island in the Caribbean; after forty years in Toronto, he moved once more to start a new life in New York. My mother's maternal ancestors were African American slaves who bought their freedom and arrived in Ontario in 1820. I left Canada at age twenty-one not because of political persecution but because I was unhappy and could only envision a better future for myself somewhere else. In a way, I was seeking asylum when I moved to the United States, but I was also aware that the circumstances behind my decision to leave were not dire. I was not a refugee; I wasn't fleeing the prospect of starvation as my Irish ancestors had in the late nineteenth century. I spent one summer with my father in Brooklyn and determined to build a life there. It was my choice, my dream.

But what differentiates me from most other immigrants - and what binds me more closely to my black ancestors - is the fact that I am also a descendant of those enslaved Africans who were forced to pass through that infamous Door, one of dozens found in the fortresses that once dotted the west coast of Africa. The First Family visited Cape Coast Castle during the President's 2009 trip to Ghana; an African American tourist who witnessed the Obamas' visit testified to the power of that moment: "The world's least powerful people were shipped off from here as slaves. Now Obama, an African American, the most powerful person in the world, is going to be standing here. For us it will be a full-circle experience." For Brand, returning to one of the physical sites of the Door in no way "completes" the traumatic journey that began five hundred years ago.

The Door of No Return is of course no place at all but a metaphor for place...A place where a certain set of transactions occurred, perhaps the most important of them being the transference of selves... To have one's belonging lodged in a metaphor is voluptuous intrigue; to inhabit a trope; to be a kind of fiction. To live in the Black Diaspora is I think to live as a fiction - a creation of empires, and also self-creation. It is to be a being living inside and outside of herself... There is the sense in the mind of not being here or there, of no way out or in.

Brand echoes W. E. B. DuBois's idea of "double consciousness": as an African American you see yourself as yourself, but also as the distorted image others have constructed in their minds. In this country of immigrants, the fact of one's untraceable origins in Africa exists as what Brand calls "a visible secret," something that is at once apparent yet remains unspoken in daily life. My goal as a writer of speculative fiction is to engage the tropes of captivity, migration, and transformation in a narrative that is thrilling, compelling, and revealing. Some bemoan the seeming abundance of "slavery stories," arguing that African American historical fiction only dredges up an abject past that shames young black readers, but I believe speculative fiction generates the kind of narrative possibility that enables us to revise, re-view, and reclaim the past. What happens when a fictional character confronts or creates a portal, a doorway to another world? Can time and space be shaped by an author to satisfy needs left unfulfilled by an unjust reality? Perhaps literature offers us both a way out of and a way into the liminal space represented by the Door of No Return.

In my time-travel novel, A Wish After Midnight, doors are of the utmost importance. My main character, Genna, yearns for a different reality and vows not to be shut out of the American Dream simply because she was born black, female, and poor. Her sanctuary is the nearby botanic garden, and when she flees there late one night after a fight with her mother, she makes a fateful wish that opens a portal and sends her back to Civil War-era Brooklyn. Believed to be a fugitive slave, Genna narrowly escapes being sold down South and instead is taken to the black community of Weeksville to recover from her wounds. The portal in the garden, like the Door of No Return, initiates "the transference of selves"; Genna first believes she is dreaming, but gradually must accept that she is trapped "inside and outside of herself " in a city - and a body - she no longer recognizes. When she miraculously reunites with her boyfriend Judah (a Rastafarian youth who was also sent back in time), the two teens must decide which way freedom lies: overseas in the newly founded nation of Liberia, or in the United States where, even after the war, so many doors will remain closed to blacks.

Now, as I write Judah's Tale, the sequel to A Wish After Midnight, I am thinking once again of those British novels I adored as a child. It is no coincidence that the portal in my first young adult novel opens in a garden; though I have consciously worked to decolonize my imagination, the influence of (and my affection for) those early narratives persist. In this novel, I am hoping to expand upon my use of Afro-urban magic, elements of which I introduced in my picture book, Bird. In Bird, when young Mehkai struggles to understand the drug-related death of his older brother, Uncle Son tells him a story passed on to him by his grandmother about enslaved Africans who lifted themselves up into the sky and found freedom by flying back across the sea. Mehkai learns that by tapping into his own creative potential, he, too, can transcend the perilous city streets that claimed his beloved brother.

According to Dionne Brand, this particular folktale, which recurs with some variation throughout the Americas, demonstrates "a mastery of way-finding" among the enslaved (Virginia Hamilton's retelling of "The People Could Fly" is the best known example in the United States). In order to reach freedom, "no known map is necessary, nor any known methods of conveyance;" the enslaved turn instead to an assortment of signs, rituals, and religious practices informed by West African belief systems: "The North Star, the Big Dipper, a dark sky, a clear night, a rabbit's foot, a juju bag, maljo beads, holy water, water of compassion, success powder, single bible leaf. Signs of rescue." Over time, Africans in the Americas developed hybrid identities that retained aspects of their African roots yet still enabled them to adapt and survive in their new, and often hostile, environment. "Way-finding" manifested in the Great Migration of the early twentieth century as millions of blacks left the rural South for northern cities; today immigrants from across the African Diaspora continue to join these urban communities, infusing vital energy into existing cultural practices. "Way-finding" celebrates tradition and innovation, and thus is central to my Afro-urban project, which seeks to represent the various ruptures and responses that shape black history and identity.

Many years after leaving Canada, I realized that I never believed anything magical could happen to me there. Whether I attribute that to a failure of my own imagination or to external factors, the result was that my dreams took root in a foreign land. It is important to me that African American youths know they need not look to a castle in England to find magic; there are wonders to discover and adventures to be had right here at home (and in other parts of the globe). I don't regret my early immersion in British literature, though I wish there had been more balance in the books I consumed as a child. I am gratified to know that my fascination with doors now enables me to contribute to a rich storytelling tradition that celebrates my ancestors' resilient humanity. If we do not create stories that expose the beauty and complexity of our varied realities, we will indeed remain trapped by the "fictions" created by those outside of our cultures and communities.

From the March/April 2010 Horn Book Magazine. Click the tag HBBlackHistoryMonth16 for more articles in this series.

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The Writer's Page: Decolonizing the Imagination

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The door is a place, real, imaginary and imagined. As islands and dark continents are. It is a place which exists or existed. The door out of which Africans were captured, loaded onto ships heading for the New World. It was the door of a million exits multiplied.

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Gorski: White Activists & the Burnout of Activists of Color

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Gorski: White Activists & the Burnout of Activists of Color

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Recommended Twitter follow during presentation - Leslie McFadden

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Recommended Twitter follow during presentation - Leslie McFadden

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Definitions:
Gender Identity: Gender Identity: One's internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or another gender(s). Everyone has a gender identity, including you. For transgender people, their sex assigned at birth and their own internal sense of gender identity are not the same. Female, woman, and girl and male, man, and boy are also NOT necessarily linked to each other but are just six common gender identities.
Gender Expression/Presentation: The physical manifestation of one's gender identity through clothing, hairstyle, voice, body shape, etc. Most transgender people seek to make their gender expression (how they look) match their gender identity (who they are), rather than their sex assigned at birth.
Sex Assigned at Birth: The assignment and classification of people as male, female, intersex, or another sex based on a combination of anatomy, hormones, chromosomes. It is important we don't simply use "sex" because of the vagueness of the definition of sex and its place in transphobia. Chromosomes are frequently used to determine sex from prenatal karyotyping (although not as often as genitalia). Chromosomes do not determine genitalia.
Sexually Attracted To: Sexual Orientation. It is important to note that sexual and romantic/emotional attraction can be from a variety of factors including but not limited to gender identity, gender expression/presentation, and sex assigned at birth.
Romantically/Emotionally Attracted To: Romantic/emotional orientation. It is important to note that sexual and romantic/emotional attraction can be from a variety of factors including but not limited to gender identity, gender expression/presentation, and sex assigned at birth.
Example of how to fill out your own Gender Unicorn:
Here are some fundamental issues with the graphic:
Many people were curious if agender and asexual people were included in this graphic. Simply identifying on the left of the sexuality spectra would indicate no attraction.

Changes from The Genderbread Person
You may recognize this graphic as similar to The Genderbread Person
by itspronouncedmetrosexual. We created a similar graphic with significant changes to more accurately portray the distinction between gender, sex assigned at birth, and sexuality.

1. The itspronouncedmetrosexual Genderbread Person is plagiarized.
2. We wanted to create a gender graphic that shows how queer and trans people view gender instead of one straight, cisgender man.

Here are some structural issues with the graphic:
1. Nongendered isn't the only identity that may fall on the "left" of the Gender Identity Spectrum. Most people prefer the term "agender".
2. Agender is typically used as a gender identity, not a gender expression
3. Biological sex is an ambiguous word that has no scale and no meaning besides that it is related to some sex characteristics.
It is also harmful to trans people.
Instead, we prefer "sex assigned at birth" which provides a more accurate description of what biological sex may be trying to communicate.
4. Asex isn't a word, everyone has some sex characteristics prescribed to them.
5. There are other genders besides male and female and not all cultures operate on a male/female binary ( which is mostly a European construct).
We included "other genders" to indicate the many genders that other people might identify as, express themselves as, and be attracted to.
6. Sex, whether referencing an array of sex characteristics or sex assigned at birth is not exclusively determined through genitals as insinuated by the image.

Sources:
Queer and trans organizers have been making the distinction between gender identity, gender presentation/expression, sex, and attraction for decades. No one person or organization has created the concept. However "Genderbread" itself has two main sources:

1. textualharassment.tumblr.com (http://www.reddit.com/r/transgender/
comments/ipgod/oversimplified_diagram_
but_still_a_good_way_to/)

2. http://cisnormativity.tumblr.com/post/
9652156368/gingerbread-person-this-is-an-anthropomorphic

Illustrations by Anna Moore. Design by Landyn Pan, Eli Erlick, and many others.

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Definitions: Gender Identity: Gender Identity: One's internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or another gender(s). Everyone has a gender identity, including you. For transgender people, their sex assigned at birth and their own internal sense of gender identity are not the same.

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Tone policing happens during conversations or debates when one person, typically of greater privilege, thwarts a speaker's thoughts or opinions by reacting to their emotional tone.

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exploring racial identity with white teachers

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So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

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So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

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'White Kids' Author discusses her new study of how white children develop ideas about race.

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'White Kids' Author discusses her new study of how white children develop ideas about race.

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American colleges struggle with racial tensions every year. Some white students -- in incidents that attract widespread attention or in everyday interactions with their minority peers -- convey a lack of understanding about race.

A new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America (New York University Press), explores how wealthy white children develop their ideas about race. The author, Margaret A. Hagerman, assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University, took a qualitative approach, following young white people as they grew up. She answered questions via email about the book and how her findings relate to current tensions at colleges.
Q: Would you describe your research method? How many white wealthy young people did you talk to? How did you define privilege as you were considering whom to interview?
A: White Kid s is based on a two-year ethnographic study of 30 families who identified as white and who lived in a medium-sized Midwest city. I interviewed 36 children who were between the ages of 10 and 13 as well as their parents, and I observed these families in their everyday lives. I drove kids to soccer practices and piano lessons, I went to birthday parties and private pools at country clubs, and so on. I also returned to this community a few years later when the youth were in high school and conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of them and their parents. In addition to their racial privilege, these families also experienced class privilege: at least one of the parents in these families, though oftentimes both, held a graduate or professional degree, worked in a professional occupation, and [they] owned a single-family home.
Q: High schools are increasingly segregated by race. How do young white people today learn about race?
A: Many people think that white kids learn about race based on what their parents say (or do not say) to them about the topic. For instance, after a racist hate crime, I often notice a surge in parenting blog posts and op-eds published that urge white parents to speak to their children about racism in America. One of the most important lessons of my research, though, is that "actions speak louder than words." Whether parents use colorblind language ("We don't see race") or color-conscious language ("We are antiracist"), what they say often matters far less than what they actually do -- and specifically, what they do to design their child's social environment. When parents move to a segregated white neighborhood because the kids in the integrated neighborhood are "too rough," or when they believe a "good" school is a whiter school, or when the only people in a child's life are also white with the exception of the economically marginalized black and brown people at the soup kitchen whom they are told they must help "save," white children notice and develop understandings of not only the position of others in society but also of themselves -- they learn about their own power and privilege through observing and interpreting this world around them. My book tries to highlight how kids are making meaning of race through these interpretive processes.
Q: You write about young people (and also their parents) saying that they are not racist, and then having stereotypical attitudes about black people or behaving in ways that reinforce racial inequality. How do you explain this?
A: None of the kids in this book want to be considered "racist," but I did find variations on why this was the case. Some children believed this label would mean that they were hurting their peers of color, which they knew was a real possibility, even if unintentional. Other kids did not believe it was even possible for them to be racist because racism is "no longer a problem." Race scholars like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have documented extensively the prevalence of colorblind ideology in America. This research illustrates how white people can say racism is no longer a problem while simultaneously explaining the existence of inequality in our society by blaming people of color through the use of culturally racist stereotypes. Other scholars have also explored differences between what white people say about race and what they do. For instance, scholars like Amanda Lewis and John Diamond demonstrate how white parents advocate for their own children in ways that protect and defend the very systems of inequality they say they otherwise reject. Additionally, scholars like Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann show how white people engage in the "happy talk" of diversity while avoiding real confrontations with structural inequality and avoiding the realities of how they perpetuate inequality in their own lives. Certainly, in my research, I found similar patterns.
Q: We are in a period of intense national debate about affirmative action in college admissions. What attitudes did you see among young white people that would influence their view of this question?
A: I found variation in these affluent white kids' perspectives on programs or policies designed to promote equal opportunity and fight institutional racism. For instance, one child told me that she did not understand the relevance of spaces like that of a Black Student Union. In her words: "Like, this one high school has, like, the Black Student Union and the Asian Student Union. I don't really get it. Like, why do they have to be like, 'Oh, you're black, so you're in your own little union.' I mean, there's not like the White Student Union!" Similarly, I witnessed a brother tell his younger sibling with a tone of disgust that he would never get into a particular summer program because the program was more likely to accept "black and Mexican kids than white kids." And yet, other kids told me that they understood the need for policies and programs that would help make up for the legacy of racism in America. For instance, another child explained, "I think there is still a lot of discrimination in jobs and stuff, and there has been for a long time ... Some people are not given certain opportunities that maybe someone would give white people just because they look different, which I think is kind of bogus." This child was in favor of trying to find ways to fix these problems. "We need to do something about this," he told me.
Q: College leaders are stunned every year when white students (who deny being racist) pose in blackface or organize "illegal alien hunt" parties, etc. How do you explain this behavior, based on the attitudes you found?
A: Not only do many of the white kids in my study express limited awareness of the history of racism or the realities of contemporary forms of racism and racial inequality, but they also express what sociologist Tyrone Forman describes as "racial apathy" or the "lack of feeling or indifference toward societal racial and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues." From my perspective, racial apathy is at the heart of the day-to-day exclusionary practices of white supremacy prevalent on college campuses (e.g., microaggressions) as well as the much more incendiary racist events that receive national attention. My research shows that such apathy manifests itself in white childhood -- like when some of the young people tell me that they "don't care" about black people who are killed by police because "when black people get shot, it is because they fucked up." Kids who do not care about the suffering of people of color in middle school may not see a problem with hosting an "illegal alien hunt" party in college.
Q: Based on what you learned, what would be your advice to college leaders who want to promote inclusive environments on their campuses?
A: My research shows that many white kids are unprepared for living and learning in a racially inclusive environment because of their own white racial socialization in childhood and early adolescence. Integrating my own research with the important work of my colleagues, I think all students should be required to take classes designed to build their empathy, understanding and capacity to act in the face of racial inequalities -- classes based in critical race studies that, as sociologist Jennifer Mueller puts it, make "ignorance [or apathy] more difficult." University leaders should support and value the faculty who teach these courses, recognizing the challenges of this work especially for faculty from racially marginalized groups. So too should university leaders work to address the consequences of racial apathy at all levels of the university -- e.g., syllabi that center white perspectives, administrative indifference to the concerns of students of color, uncritical hiring practices, inequitable service demands placed on faculty of color and so on. In order to challenge the normative nature of whiteness on college campuses, administrators first need to better understand the process of white racial socialization and the insidious power of racial apathy.

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Author discusses her new book on how white children develop ideas about race

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American colleges struggle with racial tensions every year. Some white students -- in incidents that attract widespread attention or in everyday interactions with their minority peers -- convey a lack of understanding about race. A new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America (New York University Press), explores how wealthy white children develop their ideas about race.

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The Unbearable Darkness of White Privilege & Why the WSJ Needs to Leave Our Literature Alone

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The Unbearable Darkness of White Privilege & Why the WSJ Needs to Leave Our Literature Alone

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On August 29, 2018, Steve Salerno wrote an article called The Unbearable Darkness of Young Adult Literature in the Wall Street Journal about the dangers of young adult literature that focuses on violence and oppression. He insinuated that various dystopic and truth-telling stories could be an underlying cause for the increase in "modern hopelessness," and he asked, "Are high rates of depression and suicide an organic outgrowth of life's legitimate trials-or are they a crisis manufactured, at least in part, by painting life as so much more trying than it is?" That is, the article asked whether talking about racism, patriarchy, sexual abuse, school shootings, gang life, etc. are contributing to the larger narrative of hopelessness in society.

To bolster his claim, he mentioned the inaugural Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature, held in Las Vegas, Nevada at the University of Las Vegas. He specifically mentions a track of presentations that nominally focused on "Rising up: Socially Relevant Text, Critical Literacy, and Identity," but ensured readers that "rising up" may not be the theme, when authors like Kekla Magoon, Chris Crutcher, and Laurie Halse Anderson, who write books that tackle difficult subjects, are present and discussed. Ultimately, Salerno decides that scholars, educators, librarians, and others should recommend books that make the world sound like it is a great place to be, instead of teaching or recommending books with difficult content. In other words, he advocates that we stop talking about the truth and embrace a false, but more utopian view of the world.

First, I think it should be clear that the nominal focus on "rising up" was actually the title of one presentation given on Thursday afternoon of the conference. With other sessions, like "Writing the Unwritten Rules of High School Sports through YAL," "Coming of Age Around the World: Engaging Global Perspectives through Postcolonial YA Literature," and my own presentation, "(Re)Writing the Future: Helping Students to Analyze the World through Science Fiction," there was much more information being presented than just topics concerning violence and social injustice. Second, I'd like to acknowledge the hard work of the ASU Now journalism team for writing the article from which Salerno probably grabbed his personal quotes from Drs. Alice Hays and James Blasingame.

Attribution of sources and accurateness of discussion aside, I think it is important to discuss the ways in which Salerno's privilege shows in the article. Of course, everyone does not like young adult literature, and some people have stated that the genre is too dark for some teens. However, there are many young people who are growing up in a world where they see darkness every day, whether we want them to or not. Only 21 weeks into 2018, there were 23 school shootings where someone was hurt or killed. Black girls are constantly penalized for wearing box braids, afros, or certain hair products. Homophobic bullying begins as early as the elementary school years. Thus, young people do not have to see violence and oppression in the books they read, they see it on an everyday basis, some more than others.

To say that we should ignore these topics and tell the youth that the world is a "hospitable place to be" is doing a disservice to young people because it assumes that they cannot handle the very real social issues they witness. It is assuming that we should lie to them and tell them that the world is filled with happiness, even though watching the news for five minutes will destroy that implausible fiction. Moreover, by explicitly naming "sexual abuse, dysphoria (I'm pretty sure he means sexual or gender identity, but...privilege), racism, domestic violence, gang life, schools shootings and other forbidding aspects of a world" as the issues we should silence, he is saying that the violence, oppression, and dangers that marginalized populations face in this world should be hidden from view. This is a privileged perspective, for he can choose to ignore these realities. Others cannot.

Suggesting that we hide Kekla Magoon's story that presents multiple perspectives on the murder of a fictional 16-year-old black boy is effectively saying that the lives of black girls and boys do not matter. It is saying that we should not #saytheirnames because that topic may be too difficult. To state that we should ignore Laurie Halse Anderson's memoir because she talks about assault, eating disorders, PTSD, and alcoholism is making a political statement. It's saying that young people who experience these things should keep it to themselves, lest it makes other people feel uncomfortable. Throwing away Chris Crutcher's novel because it narrates a story about dysfunctional families, foster families, and love is saying that we only want certain families and lives centered in stories. Just like speaking out, marching, and voting are political, so is silence and erasure.

Essentially, saying these stories are the causes for hopelessness and despair in the youth population of society is overlooking the fact that there are political, institutional, and individual aspects that created these stories. If young black girls and boys were not being killed by police, then I doubt that there would be multiple books about the topic written and published in the last few years. If sexual assault and patriarchy did not run rampant in society, then there would be no need for the #metoo movement, and there would be no need for books that discuss those topics. If all families were the same, then there would not be numerous family and community-based initiatives available, nor books written to show the heterogeneity of family and communal life.

The unbearable darkness of privilege shown through this article is one of many attempts to misdirect the real issue from the structural to the individual. It is a way of erasing, silencing, and hiding the voices of all people who do not experience the privileged life that Salerno wishes to highlight. It is an attempt to berate those of us who work with young people and see that many of them struggle every day, more than we ever did. It is a privilege to ignore the dark things that happen in our society. It is a privilege to only focus on the happy aspects of life all the time. It is a privilege to write about a conference that you did not attend. Sometimes, it's best to look past that privilege and see that although you may not need these stories, there are some people who do.

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The Unbearable Darkness Of White Privilege And Why The Wall Street Journal Needs To Leave Our Literature Alone

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On August 29, 2018, Steve Salerno wrote an article called The Unbearable Darkness of Young Adult Literature in the Wall Street Journal about the dangers of young adult literature that focuses on violence and oppression.

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Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it's required your ignorance.

H i white person in my DMs, let me respond here in the hopes that I never have to again.

Almost every day I get a message like yours from a random white person - on Facebook, Twitter, or email - offering to provide me with the "white perspective" that they think that my work on race and feminism is missing. "Just to give a more well-rounded picture," they'll explain, or "Having been a white person my whole life, I think my insight would be useful to you," or, "I think I can help you understand how this issue looks to white society."

To which I say: Physician, heal thyself.

No, I do not know everything. I do not cover every angle all the time. Sometimes, I'm flat-out wrong. But here's the thing: I do know white culture. I know white culture better than most white people know white culture. I know white culture, white history, white politics. I know it better than you because if you knew why you were really in my DMs right now, you'd be embarrassed. Why do I know white culture so well? Because I'm a black woman. And while I, and just about any person of color who has spent their lives in a white supremacist society, know enough about white culture to write a book or two on whiteness and option the bestseller movie rights, y'all know almost nothing about us and even less about yourselves.

Why? Because you don't have to.

Why do I know white culture so well? Because I'm a black woman.

I may be coming across as arrogant but honestly, I'm just exhausted. From the moment I was born my life has been steeped in whiteness. Not just the MTV I grew up with or the Disney characters I loved, but the white history I learned from white teachers, the white art I learned to revere above all else, the beauty standards I knew I'd never live up to. I know what songs y'all like the most, who your biggest movie stars are, how you achieve the hottest hairstyles in your magazines, what fashion you're appropriating. I know what your "ideal" family looks like, what your definition of "American values" is. I know what you find funny and romantic. I know your definitions of success.

But it's more than that, much more. I had to learn to talk to my white teachers in a way that didn't seem "too boisterous," and I learned why enthusiasm would be disruptive from me yet welcomed by white boys. I had to learn what level of eye contact with cops seemed respectful, what seemed evasive, and what seemed challenging. I had to learn why clerks in the grocery store were following me. I had to learn why the same white people who clutch their purse around me when they have a coin will come running to me for help when they don't.

I know what "articulate" really means. I know what "thug" really means. I know what the words "tough on crime" will do to you and us. I had to learn why a black President scared the shit out of so many of you. I had to learn how many times I could voice my opinion in a work meeting before I was labeled "difficult." I had to learn how loud I could raise my voice before I was labeled "threatening." I know why so many of you want to say "nigger" so bad. I know what face you make when you are about to shout it at me. I had to learn why so many of you think that people like me are why you are poor. I know why you co-opt our movements. I know why you still expect a thank you. I had to learn why your needs are default but mine are "divisive." I had to learn how to not get suspended by white teachers, how to not get arrested by white cops, how to not get fired by white supervisors.

I know what the words 'tough on crime' will do to you and us.

I know right now why so many of you will feel compelled to make me understand that I'm not talking about you here before you will consider reading further.

And to know all of that about you, I had to learn how race was invented as a function of capitalism to justify the brutality of genocide and forced free labor. I had to learn how slavery was repurposed into the prison industrial complex and the school-to-prison pipeline. I had to learn how your police force was created to return black people to slavery and maintained to control brown and black populations to manufacture a false sense of white security. I had to learn how the Southern Strategy was able to capitalize on the racism that you dared not see in yourselves, even though we could see it clear as day. I had to learn how the Irish became white when we could not. I had to learn how you could claim to rightfully own stolen land and how you still can today.

You have not had to know these things; even if you studied some of these topics in school, you did not have to know them. People of color, on the other hand, have lost so much when we've gotten it wrong. We have been fired for wearing our hair in ways you don't like, for not hiding our bodies that you decided to hypersexualize, for having too many opinions, for answering too honestly, for using our own accents and dialogue instead of yours, for believing you when you said you didn't tolerate racism in the workplace, for teaching history you refuse to acknowledge, for celebrating our beauty that you don't want to see. We have died for walking with a certain swagger, for reaching for our wallets, for asking for help, for speaking with the wrong tone, for giving a menacing look, for playing our music too loud, for not walking away, for walking away, for marching in peace.

I had to learn how race was invented as a function of capitalism to justify the brutality of genocide and forced free labor.

Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it's required your ignorance. The dominant culture does not have to see itself to survive because culture will shift to fit its needs. This shift is cheaper and easier when you don't look too closely at how it's being accomplished - if you never ask who is picking up the check. And no, you hardly see us at all - even if you love us. You can't; we don't exist as whole people in most of the places that you have been getting your information from.

And as much as I'd like you to see me - as much as I'd like systemic racism to simply be a problem of different groups not seeing each other - I need you to see yourself, really see yourself, first. This is the top priority.

Because I and so many people of color have had to stand by and watch you declare we live in a post-racism world when Obama was elected, when we could see how much of the legacy of slavery and brutality was still lodged deep in your bones. I had to watch the Tea Party rise from your fear of losing the centuries-long promise that you'd always get more because we'd always get less, all while you brushed it off as fringe lunacy. I had to watch you high-five each other and celebrate an election already won while I could see that your parents, your uncle, maybe even your spouse was going to vote for White Supremacy, because deep down part of them knew that they didn't earn all that they enjoy in this world, and in a couple of years they wouldn't have the votes to protect the parts they stole.

And when the election for the extension of White Supremacy was won, I had to watch you say that it was not White Supremacy, it was the economy or it was identity politics or it was the Clinton legacy. And when white people across America started doing Nazi salutes in high school gymnasiums and political gatherings, when white people started adding swastikas to their profile pictures and painting swastikas on walls, I had to watch you turn to the nearest person of color and ask, "how did this happen?"

And while I get it -  I understand how the entire history of this blood-soaked racist country and its entrenched self-delusion would lead us here - I do not actually know what it will take to get you to see it as well.

The dominant culture does not have to see itself to survive because culture will shift to fit its needs.

Because we have been trying, very, very hard, to show you. None of this - not a single word I've written in this essay or in my entire career - is new. People of color have been begging you to see what you are doing and why. We've been begging you to see what you came from and the true legacy you have inherited. We've begged you to see your boot on our necks as long as it's been there.

Find yourselves white people. Find yourselves so that you can know what whiteness is. Find yourselves so that you can determine what you want whiteness to be. Find yourselves so that you can stop your loved ones from voting for a definition of whiteness that you no longer want to subscribe to. Find yourselves so that racism no longer surprises you. Find yourselves so that maybe I can try writing fiction for a change.

Find yourselves so that next time you offer up the "white perspective," you might actually say something that surprises me.

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White People: I Want You To Understand Yourselves Better

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Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it's required your ignorance. H i white person in my DMs, let me respond here in the hopes that I never have to again.

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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. In a dynamic talk, Vulchi and Guo pair the personal stories they’ve collected with research and statistics to reveal two fundamental gaps in our racial literacy -- and how we can overcome them.

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Following Up After Fouling Up: Real Talk About Real Apologies - 2017 Book Expo Panel

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Recording from WNDB panel at Book Expo America on 6/2/17 with Alex Gino, Daniel José Older, Kiera Parrott, Ibi Zoboi, and Dr. Laura M. Jiménez. We Need Diverse Books presents a frank and honest discussion on genuine apologies that acknowledge the impact of our errors and decentralize our fragility.

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By Louise Derman-Sparks Based on "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism." Updated in 2013.*

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

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

Check the Illustrations

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

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

BOX 1:
Common Harmful/Undermining Stereotypes

Strong, independent girls and women are "manlike"

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

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

Latina women are earth mothers or subservient

African American men are gang members, oversexed, or underemployed

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

LGBTQ people are invisible or sexual predators

Poor people are invisible or depicted as passively needing help from others

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

People with disabilities are not independent or are to be pitied

Arab and/or Muslim men are terrorists

Arab and/or Muslim women are voiceless and passive

All Muslims are Arab

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

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

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

Families who live in rural areas

Blue-collar workers

Musicians, artists, and writers

Families with two dads or two moms

Single mothers or fathers

Homeless families

Families with an incarcerated parent

People of Arab descent and/or families who practice Islam

Transgender adults and children

Check the Story Line and the Relationships Between People

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

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

Look at Messages About Different Lifestyles

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

Consider the Effects on Children's Self and Social Identities

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch for Loaded Words

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

Look at the Copyright Date

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

Assess the Appeal of the Story and Illustrations to Young Children

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally there is the somewhat sensitive issue of what to do about "classic" or "well-beloved" children's books. Many of these are wonderful as children's literature, but unfortunately they often convey values of sexism, racism, ableism, or even colonialism. People who love the books that pose this dilemma argue that it is OK to use them because they "reflect their times," which they imply somehow excuses their biased messages. For example, I adored the Babar series of books as a young child and was unpleasantly shocked to realize as an adult how much the images and story lines reflected messages of European colonialism in Africa. I chose not to use them with my own children, wanting them to learn accurate information about how people in Africa really live. Not sharing childhood favorites may sadden some, but it is far better than the harm caused by reinforcing messages of racism and colonialism.

In a nutshell-as you choose books or critically examine your current book selection, always keep in mind the power of books-their words and their images-to nurture or, conversely, to undermine a child's sense of self, positive attitude toward others, and motivation to act for fairness. Additional Resources
Louise Derman-Sparks is an internationally respected anti-bias educator and author (along with Julie Olsen Edwards) of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. She has co-authored several additional books with Dr. Carol Brunson Day (Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism), the ABC Task Force ( Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children), Dr. Patricia Ramsey (What If All the Kids Are White?), and Dr. John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan (Leading Anti-Bias Early Childhood Programs: A Guide for Change). She speaks throughout the United States and abroad, and served on the NAEYC Governing Board from 1998 to 2001. Louise has a lifelong commitment to building a more just society for all people. Her children Douglass and Holly, now grown, were her inspiration. A Pacific Oaks College faculty member for 33 years-when its mission and pedagogy reflected anti-bias education principles-Louise is now retired.

*In 1980, the Council on Interracial Books for Children published the book Guidelines for Selecting Bias-Free Textbooks and Storybooks. A shorter version of the book in pamphlet form, "Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Racism and Sexism," followed. One of the first guides written for teachers and families, it became an invaluable tool for hundreds of thousands of people. Both the book and pamphlet have been out of print for several years. Rethinking Schools published their adaptation of the original Guidelines in 1994. Here is a version of the original pamphlet, revised in 2013.

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Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books - Teaching for Change

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

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Mission: The mission of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature is to publish scholarship attending to issues of diversity, equity, social justice, inclusion, and intersectionality in youth literature, culture, and media.

Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RDYL) is a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal hosted by St. Catherine University's Master of Library and Information Science Program and University Library. It will be published two times a year, with the first issue to be published on June 1, 2018.

For our inaugural issue, we welcome submissions by #OwnVoices (underrepresented persons writing about topics related to their lived experiences) from all disciplines engaging with Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's article " Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors " (1990). Almost thirty years after its initial publication, how have youth literature and the practices surrounding it (scholarship, publishing, programming, teaching, and circulation) responded to, taken up, and/or ignored Dr. Bishop's framework and call to action?

Please submit complete essays to co-editors Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen ( spark@stkate.edu) and Dr. Gabrielle Atwood Halko ( ghalko@wcupa.edu) by December 1, 2017. Essays must be between 5,000-8,000 words, including notes and citations, and use APA Style.

This journal is supported by the Children's Literature Association Diversity Research Grant; the American Library Association Office for Diversity, Literacy, and Outreach Services; and St. Catherine University.

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Research on Diversity in Youth Literature

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Mission: The mission of Research on Diversity in Youth Literature is to publish scholarship attending to issues of diversity, equity, social justice, inclusion, and intersectionality in youth literature, culture, and media. Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RDYL) is a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal hosted by St.

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Library Juice Press : Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science

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Exploring the diverse terrain that makes up library and information science (LIS), this collection features the work of scholars, practitioners, and others who draw from a variety of theoretical approaches to name, problematize, and ultimately fissure whiteness at work.

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Welcome to the Fakequity blog!

We blog about racial equity and its nemesis Fakequity. Some of the posts may veer off towards equity's siblings and cousins diversity, inclusion, culture, community engagement, accountability, etc. They are all related and we need to understand and think about a lot of different things in order to get towards equity.

Sometimes we capitalize Fakequity, sometimes we won't- don't hate us for our inconsistency. Its a made-up word so the rules around its use are a little loose. Please forgive typos and odd-sounded sentences. The Fakequity team members have full-time jobs and blog on the side, which means we're writing late at night, in Erin's case 11.00-2.00 a.m.

Some of the posts will be authored by member's of the Fakequity team, others may be guest posts, and some will be posted under the cover of Fakequity. Some of the posts push the boundaries of comfort and therefore having a name attached to it might not be the best for our professional careers. We aim to talk about what needs to be talked about, but we still need paying jobs and paychecks to buy ourselves tacos and pho.

We blog most Fridays, unless it is a holiday, school vacation, a full moon, or something good is on TV. Our Facebook page gets more action, check us out there for more current Fakequity thinking.

Settle in, grab a cup of tea, and get to know Fakequity. You can start by reading the Fakequity chart above.

Sincerely,
Erin and the Fakequity team
fakequity@gmail.com

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Welcome to the Fakequity blog! We blog about racial equity and its nemesis Fakequity. Some of the posts may veer off towards equity's siblings and cousins diversity, inclusion, culture, community engagement, accountability, etc. They are all related and we need to understand and think about a lot of different things in order to get towards equity.

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Interview with Cynthia Levinson, author of The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2017) AG: Thanks for helping us to launch M is ... Continue reading Cynthia Levinson: "The Youngest Marcher"

I was first introduced to Daniel Camacho's art through the children's book he illustrated, Joelito's Big Decision/La Gran Decisison de Joelito. Ann Berlack, the author, had contacted me with some questions about the book, and I was excited to help ... Continue reading Daniel Camacho: "I always liked drawing on walls"

One of my earliest memories from first grade is being on the playground with one of the handful of other Indian-American kids in the school, when a group of older girls approached us. They told us that they were vanilla ... Continue reading Supriya Kelkar: "Finding Your Voice"

AG: Congratulations on the release of your newest book, The Wedding Portrait! Your picture books focus on activism while having roots in very personal stories. You wrote A is for Activist for your son. My Night in the Planetarium is ... Continue reading Innosanto Nagara: "The Wedding Portrait"

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Interview with Cynthia Levinson, author of The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist, illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2017) AG: Thanks for helping us to launch M is ...

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The Center for Social Inclusion (CSI) is a national policy strategy organization whose mission is to dismantle structural racism.

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Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant reason racism endures is because it is structural: it's embedded in culture and in institutions.

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"Of Warrior Chiefs and Indian Princesses: The e Psychological Consequences of American Indian Mascots" | American Indian Studies | University of Washington

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Publications, Essays, Articles, and Book Chapters. Abstract: Four studies examined the consequences of American Indian mascots and other prevalent representations of American Indians on aspects of the self-concept for American Indian students.

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James Arthur Ray was at the top of his game in 2009. He'd fashioned himself into a celebrity self-help guru, becoming a darling of the television talk show circuit with appearances on Oprah, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Larry King Live, and frequently Today. He had rocketed to fame after being a featured subject of a 2006 book and companion movie, both called The Secret, which provided a road map to personal empowerment and wealth.

By 2008 he was a New York Timesbest-selling author with Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want, his third book. Not surprisingly, Ray's expertise didn't come cheap-his individual mentorship could cost upwards of $90,000, and the price tag for a weeklong "Spiritual Warrior" retreat in Sedona, Arizona, was almost $10,000. In October of that year, however, Ray's New Age self-help empire came crashing down when three people were killed in a sweat lodge ceremony he conducted and eighteen others were hospitalized with injuries ranging from burns to kidney failure.

A sweat lodge ceremony is an ancient spiritual tradition among many Indigenous peoples that is still widely practiced today. It is a purification ritual performed inside a small lodge, where water poured on fire-heated rocks creates a cleansing steam. Ray was convicted of negligent homicide, served two years in prison for the crime, and was ordered to pay $57,000 in restitution to the victims' families. After his release the conditions of his parole, curiously, did not bar him from conducting self-help seminars or sweat lodges.

Indian country responded with fury, and Native media pundits pointed out all the ways Ray had gone wrong. He had violated all the protocols that Native spiritual leaders carefully adhere to, including grossly incorrect construction of the lodge, the use of improper herbs and other substances, and not allowing breaks to cool the lodge (known as "rounds"). Navajo journalist Valerie Taliman called it "a bastardized version of a sacred ceremony." According to American Indian traditions, only spiritual leaders with many years of training are allowed to conduct sweat lodge ceremonies, and it is often a right that is inherited through family or other kinship lineages. James Ray had no such lineage or training. Many in Indian country voiced outrage that Ray received only a two-year sentence for the deaths caused by his charlatanism. And if all of that were not bad enough, Ray's sweat lodge victims had paid obscene amounts of money to participate in a sacred ceremony that Indian people say should never involve money.

James Ray's cultural appropriation was hardly an isolated incident. By 1993 the appropriation of Native spirituality had become so widespread that a gathering of Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people drew an international audience of some five hundred people to pass a "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality."

Ten years later-with apparently no perceivable improvement of the situation-a proclamation was issued by Arvol Looking Horse, the Nineteenth Generation Keeper of the Sacred Calf Pipe, prohibiting non-Native participation in Lakota ceremonies. As Suzanne Owen writes, "The reasons why the Lakota Declaration and the Looking Horse Proclamation are significant documents in the debates about appropriation are due to the prominence of Lakota models in representations of Native American spirituality."

Not that the Lakota are the only ones whose ceremonies and culture are being appropriated. As Owen notes, the proposed prohibitions, according to Lakota and other Native American activists, are as much to protect the well-being of practitioners as the integrity of Native ceremonies. Ceremonial protocol not followed correctly can be dangerous, they warn.

In their endeavors to understand how and why playing Indian manifests as spiritual appropriation, scholars have offered various analyses, all of which share several common traits. One is the recognition of non-Natives' sense of entitlement to practice Native American cultures and religions. This entitlement is expressed implicitly as claims to Native heritage-the mythical idea that Native American heritage equals US heritage-that what belongs to Native people should be shared by all. Explicitly, it comes out as a stated right.

***

Rayna Green first articulated the concept of playing Indian in a 1988 essay where she argued that the phenomenon likely originates from the captivity experiences of Europeans. Transforming eventually into cultural performances that relied upon the removal and death of real Indians, playing Indian at its core reflected an inherent hatred of Indians, not love or affinity. From the Boston Tea Party forward, US Americans obsessed on vanishing Indians in a multitude of ways that translated into trying to become them, or at least using them to project new images of themselves as they settled into North America and left Europe behind.

The historical practice of white people becoming Indian is visible in the social and civic clubs where versions of Indianness were (and in some cases still are) enacted, including Tammany Hall (aka the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, and the Colombian Order), the Elks, the Lions, the Kiwanis, the Improved Order of Red Men, the YMCA's Indian Guides and Princesses program, and the Boy Scouts of America Koshare Dancers. Even Indians were conscripted into playing Indian, with performances like the Wild West Shows of the late nineteenth century, and the projections of Indianness became ubiquitous (and literal) with the development of photographic and cinematographic technology.

By the 1960s, young white Americans were transforming themselves into pseudo-Indians and showing up in droves on Indian reservations, looking for a way of life different from the consumer-oriented Christian conformity of their parents. Indian images-however imaginary and distorted-have so infiltrated US American consciousness that they appear in consumer products in everything from butter packaging to recreational vehicles. Business names like Navajo Express (trucking), Mohawk Industries (floor coverings), and Apache Software can be seen. From Rayna Green's perspective, each era of US history exhibited some form of Indian play. The spiritual appropriation of the New Age movement is thus only one recent manifestation of it.

By the 1980s, the hippie counterculture had evolved into the New Age movement. Lisa Aldred wrote in 2000 that this was a consumerist movement, and that while not all New Agers flock to Native American spiritual practices, "a small percentage constructs their essential identity around Native American religion." Aldred contended that the biggest business for Indigenous appropriation was in book publishing, where "plastic medicine" authors were big sellers. Among the more familiar of them are Carlos Castaneda, with his many best-selling books on the sorcerer Don Juan Matus; Lynn Andrews, who became known as the "Beverly Hills Shaman"; Mary Summer Rain, who purported to record the teachings and prophecies of a blind Indian medicine woman she calls No Eyes; and Brooke Medicine Eagle, with her generic version of "Native American wisdom" drawn from various specific traditions.

Echoing Green, Aldred asserted that New Agers were far more interested in exotic images and romanticized rituals built on distorted stereotypes of Native peoples than they were in the sociopolitical realities of Native peoples living under conditions of colonialism. This put them in adversarial positions when Native people objected to what they perceived as cultural theft.

Among New Agers' defenses against charges of appropriating American Indian spirituality, Aldred also found claims that spirituality and truth cannot be owned, and that "spiritual knowledge belongs to all humans equally." Aside from the contradiction that the consumerist aspect of the New Age movement inevitably entails claims to ownership via products and copyrights, it also implies the universality of "truth." In this case, it is a claim that all spiritual knowledge held by Indigenous peoples is universally true across the great divide of cultural difference.

Viewing the issue as based in a First Amendment right bespeaks the very different paradigms that frame dominant white society and that of American Indians. For US Americans the discourse about rights is undergirded by the rugged individualism enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and a fundamental belief in universalism. Religion is thought to be a matter of personal choice and is ultimately disconnected from culture. The freedom of religion, then, is a matter of the rights of individuals and part of the right to pursue happiness.

For American Indians, however, spirituality is part of a broader cultural context where religion is not separate from culture. As part of the continuum of culture, an Indigenous nation's spirituality is a reflection of the circumstances of life connected to specific places over vast expanses of time and in the context of particular worldviews and language. The origin stories, language, and worldviews of a people-and thus their spirituality-are what Native people call their "original instructions." Those original instructions are oriented toward the survival of the people and the perpetuation of their cultures more than they are toward any promises of personal happiness or individual enlightenment (although it could be said that these are natural effects of strong, healthy cultures), and they are certainly not thought to be meant for everybody universally. In short, the frame of reference non-Native people bring to their practice of American Indian spirituality is wholly different-and arguably inconsistent with-those of Indian people.

***

Finally, one of the most controversial forms of playing Indian occurs at the level of personal identity claims, especially where prestigious professional positions and other material benefits are at stake. Often referred to as ethnic fraud, dubious claims to Indian identity are muddled in abstract rhetoric about the complexity wrought by colonialism or the personal right to claim an identity by choice. History is plagued with examples of non-Indigenous people passing themselves off as Indian for personal gain. In one of the more famous twentieth-century cases, the Englishman Archie Belaney pursued a successful literary career under the alias Grey Owl. Traveling the lecture circuit during the 1920s and 1930s in North America and Europe sporting full buckskins and headdress, Belaney kept his fraudulent identity a secret until after his death.

By the second half of the twentieth century, impostors were abundant, most often masquerading among the literary ranks of the New Agers. But in the 1990s a more ambiguous identity claim emerged among the Indigenous intelligentsia in academia with Ward Churchill, perhaps best known for publishing a controversial article on the heels of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. Churchill's claim to Cherokee and Creek heritage-upon which he'd based much of his reputation as a Native American scholar-appeared to have been unsubstantiated, while an investigation finding academic misconduct resulted in his fi ring from the University of Colorado Boulder. A few years later, in 2008, noted scholar Andrea Smith came under fire when genealogical searches turned up nothing to substantiate her claims to Cherokee lineage. A petition for tenure was subsequently denied at the University of Michigan.

The Smith issue would reemerge in 2015 with a social media campaign created anonymously to discredit her after it was discovered that Rachel Dolezal had falsely claimed African American heritage, prompting her resignation as president of the local NAACP. In 2012 senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren was publicly lambasted for claiming Cherokee and/or Delaware heritage on her application to Harvard Law School. And in 2015 another controversy erupted when Dartmouth's Native American Program announced the hiring of Susan Taffe Reed as its new director. Reed is a member of a group called the Eastern Delaware Nation, which is viewed as an illegitimate Indian tribe since it has no official state or federal recognition. Genealogical searches on Reed's heritage also turned up no documented Native ancestry. All of these cases are examples of what Native scholars call "box-checking Indians," people who claim Native heritage in the context of college and universities (which strive to increase their diversity), knowing that they will not be asked to produce documentation to back up their claims.

Some forms of Native American cultural appropriation are clearly more egregious than others. In terms of personal identity claims, the need for documentation is troubled by the fact that American Indians are the only US citizens who are required to document their ethnicity in order to meet legal definitions, a reality scholars often connect to the eliminative impulse of the settler state.

There is undoubtedly a sizable population of people who legitimately descend from Indigenous peoples who will never be able to prove it for a multitude of reasons resulting from federal policies designed to assimilate Indigenous peoples or otherwise eliminate them. But in the case of broader sociological phenomenon like mascots and New Age posers, non- Native people playing Indian says as much about non-Native US Americans' unsure collective sense of themselves as it doesabout their ambivalence toward American Indians. As Philip Deloria suggests, it offers the opportunity to experience a contrived sense of "aboriginal Americanness" in the face of its de facto absence, simultaneously building a foundation for and reflecting the mythological belief that Native American culture is by default everyone's culture.

Playing Indian overall can also be thought of as "a move to settler innocence," based on the hard-hitting essay on decolonization by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. In this framework settler innocence is the investment in maintaining the settler structure to avoid actual, material decolonization, where the restoral of Indigenous lands and sovereignty is the objective: "strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all. In fact, settler scholars may gain professional kudos or a boost in their reputations for being so sensitive or self-aware. Yet settler moves to innocence are hollow, they only serve the settler."

Tuck and Yang hold that ultimately decolonization must ensure the future existence of Indigenous peoples and not concern itself with guaranteeing a settler future; they argue for an "ethic of incommensurability," meaning that although not all questions are immediately answerable, they will be revealed in time. They also acknowledge what may be perceived as an "unfriendly" delinking of coalition politics in order to achieve a decolonized future for Indigenous peoples.
Adapted from "All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Beacon Press, 2016). Reprinted with Permission from Beacon Press. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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White Americans need to stop assuming Native American culture belongs to them, too

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James Arthur Ray was at the top of his game in 2009. He'd fashioned himself into a celebrity self-help guru, becoming a darling of the television talk show circuit with appearances on Oprah, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Larry King Live, and frequently Today.

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As the country focuses its attention on Native Americans' protests in North Dakota, we should be inspired by those who are exercising their civil rights in the name of such an honorable cause. We should also, though, ponder a troubling question: Why did an energy company and its local allies ignore the dissent, run roughshod over the community and try to build a pipeline over Native Americans' land, threatening their sacred sites and their drinking water? And why did the federal government have to intervene at the 11th hour to delay construction so Native American voices could be heard?

There are many answers, but one stands out. In a popular culture that dehumanizes Native Americans, our community is too often treated as an afterthought - or not thought of at all. Just as problematic, those who appropriate our history for their own objectives often remain silent when our community is being mistreated.

We see this dehumanization in myriad ways. For instance, a recent academic study found that Native Americans are all but invisible in mass media, and "in the rare cases they appear, they are typically depicted in a stereotypical and historical fashion." Similarly, the world of athletics has turned Native Americans into cartoons, using our heritage and culture as mascots.

Over the last two years, a broad coalition of civil rights groups, religious leaders, public health organizations and lawmakers from both political parties have spotlighted the worst example of this -- the Washington professional football franchise, which uses a dictionary-defined racial slur as its team name. In our Change the Mascot campaign, we have repeatedly exposed how that name harms Native Americans' self-image -- and also how it teaches millions of Americans to see our people as cartoonish relics from the past rather than a vibrant community here in the present.

In a sense, when a pipeline company and government officials brazenly ignore our concerns and trample our lands, we see the concrete effects of such dehumanization in real time.

Of course, those who have tried to dehumanize us often claim they are actually working to help us. The Washington team is again illustrative of the larger trend: its billionaire owner has insisted that marketing, promoting and profiting off its preferred racial slur actually honors our people, and when defending his use of the slur, he has asserted that he is genuinely concerned about the challenges Native Americans face today.

Yet, as Native Americans right now fight for their most basic rights in North Dakota, the National Football League and the Washington team have remained silent, offering not so much as a peep of support or solidarity -- even as they kick off another season to profit off demeaning our heritage.

To be sure, self-serving critics will claim that there is no connection between the general depiction of Native Americans in popular culture and a specific fight over an oil pipeline. The link, though, is straightforward and simple: A society that appropriates our culture without regard for the damage it does is one that will inevitably allow a powerful corporation to appropriate our lands without regard for our people.

The good news is that the conflict over the pipeline has exposed this destructive dynamic for all to see, providing us with a potential turning point in our people's fight for equality. Stopping the pipeline is a critical part of this battle -- and finally stopping the larger dehumanization that led to this moment will secure a brighter future for our people.

Pata is the Executive Director of the National Congress of American Indians. Follow the National Congress of American Indians on Twitter . Halbritter is Oneida Indian Nation Representative and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises. Follow the Oneida Nation on Twitter
The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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The destructive dynamic of dehumanizing Native Americans

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As the country focuses its attention on Native Americans' protests in North Dakota, we should be inspired by those who are exercising their civil rights in the name of such an honorable cause.

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Winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award Winner of the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry Winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection Winner of the 2015 PEN Open Book Award Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry Winner of Poets and Writers'

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Whistling Vivaldi | W. W. Norton & Company

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What Does it Mean to Be White? & other publications by Robin DiAngelo

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What Does it Mean to Be White? & other publications by Robin DiAngelo

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

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Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life from Teachers College, Columbia University

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Racial Microaggressions in Everyday Life from Teachers College, Columbia University

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The First R: How Children Learn Race & Racism

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The First R: How Children Learn Race & Racism

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The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism

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This study looks into how children learn about the 'first R'-race-and challenges the current assumptions with case-study examples from three child-care centers. Parents and teachers will find ...

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A space for those working in libraries, archives and information fields to share their experiences with microaggressions.

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This Is What (Straight, Cis, Capitalist, Christian, White Male) Democracy Looks Like

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If I hear one more white person whine about free speech, I will scream with a deep primal yell borne out of the viscera of my enslaved ancestors down through the ages on whose blood, sweat, and stolen tears this mock-democracy of a country was founded and built.

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I begin this post by condemning the racists, white supremacist, and Nazi actions in Charlottesville.

The past few days have been extremely troubling, and left me wondering what I can do. I then remembered I was asked that exact question after the Charlie Hebdo attack in France. I put together this post: https://davidlankes.org/charlie-hebdo/

This morning I re-read it and while I stand by it, I don't think it went nearly far enough, and I need to amend it.

In the post, I talked about three things librarians and libraries could do in the wake of a terrorist act:

1. fight violence with information and understanding

2. help the community develop their own narrative

3. continue to be the resource for your communities to come together

I still think this is a good game plan for any library in the wake of violence and tragedy. Counter false and ignorant claims with knowledge and learning; help the community construct and disseminate their own story so that one is not imposed from outside; and continue to be a place the community relies upon. A library should be a safe space, but it will only be that if librarians continue to understand the threats all their community members face and work to overcome them.

What struck me upon re-reading the post was a stark difference in the situation between Paris and Charlottesville. In Paris, the worry was that a shocked community would turn against an innocent and valuable part of themselves, namely Muslims and immigrants. My post was a call not just for the importance of diversity, but an acknowledgement that immigrants and Muslims were part of the community and a need to come together a better understand each other.

In Charlottesville, there is absolutely a need to acknowledge that racists are part of the community, but librarians should not be giving them an equal voice or justifying their beliefs. Also, to be VERY clear, the community I am talking about here is the American community, not just one city in Virginia, or the South. Put simply there are times when a community must face the fact that parts of that community are simply antithetical to the ultimate mission of a library.

Racism is a state of ignorance. It deliberately denies the positive effect of diversity and inclusion. Purposefully living in a state of ignorance is counter to the values and mission of librarianship. Therefore, giving voice to racism does not further the conversation or learning of a community.

Now stating that racism is bad is a pretty obvious call. Talking about libraries not promoting racists views is also a pretty easy call. Here's the thing, stating that as a librarian you have to choose or take a side in this situation is another thing altogether. It means acknowledging you are not neutral, and that as a professional you must take a stand against part of your community is hard.

Shouldn't libraries be place for all voices in the community? No. Libraries are not neutral microphones placed in a town square open to all comers. They are platforms of learning that acknowledge the full range of the views in a community, but with the community develop and support a learning narrative that pushes against racism and bigotry.

I watched the press conference yesterday when the Virginia Governor, the Charlottesville Mayor, the City Manager of Charlottesville, and the city's Chief of Police talked about outsiders and how their community would become stronger in the face of the racists violence. It was a moving moment. I am imploring the librarians in Charlottesville and throughout the country to be part of that process. To engage and model the power of inclusion and diversity. Don't simply inform your population, help them learn. Don't think that open doors are sufficient to be sanctuaries: actively engage and invite in people of all classes, and races, and creeds.

Don't ignore the systemic racism and the passive attitude that allows white supremacy to fester. Understand also that your fighting the ignorance of racism doesn't start nor end at the door of a library. Fight for better transportation options to allow greater economic opportunity for under-served peoples. Be a source of healthy foods and meals in the summer and food-deserts of our cities. Work to make a library card a symbol of equity to all people, not just those who can or choose to come in the door.

This is not about ideology or political party, this is about our mission: to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in our communities. Racism is antithetical to this mission. Period.

I will end this post as I ended my Charlie Hebdo post.

To my Charlottesville colleagues I ask, how can I help?

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I begin this post by condemning the racists, white supremacist, and Nazi actions in Charlottesville. The past few days have been extremely troubling, and left me wondering what I can do. I then remembered I was asked that exact question after the Charlie Hebdo attack in France.

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Equality is Not Pie; Libraries and the Insidiousness of Subtle Racism

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Equality is Not Pie; Libraries and the Insidiousness of Subtle Racism

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It's funny. I started this blog post over a week ago. The original catalyst for the post was affirmative action, google guy, and personal experiences in my own life. The reason it was taking so long was because I wanted to make sure it had the best mix of personal and professional tone. And primarily, because librarianship is a very white and female field. And a post like this, if not done right, could hurt me professionally in the long run. So, I really wanted to make sure that the information was portrayed in a way most palatable to what would most likely also be the post's biggest audience - white women.

And then this weekend happened. And now, honestly, I do not care about palatability. This weekend has reinforced what most people of color know to be true-"civil" discourse is only reserved for white people. The differences in response between Charlottesville when the alt-right/Nazis marched and all of the Black Lives Matters protests are telling. The system isn't broken. The system is doing what it was built for-the suppression and oppression of Black people and other people of color.

But this post isn't about white male aggression. White male aggression is easily seen and understood. It's all over Charlottesville (though white women marched as and have actively supported them). White male aggression manifests as outwardly physical aggression. The goal is to take up as much space as possible whether it be physically (making themselves bigger, crowding your space, etc.) or verbally (the ten page antidiversity , the reason " are men talking too much " was created, and why certain library and archive listservs are rendered unusable, etc.). There are a lot of great articles about how white male aggression is deployed in multiple contexts.

But I'm in librarianship which is a predominantly female field. And so this post is about white female aggression. White female aggression, like its male counterpart, is also born of white resentment. But it manifests in drastically different ways. In fact, while instinctually I knew what it was, it wasn't until broke down the exchange with White House Press Secretary Sanders and White House Press Correspondent, April Ryan that it all came together. Similar to my experience with the word microaggression, reading the breakdown suddenly put a name to various experiences I had had in my personal and professional life.

So, what exactly is white female aggression? It is the indirect, and often passive aggressive, ways that white women exert control and establish dominance over people of color, especially Black women. Unlike white male aggression, it is executed in phrasing and tone, and the goal is to damage or destroy one's social standing. Like other types of relational aggression, it uses psychological manipulation to advance their own interests, while claiming ignorance of its harm to others. A great visual example of this is Kirsten Dunst's role in Hidden Figures as the head of the computing women's unit. Throughout the movie she actively builds roadblocks and attempts to stall careers, but maintains that she is not a bad person. Not only does her character maintain that she is not a bad person, but the movie does so as well, by having the scene where she shows a grudging modicum of respect to the Black women, as if the bare minimum is all that is needed to no longer be racist.

White female aggression often uses the constructed idea of white womanhood (a precious fragile thing that must be protected at all costs) as a weapon and patriarchy as a shield against critique. It's how we can know that 53% of white women voted for Trump, but still get stuff like this:

Many white women will tone police, dominate conversation, and then when challenged follow the following - cry, accuse people of bullying, and/or attempt to excuse their behavior using self-care (check out this thread for numerous examples).

If you know me at all, you know I'm all about ; here I speak to the specific tone policing reaction that occurs when many white women are challenged on their problematic behaviour, and they in turn bow out of the conversation because of their need for self-care.

Like I said in my previous post, " nice white women " will lash out as soon as their allyship no longer maintains their own personal comfort. And this lashing out is often loud and can be said with a smile as often as a frown. It's insidiousness lies in its openness to "interpretation."

And in libraries, many white women will fight together with women of color against the injustices of sexism and male domination in libraries (e.g. the fast-tracking of men to leadership), but are offended when confronted with the many ways they often fulfill their roles as oppressors. The equality white women strive for then, appears to women of color, as not equality but the freedom to oppress, when in fact, equality is not a pie. Uplifting women of color doesn't mean less equality for white women, just like uplifting women as a whole doesn't mean less equality for men. (Check out the root word of equality ya'll, by definition no one is supposed to get .)

Now that the macro has been covered, here is how white female aggression plays out in the micro. These are a few ways it has impacted me specifically, as well as other people of color I know.

The constant undermining of achievements. This is across the board. So it manifests in discussions about:

Me winning scholarships and travel grants: ("Well, it was probably one targeted for diversity, right? It's hard because I'm X, but that isn't considered diverse.")

Me getting job offers: ("Congrats! Yeah, it must be nice that the field is trying to increase diversity." This statement is sometimes followed with a "poor so and so" (white person) still hasn't found a position," or with a statement of how long it took them to obtain a full-time job with benefits.)

Money, negotiating, and salary: Conflation of pay statistics, as if all women are in the 77 cents to a white man's dollar stat. In reality, Black women make 64 cents and Latinas make even less at 54 cents. Also, the insinuation (or direct accusation) that you are being paid more for adding to the institution's diversity. It is often suggested, that this is, of course, at a more qualified white person's expense.

Cultural fit. And all of the horror those two words contain.

And finally, vocational awe is most often and most dangerously deployed against POC in libraries. With the loaded history of stereotyping of Black and Latina women as lazy and not team players, as well as the stereotype of Black women as loud and aggressive, many white women use these stereotypes, and their own racist assumptions, to justify the exclusion of women of color from professional fields. And while the exclusion may not be from the field totally, white female aggression created the roadblocks that keep women of color in staff positions and/or those with lower pay. Things POC hear in the workplace time and again:

Statements like these intersect with these racist assumptions about qualifications, and ultimately exclude those who do not fit their standards of success.

Ultimately, white female aggression can be as violent, if not more so, than white male aggression. It operates within the most socially acceptable forms of white supremacy. By using passive aggressive and indirect methods of control and oppression it is hard to parse out, identify, and call out injustice, let alone fight against it. But just like microaggressions, once it is recognized, it can be challenged. Remember, equality is not pie. White women in libraries need not break the glass ceiling on the backs of WOC.

p.s. Many thanks to Elena, partner, and bomb-ass editor of this post.

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Equality is Not Pie; Libraries and the Insidiousness of Subtle Racism

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It's funny. I started this blog post over a week ago. The original catalyst for the post was affirmative action, google guy, and personal experiences in my own life. The reason it was taking so long was because I wanted to make sure it had the best mix of personal and professional tone.

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The Real Censorship in Children's Books by D.J. Older

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The Real Censorship in Children's Books by D.J. Older

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Earlier this month, the children's book industry released yet another picture book featuring smiling enslaved people, gleefully going about the apparently-not-so-bad business of slave work. A Birthday Cake for George Washington tells the story of Hercules, the first president's enslaved chef, and his daughter, Delia. Life seems to be pretty decent for them, judging by the wide, shiny grins that appear on almost every page. No context is given about the true, horrific nature of American slavery; George Washington appears as a warm, benevolent patriarch. Besides a brief mention of the complexity of the topic in an author's note at the end, the book gives no hint as to why Mr Hercules would go on to run away, leaving his daughter behind, on George Washington's birthday.

Black Lives Matter activist Leslie Mac led the chorus of voices raised up against it. She talked about it on her podcast and began the Twitter hashtag #SlaveryWithASmile. Children's book activist Debbie Reese, literary scholar Ebony Elizabeth, writer Mikki Kendall, myself and others chimed in, many of us still reeling from the staunch defence put up for the last picture book showing smiles and slavery, A Fine Dessert. Unlike that book, which received critical acclaim for months before it garnered criticism, A Birthday Cake for George Washington was roundly panned by critics and bloggers for essentially the same faults.

On 17 January, Scholastic (who, full disclosure, published my young adult novel Shadowshaper last year) pulled the book from circulation, stating: "without more historical background on the evils of slavery than this book for younger children can provide, the book may give a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves and therefore should be withdrawn."

On Friday, three prominent free speech organizations - the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Pen American Center, and the The First Amendment Committee of the American Society of Journalists and Authors - condemned Scholastic's decision to pull A Birthday Cake for George Washington from circulation; a move the group qualified as "censorship".

Their statement - which sounds more like panicked GOP candidates squalling about the rise of "PC culture" than organizations dedicated to freedom - conflates Black Lives Matter activism for equality in children's books with the anti-immigrant cultural studies purges in Arizona and homophobic attacks on books with LGBTQ characters.

It seems the definition of censorship becomes more fluid and convenient with each new use. If free speech groups feel the need to cry censorship about editorial decisions, there are many, many stories of slavery that don't feature smiling enslaved people or white saviours in the rejected folders of the 79% white publishing industry that they could start with. They could look into the even wider array of stories about our anger, our resistance, our power, that have never made it out of the slush pile, let alone to the shelves of major bookstores.

But the free speech advocates haven't devoted much energy to the alarmingly un-diverse publishing industry and its very real effect on literature. ( Pen American, of which I'm a relatively new and usually proud member, has been doing more recently and hosted an excellent series of panels on the subject last year.)

What we're left with is a palpable sense of selective outrage. Pulling a book because it's historically inaccurate and carries on the very American tradition of whitewashing slavery is classified as "censorship", while maintaining an ongoing majority white industry that systematically excludes narratives of color is just business as usual.

Under that selective reasoning, those of us who don't want children to be exposed to heinous caricatures of people of color or whitewashed versions of history must be content to sit on the sidelines. We are left to hope thatteachers and librarians provide the proper context for the work, cold comfort considering the history of children's literature and the education system, both of which have long institutional histories of upholding white supremacy.

The statement praises A Birthday Cake for George Washington for generating "important discussions about how our nation creates, perceives, and perpetuates narratives about slavery". But there's nothing new about the question of how America has failed to reconcile with its ugly history or how the survivors of that history have been able to represent themselves. Frederick Douglass never allowed himself to be photographed smiling so as not to perpetuate the myth of the " happy slave". He also warned against being"told of the contentment of the slaves, and...entertained with vivid pictures of their happiness." He was astonished to encounter northerners who believed the slaves' song was proof of their happiness: "It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears."

The book's defenders couch their arguments in the claim that a book has no power."I have always been skeptical of claims that a particular book would harm a particular child," Roger Sutton, editor in chief of the Horn book, wrote in defence of the book, "never mind children as a whole, or children of a particular ethnicity or gender." You can't champion the power of books on the one hand and then pretend they don't affect the world at all. Rebecca Solnit put it perfectly in her recent essay Men Explain Lolita To Me: "There is a common attack on art that thinks it is a defence. It is the argument that art has no impact on our lives, that art is not dangerous, and therefore all art is beyond reproach, and we have no grounds to object to any of it, and any objection is censorship."

Of course books are dangerous; that's why we love them. Stories matter, and the stakes are higher in children's literature. "If books have the power to help us find ourselves," Newbery medalist Linda Sue Park recently explained, "then a children's book has superpowers". And if the pen truly is mightier than the sword - as we were reminded us again and again after the Hebdo tragedy - then we must understand that, like the sword, the blade of art and literature has two sides: one that can create and the other destroy.

Somewhere beyond the false equivalency of caring what our children read and censorship, there is a way to cultivate equity in books by being a conscientious, compassionate, and reflective literary citizen. I'll meet you there.

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The real censorship in children's books: smiling slaves is just the half of it

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Earlier this month, the children's book industry released yet another picture book featuring smiling enslaved people, gleefully going about the apparently-not-so-bad business of slave work. A Birthday Cake for George Washington tells the story of Hercules, the first president's enslaved chef, and his daughter, Delia.

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Talking About Race in Storytime: Resources from Jessica Anne Bratt (@whimsylibrarian)

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Talking About Race in Storytime: Resources from Jessica Anne Bratt (@whimsylibrarian)

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The foundation of Donald Trump's presidency is the negation of Barack Obama's legacy.

Jesse Draxler; Photo: David Hume Kennerly / Getty

It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump's predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness-that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump's forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America's founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump-a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.

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His political career began in advocacy of birtherism, that modern recasting of the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the country they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear. He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government; called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and railed against "lazy" black employees. "Black guys counting my money! I hate it," Trump was once quoted as saying. "The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day." After his cabal of conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump demanded the president's college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for them), insisting that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.

It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true-his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump inaugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood against Mexican "rapists," only to be later alleged by multiple accusers, and by his own proud words, to be a sexual violator himself. White supremacy has always had a perverse sexual tint. Trump's rise was shepherded by Steve Bannon, a man who mocks his white male critics as "cucks." The word, derived from cuckold, is specifically meant to debase by fear and fantasy-the target is so weak that he would submit to the humiliation of having his white wife lie with black men. That the slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek to alchemize one's profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with marauding Klansmen organized against alleged rapes and other outrages. So it was with a candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent's email and who now, as president, is claiming to be the victim of "the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history."

In Trump, white supremacists see one of their own. Only grudgingly did Trump denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, one of its former grand wizards-and after the clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Duke in turn praised Trump's contentious claim that "both sides" were responsible for the violence.

To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling, Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a "piece of ass." The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape ("When you're a star, they let you do it"), fending off multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy-to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump's counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people, and even more is possible.

For Trump, it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough-Trump has made the negation of Obama's legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. "Race is an idea, not a fact," the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written, and essential to the construct of a "white race" is the idea of not being a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent-an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new-the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorific-America's first white president.

The scope of Trump's commitment to whiteness is matched only by the depth of popular disbelief in the power of whiteness. We are now being told that support for Trump's "Muslim ban," his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap between Lena Dunham's America and Jeff Foxworthy's. The collective verdict holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned everyday economic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. The indictment continues: To their neoliberal economics, Democrats and liberals have married a condescending elitist affect that sneers at blue-collar culture and mocks the white man as history's greatest monster and prime-time television's biggest doofus. In this rendition, Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class people.

"We so obviously despise them, we so obviously condescend to them," the conservative social scientist Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve, recently told The New Yorker, speaking of the white working class. "The only slur you can use at a dinner party and get away with is to call somebody a redneck-that won't give you any problems in Manhattan."

"The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself discuss red-state, gun-country, working-class America as ridiculous and morons and rubes," charged the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, "is largely responsible for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that we're seeing now."

That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not trouble these theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump's racism and the racism of his supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with which liberals call out Trump's bigotry is assigned even more power than the bigotry itself. Ostensibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments about intersectionality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless white working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in picture-book form.

Asserting that Trump's rise was primarily powered by cultural resentment and economic reversal has become de rigueur among white pundits and thought leaders. But evidence for this is, at best, mixed. In a study of preelection polling data, the Gallup researchers Jonathan Rothwell and Pablo Diego-Rosell found that "people living in areas with diminished economic opportunity" were "somewhat more likely to support Trump." But the researchers also found that voters in their study who supported Trump generally had a higher mean household income ($81,898) than those who did not ($77,046). Those who approved of Trump were "less likely to be unemployed and less likely to be employed part-time" than those who did not. They also tended to be from areas that were very white: "The racial and ethnic isolation of whites at the zip code level is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support."

An analysis of exit polls conducted during the presidential primaries estimated the median household income of Trump supporters to be about $72,000. But even this lower number is almost double the median household income of African Americans, and $15,000 above the American median. Trump's white support was not determined by income. According to Edison Research, Trump won whites making less than $50,000 by 20 points, whites making $50,000 to $99,999 by 28 points, and whites making $100,000 or more by 14 points. This shows that Trump assembled a broad white coalition that ran the gamut from Joe the Dishwasher to Joe the Plumber to Joe the Banker. So when white pundits cast the elevation of Trump as the handiwork of an inscrutable white working class, they are being too modest, declining to claim credit for their own economic class. Trump's dominance among whites across class lines is of a piece with his larger dominance across nearly every white demographic. Trump won white women (+9) and white men (+31). He won white people with college degrees (+3) and white people without them (+37). He won whites ages 18-29 (+4), 30-44 (+17), 45-64 (+28), and 65 and older (+19). Trump won whites in midwestern Illinois (+11), whites in mid-Atlantic New Jersey (+12), and whites in the Sun Belt's New Mexico (+5). In no state that Edison polled did Trump's white support dip below 40 percent. Hillary Clinton's did, in states as disparate as Florida, Utah, Indiana, and Kentucky. From the beer track to the wine track, from soccer moms to nascar dads, Trump's performance among whites was dominant. According to Mother Jones, based on preelection polling data, if you tallied the popular vote of only white America to derive 2016 electoral votes, Trump would have defeated Clinton 389 to 81, with the remaining 68 votes either a toss-up or unknown.

Part of Trump's dominance among whites resulted from his running as a Republican, the party that has long cultivated white voters. Trump's share of the white vote was similar to Mitt Romney's in 2012. But unlike Romney, Trump secured this support by running against his party's leadership, against accepted campaign orthodoxy, and against all notions of decency. By his sixth month in office, embroiled in scandal after scandal, a Pew Research Center poll found Trump's approval rating underwater with every single demographic group. Every demographic group, that is, except one: people who identified as white.

The focus on one subsector of Trump voters-the white working class-is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump's presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony-even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president-is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country's political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of. Moreover, to accept that whiteness brought us Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world. But if the broad and remarkable white support for Donald Trump can be reduced to the righteous anger of a noble class of smallville firefighters and evangelicals, mocked by Brooklyn hipsters and womanist professors into voting against their interests, then the threat of racism and whiteness, the threat of the heirloom, can be dismissed. Consciences can be eased; no deeper existential reckoning is required.

This transfiguration is not novel. It is a return to form. The tightly intertwined stories of the white working class and black Americans go back to the prehistory of the United States-and the use of one as a cudgel to silence the claims of the other goes back nearly as far. Like the black working class, the white working class originated in bondage-the former in the lifelong bondage of slavery, the latter in the temporary bondage of indenture. In the early 17th century, these two classes were remarkably, though not totally, free of racist enmity. But by the 18th century, the country's master class had begun etching race into law while phasing out indentured servitude in favor of a more enduring labor solution. From these and other changes of law and economy, a bargain emerged: The descendants of indenture would enjoy the full benefits of whiteness, the most definitional benefit being that they would never sink to the level of the slave. But if the bargain protected white workers from slavery, it did not protect them from near-slave wages or backbreaking labor to attain them, and always there lurked a fear of having their benefits revoked. This early white working class "expressed soaring desires to be rid of the age-old inequalities of Europe and of any hint of slavery," according to David R. Roediger, a professor of American studies at the University of Kansas. "They also expressed the rather more pedestrian goal of simply not being mistaken for slaves, or 'negers' or 'negurs.' "

Roediger relates the experience, around 1807, of a British investor who made the mistake of asking a white maid in New England whether her "master" was home. The maid admonished the investor, not merely for implying that she had a "master" and thus was a "sarvant" but for his basic ignorance of American hierarchy. "None but negers are sarvants," the maid is reported to have said. In law and economics and then in custom, a racist distinction not limited to the household emerged between the "help" (or the "freemen," or the white workers) and the "servants" (the "negers," the slaves). The former were virtuous and just, worthy of citizenship, progeny of Jefferson and, later, Jackson. The latter were servile and parasitic, dim-witted and lazy, the children of African savagery. But the dignity accorded to white labor was situational, dependent on the scorn heaped upon black labor-much as the honor accorded a "virtuous lady" was dependent on the derision directed at a "loose woman." And like chivalrous gentlemen who claim to honor the lady while raping the "whore," planters and their apologists could claim to honor white labor while driving the enslaved.

And so George Fitzhugh, a prominent 19th-century Southern pro-slavery intellectual, could in a single stroke deplore the exploitation of free whites' labor while defending the exploitation of enslaved blacks' labor. Fitzhugh attacked white capitalists as "cannibals," feeding off the labor of their fellow whites. The white workers were " 'slaves without masters;' the little fish, who were food for all the larger." Fitzhugh inveighed against a "professional man" who'd "amassed a fortune" by exploiting his fellow whites. But whereas Fitzhugh imagined white workers as devoured by capital, he imagined black workers as elevated by enslavement. The slaveholder "provided for them, with almost parental affection"-even when the loafing slave "feigned to be unfit for labor." Fitzhugh proved too explicit-going so far as to argue that white laborers might be better off if enslaved. ("If white slavery be morally wrong," he wrote, "the Bible cannot be true.") Nevertheless, the argument that America's original sin was not deep-seated white supremacy but rather the exploitation of white labor by white capitalists-"white slavery"-proved durable. Indeed, the panic of white slavery lives on in our politics today. Black workers suffer because it was and is our lot. But when white workers suffer, something in nature has gone awry. And so an opioid epidemic among mostly white people is greeted with calls for compassion and treatment, as all epidemics should be, while a crack epidemic among mostly black people is greeted with scorn and mandatory minimums. Sympathetic op‑ed columns and articles are devoted to the plight of working-class whites when their life expectancy plummets to levels that, for blacks, society has simply accepted as normal. White slavery is sin. Nigger slavery is natural. This dynamic serves a very real purpose: the consistent awarding of grievance and moral high ground to that class of workers which, by the bonds of whiteness, stands closest to America's aristocratic class.

This is by design. Speaking in 1848, Senator John C. Calhoun saw slavery as the explicit foundation for a democratic union among whites, working and not:

With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.

On the eve of secession, Jefferson Davis, the eventual president of the Confederacy, pushed the idea further, arguing that such equality between the white working class and white oligarchs could not exist at all without black slavery:

I say that the lower race of human beings that constitute the substratum of what is termed the slave population of the South, elevates every white man in our community ... It is the presence of a lower caste, those lower by their mental and physical organization, controlled by the higher intellect of the white man, that gives this superiority to the white laborer. Menial services are not there performed by the white man. We have none of our brethren sunk to the degradation of being menials. That belongs to the lower race-the descendants of Ham.

Southern intellectuals found a shade of agreement with Northern white reformers who, while not agreeing on slavery, agreed on the nature of the most tragic victim of emerging capitalism. "I was formerly like yourself, sir, a very warm advocate of the abolition of slavery," the labor reformer George Henry Evans argued in a letter to the abolitionist Gerrit Smith. "This was before I saw that there was white slavery." Evans was a putative ally of Smith and his fellow abolitionists. But still he asserted that "the landless white" was worse off than the enslaved black, who at least enjoyed "surety of support in sickness and old age."

Invokers of "white slavery" held that there was nothing unique in the enslavement of blacks when measured against the enslavement of all workers. What evil there was in enslavement resulted from its status as a subsidiary of the broader exploitation better seen among the country's noble laboring whites. Once the larger problem of white exploitation was solved, the dependent problem of black exploitation could be confronted or perhaps would fade away. Abolitionists focused on slavery were dismissed as "substitutionists" who wished to trade one form of slavery for another. "If I am less troubled concerning the Slavery prevalent in Charleston or New-Orleans," wrote the reformer Horace Greeley, "it is because I see so much Slavery in New-York, which appears to claim my first efforts."

Firsthand reports by white Union soldiers who witnessed actual slavery during the Civil War rendered the "white slavery" argument ridiculous. But its operating premises-white labor as noble archetype, and black labor as something else-lived on. This was a matter of rhetoric, not fact. The noble-white-labor archetype did not give white workers immunity from capitalism. It could not, in itself, break monopolies, alleviate white poverty in Appalachia or the South, or bring a decent wage to immigrant ghettos in the North. But the model for America's original identity politics was set. Black lives literally did not matter and could be cast aside altogether as the price of even incremental gains for the white masses. It was this juxtaposition that allowed Theodore Bilbo to campaign for the Senate in the 1930s as someone who would "raise the same kind of hell as President Roosevelt" and later endorse lynching black people to keep them from voting.

The juxtaposition between the valid and even virtuous interests of the "working class" and the invalid and pathological interests of black Americans was not the province merely of blatant white supremacists like Bilbo. The acclaimed scholar, liberal hero, and future senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in his time working for President Richard Nixon, approvingly quoted Nixon's formulation of the white working class: "A new voice" was beginning to make itself felt in the country. "It is a voice that has been silent too long," Nixon claimed, alluding to working-class whites. "It is a voice of people who have not taken to the streets before, who have not indulged in violence, who have not broken the law."

It had been only 18 years since the Cicero riots; eight years since Daisy and Bill Myers had been run out of Levittown, Pennsylvania; three years since Martin Luther King Jr. had been stoned while walking through Chicago's Marquette Park. But as the myth of the virtuous white working class was made central to American identity, its sins needed to be rendered invisible. The fact was, working-class whites had been agents of racist terrorism since at least the draft riots of 1863; terrorism could not be neatly separated from the racist animus found in every class of whites. Indeed, in the era of lynching, the daily newspapers often whipped up the fury of the white masses by invoking the last species of property that all white men held in common-white women. But to conceal the breadth of white racism, these racist outbursts were often disregarded or treated not as racism but as the unfortunate side effect of legitimate grievances against capital. By focusing on that sympathetic laboring class, the sins of whiteness itself were, and are still being, evaded.

When David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, shocked the country in 1990 by almost winning one of Louisiana's seats in the U.S. Senate, the apologists came out once again. They elided the obvious-that Duke had appealed to the racist instincts of a state whose schools are, at this very moment, still desegregating-and instead decided that something else was afoot. "There is a tremendous amount of anger and frustration among working-class whites, particularly where there is an economic downturn," a researcher told the Los Angeles Times. "These people feel left out; they feel government is not responsive to them." By this logic, postwar America-with its booming economy and low unemployment-should have been an egalitarian utopia and not the violently segregated country it actually was.

But this was the past made present. It was not important to the apologists that a large swath of Louisiana's white population thought it was a good idea to send a white supremacist who once fronted a terrorist organization to the nation's capital. Nor was it important that blacks in Louisiana had long felt left out. What was important was the fraying of an ancient bargain, and the potential degradation of white workers to the level of "negers." "A viable left must find a way to differentiate itself strongly from such analysis," David Roediger, the University of Kansas professor, has written.

That challenge of differentiation has largely been ignored. Instead, an imagined white working class remains central to our politics and to our cultural understanding of those politics, not simply when it comes to addressing broad economic issues but also when it comes to addressing racism. At its most sympathetic, this belief holds that most Americans-regardless of race-are exploited by an unfettered capitalist economy. The key, then, is to address those broader patterns that afflict the masses of all races; the people who suffer from those patterns more than others (blacks, for instance) will benefit disproportionately from that which benefits everyone. "These days, what ails working-class and middle-class blacks and Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts," Senator Barack Obama wrote in 2006:

Downsizing, outsourcing, automation, wage stagnation, the dismantling of employer-based health-care and pension plans, and schools that fail to teach young people the skills they need to compete in a global economy.

Obama allowed that "blacks in particular have been vulnerable to these trends"-but less because of racism than for reasons of geography and job-sector distribution. This notion-raceless antiracism-marks the modern left, from the New Democrat Bill Clinton to the socialist Bernie Sanders. Few national liberal politicians have shown any recognition that there is something systemic and particular in the relationship between black people and their country that might require specific policy solutions.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton acknowledged the existence of systemic racism more explicitly than any of her modern Democratic predecessors. She had to-black voters remembered too well the previous Clinton administration, as well as her previous campaign. While her husband's administration had touted the rising-tide theory of economic growth, it did so while slashing welfare and getting "tough on crime," a phrase that stood for specific policies but also served as rhetorical bait for white voters. One is tempted to excuse Hillary Clinton from having to answer for the sins of her husband. But in her 2008 campaign, she evoked the old dichotomy between white workers and loafing blacks, claiming to be the representative of "hardworking Americans, white Americans." By the end of the 2008 primary campaign against Barack Obama, her advisers were hoping someone would uncover an apocryphal "whitey tape," in which an angry Michelle Obama was alleged to have used the slur. During Bill Clinton's presidential-reelection campaign in the mid-1990s, Hillary Clinton herself had endorsed the "super-predator" theory of William J. Bennett, John P. Walters, and John J. DiIulio Jr. This theory cast "inner-city" children of that era as "almost completely unmoralized" and the font of "a new generation of street criminals ... the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known." The "baddest generation" did not become super-predators. But by 2016, they were young adults, many of whom judged Hillary Clinton's newfound consciousness to be lacking.

It's worth asking why the country has not been treated to a raft of sympathetic portraits of this "forgotten" young black electorate, forsaken by a Washington bought off by Davos elites and special interests. The unemployment rate for young blacks (20.6 percent) in July 2016 was double that of young whites (9.9 percent). And since the late 1970s, William Julius Wilson and other social scientists following in his wake have noted the disproportionate effect that the decline in manufacturing jobs has had on African American communities. If anyone should be angered by the devastation wreaked by the financial sector and a government that declined to prosecute the perpetrators, it is African Americans-the housing crisis was one of the primary drivers in the past 20 years of the wealth gap between black families and the rest of the country. But the cultural condescension toward and economic anxiety of black people is not news. Toiling blacks are in their proper state; toiling whites raise the specter of white slavery.

Moreover, a narrative of long-neglected working-class black voters, injured by globalization and the financial crisis, forsaken by out-of-touch politicians, and rightfully suspicious of a return of Clintonism, does not serve to cleanse the conscience of white people for having elected Donald Trump. Only the idea of a long-suffering white working class can do that. And though much has been written about the distance between elites and "Real America," the existence of a class-transcending, mutually dependent tribe of white people is evident.

Joe Biden, then the vice president, last year:

"They're all the people I grew up with ... And they're not racist. They're not sexist."

Bernie Sanders, senator and former candidate for president, last year:

"I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from."

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, in February of this year:

My hometown, Yamhill, Ore., a farming community, is Trump country, and I have many friends who voted for Trump. I think they're profoundly wrong, but please don't dismiss them as hateful bigots.

These claims of origin and fidelity are not merely elite defenses of an aggrieved class but also a sweeping dismissal of the concerns of those who don't share kinship with white men. "You can't eat equality," asserts Joe Biden-a statement worthy of someone unthreatened by the loss of wages brought on by an unwanted pregnancy, a background-check box at the bottom of a job application, or the deportation of a breadwinner. Within a week of Sanders lambasting Democrats for not speaking to "the people" where he "came from," he was making an example of a woman who dreamed of representing the people where she came from. Confronted with a young woman who hoped to become the second Latina senator in American history, Sanders responded with a parody of the Clinton campaign: "It is not good enough for someone to say, 'I'm a woman! Vote for me!' No, that's not good enough ... One of the struggles that you're going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics." The upshot-attacking one specimen of identity politics after having invoked another-was unfortunate.

Other Sanders appearances proved even more alarming. On MSNBC, he attributed Trump's success, in part, to his willingness to "not be politically correct." Sanders admitted that Trump had "said some outrageous and painful things, but I think people are tired of the same old, same old political rhetoric." Pressed on the definition of political correctness, Sanders gave an answer Trump surely would have approved of. "What it means is you have a set of talking points which have been poll-tested and focus-group-tested," Sanders explained. "And that's what you say rather than what's really going on. And often, what you are not allowed to say are things which offend very, very powerful people."

This definition of political correctness was shocking coming from a politician of the left. But it matched a broader defense of Trump voters. "Some people think that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and just deplorable folks," Sanders said later. "I don't agree." This is not exculpatory. Certainly not every Trump voter is a white supremacist, just as not every white person in the Jim Crow South was a white supremacist. But every Trump voter felt it acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one.

One can, to some extent, understand politicians' embracing a self-serving identity politics. Candidates for high office, such as Sanders, have to cobble together a coalition. The white working class is seen, understandably, as a large cache of potential votes, and capturing these votes requires eliding uncomfortable truths. But journalists have no such excuse. Again and again in the past year, Nicholas Kristof could be found pleading with his fellow liberals not to dismiss his old comrades in the white working class as bigots-even when their bigotry was evidenced in his own reporting. A visit to Tulsa, Oklahoma, finds Kristof wondering why Trump voters support a president who threatens to cut the programs they depend on. But the problem, according to Kristof 's interviewees, isn't Trump's attack on benefits so much as an attack on their benefits. "There's a lot of wasteful spending, so cut other places," one man tells Kristof. When Kristof pushes his subjects to identify that wasteful spending, a fascinating target is revealed: "Obama phones," the products of a fevered conspiracy theory that turned a long-standing government program into a scheme through which the then-president gave away free cellphones to undeserving blacks. Kristof doesn't shift his analysis based on this comment and, aside from a one-sentence fact-check tucked between parentheses, continues on as though it were never said.

Observing a Trump supporter in the act of deploying racism does not much perturb Kristof. That is because his defenses of the innate goodness of Trump voters and of the innate goodness of the white working class are in fact defenses of neither. On the contrary, the white working class functions rhetorically not as a real community of people so much as a tool to quiet the demands of those who want a more inclusive America.

Mark Lilla's New York Times essay " The End of Identity Liberalism," published not long after last year's election, is perhaps the most profound example of this genre. Lilla denounces the perversion of liberalism into "a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity," which distorted liberalism's message "and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing." Liberals have turned away from their working-class base, he says, and must look to the "pre-identity liberalism" of Bill Clinton and Franklin D. Roosevelt. You would never know from this essay that Bill Clinton was one of the most skillful identity politicians of his era-flying home to Arkansas to see a black man, the lobotomized Ricky Ray Rector, executed; upstaging Jesse Jackson at his own conference; signing the Defense of Marriage Act. Nor would you know that the "pre-identity" liberal champion Roosevelt depended on the literally lethal identity politics of the white-supremacist "solid South." The name Barack Obama does not appear in Lilla's essay, and he never attempts to grapple, one way or another, with the fact that it was identity politics-the possibility of the first black president-that brought a record number of black voters to the polls, winning the election for the Democratic Party, and thus enabling the deliverance of the ancient liberal goal of national health care. "Identity politics ... is largely expressive, not persuasive," Lilla claims. "Which is why it never wins elections-but can lose them." That Trump ran and won on identity politics is beyond Lilla's powers of conception. What appeals to the white working class is ennobled. What appeals to black workers, and all others outside the tribe, is dastardly identitarianism. All politics are identity politics-except the politics of white people, the politics of the bloody heirloom.

White tribalism haunts even more-nuanced writers. George Packer's New Yorker essay "The Unconnected" is a lengthy plea for liberals to focus more on the white working class, a population that "has succumbed to the ills that used to be associated with the black urban 'underclass.' " Packer believes that these ills, and the Democratic Party's failure to respond to them, explain much of Trump's rise. Packer offers no opinion polls to weigh white workers' views on "elites," much less their views on racism. He offers no sense of how their views and their relationship to Trump differ from other workers' and other whites'.

That is likely because any empirical evaluation of the relationship between Trump and the white working class would reveal that one adjective in that phrase is doing more work than the other. In 2016, Trump enjoyed majority or plurality support among every economic branch of whites. It is true that his strongest support among whites came from those making $50,000 to $99,999. This would be something more than working-class in many nonwhite neighborhoods, but even if one accepts that branch as the working class, the difference between how various groups in this income bracket voted is revealing. Sixty-one percent of whites in this "working class" supported Trump. Only 24 percent of Hispanics and 11 percent of blacks did. Indeed, the plurality of all voters making less than $100,000 and the majority making less than $50,000 voted for the Democratic candidate. So when Packer laments the fact that "Democrats can no longer really claim to be the party of working people-not white ones, anyway," he commits a kind of category error. The real problem is that Democrats aren't the party of white people-working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact of labor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers by the fact of their whiteness.

Packer's essay was published before the election, and so the vote tally was not available. But it should not be surprising that a Republican candidate making a direct appeal to racism would drive up the numbers among white voters, given that racism has been a dividing line for the national parties since the civil-rights era. Packer finds inspiration for his thesis in West Virginia-a state that remained Democratic through the 1990s before turning decisively Republican, at least at the level of presidential politics. This relatively recent rightward movement evinces, to Packer, a shift "that couldn't be attributed just to the politics of race." This is likely true-the politics of race are, themselves, never attributable "just to the politics of race." The history of slavery is also about the growth of international capitalism; the history of lynching must be seen in light of anxiety over the growing independence of women; the civil-rights movement can't be disentangled from the Cold War. Thus, to say that the rise of Donald Trump is about more than race is to make an empty statement, one that is small comfort to the people-black, Muslim, immigrant-who live under racism's boot.

The dent of racism is not hard to detect in West Virginia. In the 2008 Democratic primary there, 95 percent of the voters were white. Twenty percent of those-one in five-openly admitted that race was influencing their vote, and more than 80 percent voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Four years later, the incumbent Obama lost the primary in 10 counties to Keith Judd, a white felon incarcerated in a federal prison; Judd racked up more than 40 percent of the Democratic-primary vote in the state. A simple thought experiment: Can one imagine a black felon in a federal prison running in a primary against an incumbent white president doing so well?

But racism occupies a mostly passive place in Packer's essay. There's no attempt to understand why black and brown workers, victimized by the same new economy and cosmopolitan elite that Packer lambastes, did not join the Trump revolution. Like Kristof, Packer is gentle with his subjects. When a woman "exploded" and told Packer, "I want to eat what I want to eat, and for them to tell me I can't eat French fries or Coca-Cola-no way," he sees this as a rebellion against "the moral superiority of elites." In fact, this elite conspiracy dates back to 1894, when the government first began advising Americans on their diets. As recently as 2002, President George W. Bush launched the HealthierUS initiative, urging Americans to exercise and eat healthy food. But Packer never allows himself to wonder whether the explosion he witnessed had anything to do with the fact that similar advice now came from the country's first black first lady. Packer concludes that Obama was leaving the country "more divided and angrier than most Americans can remember," a statement that is likely true only because most Americans identify as white. Certainly the men and women forced to live in the wake of the beating of John Lewis, the lynching of Emmett Till, the firebombing of Percy Julian's home, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers would disagree.

The triumph of Trump's campaign of bigotry presented the problematic spectacle of an American president succeeding at best in spite of his racism and possibly because of it. Trump moved racism from the euphemistic and plausibly deniable to the overt and freely claimed. This presented the country's thinking class with a dilemma. Hillary Clinton simply could not be correct when she asserted that a large group of Americans was endorsing a candidate because of bigotry. The implications-that systemic bigotry is still central to our politics; that the country is susceptible to such bigotry; that the salt-of-the-earth Americans whom we lionize in our culture and politics are not so different from those same Americans who grin back at us in lynching photos; that Calhoun's aim of a pan-Caucasian embrace between workers and capitalists still endures-were just too dark. Leftists would have to cope with the failure, yet again, of class unity in the face of racism. Incorporating all of this into an analysis of America and the path forward proved too much to ask. Instead, the response has largely been an argument aimed at emotion-the summoning of the white working class, emblem of America's hardscrabble roots, inheritor of its pioneer spirit, as a shield against the horrific and empirical evidence of trenchant bigotry.

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Packer dismisses the Democratic Party as a coalition of "rising professionals and diversity." The dismissal is derived from, of all people, Lawrence Summers, the former Harvard president and White House economist, who last year labeled the Democratic Party "a coalition of the cosmopolitan élite and diversity." The inference is that the party has forgotten how to speak on hard economic issues and prefers discussing presumably softer cultural issues such as "diversity." It's worth unpacking what, precisely, falls under this rubric of "diversity"-resistance to the monstrous incarceration of legions of black men, resistance to the destruction of health providers for poor women, resistance to the effort to deport parents, resistance to a policing whose sole legitimacy is rooted in brute force, resistance to a theory of education that preaches "no excuses" to black and brown children, even as excuses are proffered for mendacious corporate executives "too big to jail." That this suite of concerns, taken together, can be dismissed by both an elite economist like Summers and a brilliant journalist like Packer as "diversity" simply reveals the safe space they enjoy. Because of their identity.

When Barack Obama came into office, in 2009, he believed that he could work with "sensible" conservatives by embracing aspects of their policy as his own. Instead he found that his very imprimatur made that impossible. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the GOP's primary goal was not to find common ground but to make Obama a "one-term president." A health-care plan inspired by Romneycare was, when proposed by Obama, suddenly considered socialist and, not coincidentally, a form of reparations. The first black president found that he was personally toxic to the GOP base. An entire political party was organized around the explicit aim of negating one man. It was thought by Obama and some of his allies that this toxicity was the result of a relentless assault waged by Fox News and right-wing talk radio. Trump's genius was to see that it was something more, that it was a hunger for revanche so strong that a political novice and accused rapist could topple the leadership of one major party and throttle the heavily favored nominee of the other.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters," Trump bragged in January 2016. This statement should be met with only a modicum of skepticism. Trump has mocked the disabled, withstood multiple accusations of sexual violence (all of which he has denied), fired an FBI director, sent his minions to mislead the public about his motives, personally exposed those lies by boldly stating his aim to scuttle an investigation into his possible collusion with a foreign power, then bragged about that same obstruction to representatives of that same foreign power. It is utterly impossible to conjure a black facsimile of Donald Trump-to imagine Obama, say, implicating an opponent's father in the assassination of an American president or comparing his physical endowment with that of another candidate and then successfully capturing the presidency. Trump, more than any other politician, understood the valence of the bloody heirloom and the great power in not being a nigger.

But the power is ultimately suicidal. Trump evinces this, too. In a recent New Yorker article, a former Russian military officer pointed out that interference in an election could succeed only where "necessary conditions" and an "existing background" were present. In America, that "existing background" was a persistent racism, and the "necessary condition" was a black president. The two related factors hobbled America's ability to safeguard its electoral system. As late as July 2016, a majority of Republican voters doubted that Barack Obama had been born in the United States, which is to say they did not view him as a legitimate president. Republican politicians acted accordingly, infamously denying his final Supreme Court nominee a hearing and then, fatefully, refusing to work with the administration to defend the country against the Russian attack. Before the election, Obama found no takers among Republicans for a bipartisan response, and Obama himself, underestimating Trump and thus underestimating the power of whiteness, believed the Republican nominee too objectionable to actually win. In this Obama was, tragically, wrong. And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over all its affairs-the prosperity of its entire economy; the security of its 300 million citizens; the purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food; the future of its vast system of education; the soundness of its national highways, airways, and railways; the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal-to a carnival barker who introduced the phrase grab 'em by the pussy into the national lexicon. It is as if the white tribe united in demonstration to say, "If a black man can be president, then any white man-no matter how fallen-can be president." And in that perverse way, the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Jackson were fulfilled.

The American tragedy now being wrought is larger than most imagine and will not end with Trump. In recent times, whiteness as an overt political tactic has been restrained by a kind of cordiality that held that its overt invocation would scare off "moderate" whites. This has proved to be only half true at best. Trump's legacy will be exposing the patina of decency for what it is and revealing just how much a demagogue can get away with. It does not take much to imagine another politician, wiser in the ways of Washington and better schooled in the methodology of governance-and now liberated from the pretense of antiracist civility-doing a much more effective job than Trump.

It has long been an axiom among certain black writers and thinkers that while whiteness endangers the bodies of black people in the immediate sense, the larger threat is to white people themselves, the shared country, and even the whole world. There is an impulse to blanch at this sort of grandiosity. When W. E. B. Du Bois claims that slavery was "singularly disastrous for modern civilization" or James Baldwin claims that whites "have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white," the instinct is to cry exaggeration. But there really is no other way to read the presidency of Donald Trump. The first white president in American history is also the most dangerous president-and he is made more dangerous still by the fact that those charged with analyzing him cannot name his essential nature, because they too are implicated in it.
This essay is drawn from Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book, We Were Eight Years in Power.

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The foundation of Donald Trump's presidency is the negation of Barack Obama's legacy. It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact.

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"A Talk to Teachers" James Baldwin, 1963

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(Delivered October 16, 1963, as "The Negro Child - His Self-Image"; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985.) Let's begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time.

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Understanding White Supremacy: Covert & Overt

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Understanding White Supremacy: Covert & Overt

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A helpful visual on race floating around social media (Source: Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (2005) "Building a Multi-Ethnic, Inclusive & Antiracist Organization-Tools for Liberation Packet for Anti-Racist Activists, Allies, & Critical Thinkers"):

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A helpful visual on race floating around social media (Source: Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (2005) "Building a Multi-Ethnic, Inclusive & Antiracist Organization-Tools for Liberation Packet for Anti-Racist Activists, Allies, & Critical Thinkers"): This entry was posted in Race, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

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Children Are Not Colorblind: How Young Children Learn Race

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Kimberlé Crenshaw: The urgency of intersectionality

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Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both.

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Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors

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Where are the People of Color in Children's Books? By Walter Dean Myers

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Where are the People of Color in Children's Books? By Walter Dean Myers

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But there was something missing. I needed more than the characters in the Bible to identify with, or even the characters in Arthur Miller's plays or my beloved Balzac. As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine. I didn't want to become the "black" representative, or some shining example of diversity. What I wanted, needed really, was to become an integral and valued part of the mosaic that I saw around me.

Books did not become my enemies. They were more like friends with whom I no longer felt comfortable. I stopped reading. I stopped going to school. On my 17th birthday, I joined the Army. In retrospect I see that I had lost the potential person I would become - an odd idea that I could not have articulated at the time, but that seems so clear today.

My post-Army days became dreadful, a drunken stumble through life, with me holding on just enough to survive. Fueled by the shortest and most meaningful conversation I had ever had in a school hallway, with the one English teacher in my high school, Stuyvesant, who knew I was going to drop out, I began to write short columns for a local tabloid, and racy stories for men's magazines. Seeing my name in print helped. A little.

Then I read a story by James Baldwin: "Sonny's Blues." I didn't love the story, but I was lifted by it, for it took place in Harlem, and it was a story concerned with black people like those I knew. By humanizing the people who were like me, Baldwin's story also humanized me. The story gave me a permission that I didn't know I needed, the permission to write about my own landscape, my own map.

During my only meeting with Baldwin, at City College, I blurted out to him what his story had done for me. "I know exactly what you mean," he said. "I had to leave Harlem and the United States to search for who I was. Isn't that a shame?"

When I left Baldwin that day I felt elated that I had met a writer I had so admired, and that we had had a shared experience. But later I realized how much more meaningful it would have been to have known Baldwin's story at 15, or at 14. Perhaps even younger, before I had started my subconscious quest for identity.

TODAY I am a writer, but I also see myself as something of a landscape artist. I paint pictures of scenes for inner-city youth that are familiar, and I people the scenes with brothers and aunts and friends they all have met. Thousands of young people have come to me saying that they love my books for some reason or the other, but I strongly suspect that what they have found in my pages is the same thing I found in "Sonny's Blues." They have been struck by the recognition of themselves in the story, a validation of their existence as human beings, an acknowledgment of their value by someone who understands who they are. It is the shock of recognition at its highest level.

I've reached an age at which I find myself not only examining and weighing my life's work, but thinking about how I will pass the baton so that those things I find important will continue. In 1969, when I first entered the world of writing children's literature, the field was nearly empty. Children of color were not represented, nor were children from the lower economic classes. Today, when about 40 percent of public school students nationwide are black and Latino, the disparity of representation is even more egregious. In the middle of the night I ask myself if anyone really cares.

When I was doing research for my book "Monster," I approached a white lawyer doing pro bono work in the courts defending poor clients. I said that it must be difficult to get witnesses to court to testify on behalf of an inner-city client, and he replied that getting witnesses was not as difficult as it sometimes appeared on television. "The trouble," he said, "is to humanize my clients in the eyes of a jury. To make them think of this defendant as a human being and not just one of 'them.' "

I realized that this was exactly what I wanted to do when I wrote about poor inner-city children - to make them human in the eyes of readers and, especially, in their own eyes. I need to make them feel as if they are part of America's dream, that all the rhetoric is meant for them, and that they are wanted in this country.

Years ago, I worked in the personnel office for a transformer firm. We needed to hire a chemist, and two candidates stood out, in my mind, for the position. One was a young white man with a degree from St. John's University and the other an equally qualified black man from Grambling College (now Grambling State University) in Louisiana. I proposed to the department head that we send them both to the lab and let the chief chemist make the final decision. He looked at me as if I had said something so remarkable that he was having a hard time understanding me. "You're kidding me," he said. "That black guy's no chemist."

I pointed out the degrees on the résumé that suggested otherwise, and the tension between us soared. When I confronted my superior and demanded to know what about the candidate from Grambling made him not a chemist, he grumbled something under his breath, and reluctantly sent both candidates for an interview with the chief chemist.

Simple racism, I thought. On reflection, though, I understood that I was wrong. It was racism, but not simple racism. My white co-worker had simply never encountered a black chemist before. Or a black engineer. Or a black doctor. I realized that we hired people not so much on their résumés, but rather on our preconceived notions of what the successful candidate should be like. And where was my boss going to get the notion that a chemist should be black?

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books? Where are the future white personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of color? Where are the future white loan officers and future white politicians going to get their knowledge of people of color? Where are black children going to get a sense of who they are and what they can be?

And what are the books that are being published about blacks? Joe Morton, the actor who starred in "The Brother From Another Planet," has said that all but a few motion pictures being made about blacks are about blacks as victims. In them, we are always struggling to overcome either slavery or racism. Book publishing is little better. Black history is usually depicted as folklore about slavery, and then a fast-forward to the civil rights movement. Then I'm told that black children, and boys in particular, don't read. Small wonder.

There is work to be done.

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Opinion | Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?

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But there was something missing. I needed more than the characters in the Bible to identify with, or even the characters in Arthur Miller's plays or my beloved Balzac. As I discovered who I was, a black teenager in a white-dominated world, I saw that these characters, these lives, were not mine.

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Opinion | The Apartheid of Children’s Literature (Published 2014)

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Too often today’s books are blind to the reality of thousands of children.

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National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Gene Luen Yang: Reading Without Walls

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National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Gene Luen Yang: Reading Without Walls

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So this crazy thing happened this past January. The Library of Congress, Children's Book Council, and Every Child A Reader appointed me the fifth National Ambassador of Young People's Literature! Every National Ambassador picks a platform. Mine is Reading Without Walls. I want every kid -- every reader, really -- to explore the world through books.

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Young People's Poet Laureate: Margarita Engle

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Young People's Poet Laureate: Margarita Engle

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Margarita Engle is the 2017-2019 national Young People's Poet Laureate, and USBBY's 2019 nominee for the Astrid Lindgren Award, the world's largest children's literature honor. She is the Cuban-American author of many verse novels, including the Newbery Honor winner, The Surrender Tree , and PEN USA Award winner, The Lightning Dreamer .

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It's a little word but a potent one.

About six or seven months ago, Kirkus started identifying characters in children's and teen books by identity and/or race-all the time. And it hasn't been easy.

It's been commonplace, if not exactly standard practice, to include racial identifiers for nonwhite characters for decades now in book reviews, especially if a book deals in some way with race. Our review of Mildred Taylor's 1975 novel, Song of the Trees, for instance, says that it "is based on one of the true stories the author's father used to tell about growing up black in Depression-era Mississippi" in the very first sentence. Similarly, our review of Laurence Yep's Dragonwings, published in the same year, indicates that the protagonist's father is "based loosely on an actual Chinese-American aviator." Conversely, if the reviewer felt that race was not germane to the story in some way-or, perhaps, felt that the author's identity made it clear-it might go unmentioned, as in our review of Virginia Hamilton's 1975 Newbery-winning M.C. Higgins, the Great.

Our approach has been variable ever since. I recall having a conversation with my predecessor when I was still a freelancer for Kirkus about whether I should mention that a character in a book that did not touch explicitly on race was black. On the one hand, a child is a child is a child-race shouldn't matter. On the other hand, I remembered working as a children's librarian in Memphis and scouring reviews for any evidence that a book was about a black child, since my shelves were groaning with books about white kids and my young readers were almost all black. Complicating things was an insidious third hand: if I did identify the character as black, was I sending a message that might cause some not to buy the book? Oh, dear.

But as the conversation surrounding diversity in children's literature has heated up, I've felt more and more that naming race and identity is one of the duties of a reviewer. Parents and caregivers of children of color want books that reflect their children, as do librarians and teachers serving children of color. Much of the conversation at a diversity summit I attended at the Texas Library Association conference last year revolved around how readers can find the diverse books that are already out there. Yes, a book about the civil rights struggle, the Trail of Tears, or the Japanese internment camps announces race or identity in its subject, but what about books in which children of color are just regular kids?

Over and over, I've heard from parents, librarians, teachers, and kids themselves that it would be wonderful to read books about black kids, or Indian kids, or Native American kids who are just being kids instead of being oppressed in some way. Just as my Jewish brother-in-law wanted to give his daughter books in which a Jewish character was not being banished, beaten, burned at the stake, or gassed but just living life, these adults want to give their children stories that might reflect their lives, to give them Muslim Henry Hugginses or Latina Ramona Quimbys. And the corollary is just as important: white kids should see that kids of color live regular lives, that they are not frozen in some long-ago strife or current villainy/misery.

Resolved to help our readers find those books, I redoubled our efforts to systematically add that information to our reviews. But this resolve also has a corollary: what to do about all the books about white people?

It's a truth those of us in our largely white industry were forced to see over 50 years ago, when Nancy Larrick decried "The All-White World of Children's Books." It's a truth that is reinforced every year by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which found that of the 3,400 children's books they received in 2015, only 501 were about African/African-Americans, American Indians/First Nations, Asian-Pacifics/Asian-Pacific Americans, or Latinos; only 355 were by creators from those categories. Yes, many of the 2,899 books remaining were about bears, robots, cars, and other nonhuman creatures, but a shockingly disproportionate number were by and/or about white people.

I say "shockingly disproportionate," because the American audience for these books is rapidly closing in on the moment when it will be majority-"minority." Preschoolers already are. Children in public schools already are. So when I imagine the readers of Kirkus Reviews, I am imagining an audience that is increasingly concerned with buying books for children who are not white. There's my former self in Memphis, as well as parents and librarians in such places as Los Angeles County, where 14.3 percent of public school students are white, and Chicago, where 9.4 percent of public school students are white. Their daily, lived reality is not one in which the norm is white, so it seems that they shouldn't have to guess when they are reading book reviews whether or not any given title is about a white character or characters.

I realize that this is going against a centuries-old tradition in literature written in English, which from its inception has assumed that both audience and characters are white unless stated otherwise. From before it appeared on European maps, however, America has been a multicultural place, but when literature written in English arrived on its shores along with smallpox, it did not adjust to its new reality. Characters in the earliest American literature are assumed to be white unless they are savages, blackamoors, or any number of other dehumanizing words. Our literature was coded so that it was populated by people, that is to say white people, or nonhumans. We've gotten better, for the most part, but white is still our default, so now we have literature populated by people and Other people.

Christopher Paul Curtis brilliantly upends this default in Bud, Not Buddy when Bud goes to the library and sees a "white lady" at the circulation desk. All the people Bud has encountered up to this time have been either named or described in the generic: "guy," "woman," "boy," "kid." When Bud first makes readers realize that "white" is somehow different, it causes them to re-evaluate all the other assumptions they may have made about characters they've already met, as well those they will meet: they are black unless specified otherwise. When I bumped into that "white lady," I thought to myself, "Is this what happens to black readers all the time?" Readers who are not of a book's default identity are at least temporarily forced into what W.E.B. Du Bois called double-consciousness: "this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others."

So to reflect the fact that large swathes of the audience of the books that we are reviewing are not white-and that not all of our own readers are white-in the fall of 2015, we started naming white characters as well as characters of color when describing humans (or humanoids, where applicable-children's literature contains multitudes).

It hasn't been easy. There's the practical problem of what it does to the experience of our print readers to encounter review after review after review that somehow includes the adjective "white." There's the fact that both my reviewers and I are almost all, as one of my black reviewers said, "socialized to see white as the default"-it's hard to train yourself to notice, much less write consciously about it. There's the fact that as a rule, many of my reviewers and I, like many white people, are not comfortable talking about race, so the information is frequently plopped in awkwardly. There's the fact that because white is the default, oftentimes it's hard to tell whether a book is being consciously race-neutral, like Virginia Euwer Wolff's Make Lemonade, or whether an author simply isn't one for physical description. There's the fact that a child in a picture book may look white but be a child of color, particularly if an artist's approach is stylized.

There's the fear of getting it wrong, which we've done, as when we misidentified Eric and Terry Fan's Asian, eponymous Night Gardener as white (see our Mar. 1, 2016, issue for more).

It hasn't been universally popular. A commenter on the Reading While White blog expressed suspicion of the lens we were using when we asserted that the narrator of Louise Hawes' The Language of Stars is "presumably white." A number of publishers have contacted me privately in varying degrees of dismay and/or anger. One of my newest reviewers of color protested energetically, saying that unless race is a factor in the story, "there is no reason at all to mention race in a review." And one of our readers expressed the concern that "a title may receive a sub-par review if it does not feature minority characters even if it is an exceptional book in all other aspects."

(The short answer to this last is no, as I hope recent starred reviews of Wolf Hollow, The Seventh Wish, Flora and the Peacocks, With Any Luck I'll Drive a Truck, The Loose Ends List, and more attest. The long answer will, mercifully, wait till another column.)

But a recent Twitter exchange begun by Linda Sue Park to bring attention to what she called Kirkus' "brave act of fairness" has garnered a decent number of thumbs-ups and retweets, including Laurie Halse Anderson's enthusiastic second: "FABULOUS!!! Let's chop that default button into bits-it hurts all readers!"

That's why we're doing our best to rewrite it.
Vicky Smith is the children's & teen editor.

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Unmaking the White Default | Kirkus Reviews

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It's a little word but a potent one. About six or seven months ago, Kirkus started identifying characters in children's and teen books by identity and/or race-all the time. And it hasn't been easy. It's been commonplace, if not exactly standard practice, to include racial identifiers for nonwhite characters for decades now in book reviews, especially if a book deals in some way with race.

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Call for Submissions Storybooks, Diversity, and Math for ages 3-6 Charlesbridge and TERC, a non-profit STEM education center in Cambridge, MA, are collaborating on an initiative to develop better math storybooks for children of all backgrounds.* At the core of our efforts are two interrelated goals: To expand the mathematical content in trade picture books

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We Need Diverse Books - weneeddiversebooks.org

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Call for Submissions Storybooks, Diversity, and Math for ages 3-6 Charlesbridge and TERC, a non-profit STEM education center in Cambridge, MA, are collaborating on an initiative to develop better math storybooks for children of all backgrounds.* At the core of our efforts are two interrelated goals: To expand the mathematical content in trade picture books

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International Literacy Association, Newark, Delaware. 74K likes. ILA is a global advocacy and membership organization dedicated to transforming lives through literacy.

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We celebrate black history to honor those who came before us, who laid the foundation for this house we call America, who struggled and excelled, who took a stand for what they believed in, and sometimes died doing so. We REMEMBER each tremendous journey, we RECOGNIZE the calamities, and we RAISE our voices in solidarity. We take a stand. Together. For the children. For America. And, we live.

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We celebrate black history to honor those who came before us, who laid the foundation for this house we call America, who struggled and excelled, who took a stand for what they believed in, and sometimes died doing so. We REMEMBER each tremendous journey, we RECOGNIZE the calamities, and we RAISE our voices in solidarity.

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Spring is upon us! It's a perfect time to curl up and immerse yourself in a series. Here are ten series or companion novels that are impossible to put down. Have a favorite LGBTQIAP+ series that's not below? Add them in the comments section or share with us on Twitter (@YA_Pride) or Tumblr (YA-Pride.tumblr.com).

Cas has fought pirates her entire life. But can she survive living among them?

For Cassandra Leung, bossing around sea monsters is just the family business. She's been a Reckoner trainer-in-training ever since she could walk, raising the genetically-engineered beasts to defend ships as they cross the pirate-infested NeoPacific. But when the pirate queen Santa Elena swoops in on Cas's first solo mission and snatches her from the bloodstained decks, Cas's dream of being a full-time trainer seems dead in the water.

There's no time to mourn. Waiting for her on the pirate ship is an unhatched Reckoner pup. Santa Elena wants to take back the seas with a monster of her own, and she needs a proper trainer to do it. She orders Cas to raise the pup, make sure he imprints on her ship, and, when the time comes, teach him to fight for the pirates. If Cas fails, her blood will be the next to paint the sea.

Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance between Mynaria and her homeland, protecting her people from other hostile lands. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire-a dangerous gift for the future queen of a kingdom where magic is forbidden.

Now, Denna must learn the ways of her new home while trying to hide her growing magic. To make matters worse, she must learn to ride Mynaria's formidable warhorses-and her teacher is the person who intimidates her most, the prickly and unconventional Princess Amaranthine-called Mare-the sister of her betrothed.

When a shocking assassination leaves the kingdom reeling, Mare and Denna reluctantly join forces to search for the culprit. As the two become closer, Mare is surprised by Denna's intelligence and bravery, while Denna is drawn to Mare's independent streak. And soon their friendship is threatening to blossom into something more.

But with dangerous conflict brewing that makes the alliance more important than ever, acting on their feelings could be deadly. Forced to choose between their duty and their hearts, Mare and Denna must find a way to save their kingdoms-and each other.

Sixteen-year-old Elli was only a child when the Elders of Kupari chose her to succeed the Valtia, the queen who wields infinitely powerful ice and fire magic in service of her people. The only life Elli has known has been in the temple, surrounded by luxury, tutored by magic-wielding priests, preparing for the day when the queen perishes-and the ice and fire find a new home in Elli, who is prophesied to be the most powerful Valtia to ever rule.

But when the queen dies defending the kingdom from invading warriors, the magic doesn't enter Elli. It's nowhere to be found.

Disgraced, Elli flees to the outlands, home of banished criminals-some who would love to see the temple burn with all its priests inside. As she finds her footing in this new world, Elli uncovers devastating new information about the Kupari magic, those who wield it, and the prophecy that foretold her destiny. Torn between her love for her people and her growing loyalty to the banished, Elli struggles to understand the true role she was meant to play. But as war looms, she must choose the right side before the kingdom and its magic are completely destroyed.

Cinderella retold

In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.

The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King's Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash's capacity for love-and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.

Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.

Knox was born into one of the City's wealthiest families. A Patron, he has everything a boy could possibly want-the latest tech, the coolest clothes, and a Proxy to take all his punishments. When Knox breaks a vase, Syd is beaten. When Knox plays a practical joke, Syd is forced to haul rocks. And when Knox crashes a car, killing one of his friends, Syd is branded and sentenced to death.

Syd is a Proxy. His life is not his own.

Then again, neither is Knox's. Knox and Syd have more in common than either would guess. So when Knox and Syd realize that the only way to beat the system is to save each other, they flee. Yet Knox's father is no ordinary Patron, and Syd is no ordinary Proxy. The ensuing cross-country chase will uncover a secret society of rebels, test both boys' resolve, and shine a blinding light onto a world of those who owe and those who pay. Some debts, it turns out, cannot be repaid.

The city of Parole is burning. Like Venice slips into the sea, Parole crumbles into fire.

The entire population inside has been quarantined, cut off from the rest of the world, and left to die - directly over the open flame. Eye in the Sky, a deadly and merciless police force ensures no one escapes. Ever. All that's keeping Parole alive is faith in the midst of horrors and death, trust in the face of desperation... and their fantastic, terrifying, and beautiful superhuman abilities.

Regan, stealth and reconnaissance expert with a lizard's scales and snake's eyes, is haunted by ten years of anxiety, trauma and terror, and he's finally reached his limit. His ability to disappear into thin air isn't enough: he needs an escape, and he'll do anything for a chance. Unluckily for him, Hans, a ghostly boy with a chilling smile, knows just the thing to get one. It starts with a little murder.

But instead of ending a man's life, Regan starts a new one of his own. He turns away from that twisted path, and runs into Evelyn, fearless force on stage and sonic-superheroic revolutionary on the streets. Now Regan has a choice - and a chance to not only escape from Parole, but unravel the mystery deep in its burning heart. And most of all, discover the truth about their own entwining pasts.

They join forces with Evelyn's family: the virtuosic but volatile Danae, who breathes life into machines, and her wife Rose, whose compassionate nature and power over healing vines and defensive thorns will both be vital to survive this nightmare. Then there's Zilch, a cool and level-headed person made of other dead people, and Finn, one of Parole's few remaining taxi drivers, who causes explosions whenever he feels anything but happy.

Separately they'd never survive, much less uncover the secret of Parole's eternally-burning fire. Together, they have a chance. Unfortunately, Hans isn't above playing dirty, lying, cheating, manipulating... and holding Regan's memories hostage until he gets his way.

Parole's a rough place to live. But they're not dead yet. If they can survive the imminent cataclysmic disaster, they might just stay that way...

Welcome to Andover... where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Just ask high school nobody, Jessica Tran. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef-up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid!) internship-only it turns out to be for the town's most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her longtime secret crush, Abby, who Jess thinks may have a secret of her own. Then there's the budding attraction to her fellow intern, the mysterious "M," who never seems to be in the same place as Abby. But what starts as a fun way to spite her superhero parents takes a sudden and dangerous turn when she uncovers a plot larger than heroes and villains altogether.

Odessa is one of Karthia's master necromancers, catering to the kingdom's ruling Dead. Whenever a noble dies, it's Odessa's job to raise them by retrieving their souls from a dreamy and dangerous shadow world called the Deadlands. But there is a cost to being raised-the Dead must remain shrouded, or risk transforming into zombie-like monsters known as Shades. If even a hint of flesh is exposed, the grotesque transformation will begin.

A dramatic uptick in Shade attacks raises suspicions and fears among Odessa's necromancer community. Soon a crushing loss of one of their own reveals a disturbing conspiracy: someone is intentionally creating Shades by tearing shrouds from the Dead-and training them to attack. Odessa is faced with a terrifying question: What if her necromancer's magic is the weapon that brings Karthia to its knees?

The world is at peace, said the Utterances. And really, if the odd princess has a hard day, is that too much to ask?

Greta is a duchess and crown princess-and a hostage to peace. This is how the game is played: if you want to rule, you must give one of your children as a hostage. Go to war and your hostage dies.

Greta will be free if she can survive until her eighteenth birthday. Until then she lives in the Precepture school with the daughters and sons of the world's leaders. Like them, she is taught to obey the machines that control their lives. Like them, she is prepared to die with dignity, if she must. But everything changes when a new hostage arrives. Elián is a boy who refuses to play by the rules, a boy who defies everything Greta has ever been taught. And he opens Greta's eyes to the brutality of the system they live under-and to her own power.

As Greta and Elián watch their nations tip closer to war, Greta becomes a target in a new kind of game. A game that will end up killing them both-unless she can find a way to break all the rules.

I was in an accident. I got out. I'm safe now.

An alternate Victorian world controlled by clock towers, where a damaged clock can fracture time-and a destroyed one can stop it completely.

A prodigy mechanic who can repair not only clockwork but time itself, determined to rescue his father from a Stopped town.

A series of mysterious bombings that could jeopardize all of England.

A boy who would give anything to relive his past, and one who would give anything to live at all.

A romance that will shake the very foundations of time.

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Spring is upon us! It's a perfect time to curl up and immerse yourself in a series. Here are ten series or companion novels that are impossible to put down. Have a favorite LGBTQIAP+ series that's not below? Add them in the comments section or share with us on Twitter (@YA_Pride) or Tumblr (YA-Pride.tumblr.com).

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Disability in Kidlit - Reviews, articles, and more about the portrayal of disabilities in children's fiction

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Princess Tilda does not demonstrate the need to "overcome" her clubfoot, that word many of us in the disability community have come to loathe. To me, Tilda represents a new kind of heroine, who is strong and doesn't need saving, but also acknowledges and shows her vulnerability and insecurities.

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On June 14, 2016, two days after the Pulse Shooting, where 49 members of my LGBTQ community were murdered, I uploaded "An open letter to the world on June 14, 2016".
Our country is struggling. Make no mistake, marginalized people are asking for an awakening from you.
I reread the letter, edited a bit, but I think it still stands. I'm sending it out there, again asking you to be brave.
I usually write about graphic novels. Today I am writing about living in this world as a cis-gendered, Latina-lesbian, with two sons and a wonderful, patient wife who keeps marrying me because the laws change but our commitment does not.

Last weekend I attended the Children's Literature Association's (ChLA) annual conference in Columbus, Ohio. I presented research, talked about graphic novels, heard important ideas about books and reading. I also took part in a panel organized by Dr. Katharine Slater, supported by the ChLA board and the ChLA Diversity committee, and focused on the needs of minority scholars.

I did not want to be part of the panel. Sitting in front of a room mostly filled, with so many women of color, with so few White allies. My reluctance to participate was born from a lifetime of being called out, threatened, and assaulted for existing - for being a person in the world.

Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen began the panel by addressing the fact that we, as women of color, were taking a chance by representing ourselves, as ourselves, to the academy. I sat next to Dr. Marilisa Jimenez Garcia, and Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and heard their stories, and shared my own. Unfortunately, our stories are not unique. The women in the audience spoke of regularly being ostracized, criticized and summarily dismissed, both personally and professionally. I left the room feeling drained. Later that afternoon I heard Dr. Park say the words I know to be true, "We are not the problem. Racism is the problem."

More Than Racism Alone

That night I enjoyed the company of friends at the ChLA awards ceremony filled with congratulations, hotel conference food, and laughter. Later we had what can only be described as the first annual ChLA Prom Night. In one corner of the room I danced with gay men, lesbians, and straight allies I had come to know and appreciate. We clustered together and celebrated the end of a long day with silliness and joy. At one point a gay male colleague confided, "I used to go dancing all the time. I miss it." And I knew what he meant.

The next day, Sunday June 13, 2016, I stood at an airport charging station with my phone before I got on an airplane to return home. I looked up and saw the news. I knew what it meant, even when the news anchors didn't say it; Mass shooting ... Pride week ... a nightclub called The Pulse ... Orlando, FL. We were, once again, hunted for living in the world.

It was not a coincidence that a coward (whom I will not name) with an assault riffle killed and wounded more than 100 LGBTQ people on Latin Dance Night in Orlando during Pride week. It was a planned attack by a rage-fueled man with a million excuses and the tacit approval of a nation. Make no mistake about the importance of the everyday aggressions against my communities; racism, homophobia, and misogyny work hand in hand to destroy the person I am in the world. They signal an open pathway to hate turned to action. As we danced and laughed and drank on that very same Saturday night, we were part of the same LGBTQ community who takes refuge in music, community, and joy, who celebrate ourselves and each other in the world.

More than One Man

I returned home on Sunday feeling wounded. On Monday I picked up my 13 year-old son from middle school. He got in the car and asked if I knew about what happened in Orlando.

"I do. What do you think about it?" I asked.

"Maybe Trump is right. Maybe we do need to keep them out." He said, quietly, as we drove down sun dappled New England streets. I found myself defending Muslims and trying to tell him it was a single man who destroyed that night. I ran through the list of non-Muslims who had bombed buildings, and opened fire in public places, killing and wounding so many out of hate. I explained it had more to do with guns and hate, rather than faith. As we drove, I defended a religion with a long and lively history of damning, imprisoning, and killing LGBTQ people to my son because I want him to be better than that.

But if I was honest with him I would say I know religion is a problem. The Catholic Church, along with the vast majority of organized Protestant religions, damns me to hell for the person I am in the world. The Church of Latter Day Saints goes one step further, damning me and my children, for the person I am in the world. The majority of Muslim countries have laws against me, and a history of condoning killing me in horrific ways, for the person I am in the world. So, it was one man, but he was not alone.

Be Brave Enough

White, cis-gendered, straight people (any combination, really) often ask, "But what can I do?" They ask me in private, in classes, in conversation, and they asked at the ChLA panel. My answer is the same.
You can be brave.
Brave enough to say, "That is not ok" out loud and in public. When faculty members say, "but she sounds so white" after meeting an African American job candidate, you can respond, "that is not appropriate". You can refrain from putting the burden of racism on the one non-White student in your class. You can be brave enough to defend my right to marry, to raise children and have all the rights you have had for so long. You can be brave enough to shut down the "all lives matter" defense of racism. Call out the "what about men?" misogyny. Shut down the "she was drunk and wearing that" rape culture. You can listen, without excuse or argument, when we say that words matter, actions hurt, we are mistreated and misjudged everyday single day for being ourselves in the world.

You can stop using intention as an excuse. For yourself and for others.

And let me be clear, you will need to be brave to stand with us because you will be uncomfortable. Your actions will cause tension, you will not be appreciated by aggressors for standing up and speaking out. You might shake, feel queasy, or doubt your decision to step out of your privileged, safe space. There will most likely be pushback, accusations and suspicion. It will never be easy, just as living in a world designed for you is never easy for me.

And, you should do all of this without expecting a letter, a gold star of appreciation, or a special high five. You should do all this without claiming special status. Without claiming any more than you already have. You should do this because it is the right thing to do.

I am tired.

I am haunted.

I am hunted.

You can choose to be brave enough to defend who you are not.

Sincerely,

Laura Maria Jiménez, a person in the world, every day.

Names of Orlando Pulse Victims, in Alphabetical order

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old

Amanda L. Alvear, 25 years old

Oscar A. Aracena Montero, 26 years old

Rodolfo Ayala Ayala, 33 years old

Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old

Angel Candelario-Padro, 28 years old

Juan Chavez Martinez, 25 years old

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old

Cory James Connell, 21 years old

Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old

Simón Adrian Carrillo Fernández, 31 years old

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old

Peter Ommy Gonzalez Cruz, 22 years old

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old

Frank Hernandez, 27 years old

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old

Javier Jorge Reyes, 40 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old

Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25 years old

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old

Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old

Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, 25 years old

Brenda Marquez McCool, 49 years old

Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old

Kimberly Jean Morris, 37 years old

Geraldo A. Ortiz Jimenez, 25 years old

Luis Omar Ocasio Capo, 20 years old

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano-Rosado, 35 years old

Jean Carlos Nieves Rodríguez, 27 years old

Yilmary Rodríguez Solivan, 24 years old

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old

Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, 24 years old

Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old

Luis Sergio Vielma, 22 years old

Juan Pablo Rivera Velázquez, 37 years old

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old

Franky Jimmy DeJesus Velázquez, 50 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old

Posted in Tagged Representation, Social Justice |LGBTQ |

Here is a book that just sort of arrived on my doorstep ... ok, well not my doorstep as much as the pile o' books that gathers in the area under

the mailboxes near my office at Boston university School of Education, waiting for me to come and collect them. I enjoy the sight and allowing the books to pile up because it feels like christmas when I do rip into them.

Spill Zone by Scott Westerfeld and Alex Puvilland, colors by Hilary Sycamore was one of the books in my latest stack. I can't tell you if I ordered it or if it was sent to me by the fine people at FirstSecond publishing but in any case, I'm happy it made it's way to me.

The cover (seen here) is oddly creepy-ish and tough. I want to stay with this idea of creepy-ish and toughness existing simultaneously. Creepy elements include the red-eyed wolf with it's open maw hovering behind the girl, as if it will chase her at any moment. The malevolent intent of the wolf seems clear and barely contained. The small but highly saturated areas of red - the wolf's eyes, mouth, as well as what appears to be the spill in the bottom quarter of the cover - frame the image of the girl on the motocross bike.

If you want to read a complete and mind-blowing treatise of how illustrators can use these kinds of colors, hues, and shapes to effect readers' meaning making, pick up Molly Bang's Picture This (1991, Chronicle Books).

Back to the cover. The other creepy element is the doll on the back of the bike. For an instant, I thought it was a child riding without a helmet, or possible without a neck. But after looking at it for a while (horror mixed with curiosity) the visible pupil-less eye, tiny nose, and disheveled hair reminded me of a Raggedy Ann doll. Which was sort of still weird.

Then there is the girl, or more exactly, the young woman. She's sitting astride a motocross motorcycle wearing full crash pads, holding a camera and looking right at me. Daring me. Daring me to what, I am not sure. But, this is a woman who does not suffer fools.

Let's get some important stuff clear. This books is about a young woman, Addison, who is raising her younger sister, Lexa, alone. They are survivors of some sort of horrendous toxic spill or alien invasion, or opening of a portal into an unwelcome world. The Zone is off limits with the National Guard manning barricades to keep people out and the things that exist in the Zone in. Lexa no longer speaks as a result of the spill and so Addison ventures into the Zone to take pictures of what is left. She sells the pictures to take care of herself and Lexa.

The Zone is alive and weird. Deeply off. Familiar objects made strange by a distortion, ill suited colors, and Addison's wary, warning narrative. She's seen all this before. She hates it. She's drawn to it. She is captured by it and repulsed by her own fascination.

The book passes the Bechdel Test ... lots of female characters talking to each other about many things not related to men. As a matter of fact women drive the plot by breathing life into the structure of the book and acting to move the story forward. Westerfeld, a noted White male, does what many White male writers attempt and fail. He creates a strong female protagonist and allows her to be a wholly complex, imperfect, active agent in her life and the life of those around her. In addition, he creates minor characters who gave me the sense that they existed before these pages and will continue to exist after I closed the book. There are Whites, Blacks, Asians, men and women all living in a fragile and suspect world.

The end of Spill Zone is frustrating to me, as a reader. Like many dystopia novels it is part of a series. The end of this first book is a cliff hanger that leaves me wondering and worried for Lexa and Addison, And possibly, the world.

The book should come with the following directions - Pick it up, read it. Put it down, walk away. Return and repeat.

Posted in Bechdel Test, Graphic novels, Middle grade fiction, Reviews, YA literature |

I don't think of myself as a sentimental reader although there is a good chance that I am. I am always more clear about other people's motives than I am about my own. I can clearly see when my friend is making a HUGE mistake or when my kids are being so prideful that it is going to come back and bite them in the butt. That kind of clarity is nearly impossible for me to glean from my own psyche.

That sense of veiled motived, self delusion, and search for clarity is what this book brings with a gentle beauty that I found ... almost painful to read.

Thi Bui, according to the book jacket, was a child when she and her family immigrated from Vietnam to America. She now teaches and lives in Berkley, CA with her husband, son and her mother. In between those two lines of text lay a story of immigration that spans continents, wars, and generations.

Before talking directly about The Best We Could Do I want to take a moment and talk about the graphic novel as a form. There are some in my field of study who don't like the term. Some consider the term an unnecessary separator that takes away from the legitimacy of comics. Like using the work film instead of movie in order to show how sophisticated you are. The term may have started that way. It may have been meant as a way to distance authors from comic books. I don't doubt any of that, but for me a graphic novels is a long form comic narrative that stands alone and apart - whole unto itself. With publishers discovering the marketplace, and readership growing I worry that graphic novels are being overtaken in the by comic book arcs and series. But, then, I see books like this and I don't have to worry much anymore. As long as there are memoirs to be told, graphic novels will continue to be written and read.

The Best We Could Do opens with Thi Bui in labor in New York. There is a bravery to this opening that I cannot overstate - think about it. The first time I meet the protagonist she is grunting, afraid, and vulnerable. She is being told what to do and how to do it by the hospital staff and trying to hold onto her adulthood, she wants to be in control of what happens to her body and to her baby. This is the perfect metaphor for the rest of the book - people trying desperately to be controlling agents in their own lives - even as fate, family, and politics pushes them in a different and often violent directions.

Like many families, there is a hidden history to this immigration story. Thi Bui uses a charcoal or heavy pencil to create the paneling throughout the book. This provides an uneven edge that signals a fragility or messiness of the world she is inviting me to witness. In addition, she uses text boxes to offset her internal narrative. This design choice (seen here on pp. 36-37) provides me with the expository text I need to better understand a story that is incredibly foreign to me. I am not any sort of Asian and although I grew up in Long Beach during the 70s and 80s and knew my fair share of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Thai kids, I learned nothing about the history of the region.

The watercolor wash - a dark orange that reminds me of the stucco houses in Los Angeles - provides an important depth to the images. Sometimes, as seen on page 36, in the larger panel, Thi Bui uses brushwork to echo and highlight an image. Sometimes color is used as an independent and layered image that illustrates a memory (p. 37, pn. 1). And there are times when the color distinguishes background objects like buildings, and creates a white space to focus attention on characters (p. 37, pn. 2). The depth of hue achieved with a single color is astonishing.

Thi Bui's light pen work (perhaps done with a brush?) on the characters faces is deceptively simplistic. There isn't much detail and yet emotions and personalities are clear. Her father's cloudy disposition, her mother's emotional reticence, and Thi Bui's own openness is clear. According to Scott McCloud (see Understanding Comics) the lack of highly defined details on character faces may be what allows me to connect with the characters.

This is a journey book covering some of the historical background that lead to the Vietnam War, and the aftermath for one family. It is at times violet, scary, and merciless in showing the history of this family. From starvation to war to the escape and assimilation this is not an easy story to read and experience but it is worthwhile. I would place this in the hands of any high school student or adult. It is, simply put, a sublime example of a graphic novel memoir. The Best We Could Do uses one family's story to provide a glimpse into a history sorely absent from the American narrative.

Posted in Graphic novels, Representation, Reviews, Social Justice |

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On June 14, 2016, two days after the Pulse Shooting, where 49 members of my LGBTQ community were murdered, I uploaded "An open letter to the world on June 14, 2016". Our country is struggling. Make no mistake, marginalized people are asking for an awakening from you.

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Hello! 🙂

My name is Alia Jones. I'm a Library Services Assistant in Cincinnati, Ohio and a lifetime lover of books and culture. I attended Cornell University for Cultural Anthropology and double-minored in East Asian Studies and American Indian Studies.

While at Cornell, I interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and worked on Indivisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas. In my senior year, I won a Fulbright Scholarship to South Korea, so I flew over right after graduation to become an English teacher! Four awesome years (and many amazing students) later, I came home and became a children's bookseller. I fell in love with children's literature while learning how to book-sell. This blog celebrates my love for kid lit & I hope you'll find some good books here.

I'm very active on Twitter. You can find me at http://twitter.com/readitrealgood and I blog with friends at thebookwenches.tumblr.com. All views/opinions expressed here, on The Book Wenches and on my Twitter page are my own.

If you'd like to contact me directly, please fill out the form below. I'll be in touch with you as soon as possible. Thanks for stopping by!

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Hello! :) My name is Alia Jones. I'm a Library Services Assistant in Cincinnati, Ohio and a lifetime lover of books and culture. I attended Cornell University for Cultural Anthropology and double-minored in East Asian Studies and American Indian Studies. While at Cornell, I interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and...

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Publisher and reviewer of books about Native Americans, particularly those aimed at schoolchildren.

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De Colores: The Raza Experience in Books for Children

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Weeks later, there is a storm-and the two friends discover that "the falcon has gone with the squalls of rain and the wind." The next day, they go back to the lot "that belongs to no one, where no one comes."

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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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American Indians in Children's Literature - Debbie Reese

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American Indians in Children's Literature - Debbie Reese

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Border Crossers - Training Educators To Be Leaders Of Racial Justice

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Border Crossers' mission is to train and empower educators to dismantle patterns of racism and injustice in our schools and communities. At Border Crossers, we envision a world where all young people learn and thrive in racially equitable, liberating, and empowering educational spaces.

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"Write what you know" is one of the most overused and debatable pieces of writing advice out there. When you're from a marginalized community this becomes increasingly hard for a few reasons. First, if you write about your own communities (#Ownvoices), you face the burden of representing everyone all at once. The next challenge is more brutal. You wrote what you knew, or thought you knew. You did the thing. Now, your work is suddenly too much your own. Too diverse. Too much of everything. Too unrelatable because, at the end of the day, no one knows you.

Being an Author of Color in the fantasy space is hard. You have to constantly wait for the market to be ready for you as a person. But more importantly, fantasy often borrows from other cultures to make something "new," and the cultural appropriation line is blurred. Can you appropriate your own culture? What stories are you allowed to tell? Whatever your answer is, you don't get a pass when you offend a group of people, even if it's your people.

When I was writing Labyrinth Lost, I knew I wanted to write about witches with a Latin American background, but I also wanted it to completely fictional. So, I went back to basics and trusted my instincts. This is what I know:
BRUJAS
Bruja is the Spanish word for "witch." The word itself has both negative and empowering connotations. In Latin American countries, like where I'm from in Ecuador, the neighborhood "bruja" might be someone to be feared, but always the person you go to when you think you're "ojeado" or have the Evil Eye. Brujeria is a faith for many, but it is not the faith in my book. In Labyrinth Lost, I chose to call Alex and her family "brujas" and "brujos" because their origins do not come from European traditions. Alex's magic is like Latin America, a combination of the old world and new.
CEREMONIES
I never had a quinceañera. I had friends who went all out. They were like mini-weddings. My mother was a single parent and, in my once introverted mind (really, I was), I didn't want one. But it's an important part of coming of age for some Latinas. It's the representation of womanhood and familial responsibilities all at once. I knew I wanted to give my witches something similar because this book, above all, is about family. So I created the Deathday ceremony. A bruja's Deathday is a magical coming of age, like a Bat Mizvah or a Sweet 16. Even though the Deathday ceremony was created for the world of Labyrinth Lost, aspects of it are inspired by the Day of the Dead and Santeria. The respect for the dead and family comes from the Day of the Dead. The use of singing, shells, small animal sacrifice, and drums comes from Santeria.
FAMILY
While I believe that Latinxs are not a monolith, the one thing we share across the board is family. The opinion that matters the most in my house is our grandmother's. From tattoos to dating to haircuts; however big or small a decision, what our grandmother says is a big deal! For Alex in Labyrinth Lost, her connection to her sisters, mom, and deceased grandma is the same as her hope. My matriarchy of witches is based on my own experiences of having a close-knit family.
MYTH
"What's real in Labyrinth Lost?" I've been answering a form of this question a lot lately. I think because my background is from South America, there's an assumption that the stories in Labyrinth Lost are real/taken from stories I heard as a child. Don't get me wrong; I'm super flattered that my world feels real. It is exactly what I aim for as a fantasy author, and I thank my readers for that.

Let's unpack Latin America. Latin America has many superstitions, despite the deep roots of Catholicism. There is no all-encompassing Latin American mythology. It's not real. It doesn't exist. My brief childhood in Ecuador doesn't come with all the superstitions of all the other countries in South America. The UN recognizes 33 Latin American countries. That includes U.S. territories, former Spanish colonies, Portuguese and French speaking countries. What we think of Latin America is a U.S. media portrayal of white Mexicans and sexy Colombians and Italian-looking Puerto Ricans. We think of the parts that Spain conquered and colonized. At the end of the day, Latin America is extremely complicated because we are all so different and individual, but also united under region and language.

So what's real and what isn't?

We tend to paint Latinos as these magical and superstitious beings, and some of us are. The Native American community knows all to well what that's like to a much worse extent. In hopes of stepping outside myths associated with Latinos, I decided to make up my own superstitions and my own stories and gods. It was so hard to take out the Llorona myth that everyone knows because even we have that story in Ecuador.

The gods of Labyrinth Lost are all made up. The other realms of Los Lagos is entirely made up. The Meadow is more inspired by Alice in Wonderland than any other culture. One of my favorite parts of writing this book was writing the cantos (spells) and epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. Writing creation myths is something I love, and the story of La Mama and El Papa (the major gods) was a lot of fun.

There is one monster in particular that is inspired by my childhood in Ecuador. When you're a kid, everyone scares you with monsters. Duendes are evil elves that can steal you away. The Duendes in Labyrinth Lost are a little different, and hopefully I'll get to bring them back in another book. But the one that's stuck with me for a long time is the Cuco. In Mexico, there's the Cucuy, which is a demon. For us (Ecuadorians), we scare kids with the "Cuco." It's a demon that eats children who behave badly. I always pictured a black beast with sharp teeth and claws. So, naturally, I turned it into the Maloscuros in Labyrinth Lost.

It is my sincere hope that readers from all ages and backgrounds find themselves in Labyrinth Lost, whether it's the search for identity, strong family ties, or a pure love of quests and fantasy.

Zoraida Córdova is the author of The Vicious Deep trilogy, the On the Verge series, and the Brooklyn Brujas series. She loves black coffee, snark, and still believes in magic. She is a New Yorker at heart and is currently working on her next novel. Send her a tweet @Zlikeinzorro.

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"Write what you know" is one of the most overused and debatable pieces of writing advice out there. When you're from a marginalized community this becomes increasingly hard for a few reasons. First, if you write about your own communities (#Ownvoices), you face the burden of representing everyone all at once.

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Title: Buried Heart (Court of Fives #3)
Author: Kate Elliott
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 465 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company
Review Copy: Purchased
Availability: In Bookstores

Summary: In this third book in the epic Court of Fives series, Jessamy is the crux of a revolution forged by the Commoner class hoping to overthrow their longtime Patron overlords. But enemies from foreign lands have attacked the kingdom, and Jes must find a way to unite the Commoners and Patrons to defend their home and all the people she loves. Will her status as a prominent champion athlete be enough to bring together those who have despised one another since long before her birth? Will she be able to keep her family out of the clutches of the evil Lord Gargaron? And will her relationship with Prince Kalliarkos remain strong when they find themselves on opposite sides of a war?

Review: I enjoyed the first two installments of Kate Elliott's Court of Five series so I was really looking forward to seeing how Elliott would end Jessamy's story. Buried Heart picks up moments after the end of Poisoned Blade as Jessamy, Kal, and their families are running from Saryenia after Nikonos pulls a deadly coup and takes over the city. I expected most of the book would focus on Jessamy and Kal working together to unite the Commoners and Patrons and somehow overthrow Nikonos. I have to say I was surprised by what actually happened in the novel. Working with her father, Jessamy and Kal are able to takeover the throne fairly easily at that happens only a quarter of the way into the book. After that, the novel takes on an interesting turn where Jessamy is captured by Lord Gargaron and is separated from everyone she loves. While I hated that Lord Gargaron had the upper hand over Jessamy at one point, but this allowed Jessamy to find an inner strength and leadership ability that she didn't know she had. It fully allowed her to choose a side and when it came time to fight for Efea, Jessamy was able to use her skills from the Five Court and her new found leadership skills to truly help turn the tide of the war.

One of the many aspects I liked about Poisoned Blade was that we traveled with Jessamy and saw more of the world of Efea, and in Buried Heart we experienced more of the same, but we learned more about the people of Efea (i.e. the Commoners). We also learned more about the customs and beliefs of the Efeans before the Saroese (Patrons) invaded and took over the land. Learning more the history of Efea and it's colonization, bring a deeper meaning to the novel. At it's core, through the story of Jessamy, Buried Heart is the story of an oppressed people rising up, and of the privileged people learning how to recognize their role in oppression and working with the oppressed to make change.

Even though Jessamy and Kal spend a lot of time apart in this novel (again) this time it was much more satisfying to me, as in their time apart they grew into the adults they were going to be, and their relationship grew as well. At the beginning of the novel, Jessamy and Kal are so sweet together, but their relationship is much more mature based on their first separation. Kai truly accepts Jessamy for who she is, the good and the ugly, though Jessamy tries to still "protect" Kal's more innocent nature. It's sweet at the beginning, but devastating for Jessamy when she must watch Kal make tough choices when he becomes king, a position he never wanted. However, with this second separation, both have to make tough, adult decisions and each lose their innocence in a way. They both change because of their experiences in the war and when they are able to finally come together (if only for a brief moment) they see each other as true equals. I loved that Elliott wrote a relationship that was equally balanced where each of the lovers grew not just together but on their own. Both Jessamy and Kal look out for each other and push each other to be better, which is a very healthy relationship not often seen in many books. The tension between them came from outside sources and these two had to find a way to create their happiness and find a way to be together. To me, that is what made their love story so touching.

There is so much more I could say about Buried Heart, but I would be giving away so much of the story. So I will say this, Buried Heart is a fitting end to a wonderful trilogy that had a beautiful love story, a villain you just loved to hate, complex family drama, and a world that was so complete it felt real, but at it's heart was an amazing heroine that us readers could root for.

Recommendation: If you have been waiting for this third book to come out you need to run to your nearest book store and buy it. If you haven't read the Court of Five series, you also need to run to your nearest book store so you can begin the adventure and read the whole series in one sitting!

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Rich in Color | Reading & Reviewing Diverse YA Books

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Title: Buried Heart (Court of Fives #3) Author: Kate Elliott Genres: Fantasy Pages: 465 pages Publisher: Little, Brown & Company Review Copy: Purchased Availability: In Bookstores Summary: In this third book in the epic Court of Fives series, Jessamy is the crux of a revolution forged by the Commoner class hoping to overthrow their longtime Patron overlords.

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A blog (mostly) about writing and books for kids.

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The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf | Grace Lin | TEDxNatick

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED

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Finding Myself in the Story of Race | Debby Irving | TEDx Fenway

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White Fragility & the Rules of Engagement

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White Fragility & the Rules of Engagement

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How to engage in the necessary dialogue and self-reflection that can lead to structural change.
RSVP for #StopRacism Weekly Calls
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I am white. I write and teach about what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet remains deeply divided by race. A fundamental but very challenging part of my work is moving white people from an individual understanding of racism-i.e. only some people are racist and those people are bad-to a structural understanding. A structural understanding recognizes racism as a default system that institutionalizes an unequal distribution of resources and power between white people and people of color. This system is historic, taken for granted, deeply embedded, and it works to the benefit of whites.

The two most effective beliefs that prevent us (whites) from seeing racism as a system are:

1. that racists are bad people and

2. that racism is conscious dislike;

When you understand racism as a system of structured relations into which we are all socialized, you understand that intentions are irrelevant.

if we are well-intended and do not consciously dislike people of color, we cannot be racist. This is why it is so common for white people to cite their friends and family members as evidence of their lack of racism. However, when you understand racism as a system of structured relations into which we are all socialized, you understand that intentions are irrelevant. And when you understand how socialization works, you understand that much of racial bias is unconscious. Negative messages about people of color circulate all around us. While having friends of color is better than not having them, it doesn't change the overall system or prevent racism from surfacing in our relationships. The societal default is white superiority and we are fed a steady diet of it 24/7. To not actively seek to interrupt racism is to internalize and accept it.

As part of my work I teach, lead and participate in affinity groups, facilitate workshops, and mentor other whites on recognizing and interrupting racism in our lives. As a facilitator, I am in a position to give white people feedback on how their unintentional racism is manifesting. This has allowed me to repeatedly observe several common patterns of response. The most common by far is outrage:

How dare you suggest that I could have said or done something racist!

Given the dominant conceptualization of racism as individual acts of cruelty, it follows that only terrible people who don't like people of color can commit it. While this conceptualization is misinformed, it functions beautifully to protect racism by making it impossible to engage in the necessary dialogue and self-reflection that can lead to change.

Outrage is often followed by righteous indignation about the manner in which the feedback was given. I have discovered (as I am sure have countless people of color) that there is apparently an unspoken set of rules for how to give white people feedback on racism.

♦◊♦

The Rules of Engagement

After years of working with my fellow whites, I have found that the only way to give feedback correctly is not to give it at all. Thus, the first rule is cardinal:

1. Do not give me feedback on my racism under any circumstances.

If you break the cardinal rule:

2. Proper tone is crucial - feedback must be given calmly. If there is any emotion in the feedback, the feedback is invalid and does not have to be considered.

3. There must be trust between us. You must trust that I am in no way racist before you can give me feedback on my racism.

4. Our relationship must be issue-free. If there are issues between us, you cannot give me feedback on racism.

5. Feedback must be given immediately, otherwise it will be discounted because it was not given sooner.

6. You must give feedback privately, regardless of whether the incident occurred in front of other people. To give feedback in front of anyone else-even those involved in the situation-is to commit a serious social transgression. The feedback is thus invalid.

7. You must be as indirect as possible. To be direct is to be insensitive and will invalidate the feedback and require repair.

8. As a white person I must feel completely safe during any discussion of race. Giving me any feedback on my racism will cause me to feel unsafe, so you will need to rebuild my trust by never giving me feedback again. Point of clarification: when I say "safe" what I really mean is "comfortable."

9. Giving me feedback on my racial privilege invalidates the form of oppression that I experience (i.e. classism, sexism, heterosexism). We will then need to focus on how you oppressed me.

10. You must focus on my intentions, which cancel out the impact of my behavior.

11. To suggest my behavior had a racist impact is to have misunderstood me. You will need to allow me to explain until you can acknowledge that it was your misunderstanding.
These rules are rooted in white fragility.
♦◊♦

Their contradictions are irrelevant; their function is to obscure racism and protect white dominance and they do so very effectively. Yet from an understanding of racism as a system of unequal institutional power, we need to ask ourselves where these rules come from and who they serve.

White fragility works to punish the person giving feedback and essentially bully them back into silence.

Many of us actively working to interrupt racism continually hear complaints about the "gotcha" culture of white anti-racism. There is a stereotype that we are looking for every incident we can find so we can spring out, point our fingers, and shout, "You're a racist!" While certainly there are white people who arrogantly set themselves apart from other whites by acting in this way, in my experience over 20 years this is not the norm. It is far more common for sincere white people to agonize over when and how to give feedback to a fellow white person, given the ubiquitousness of white fragility. White fragility works to punish the person giving feedback and essentially bully them back into silence. It also maintains white solidarity-the tacit agreement that we will protect white privilege and not hold each other accountable for our racism. When the person giving the feedback is a person of color, the charge is "playing the race card" and the consequences of white fragility are much more penalizing.
Racism is the norm rather than an aberration. Feedback is key to our ability to recognize and repair our inevitable and often unaware collusion.
In recognition of this, I follow these guidelines:

1. How, where, and when you give me feedback is irrelevant - it is the feedback I want and need. Understanding that it is hard to give, I will take it any way I can get it. From my position of social, cultural, and institutional white power and privilege, I am perfectly safe and I can handle it. If I cannot handle it, it's on me to build my racial stamina.

2. Thank you.

The above guidelines rest on the understanding that there is no face to save and the jig is up; I know that I have blind spots and unconscious investments in white superiority. My investments are reinforced every day in mainstream society. I did not set this system up but it does unfairly benefit me and I am responsible for interrupting it. I need to work hard to recognize it myself, but I can't do it alone. This understanding leads me to gratitude when others help me.

In my workshops, I often ask the people of color,

"How often have you given white people feedback on our unaware yet inevitable racism and had that go well for you?"

Eye-rolling, head-shaking, and outright laughter follow, along with the general consensus of never. I then ask,

"What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?"

Recently a man of color sighed and said,

"It would be revolutionary."

I ask my fellow whites to consider the profundity of that response. Revolutionary that we would receive, reflect, and work to change the behavior. On the one hand, it points to how difficult and fragile we are. But on the other hand, how simple taking responsibility for our racism can be.

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Read more Of Dr. DiAngelo's insights into racism.
White Fragility and the Question of Trust White Fragility: Why It's So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism White Women's Tears and the Men Who Love Them
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White Fragility and the Rules of Engagement - The Good Men Project

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RSVP for #StopRacism Weekly Calls - I am white. I write and teach about what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless, yet remains deeply divided by race. A fundamental but very challenging part of my work is moving white people from an individual understanding of racism-i.e.

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HRC Foundation's Welcoming Schools is the nation's premier professional development program providing training and resources to elementary school educators to embrace all families, create LGBTQ and gender inclusive schools, prevent bias-based bullying, and support transgender and non-binary students.

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Three Things White People's Love for "Get Out" Says About the White Subconscious

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Three Things White People's Love for "Get Out" Says About the White Subconscious

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Spoiler Alert - I'm definitely going to be ruining some important details from Jordan Peele's Get Out if you read this without having seen the film.

We liberal White folks sure do LOVE Jordan Peele's smash hit . In a recent conversation with friends, one White person remarked that it's a "genius use of fiction" that highlights the realities of White liberal racism.

And that's true. But in the context of the brutal history of Whiteness, the plot of Get Out is not exactly a far fetched idea (for more on the construction and history of Whiteness, see the work of Battalora, Du Bois, Leonardo, Painter, and Rodeiger). And I wonder to what degree that is lost of us as White people as we flock to see the film.

After all, the film depicts a particular type of violence committed by White people against Black lives and bodies. In the film, Black people are being kidnapped by White liberal suburbanites in order to lobotomize them, steal their bodies, and have a White brain and consciousness take over the body - effectively rendering the White body snatcher immortal.

This is a medicalized violence to benefit the longevity of White health. And that's not exactly a new or fictive concept.

As we watch the film, White audiences ought to consider the ways that many developments in Western medicine have been achieved through a similar process. For as long as Western medicine has been a reality, Black bodies (as well as the bodies of other people of Color) have been experimented upon without consent to advance the field to the benefit of White people.

What we now know as gynecology exists because a White man experimented brutally on the bodies of enslaved Black women - Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy - who are only now being called the " mothers of modern gynecology " in a somewhat ironic twist of feminist language (since so much of feminism relies on the presumption that motherhood should fundamentally be a choice for women, yet these women were given no choice).

Advancements in tumor removal, treatment of injuries, and responses to birth "defects" (to use the common but ableist language) have all resulted from White experimentation on Black enslaved bodies. More widely known are the Tuskegee experiments to understand and development treatments for syphilis conducted by the U.S. federal government until the 1970s without the proper consent of Black participants. I could go on and on...

When Saidiya Hartman speaks of the "afterlife of slavery," whereby the violence of slavery lives on in new and renewed forms of racial violence, I can't help but think that Get Out offers us a glimpse through narrative into the medicalized violence of our past.

My point is that within the context of this history, Get Out is just barely a fiction. As such, the film exists as a powerful piece of counterstory and Racial Realism in the tradition of Critical Race Theory. What is powerful about counterstory and Racial Realist narrative, though, is that it ought to make us as White people profoundly uncomfortable, for these fusions of art and scholarship have the power to turn the lens on how White people are complicit in the ongoing violence of racial oppression.

So as I watched the film and as I watched the majority-White audience file out of the theater, I couldn't help but wonder:

What are we as White people getting from this film? How does Get Out serve us?

Sure, some White folks have called the film "racist" and "anti-White" (predictably speaking to our usual yet profound lack of understanding of racism). But by and large, the film has been received an incredible response from White critics (ain't nothing Whiter than Terry Gross gushing about the film with it's creator) and audiences (I mean, look at the Rotten Tomatoes score for fucks sake). The film is clearly serving some kind of purpose for White folks. And as Derrick Bell makes clear, White people tend not to be supportive of anything that challenges Whiteness unless we have a clear interest in doing so. So what is our interest in the film?

Well, I see the film as serving three of the functions that are necessary to the continued functioning of the modern White racial (sub)conscious: a signal that we are, in fact, the "good' White people, an opportunity to enjoy and consume Black suffering and death (while also lauding a Black hero), and an opportunity to emotionally distance ourselves from the truths of the brutality of Whiteness.

1. "I'm One of the Good Ones!"

The first and simplest of the three things I argue that we as White folks get out of our very public lauding of the film relates to our need to be seen as "good." Many authors have talked about the need White people often feel to feel good about being White without doing anything to address our complicity in interpersonal racism or systems of racial oppression (see Applebaum, Frankenburg, Matias, Tatum, and Tochluk).

This trend has taken on a whole new dimension with the advent of social media, which allows us as White people to signal our support for racial progress or to distance ourselves from "bad" White people without actually doing anything to destabilize Whiteness as a system of oppression or to change our daily investments in Whiteness. Of course, there's always more that we as White people can do to address racism, but I definitely have been guilty at times of posting to express just how "down" I am without considering what it would mean for me to take some sort of transformative action toward solidarity.

Thus, our uncritical love for a film that ought to make us profoundly uncomfortable in an important and generative way allows us to signal to fellow White people (and to our Black Friends ™) that we're "down," that we "get it," that we are the "good" White people. The film can in turn serve as an important function to assuage guilt.

Thus, as White folks consider why exactly we love the film, we ought to consider Dr. Cheryl Matias' words from her recent book (p. 80):

"For those narcissists who parade their badge of antiracism in soliloquies after Q & A sessions, or make it a point for people to know they are indeed 'urban' teachers, I employ Hayes & Júarez (2009): 'You don't get a 'good' White people's medal' for doing antiracist things you should be doing all along."

In short, we can enjoy the film, and we can encourage other White people to see the film, but we ought to do so while employing a critical lens levied at our own Whiteness and the systems that benefit us through violence committed against people of Color.

2. The Enjoyment and Consumption of Black Suffering and Death

Dr. Stacey Patton recently pointed out just how addicted White people are to Black death. And while reading her piece, I couldn't help but think of the love we have for Get Out.

The film does feature a Black protagonist winning the day by killing his White captors, which perhaps gives us permission to cheer on the film. But our love for Get Out in the context of our love for 12 Years a Slave and Django Unchained and The Blindside and so many more that feature a White savior and/or the brutality and suffering of Black people tells me that our love for Get Out is a bit more complex than us wanting to cheer for Chris as he kills those who wish to enslave him.

The film turns the lens on White liberalism through the interrogation of the Black suffering and psychic death that White people inflict on Black people. But when we consume the film without a critical lens to how Peele is, in fact, indicting us and our community's commitment to White violence, the truth of the film can be lost in the midst of a White commitment to consumption of Black suffering. We risk losing the impact of the suffering of Walter and Georgina, and we likely miss that Andrew's jarring appeal for Chris to "get out!" is about more than him fleeing from the violence of this suburban neighborhood.

In short, our ability to cheer for Chris offers us a way to feel good about a film where many of us might miss the deeper messages but where we still get to consume Black suffering and death.

3. Emotional Distance from the Truths of White Supremacy

Our exuberant love for Get Out gives us as White people an opportunity to distance ourselves from its truths. If people ask, "How did you like the movie?" and we answer, "It made me a bit uncomfortable," we are admitting that the movie did what it was supposed to do - highlight our complicity in the brutality of Whiteness.

Our comfort with the movie speaks to the work that we have done over generations to emotionally distance ourselves from how we directly benefit from the suffering of others (as scholars like Helms, Leonardo, Matias suggest). Just as White people have invested in the lie of colorblind ideologies (something notably critiqued in Peele's film), we now invest in the lies of racial liberalism and the progress it represents in order to avoid the harder, deeper truths of the permanence of racism in the U.S.

Each of these act as strategies of emotional distancing that allow us to love Get Out and other projects of Racial Realism without actually doing the deeper work to understand what they say about us as White people.

Without such emotional distancing, would it be possible for us to see Get Out without profound self-consciousness about what it says about Whiteness and White liberalism? Without such emotional distancing, could we consume other spectacles of Black suffering and death ( like police shootings on repeat) without a profound self-consciousness about the role we play in this brutality?

I suggest not. Racial fiction such as this film allows us a rhetorical and thus emotional distance for White people to feel good about narratives of anti-Whiteness without ever dealing with our own complicity in the very real violence of Whiteness.

White People's Work

Of course, it's possible for White people to appreciate (or even love) the film without it serving one or all of these functions, but that demands a much deeper engagement with the film's meaning and what we as White people must do to challenge the system of White violence that it critiques.

Critical Race Theory demands that people of all races consider the social and structural realities that perpetuate racial oppression in our society, but this work means something wholly different for those of us who are White than for people of Color.

CRT is a form of embodied theory, a theory lived and understood by those who experience racial oppression because of how they carry its truths in their bodies and experiences. This means that White folks simply cannot access the brilliance represented in the canon of CRT in the same way that people of Color can, but this ought not be an excuse to disengage from the ways Critical Race Theory asks us to understand and change the world.

Instead, White folks ought to do the work to more deeply understand our own racial identities and epistemologies in order to do the work of resistance to Whiteness, to act as accomplices or turncoats through a racial justice praxis grounded in the leadership and knowledge of people of Color.

In considering our love for Get Out, this would mean deeply considering what the film says about the violence we have enacted and continue to enact in the maintenance of Whiteness. That violence is not always as overt as lobotomizing people of Color to steal their bodies for our own (though, honestly, it has been basically that in the past). But regardless of how overt, we must do the work to understand our role in the violence and to do the lifelong work of divesting ourselves from it in order to contribute to the struggle for racial justice.

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Three Things White People's Love for "Get Out" Says About the White (Sub)Conscious

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Spoiler Alert - I'm definitely going to be ruining some important details from Jordan Peele's Get Out if you read this without having seen the film. We liberal White folks sure do LOVE Jordan Peele's smash hit Get Out. In a recent conversation with friends, one White person remarked that it's a "genius use of...

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Teaching for Change provides teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write and change the world.

By drawing direct connections to real world issues, Teaching for Change encourages teachers and students to question and re-think the world inside and outside their classrooms, build a more equitable, multicultural society, and become active global citizens.

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Teaching for Change - Building social justice starting in the classroom

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Teaching for Change provides teachers and parents with the tools to create schools where students learn to read, write and change the world. By drawing direct connections to real world issues, Teaching for Change encourages teachers and students to question and re-think the world inside and outside their classrooms, build a more equitable, multicultural society, and become active global citizens.

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5 Things You Should Know About Racism | Decoded | MTV News

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I'm Not Racist... Am I? Extended Trailer

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Uploaded by I'm Not Racist... Am I? on 2014-02-03.

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The official trailer for White Like Me featuring Tim Wise, available Fall 2013. Help support the film (http://WhiteLikeMeMovie.org).

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The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond

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The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) focuses on understanding what racism is, where it comes from, how it functions, why it persists and how it can be undone.

Our workshops utilize a systemic approach that emphasizes learning from history, developing leadership, maintaining accountability to communities, creating networks, undoing internalized racial oppression and understanding the role of organizational gate keeping as a mechanism for perpetuating racism.

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The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB) focuses on understanding what racism is, where it comes from, how it functions, why it persists and how it can be undone. Our workshops utilize a systemic approach that emphasizes learning from history, developing leadership, maintaining accountability to communities, creating networks, undoing internalized racial oppression and understanding the role of organizational gate keeping as a mechanism for perpetuating racism.

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WPC is a conference that examines challenging concepts of privilege and oppression and offers solutions and team building strategies to work toward a more equitable world.

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Today, we welcome over 40 participants to the first session of the 31st year of SEED New Leaders Week. They will spend their time immersed in multicultural SEED materials and methods in preparation for leading their own SEED seminars -- a group of individuals who meet regularly to learn about themselves, interact with each other across identities, and develop strategies for greater equity and diversity in their local settings.