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The Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools

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The Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools

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Coshandra Dillard, 2020

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The events of a troubling summer have reminded us all about the importance of affirming Black Lives Matter in schools. But acknowledging Black students and celebrating their culture isn't enough. Anti-racist educators are pushing their schools to respond not through vague statements or gestures but with actionable steps toward dismantling systems that harm Black students. As a first step, educators must examine how whiteness operates-and is weaponized-in schools.

In late May, on the day news broke of George Floyd's murder, a different video was receiving widespread national attention. In it, a white New York City woman calls 911 on a Black man as the two stand, yards apart, in a secluded section of Central Park.

The man, Christian Cooper, had insisted that she put a leash on her dog, per posted rules. The woman responded with aggression. And, understanding how minor disputes have led to Black people's deaths, the man had begun recording the interaction.

"Unfortunately, we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where Black men are seen as targets," Cooper said in a CNN interview. "This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn't having it."

He had good reason to be concerned.

"I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life," she says.

In the video, the woman's tone goes from calm to frightened in a matter of seconds. She mentions twice to the 911 dispatcher that an "African American man" is threatening her and her dog. Her voice turns panicky.

"Please send the cops immediately!"

Unpacking the Pattern

Typically, the weaponization of whiteness happens this way: There is a demonstrated sense of entitlement, anger and a need for retaliation, feigned fear and, finally, white fragility.

It's easy to recognize this pattern when it's caught on video. We can observe for ourselves racial slurs, exaggerated fear and the privilege of whiteness forcefully taking up space. But when we publicly shame white people caught on video or demand severe penalties for their transgressions, we are individualizing racism rather than seeing how it can easily manifest in any white person because of how whiteness works in our society.

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The Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools

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The events of a troubling summer have reminded us all about the importance of affirming Black Lives Matter in schools. But acknowledging Black students and celebrating their culture isn't enough. Anti-racist educators are pushing their schools to respond not through vague statements or gestures but with actionable steps toward dismantling systems that harm Black students.

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Let's Talk: Facilitating Critical Conversations with Students

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Let's Talk: Facilitating Critical Conversations with Students

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Teaching Tolerance

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Paul Gorski, 2019

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Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors

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Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors

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Rudine Sims Bishop, 1990

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Christina Torres, 2020

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As more and more teachers, administrators, schools and organizations are questioning their practices and looking at the racist history of their institutions, many are finally asking, "How we can listen to and support Black students, teachers and communities who have been systemically silenced for too long?"

This question is essential, and examining anti-Blackness in our practice is something we all must be looking at. Looking at anti-Blackness or inequities brought about by systems rooted in white supremacy and racism is something all students should be doing. While more institutions, including primarily or historically white ones, are committing to this work, white teachers with primarily white students can feel hesitant to discuss these issues since they may not feel it affects them. This idea is a fundamental misunderstanding of what anti-racist work actually is.

Anti-racist work means acknowledging that racist beliefs and structures are pervasive in all aspects of our lives-from education to housing to climate change-and then actively doing work to tear down those beliefs and structures. Those beliefs and structures don't just exist in primarily white/and or privileged institutions-they thrive there.

Schools that house mostly students and teachers who have benefited from white privilege can lack the perspective to push back on institutional malpractice or racist mindsets that may be present. In addition, it is difficult to convince those with power and privilege to give those privileges up without clear education and work to understand why doing so is a necessity for true justice in our society.

Doing the work in spaces of privilege may look different, but educators cannot pretend that anti-racist work doesn't exist simply because their student body isn't directly harmed by racism. There are clear aims that primarily white and otherwise privileged institutions must work toward in the fight against racism.

Teachers must re-evaluate their curriculum.

When teaching standards and core curricula have been developed for your students, it's easy to simply follow along. However, it's important to remember that our education system has been founded on historically racist practices, including silencing those from disenfranchised communities.

It's not just BIPOC who need to see themselves in the literature or history they study. White students need to hear those perspectives as well, just as straight and cisgender students need to read LGBTQ+ stories. This is because students need not just mirrors but also windows into other cultures, as Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop notes in her essay " Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors. "

Students from communities with white privilege need to hear voices from other perspectives in order to grow their own thinking. Those perspectives need to be diverse and empowering as well-only showing Black suffering or slavery does not begin to break down problematic beliefs about Black people. Instead, students coming from positions of power need to see and understand the power and agency of those who have been historically disenfranchised, particularly since society frequently tells them otherwise. This will allow white students and teachers to have a more accurate and nuanced understanding of our history, while also ensuring they can center BIPOC voices and be allies and accomplices instead of "saviors."

Students need to understand privilege and rethink power.

Students from privileged communities can struggle to understand privilege since they may feel that they have had to work hard or struggle at times in their lives. Teachers must help students understand how privilege works at a systemic level that may have given students an edge that, while it may be one they didn't ask for, is still very real.

The work does not stop there, though. It can be easy in teaching privilege to fall into the trap of "white guilt" or "privilege guilt" (or even "survivor guilt" for BIPOC who have moved up socioeconomically and have internalized the belief that their communities were something to be "survived"). While guilt can be an important emotion to notice and process, educators should help students move through it to a place of action. Beyond "feeling bad" about generations of oppression, how can they use this knowledge to advocate for change and begin breaking down their own racist beliefs? How can they also reframe their understandings of privilege so that they stop prioritizing hegemonic ideas of success and worth?

Some of that will mean teaching students to analyze and reframe how they see values and stories from other cultures. Most of us were taught to praise white-dominant cultural ideas: financial success, rugged individualism, paternalism. Because of this, cultures with different priorities may not be seen as "successful" or "valuable" in our eyes and in the eyes of our students. We need to teach students with privilege not to be "saviors" for historically disenfranchised communities, but rather to listen to, value and stand in kinship with them so we can work together toward justice.

Schools must interrogate their practices and how they gained institutional privilege to begin with.

Anti-racist work cannot be done on an individual or classroom level. Administrators, faculty and staff at primarily white or otherwise privileged institutions must question how this has affected their school, students and community. If you don't have any Black students, why is that? If your school primarily serves folks with high socioeconomic status, what policies and events led to that? Schools need to consider how they can help create more integration in their community by having open and honest discussions with their parents and caregivers about the benefits of diverse schools ( including for white students) or questioning policies (such as requirements regarding tardiness and truancy and dress codes) that have made it historically difficult for more diverse populations to join their school community.

This also means making students from historically disenfranchised communities feel included when they do attend school. It's not enough to simply have representation-students must feel that their identities are validated and that their school is a place that accepts them completely. In addition, schools must hold educators and students accountable when they say and do things that make school unsafe for those they claim they want to support. Only when students feel they will be supported by their schools will they be able to fully become a part of that school community.

As Dr. Ibram X. Kendi notes in his work How to Be an Antiracist, "There is no neutrality in the racism struggle. ... The claim of 'not racist' neutrality is a mask for racism. ... An antiracist is someone who is supporting an antiracist policy by their actions or expressing an antiracist idea."

This means we educators have important questions to ask ourselves: Will I work to be anti-racist? Or will I continue thoughtlessly breathing in what Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum calls the "smog of racism" and allowing that to affect my classroom, school and conduct in our larger world? We must actively take a stand against racism with all our students if we want to truly fight its systemic grasp on society.

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As more and more teachers, administrators, schools and organizations are questioning their practices and looking at the racist history of their institutions, many are finally asking, "How we can listen to and support Black students, teachers and communities who have been systemically silenced for too long?"

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Celebrity readers share children's books by Black authors to spark kid-friendly conversations about empathy, equality, self-love and antiracism. Watch trailers & learn more.

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What White Colleagues Need to Understand

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What White Colleagues Need to Understand

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Brazas & McGeehan, 2020

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What White Colleagues Need to Understand

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White supremacy doesn't stop at the teachers' lounge door.

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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McKamey, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently

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

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Repair the World

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BrainPOP

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Learn about the mass protests happening in cities around the world.

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Scene on Radio (Podcast)

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it's an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of "whiteness" come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

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Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels ne

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Teaching Tolerance, 2020

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Juneteenth, celebrated June 19, marks the day enslaved Texans learned they were free in June of 1865. While the history of the holiday includes the injustice of enslavement, Juneteenth should also be understood in the context of Black people's fight for justice and freedom.

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Lester, 2020

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For my white friends who ask if I am OK, the answer is, "No, I am not OK."

To ask that question of me right now-amid this COVID-19 pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black and Brown people in the United States and the trauma resulting from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd-comes off as potentially insensitive.

The unrest across this country and the globe is bigger than George Floyd. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about the parallel plagues of American racism and COVID-19. What it means to deal with American racism in all its insidious forms, police brutality, human loss and suffering cannot be captured in media sound bites.

So no, I am not OK, and I am not alone in not being OK.

I am not OK when my 2017 call for white allies to step up after Charlottesville applies to Minneapolis now and could potentially apply to Anytown, USA.

I am not OK when I know that jogging in the "wrong neighborhood" can lead to a young Black man's death in Georgia, my home state, or that allegedly forging a check can lead to a Black man's suffocation at the hands of Minnesota police while other police stand by doing nothing to intervene.

I am not OK when I recall being told by white police to stop jogging in a "white neighborhood" in Birmingham, Alabama, because my presence made the home dwellers nervous. I am not OK when I realize I could have been a newspaper headline or crime statistic when I tried to explain the purpose of our Saturday morning community homeless outreach to a police sergeant who became more and more agitated.

I am not OK when I am stopped in Sierra Vista, Arizona, for speeding but asked three times by the ticketing officer, "Where are you from?" as though my answers-Phoenix, as my driver's license shows, and Georgia before Arizona-are not "exotic" enough to explain my locs and skin color.

I am also not OK when I see so many Facebook posts and threads of alleged white allies asking Black folk to give them a blueprint of how and where to direct their alleged anger and outrage.

I'm not OK with an alleged ally asking an already vulnerable and justifiably angry Black woman to organize a panel of other women of color to "brainstorm on solutions to American racism."

I'm not OK with complaints about the destruction of property during protests and contentions that "peaceful protest" and " civility" are all that's needed to address this plague of American racism. What has Colin Kaepernick's peaceful protest against police brutality done? How did the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King's steadfast fight for justice end? His was the same end as that of an "angrier" Malcolm X.

"Don't act like everyone loved my father," Bernice King tweeted last month. "He was assassinated. A 1967 poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in America. Most hated. Many who quote him now and evoke him to deter justice today would likely hate, and may already hate, the authentic King."

To be clear, I do not legitimize violence as a principle. But I ask that concerned individuals-Black, white and otherwise-measure the impact of destroying property as compared to killing people. Nor am I in any way minimizing or advocating for the destruction of property, potentially the source of another's livelihood. What I am keenly aware of, however, is the legitimacy of expressing anger, hurt and pain and responding viscerally to serial injustices in our "land of the free and home of the brave."

Property can be rebuilt. Dead bodies cannot be resurrected.

No, I am not OK with so many stories of innocent Black men who spend years in prison for crimes later determined they did not commit. I am not OK when Michael Donald is hunted like an animal, beaten, shot and hung from a tree by white men in Mobile, Alabama, as a symbol of the illusion of white supremacy in the Deep South. I am not OK when Sandra Bland is pulled from her car by a police officer and perceived as a threat because she has a lit cigarette and dares to speak back. I am not OK with Carolyn Bryant admitting that Emmett Till did nothing years after he was killed by her husband and brother-in-law and the world grieved with his mother, Mamie.

This moment's unrest is not just about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, Kathryn Johnston, Alberta Spruill or Botham Jean. It is about 400 years of tragic moments like these since the first Africans were forcibly brought to this country. This moment is about the reality of Black American identities in this country, a clamoring to declare our own humanity.

Lest we also forget: I am not OK with the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, the Atlanta Child Murders, the Scottsboro Boys, Amy Cooper's faux fear of a Black male bird watcher, Susan Smith's bigger-than-a-little-white-lie that a Black man kidnapped her two small children when she herself drowned them, or the recent tsunami of " White People Calling the Police on Black People" for just living. How is anyone OK with the individual and collective stories of American racial injustice?

I fully understand singer Lauryn Hill's laments in "Black Rage," which she dedicates to Michael Brown's death in 2014: "Black rage is founded on two-thirds a person. Rapings and beatings and suffering that worsens/ Black human packages tied up in strings/ Black rage can come from all these kinds of things."

So, no, I am not OK. If you are paying attention to what's happening in this country, and when you know our American and world history regarding our inhumanity to each other based on race-and all other systemic -isms that oppress and dehumanize-how can anyone be OK?

How can anyone be OK when people are pushed to the edge from decades of having their humanity denied? How can anyone in the United States with their humanity-their empathy, respect, integrity and compassion-intact be OK with racial violence in what we call the U.S. since the colonial era?

If you are OK, perhaps your commitment to fundamental humanity as it fundamentally connects to social justice is not as deep as you believe. We are not all in this together. All lives do not matter and never have.

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For my white friends who ask if I am OK, the answer is, "No, I am not OK." To ask that question of me right now-amid this COVID-19 pandemic that is disproportionately killing Black and Brown people in the United States and the trauma resulting from the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd-comes off as potentially insensitive.

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Discussing Race with Young Children Virtual Library

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Discussing Race with Young Children Virtual Library

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Michelle Yerón, 2020

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Copy of Discussing Race with Young Children Virtual Library

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Gala Theatre Bilingual Read Alouds/Social Emotional Book Library

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Gala Theatre Bilingual Read Alouds/Social Emotional Book Library

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Michelle Yerón, 2020

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Copy of Gala Theatre Bilingual READ ALOUDS/Social Emotional Book Library 

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Teachers Are People Too: Examining the Racial Bias of Teachers Compared to Other American Adults

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Teachers Are People Too: Examining the Racial Bias of Teachers Compared to Other American Adults

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Starck et al., 2020

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Jordan G. Starck, Princeton University
Travis Riddle, Princeton University
Stacey Sinclair, Princeton University
Natasha Warikoo, Tufts University

Schools are heralded by some as unique sites for promoting racial equity. Central to this characterization is the presumption that teachers embrace racial equity and teaching about this topic. In contrast, others have documented the ongoing role of teachers in perpetuating racial inequality in schools. In this article, we employ data from two national data sets to investigate teachers' explicit and implicit racial bias, comparing them to adults with similar characteristics. We find that both teachers and nonteachers hold pro-White explicit and implicit racial biases. Furthermore, differences between teachers and nonteachers were negligible or insignificant. The findings suggest that if schools are to effectively promote racial equity, teachers should be provided with training to either shift or mitigate the effects of their own racial biases.

Read the full open-access article online here.

Read the press release: " Research Finds Teachers Just as Likely to Have Racial Bias as Non-Teachers."

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educators; administrators; directors of research; testing or evaluation in federal; state and local agencies; counselors; evaluators; graduate students; behavioral scientists; education; psychology; statistics; sociology; history; economics; philosophy; anthropology; political science; aera; american educational research association

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Teachers Are People Too: Examining the Racial Bias of Teachers Compared to Other American Adults

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The American Educational Research Association (AERA), founded in 1916, is concerned with improving the educational process by encouraging scholarly inquiry related to education and evaluation and by promoting the dissemination and practical application of research results. AERA is the most prominent international professional organization, with the primary goal of advancing educational research and its practical application.

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Teachers Are as Racially Biased as Everybody Else, Study Shows

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Teachers Are as Racially Biased as Everybody Else, Study Shows

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Will, 2020

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Teachers are just as likely to have racial biases as non-teachers, a recent study finds-suggesting that schools need to do more work to combat stereotypes and discrimination.

In a paper titled " Teachers Are People Too," which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher, a team of researchers from Princeton and Tufts universities compare teachers' explicit and implicit biases with those of other American adults. The findings, they say, are not necessarily a surprise. But as Americans work to confront racism in society, educators need to acknowledge that they play an ongoing role in perpetuating racial inequality in schools, experts say.

"Our schools are a microcosm of society," said Jordan Starck, an author of the study and a doctoral student in the department of psychology at Princeton. "Given what we know of how pervasive bias is, ... I didn't suspect that either the selection process [of who becomes a teacher] or being in school [with children of different races] would be strong enough to curb that pervasive bias."

First, the researchers examined data from Project Implicit, which collects hundreds of thousands of results from self-administered Implicit Association Tests, as well as explicit measures. Researchers gathered a dataset of 1.6 million respondents, which included 68,930 teachers. (The average age among teachers was about 35, while the average age of non-teachers was 29.)

The test measures how quickly and accurately respondents pair white faces with positive words and black faces with negative words in comparison to the inverse. Seventy-seven percent of teachers demonstrated implicit bias, compared with 77.1 percent of non-teachers. Then, researchers subtracted respondents' reported warmth toward black people from their reported warmth toward white people to measure explicit bias. They found that 30.3 percent of teachers showed explicit bias, compared with 30.4 percent of non-teachers.

Since Project Implicit is not nationally representative and relies on self-selected participants, the researchers repeated their study with a second national dataset, the American National Election Study in 2008. The researchers analyzed a nationally representative sample of 1,984 people, which included 63 teachers. (The average age of teachers was 43.2 years, while the average age of non-teachers was 47.4 years.)

Respondents were asked to judge Chinese characters as "pleasant" or "unpleasant" after being shown pictures of a black or white young adult male face. The researchers found no significant association between occupation and level of bias.

"Teachers are probably more well-intentioned than the general population, but they still have the same bias levels," Starck said.

The researchers controlled for demographic factors, including level of education. While in general, white people are more likely to have racial biases than black people, Starck said the researchers did not compare white teachers' levels of bias to those of teachers of color.

What Biases Look Like in the Classroom

This study comes in a moment of reckoning over race, with protests sweeping the country over police killings of unarmed black men and women. Teachers are grappling with how to talk to their students about racism and white privilege. Eighty percent of teachers are white, while about half of students are.

See Also: 15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest

Starck said teachers' racial biases tend to influence the expectations they have for their students, the quality of their teaching, and the choices in how they manage their classrooms. Past research has found that black students are less likely to be placed in gifted education classes and more likely to receive exclusionary discipline (such as detentions and suspension) when they have white teachers. White teachers also tend to have far lower expectations for black students than they do for white students, which can contribute to high school graduation and college-enrollment rates.

"Teachers' bias levels are related to student outcomes-the more biased teachers are, the worse students' outcomes are," Starck said. "Teachers perceive, evaluate, and treat students differently on the basis of their race, and there's a big role for bias to play in those disparities."

Teachers are more likely to act on their biases when decisions are ambiguous, Starck said, like when they write up a student for insubordination-an infraction that has no clear definition. They also are more likely to act on their biases when they're tired, he said.

"The more tired we are, the less we override [our biases] and the more likely we are to rely on stereotypes," Starck said. "The more we ask of our teachers, the more likely they are to rely on biases even against their own will. They don't have the cognitive resources to override the biases."

'Good Intentions' Not Enough

These findings are not meant to "be read as blaming teachers," Starck said. Instead, they highlight a need for more resources and more support to manage racial biases.

"This isn't a battle for teachers to fight themselves," he said.

Instead, Starck and other researchers said, school leaders should both provide in-depth professional development to teachers that asks them to address their own biases and put in place policies to prevent those biases from harming students.

"The first thing principals can do is to educate themselves and their staff that racism exists," said Tracey Benson, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and the co-author of the book Unconscious Bias in Schools.

And with the current national conversation on racism, he said, "it's a perfect opportunity-a large part of America is waking up finally."

But awareness only goes so far. "Teachers believe that good intentions will mitigate their biases, and that's just not true," Benson said. "Consciousness- and awareness-raising doesn't lead to better action."

Some districts have started to hold trainings that aim to make teachers aware of their unconscious biases and reflect on how to change their behaviors in the classroom. This sort of professional development that asks teachers to critically examine their own identity and actions is a step beyond what has traditionally taken place in schools, experts say.

"Schools still overwhelmingly focus on professional development that centers diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, which are often ways of approaching schooling as a place for everyone to belong and for everyone to appreciate each other," said Kathleen King Thorius, the executive director of the Great Lakes Equity Center in Indianapolis. "It sounds good and nice to address diversity and equity and inclusion, but those often just scratch the surface."

School leaders need to facilitate conversations where teachers explicitly examine the ways racism manifests in school policies and processes, she said. These discussions should be ongoing and happening in conjunction with other policy changes, researchers say.

"It's a tall task to ask a diversity trainer to come in and reduce people's biases-that's going to take a lot of time, and it might not even be possible," Starck said. "But what we can do is manage the biases in our schools that exist, so they have less of an impact on students."

For example, Benson said school leaders should look at all student data-including test scores, attendance, discipline records, advanced course enrollment, and dropout rates-through a racial lens to pinpoint discrepancies. They should also conduct classroom observations through a race and gender lens: Who are teachers calling on? Which students are getting in trouble?

Even so, Starck said, individual schools can only do so much. A growing percentage of schools are becoming racially segregated once again, and schools that are predominately black and Hispanic are almost always schools with high concentrations of poverty. Those schools often have fewer experienced and effective teachers than schools with a more affluent student body.

"There needs to be advocacy for a larger societal change, or the same sorts of biases will keep perpetuating themselves," he said.

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Teachers Are as Racially Biased as Everybody Else, Study Shows

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Teachers are just as likely to have racial biases as non-teachers, a recent study finds-suggesting that schools need to do more work to combat stereotypes and discrimination. In a paper titled " Teachers Are People Too," which was published in April in the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher, a team of researchers from Princeton and Tufts universities compare teachers' explicit and implicit biases with those of other American adults.

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Combatting the Altruistic Shield in English Language Teaching

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Combatting the Altruistic Shield in English Language Teaching

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JPG Gerald, 2020

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JSTOR

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The United States has seen escalating protests over the past week, following the death of George Floyd while in custody of the Minneapolis police. Educators everywhere are asking how can we help students understand that this was not an isolated, tragic incident perpetrated by a few bad individuals, but part of a broader pattern of institutionalized racism. Institutional racism-a term coined by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) and Charles V. Hamilton in their 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America-is what connects George Floyd and Breonna Taylor with Ahmaud Arbery, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Emmett Till, and the thousands of other people who have been killed because they were " black in America."

This context seems vital for discussions both inside and outside the classroom. The following articles, published over the course of JSTOR Daily's five years try to provide such context. As always, the underlying scholarship is free for all readers. We have now updated this story with tagging for easier navigation to related content, will be continually updating this page with more stories, and are working to acquire a bibliographic reading list about institutionalized racism in the near future. (Note: Some readers may find some of the stories in this syllabus or the photos used to illustrate them disturbing. Teachers may wish to use caution in assigning them to students.)

Racial (In)Justice: Putting Protest into Perspective

Video Documentation & Police Brutality: Ethical Considerations

Racial, Economic, and Educational Disparities Go Hand in Hand

Editor's notes: We welcome reader comments: get in touch with comments, pitch us, or offer recommendations for further coverage here. Submission guidelines (we pay all our writers) here. These articles are just a small selection of the work we publish on JSTOR Daily. We've added tags on this article to help you find your way to related content, but are in the process of reviewing our tagging structure so these may change. We encourage you to sign up for our newsletter to get a digest of stories each week. Note: This story was updated June 4 with additional stories and tags for navigation to other related content. Thanks to reader comments, the introduction was updated June 3 with Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland's names and the phrase "people of color" was changed to "people." To support JSTOR Daily's work providing historical and scholarly context to the news and current affairs, you can become a member on Patreon.
Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Journal of Negro Education

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Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus | JSTOR Daily

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The United States has seen escalating protests over the past week, following the death of George Floyd while in custody of the Minneapolis police. Educators everywhere are asking how can we help students understand that this was not an isolated, tragic incident perpetrated by a few bad individuals, but part of a broader pattern of institutionalized racism.

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Includes a list for educators and active citizens and a list for children and students (Teach and Transform)

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Dionne Grayman, Morningside Center for Teaching social Responsibility

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On the night of George Floyd's memorial service, at about 10:23 pm, I received a text from my friend which read, " My son...my 7 year old son...asked me if he's going to die young 'cause he's Black in America...I don't know how I didn't fall on my knees sobbing. But am sobbing now. He's sleeping next to me."

My friend is not unique. She is not the only Black mother to have heard this question. Her husband won't be the only Black man holding his wife's hand as they hug both of their sons over the remains of a dinner. Or a breakfast. Or slice of pizza. Or on trip to Nana's house or Target.

Her son is a second grader. Inquisitive, curious, bounding with energy, with all of the markers of a child who knows the love and care of attentive adults, which includes his teachers. His parents made the conscious decision to place their sons in a private independent school created especially for Black children. It centers Blackness and belonging, encourages creativity, and invites reflection as a way to explore themselves, each other and the world. Their brilliance is a given. It's acknowledged and accepted without pre-existing conditions. Rarely is this the experience of Black children in public schools.

In his impassioned eulogy for George Floyd, the Reverend Al Sharpton called out America for having too long had its knee on the neck of Black people in this country, ultimately preventing us from just BEING.

The same indictment could be made of many educators of Black students. Your knees on the necks of our children have prevented them from just BEING. They have received the blame for failing schools, for the achievement gap, for persistently low test scores. They are the reason for the low expectations teachers have of them, and the unwitting recipients of curriculum that is often historically inaccurate, uninspiring, and lacks much with respect to cultural responsiveness. Black students have been criticized for performing poorly, behaving badly, and for not being as smart or capable as their white counterparts. All knees on the necks. Your knees on their necks. Not allowing them to just BE.

At the end of the service, Reverend Sharpton had everyone stand in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time if took for the knee to the neck of George Floyd to suffocate him, to crush the life out of his body, to kill him.

That 8 minutes and 46 seconds metaphorically happens to a Black student in this country every day a school is open. It happens in the teaching and learning, it happens in the hiring and staffing, it happens in the language of zero tolerance and harsh and spirit-killing discipline policies.

All complicit and co-conspirators in the act of not allowing Black students to just BE their wonderfully made selves.

As we contemplate what the new school year will bring, we now all know what our commitment as educators should be. No Black child in this country should ever ask that question again because the adults in their life especially their teachers and principals have committed to letting Black students just BE. Be loved. Be cared for. Be valued. Be seen as precious. Be given to space to make mistakes and grow. Be given room to explore. Be allowed to breathe, fully and deeply, their possibilities.

Read more of Dionne Grayman's 'See and Be Seen' Essays

Making the Call. Sometimes educators have to make hard decisions that put the needs of the many over the needs of one. Dionne tells about a wrenching choice she had to make.

Invisibilized Me. Dionne reflects on the experience of being "invisibilized" as a student - or adult - of color.

When Adults Don't See Remorse, They Won't See Vulnerability. The principal was greeting students on the steps of the school when I arrived. His normally cheerful demeanor was slightly subdued as he told me about the two major incidents that had happened the day before, each one centered around one student, Justin, in particular.

Having Heart: The Healing Power of Listening. The class had already earned a reputation for being one of the more difficult ones in a school that considers itself the last stop for young people who have spent the majority of their student careers majoring in "Disruptive" and minoring in "Challenging."

The Dance Teacher's Dilemma. Edward was a part of a cohort of teachers in a middle school that was participating in a unique project to develop a whole-school model for restorative practices.

The Day before the 20th. It is Thursday, January 19th, 2017, and I am sitting in a large, warm, aesthetically comforting office at a school that I have been sitting in every school day since Tuesday.

Rely on Human Goodness. Dionne was asked by her daughter's school to facilitate a post-election circle for parents and staff. Many who came were upset about the election. Here's what happened.

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On the night of George Floyd's memorial service, at about 10:23 pm, I received a text from my friend which read, " My son...my 7 year old son...asked me if he's going to die young 'cause he's Black in America...I don't know how I didn't fall on my knees sobbing.

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Marieke Van Woerkom, Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility

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People have been protesting daily around the country and world since George Floyd was brutally murdered by four Minneapolis, MN, police.

The murder, which took place on Memorial Day 2020, was captured on cell phone video and went viral. It showed the world how George Floyd had the life squeezed out of him by three police who pinned him to the pavement, while a fourth stood by trying to keep eyewitnesses at bay. As eyewitnesses filmed, they told police to get off George Floyd and that they were killing him. But the officers didn't budge, even as George himself kept pleading with them: "Please, please, please. I can't breathe. Please man." The officers have since been arrested and charged.

But that hasn't stopped the outrage and protests over not only this murder, but those of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Dion Johnson, just in the past few months. Of course the history of violence perpetrated against Black bodies and Black communities goes back years, decades, and centuries, back to the founding of this country. Black, Brown, Asian and Native people have always been dehumanized, their labor exploited, to build the country in which we live today.

It is not just through murder that Black lives continue to be taken. It's important to look also at the systems of oppression, injustice, and racism that manifest as poverty, food and housing insecurity, lack of opportunity, illness, incarceration, and other ills that result in daily, and often unseen, violence against people of color. The disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on Black, Brown, Asian, and Native communities is a current, and tragic, case in point. We cannot underestimate the loss, stress and trauma that this has caused and continues to cause.

And so we see people out in the streets despite the Covid-19 pandemic, risking their lives, to protest what some are calling the racism pandemic.

This activity has students listen to and reflect on the voices of those who are out in the street. What brings them there? And what do students think and feel about it?

Marching in Washington, DC on June 6, 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan.

Opening Reflection

Invite one of your students to read the following Frederick Douglass quote out loud:

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

Next, ask your students to connect the quote to what's been happening around our country these past two weeks, following the brutal murder of George Floyd, captured on camera in Minneapolis, MN before it went viral.

Ask students what they know about the reasons why people are in the street, protesting in cities around the country and world.

Ask if they, or people they know, have been protesting. If so, incorporate their/those voices here and in the activity below.

Reasons Why People Are Protesting: Voices from the Protests

Either share this PDF with "voices from the protest" with students via email, or pull it up on the shared screen for students to see. The text is also below. (If time is short, you might select quotes that you think are most important for your students.)

Invite student volunteers to read the voices, one after the other, for all to hear. Alternatively, ask students to read the voices in silence by themselves. Then ask students to pick one that resonates with them to read out loud.

After reading the quotes aloud, ask some or all of the following questions for students to respond to.

How do you feel about hearing these voices?

How are the protesters feeling? Why?

What, if any voice stood out for you? What voice resonated and why?

What are some of the reasons that people are out in the street?

Do you seen any connections between the reasons why people are protesting?

How do these reasons connect back to this country's history, going back to its founding?

If you and your students want to explore the interconnected, historic nature of the reasons that brought people into the streets in protests over the past few weeks, begin an exploration. Some possible readings are at the bottom of this lesson.

Closing

To close the session, ask your students to share a one word statement about what we have discussed today. (This might be a message, a feeling, or a thought.)

Alternatively, read aloud the quote on hope by historian Howard Zinn below:

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

Then ask students: What, if anything, gives you hope today?

Possible Background Reading

BBC News : George Floyd: Five pieces of context to understand the protests: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52904593

European Sting: This is what has led to the George Floyd protests in the United States: https://europeansting.com/2020/06/05/this-is-what-has-led-to-the-george-floyd-protests-in-the-united-states/

NY Times: Destructive Power of Despair (Charles Blow commentary): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/opinion/george-floyd-protests.html

Vox: The anger behind the protests, explained in 4 charts: https://www.vox.com/2020/5/31/21276004/anger-police-killing-george-floyd-protests

The Root: A Timeline of Events That Led to the 2020 'Fed Up'-rising (contains profanity): https://www.theroot.com/a-timeline-of-events-that-led-to-the-2020-fed-up-rising-1843780800

The Guardian: America must listen to its wounds (commentary by Reverend William Barber): https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/30/america-must-listen-to-its-wounds-george-floyd-they-will-tell-us-where-to-look-for-hope

Voices from the Protests

"I got tired of sitting at home feeling anxious and helpless. As an undocumented organizer, I recognize that now is the time to stand up for abolition and justice for all. Regardless of my status, the Black community is looking for support from everyone. I know that my freedom is tied to their freedom." Johana

"We can A) invest in communities and give people what they need. Or B) invest in prisons and police to brutalize people when they act out because they don't have what they need. I protested because America has chosen to do the latter." Richie

"Because I don't want to live in a country where the authorities murder with impunity. That is a more existential threat than Covid-19." Karine

"Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Current police brutality and murder. I'm protesting the illegitimate authority of the USA and the LAPD." Robert

"It's time to dismantle and reform 'police culture' in this country." Ashley

"Because police officers have abused their power and run rampant for too long. They have been viciously murdering people with impunity. It's systematic oppression upheld and reinforced by white supremacy."

"Because I could've been George Floyd." Joe

"I protest a system that knelt on the neck of a Black man until he died because it is the very same system that not only has killed countless other Black men and women, but has killed thousands of Americans of all races by failing to protect us effectively and successfully in a global pandemic. ... America is broken and has been broken for quite some time, and I couldn't live with myself if I told my future children that I did nothing at all to effect change." Janay

"Friday night ..., in front of my home, I exercised my First Amendment rights, feeling the same overwhelming anxiety and pain from another Black person being killed rush back. ... There has to be a change." Toni

"We have lost our way. We have lost our humanity. And we have definitely lost whatever pretense we had of a democratic society." V.H.

"When there is a police shooting, with the chaos that often is involved, I can understand there might be two sides to the story. But to see the video of a white police officer slowly and deliberately killing a Black man, suffocating the life out of him minute by minute and keeping up the pressure almost two minutes after the man has no pulse: There is no excuse. It is murder, plain and simple. The other officers stood and watched it happen. There is no excuse for their behavior, either. They were complicit."

"Because Black Lives Matter. ... We should be investing more in what people need to survive and thrive - housing, food, schools, jobs - not adding to our already bloated police budget." Victoria

"Being out on the streets today was so empowering and peaceful. People were looking out for each other because we knew things could take a turn for the worse in an instant. That is the reality that so many Black people have had to adapt to for centuries." Johana

"The right question to ask: Why are you not protesting? Unlike the previous generation who was able to turn a blind eye to police brutality and allow systemic racism to persist with little to no accountability, our generation - the most diverse generation in American history - is saying 'Enough!' We will not bear this oppressive and racist system we have inherited. We want change now, not later. We are not asking for it, we are demanding it!" Jorge

"Why isn't EVERYONE protesting? Six years after Ferguson and Eric Garner, law enforcement is still getting away with killing Black men on video. How is that acceptable to anyone?! I am proud to be one of many non-Black people marching with our Black brothers and sisters, chanting, 'Say his name: George Floyd,' 'Prosecute Killer Cops' and 'No Justice, No Peace,' especially because I am a Korean American who is aware of the L.A. riots in 1992. I saw people of all races [protesting] today. No, I cannot know what it is like to be a Black person in this country, always under threat of getting killed just for being Black, even while sleeping in my own bed or watching TV in my own living room, but I can try to understand and fight for them." Karen

"How the Covid-19 pandemic has been handled, leaving huge parts of society left without healthcare, due process, or a future points out the ZERO representation by any political party or leadership along the way." Dave

"In solidarity with Black Lives Matter. I'm white, and want to make my support visible in some way." Ian

"Because I'm sick and tired of hearing that the system is broken. It's not broken; it's doing exactly what it's meant to do - disenfranchise Black and Latino [people]."

"Because as a white person I can no longer be silent! My complacency shows agreement, and that is not OK. Jesus stands for the disenfranchised. As a Christian, I need to stand for the disenfranchised." Carol

"Injustice, injustice, injustice. What has this great country become? A place where people are suffering more every day with unfair treatment and the bashing of basic civil liberties and human rights." Philippe

"Because I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe."

"I went because it was the right thing to do. For years I saw things in this country that made me angry and was too afraid to go to the streets, telling myself, 'What good will it do anyway?' So I made donations and wrote strongly written letters, but what good did any of that do? Clearly not much. So I needed to be there physically, in the community, not just showing support in the shadows, but proud and out loud." Quinn

"Hearing Mr. Floyd call out for his mother in his last moments of life broke me. I sat on my car bawling. I'm a mother of three sons. My sons look to me for comfort when they fall or are cold. They look for Mom to comfort and nurture them. Mr. Floyd called out for his mom to comfort him. That shook me. Enough is enough. Cops can't keep killing our sons, brothers and husbands and getting off with a slap on the wrist. It ends now. We've been asking for help for years. Do you hear us now?" Yesenia

"When the Rodney King video came out, I rejoiced thinking the world would finally see what we dealt with daily. I thought they just didn't know - I didn't realize they just didn't care. Then Latasha Harlins was killed, shot in the back of the head on video after paying for her purchases. Her murderer got the same sentence as a man who'd abused a dog. ... I've long since forgotten the names of the innocent Black people murdered. ... Those names got mingled with the ones my elders taught me about (Emmett Till, George Stinney, etc., etc., etc.), But worse, we keep adding to the list: It has grown longer than my memory. This is why I protest." Misty

"End of the police state. Return of civil liberties and constitutional right as a U.S. citizen and as a human being of this planet. End Trump's blatant corruption."

"I came out today to tell the cops I was coming after their jobs, not to riot. I came out today because this country has to have a moral reckoning. White people have to confront the system we've built that oppressed Black people in the country and dismantle it. I came to tell the mayor to spend less on police bonuses and overtime and more on mental health crisis teams, more on homelessness services and less on rubber bullets, like the ones that were shot at me today. This country MUST change."

"I am white and I am ashamed and outraged every time a Black citizen is killed by a white police officer. This has been going on for decades and enough is enough. Police officers are sworn to protect and to serve all citizens of the community. They do not have the right to kill these citizens, then make up a cover story about 'resisting arrest.'" Jodi

"I am protesting because I'm tired of all our actions being a powerless scream into the void. All the accumulated stress from each new horror story of inequity is like a wire holding my jaw shut. For the first time, it feels like people can listen. I hope this movement can be a light that makes it starkly clear what the world is like."

"The need for change to the police system. For the police union to remove itself and to set up a new system from the ground up."

"Police unions have for too long fought the changes needed to change policing. There is great injustice in how police ... treat minorities, people experiencing homelessness, and other disenfranchised groups. The city has cut services, but is giving police raises, and the so-called progressives on the City Council say nothing." Rick

"We cannot afford to be neutral in situations of injustice. Honestly, my heart is hurting - it's broken. Right now, it's in the news because the violence was filmed, but Black communities and my brown brothers and sisters see this day in and day out. The scars of colonization and white supremacy are burned into our DNA through generational trauma of rape, murder, and looting of our ancestors. [People of color] wear this pain every day, we carry it inside us always; we just can't suppress this trauma any longer." Natalie

"I'm protesting against the benefit of the doubt given to law enforcement in case of police terrorism against communities of color. ... Why aren't you protesting?" Absalom

"In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, I'm plain ol' sick and tired of being sick and tired! For too long the police departments in OUR country have behaved like legal entities of the KKK. Yes, there was a lot of looting and property damage and that is wrong, but so was the looting of Africa of its people; so is the damage to the properties of humanity." Grant

"I am protesting our failure to reckon with history, and to make reparations in the wake of it. I am protesting because Black people being killed every day for things I do without fear, by the same forces that, at their roots, were founded in order to catch and return people escaping slavery. I am protesting because people I love live in fear of police every day, people I love are dying slowly in cages because they can't afford bail to get out, or because the systems that put them there are more focused on punishment and erasure than on healing and accountability. I am protesting because police don't make people safer, and incarceration does not serve the interests of justice. I am protesting because if I care about justice and liberation for all people, then I have to show up."

"Due to military-like response by police to peaceful protest. And now literally military response."

"There are millions of Chauvins in the so many police forces, turn them in. There are a million Amy Coopers in everyday corporate life. ... We protest being tired for having this target on our backs everyday, just for being BLACK. Tired that all the good white people, our friends, co-workers won't stand up. Tired. That's why we protest." Jacqueline

It's my only way of getting attention to the societal devastation caused by evictions, exploitative pay, and an inability to have healthcare or a comfortable retirement." Jason

"Because our work is unfinished, now more than ever. We are responsible for making our society just. No one else. By any means necessary, because we've already seen again and again that there is no alternative to direct action in the streets. Stop murdering Black people!!!"

"My reasoning is that it will be me next with the knee on the neck, or someone I love, with no recourse or remedy. What happened to the police internalizing their own motto: to protect and serve? When the entire population has been pushed to the brink with the lockdown ... and lack of factual information, leadership's only answer is do less." Dana

"BLACK LIVES MATTER" Bianca

"This is about ALL injustices. The Black innocent lives that are lost time and time again at the hands of police. Yet they unjustly get to walk away with their hands clean. Trump being in office and getting to stay in office is an injustice to the entire U.S. and we all know why. The rich getting richer off the poor, getting first access to everything, including Covid testing and treatment, is an injustice. Greedy corporations preying on innocent lives. THIS IS ABOUT ALL INJUSTICES."

"It could be my father, my brother, my uncle, my cousin, my friend, .... It makes me angry." Victoria

"In every city, there's a George Floyd." Michael

"I'm speaking for everybody, all my kinfolk, all my brothers and sisters who've gotten beaten up by police .... I don't condone the violence ... but at the end of the day, no 14-year-old should be beat up by police."

"If we don't fight for change we're not going to get it" Douglas

"I took six rubber bullets, but do you know what didn't happen to me? No one kneeled on my neck." Elizabeth

"We've been through Jamar Clark, we've been through Philando Castile, and there was no justice whatsoever. We're tired of it, we are very tired. My son, he's 16 and six feet tall, and I don't want him to be taken as somebody bad because he's a bigger Black man." Ashley

"On one hand, it's very scary, because I know a lot of really messed up stuff is happening, people are being hurt, property is being destroyed. But at the same time, something else is on the horizon." Chad

"I'd never been affected by another one like this. I watched a man die, that's why. I watched a man die." Erika

"I felt like I had no excuse but to be a part of it. I have nephews. I have the next generation that's looking up to me as a role model." Rashaad

"What hit me about this in particular is how incredibly blatant it was, like how clear and how incredibly unnecessary and completely undefendable it was." Damarra

"I've never seen nothing like that before. Ever. Ever." Kennetta

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People have been protesting daily around the country and world since George Floyd was brutally murdered by four Minneapolis, MN, police. The murder, which took place on Memorial Day 2020, was captured on cell phone video and went viral.

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Ibram X. Kendi

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Please note this title is on backorder.  This title is in the process of being printed by the publisher and is expected to arrive in mid-June.  Orders will be fulfilled upon arrival.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review - Time - NPR - The Washington Post - Shelf Awareness - Library Journal - Publishers Weekly - Kirkus Reviews


Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism--and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At it's core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas--from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites--that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their posionous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.


Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.


Praise for How to Be an Antiracist


"Ibram X. Kendi's new book, How to Be an Antiracist, couldn't come at a better time. . . . Kendi has gifted us with a book that is not only an essential instruction manual but also a memoir of the author's own path from anti-black racism to anti-white racism and, finally, to antiracism. . . . How to Be an Antiracist gives us a clear and compelling way to approach, as Kendi puts it in his introduction, 'the basic struggle we're all in, the struggle to be fully human and to see that others are fully human.' " --NPR


"Kendi dissects why in a society where so few people consider themselves to be racist the divisions and inequalities of racism remain so prevalent. How to Be an Antiracist punctures the myths of a post-racial America, examining what racism really is--and what we should do about it." --Time

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How to Be an Antiracist (Hardcover) | sankofa-dc

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Please note this title is on backorder. This title is in the process of being printed by the publisher and is expected to arrive in mid-June. Orders will be fulfilled upon arrival.

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Ijeoma Oluo

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So You Want to Talk about Race a book by Ijeoma Oluo

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In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in America Protests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seem…

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Racial Justice Resources: Justice for Black Lives

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Racial Justice Resources: Justice for Black Lives

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National Education Association: EdJustice

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Recent events in our nation have once again put a spotlight on a long legacy of racism, violence and white supremacy in our communities. As COVID-19 continues to ravage communities of color, the recent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Aubrey, and Breonna Taylor have highlighted an inherently broken system and illustrated how deep injustice runs through our health, income, housing, education and policing systems.

In her statement on the murder of George Floyd, NEA President Lily Eskelsen García said, "We must examine how white supremacy culture impacts our biases, our practices, and the policies in our own schools and communities. It is our responsibility as educators to create the space for students to explore, by first evaluating our own biases, privilege and collusion".

NEA is committed to working with educators towards eradicating racist systems that keep students from attaining the best public education possible. The following resources can help promote deeper understanding around the issues of racism and violence with colleagues, students and families.

NEA Racial Justice in Education Resource Guide
NEA Center for Social Justice

Why racial equity & justice?

Talking race

Tools for assessment, strategic planning and action

Black Lives Matter at School Week
NEA Center for Social Justice

Resources to help facilitate conversations about race any time of year, including classroom appropriate lesson plans, guides on how to have tough conversations with peers and students, and more.

Read Across America Book Recommendations
Read Across America

Selected by educators, NEA's Read Across America includes books that students can see themselves reflected in, as well as books that allow readers to see a world or a character that might be different than them.

Video "Primers" for Anti-racist White Educators
NEA Center for Social Justice

Inspired by their own experiences working with students, teachers Luke Michener and Terry Jess offer advice to other white educators who are committed to racial equity in education but may not know where to begin.

Marley Dias Video
NEA YouTube Channel

For Marley Dias, the call to activism began with books. Frustrated by not seeing other Black girls as the main characters in the books in her school library, she decided to take action and make a change by launching the wildly successful social media project, #1000blackgirlbooks.

NEA: Visually Speaking Series: The Playlist
NEA YouTube Channel

Visually Speaking is a photo/video social justice project that invites educators and students to talk about the issues that affect them most.

Microcredentials for Educators - Online Courses
NEA.CertificationBank.com

NEA's certification bank includes courses to help educators adopt restorative justice practices, cultivate socially just environments, challenge inequity, examine intersections of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and create classroom culture that cultivates relationships among all learners.

Resources for Talking about Race, Racism and Racialized Violence with Kids
Center for Racial Justice in Education

Teaching About Race, Racism and Police Violence
Southern Poverty Law Center/Teaching Tolerance Black Lives Matter
Southern Poverty Law Center/Teaching Tolerance

Systemic Racism Explained (Video)

Talking About Racism and Violence with Students: Resources for Educators
Colorin' Colorado

These resources can help promote deeper understanding around the issues of racism and violence. They also can contribute to discussion of these topics with colleagues and students during this difficult time, even at a distance.

Say Her Name Campaign
African American Policy Forum

A movement that calls attention to police violence against Black women, girls and femmes and demands their stories be integrated into the calls for justice, policy changes and police violence.

Reflecting on George Floyd's Death and Police Violence Towards Black Americans
Facing History and Ourselves

TED Talk Playlist
Talks to help you understand racism in America.

Talking About Race
National Museum of African American History and Culture

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

Race Works Toolkits
Stanford Center for Comparitive Studies in Race & Ethnicity

A series of short films and activities featuring the latest Stanford scholarship about how people do race and how to undo racism

10 Documentaries to Watch about Race Instead of Asking a Person of Color to Explain Things for You
DocPlay.com

10 important documentaries about race, racial prejudices and privilege within our society.

White Supremacy & Anti-Blackness: A Covert & Overt Beast
WeAreBeloved.org

Displays a pyramid that describes all of the ways that white supremacy moves, and especially takes stock of the covert ways.

Scaffolded Anti-racism Resources
A working document for scaffolding anti-racism resources. The goal is to facilitate growth for white folks to become allies, and eventually accomplices for anti-racist work.

Resources for Accountability and Actions for Black Lives
A live document compiled by Carlisa Johnson on 5/27/20. Updated daily as more resources and information becomes available.

Anti-Racism Resources
This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen anti-racism work.

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RACIAL JUSTICE RESOURCES: JUSTICE FOR BLACK LIVES - NEA EdJustice

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NEA is committed to working with educators towards eradicating racist systems that keep students from attaining the best public education possible. The following resources can help promote deeper understanding around the issues of racism and violence with colleagues, students and families.

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Free Resources for Supporting Antiracist Education

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Free Resources for Supporting Antiracist Education

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BrainPOP

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Updated 06/29/2020: We hope that our new Black Lives Matter Protests movie inspires action, opening the door to challenging and essential conversations at home and in the classroom.
As a teacher, parent, or caregiver, you may be at a loss for words right now. But silence is not an option. Racism thrives in silence, and having open and honest conversations with kids is crucial, even at a very early age.

It's important to acknowledge that children see racial identity and skin color. When we acknowledge identity-and encourage kids to take pride in their diversity and respect the diversity of others-we empower them to stand up to racial injustice. Talking about these issues with children also allows us to open the door to how they can disrupt inequality and combat systemic racism.

If you're at a loss for words or struggling with how to begin, you can start a conversation by asking, "Do you have any questions about why people are protesting?"

Black lives matter, and BrainPOP is committed to combating racism by creating antiracist content that examines the long and painful history of race in America. By doing so, we hope to help children understand the root causes of racism that we continue to encounter today, and empower them to dismantle it.

We want to know what's on your kids' minds. Please use this anonymous survey to share their questions and thoughts with us, which will help inform our ongoing content development efforts.

BrainPOP is committed to combating racism by creating content that examines the long and painful history of race in America.

Below you will find a list of BrainPOP topics, recommended by grade level, to help you engage in these difficult but essential conversations. Recognizing that we have an obligation to use our platform to examine and teach about these important issues, we commit to producing additional content that develops and supports antiracist learning and growth.

In the meantime, we have made the following resources FREE to access.

For Kindergarten-Grade 3

Profiles in Activism

For Grades 4+

Institutionalized Racism and the Fight Against It
Discussion Prompts Discussion Prompts
Profiles in Activism

Ressources en français

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Free Resources for Supporting Antiracist Education - BrainPOP

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Updated 06/29/2020: We hope that our new Black Lives Matter Protests movie inspires action, opening the door to challenging and essential conversations at home and in the classroom. As a teacher, parent, or caregiver, you may be at a loss for words right now. But silence is not an option.

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library? 

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library? 

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Lee & Low, 2017

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Teachers, let's talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It's an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes.

Unfortunately, we often see classroom libraries that group diverse books into categories that isolate or limit their use. Simply having a book bin labeled "cultures from around the world" or "black history month books" does not mean your library is culturally responsive. We need to think critically about how these books reflect the diversity of our students, their backgrounds, and the communities in which we live while exposing them to new ideas and concepts. Does your classroom library contain books that include main characters of color or with disabilities? Do your books featuring people of color only focus on issues of race, prejudice, or discrimination? Do they go beyond ethnic heritage months? Do they only focus on cultural traditions and foods?

To help you do so, LEE & LOW BOOKS has created a Classroom Library Questionnaire for you to use as a tool to analyze the books in your library and determine where there are strengths and gaps in diversity. It isn't enough just to have diverse and culturally responsive books, but we also need to think about how and when we use these books in the classroom.

Click here to download the free Classroom Library Questionnaire.
For more information about building a culturally responsive classroom library: Veronicahas a degree from Mount Saint Mary College and joined LEE & LOW in the fall of 2014. She has a background in education and holds a New York State childhood education (1-6) and students with disabilities (1-6) certification. When she's not wandering around New York City, you can find her hiking or hanging out with her dog Milo in her hometown in the Hudson Valley, NY.

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Classroom Library Assessment: How Culturally Responsive is Your Library?

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Teachers, let's talk about a popular topic across education blogs and Pinterest: the classroom library. A quick search on the Internet results in numerous tips, tricks, and ideas for different ways to configure and organize your classroom library. It's an intensive and thoughtful process that involves thinking about genre, reading levels, interest levels, grade-level content, categories, and themes.

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The Tutu Teacher

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Being an Ally: The Role of White Educators in Multicultural Education Assumptions and Actions

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Being an Ally: The Role of White Educators in Multicultural Education Assumptions and Actions

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E. Denevi

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Teaching Tolerance

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Being an effective ally requires significant self-reflection and a strong sense of self-identity. Any educator can become an ally, but the journey might look different depending on one's identity, experience and familiarity with issues of power and privilege.

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Being an effective ally requires significant self-reflection and a strong sense of self-identity. Any educator can become an ally, but the journey might look different depending on one's identity, experience and familiarity with issues of power and privilege.

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Teaching Tolerance, 2016

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As educators we (sometimes unknowingly) step into roles of advocate, caretaker, guide, and even mother or father to students. Students pay attention to everything we say and do. They particularly pay attention to our silence.

We may be uncomfortable talking about race, but we can no longer afford to be silent. We have chosen a profession, which-like parenting-requires that our comforts come second to those of children.

Many black and brown students are educated in school systems and classrooms where they, despite making up the racial majority, are taught how to understand a world by a staff comprised of a powerful minority. When their teachers choose to remain silent about moments of racial tension or violence-violence that may well touch students' own communities or families-these children are overtly reminded of their inferior place in society.

Even as a black teacher, I have to set a tone for my students that signals that it's safe to talk about race. Even with me, students of color are afraid to say the word white or to name the blatant racism of slavery and Jim Crow. If that's the case, imagine how much more difficult it is for them to engage in dialogue about mass incarceration rates; the militarism of police; the killing of innocent black men and women; cycles of poverty; the destruction of our bodies, minds and souls; the lack of access to healthy food and quality schools; and gentrification. These are all symptoms of a type of racism that remains deadly to this day because, despite bodies lying in the street, we refuse to talk about it.

White teachers must also broach these topics with white children attending white schools. These students need to learn about the destructive power of racism and brutality that have plagued our country for centuries. They should also understand that Alton Sterling, Philando Castile and Trayvon Martin were preceded in death by Emmett Till, Jimmie Lee Jackson and countless others whose stories and deaths we must also teach. Our lack of instruction becomes deadly when we allow fear and discomfort to indirectly allow white students to labor under false, privileged assumptions.

Moreover, the silence on the part of white teachers who teach black and brown children is insulting. Imagine seeing white people, the perceived dominant race, loving and appreciating black culture when it is pretty-enjoying the music, food, culture and beauty of our people-but remaining silent about our oppression and refusing to see how the beauty of our culture was largely born out of necessity. It hurts students when their teachers only acknowledge what black people have done for this country and not what this country has done to them.

But how encouraging is it to know that we stand in a powerful and political position where we can directly influence and break this silence?

Begin by confronting your own biases-about yourself, your students, your fellow educators, the world. This process is essential; if educators don't do this, think about how much damage we could do to the open, vulnerable minds of our students. In particular, examine your feelings about the police. And, regardless of your personal feelings about law enforcement, it is critical to understand that many black and brown students have incredibly negative perceptions about the police. This difficult understanding on the part of teachers can hopefully lead to dialogue and healing in schools.

Once you've done the inner work of evaluating your own comfort levels and examining your biases, start the conversation. You might begin by admitting to students that-like them-you are scared, frustrated, angry, confused, hurt or uncomfortable. Students at any age understand these feelings and will appreciate your humility, compassion and vulnerability, especially black and brown students. This is how you lay the foundation.

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As educators we (sometimes unknowingly) step into roles of advocate, caretaker, guide, and even mother or father to students. Students pay attention to everything we say and do. They particularly pay attention to our silence. We may be uncomfortable talking about race, but we can no longer afford to be silent.

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I. Kendi, 2020

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Americans don't see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road-they see their fear.

Oakmont beckoned outdoor runners-even novices like me.

We were the second family to move into Oakmont, a new housing development seven miles west of the University of Florida, when I joined the faculty in 2015. My partner and I loved how our living space wrapped around a green-dotted, open-air indoor courtyard like homes we'd seen in West Africa and Latin America. Nothing compared to being outside inside our courtyard home.

Well, maybe being outside in Oakmont-running down its newly paved roads, gazing up at stately oak trees with moss draping down, staring down into the ponds, racing all the galloping or flying animals, all to the sweet melody of quietness. Few houses. No people. Just paved roads. Just nature's sight lines.

At first, I hardly worried about cars while exercising. But the vehicles started coming. Trees were cleared. Foundations laid. New houses framed-a fascinating new picture screening every day for my curiosity.

As I ran on by, I imagined how the framed-out houses were going to look completed. Or I imagined living in the jumbo dwellings. Or as I ran on by, I stared at the construction workers as they stared back at me.

But not on one particular day. That day, no construction workers were around this half-built wonder. No vehicles were in sight. There was just my curiosity on overdrive-pushing me into the house to feed my imagination. I did not need long. I never needed long.

Minutes later, my feet were pounding the pavement under the moss. I am Ahmaud Arbery.

Running from yesterday's acquittal, 2019. Acrylic on cotton canvas. 24" x 24" (Image courtesy of Chase Hall Studio)

On Sunday, February 23, around 1 p.m., Arbery had just peered into a half-built home, as I did so many times in Oakmont. He ran away under the falling moss near the coastal Georgia town of Brunswick. Up the block lived Gregory McMichael, a former police officer and investigator for the local district attorney, and his son, Travis. McMichael did not see a former high-school football standout who normally jogs around the neighborhood, as Arbery's family describes him. McMichael saw a black male "hauling ass" from the scene of a crime, as he told investigators.
Adam Serwer: The coronavirus was an emergency until Trump found out who was dying
Arbery could have been any "black male running down the street," as a 911 caller described him. He could have been anyone's brother, father, son, cousin, boyfriend, husband, co-worker, friend. He could have been me running down the street. As a black male-not to the people who know me or who know Arbery, but to the Americans who don't know me and think they do-I am Ahmaud Arbery. Those Americans think they know me when my curiosity gets the best of me. They think they know me when something has gone missing. They think they know me when they see me running down the road.

They don't see me wearing the same white T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers that they wore the other day. They don't see themselves in me. They certainly don't see their own innocence in me. They see only their own guilt in me-their villainous fear marking me as the villain.

They don't need to figure out who I am. All they see is what I am. A black male. And what I am pronounces who I am. A criminal. The embodiment of danger. The producer of fear.

Black males have been made into the fathers of fear. But the fears of black men are bastards. Broods we never wanted, but can't escape. All these bastards are coming after us, suspecting us continuously, terrorizing us constantly, and we can't escape. The black man can't escape the fear of the black man.

Gregory McMichael "stated he was in his front yard and saw the suspect from the break-ins 'hauling ass'" down the road, according to the police report. McMichael "stated there have been several Break-ins in the neighborhood and further the suspect was caught on surveillance video," the report said. But where is the surveillance video linking Arbery to a recent burglary? And McMichael's neighborhood had gone seven weeks without a reported burglary, a local police lieutenant recently told CNN. The last reported burglary was on January 1, when a 9-mm pistol was stolen from an unlocked truck outside the McMichaels' home.
Ibram X. Kendi: We're still living and dying in the slaveholders' republic
According to McMichael, he ran in his house and grabbed his son, Travis, and both grabbed their weapons. McMichael told police they armed themselves because they "didn't know if the male was armed or not." McMichael also told police he saw Arbery "the other night" stick his hand down his pants, which led him to believe he was armed. Arbery was not armed.

No one living knows what Arbery felt in his final moments. No one living knows what Arbery felt as he approached the white pickup truck parked on the two-lane road, blocking his way. No one living knows what he felt as he saw Gregory McMichael standing in the truck's bed and saw Travis McMichael standing outside the passenger door wielding a shotgun.

All I know is what I would have felt. If I were running under the falling moss, if two armed white men were coming after me in their pickup truck-and a third not far behind-then I would have felt the wrath of terror: racist terror.

And I know the feeling of racist terror. I know what it feels like when a white man- in my case a police officer -suspects me as an armed criminal and pursues me and clutches his gun when I'm just out running (errands). I was three years older than Arbery, who would have turned 26 on Friday. I lived, and Arbery died. Arbery could have lived, and I could have died.

And I could have been placed in a morgue near all those black bodies falling from COVID-19, at rates higher than any other racial group, in states from Georgia to Maine, from Michigan to South Carolina, from Ohio to South Dakota, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker. We can't see the coronavirus like we can't see the fears that terrorize us, but we keep feeling their lethal effects.

I just don't think Americans fully realize how terrorizing it is to black males when we are falsely suspected as violent criminals. All Americans seem to be thinking about is their fear of us-not our fear of their fear. Black males fear racist fear because we know from experience what happens when the police are called, when the Klan is called, when faces are reddened, when purses or ropes or guns are clutched, when they cross the street away from us, or cross the street toward us clutching their police badges, or their badges of white masculinity.

It is terrifying to produce so much unwanted and unwarranted fear. And then we are harmed. And then we are killed. And then our killers claim self-defense. And then our killers cast us-the unarmed ones, the dead ones-as the aggressors, as Gregory McMichael cast Arbery in the police report, justifying his son pulling the trigger; as George Zimmerman's lawyers cast Trayvon Martin in a strikingly similar case.

If I was chased by armed white men on an afternoon jog, then I would have thought they were trying to lynch me. I might not have run past their pickup truck, especially if they had been pursuing me for some time, especially if one of them was standing outside the car holding a gun. I would have thought he had gotten out of the car to shoot me. I would have feared that if I ran past the car, he'd shoot me in the back. I would have felt the need to disarm him to save my life.

But then again, armed white men have fashioned a racist existence wherein I'm unable to stand my ground against their violence. When white men murder men like me, they call it self-defense. And they are believed. When men like me defend ourselves against violent white men, they call us the aggressors. And they are believed.

Self-defense, like the Second Amendment, like stand-your-ground laws, has been colonized by white men. These rights are not for black women such as Marissa Alexander or Catina Curley, nor for white women such as Francine Hughes or Jennifer Schlecht, who defend themselves against domestic abusers. They are not for Latinos fleeing state-sponsored xenophobia, Native warriors fighting off white invaders, or Asians warding off coronavirus hate. They are not for Muslims or Jews defending themselves against crusading neo-Nazis. The human instinct to defend one's right to life is considered divinely human in white men, and bestial in the rest of us. When I defend myself as a human, I am not seen as human. I am seen as a beast.

Arbery did not just die. His version of the events died with him. His ability to defend his right to live died with him.

But there are black men who have survived the terror of being wrongly suspected. There are black men who know what it feels like to be avoided like we are beasts, or to be "literally hunted" like we are beasts, to use the words of LeBron James. There are black men who know what it feels like to fear the fear.

But there are also black men who know what it feels like to have courage: to acknowledge our fears-and all the fears about us-and still muster the strength to do what's right in the face of this pandemic of fear. We can build a different existence for black men-for all feared peoples-as we all run under the moss draping down for Ahmaud Arbery.

We can build an existence wherein when people don't know us, they recognize that they don't know us. An existence wherein people see our tattoos, hair, flash, lyrics as our art. An existence wherein people see us as unarmed when we are unarmed. An existence wherein people see us as armed for self-defense. An existence wherein when people see us speeding recklessly down the road like Sean Reed, they see us in a mental-health crisis. An existence wherein when people see us wearing masks, they see us protecting ourselves and them from infection. An existence wherein when we are not wearing masks, people give us masks to wear out of care.

What I am-a black male-should not matter. Who I am should matter.

We can build an existence wherein the fearful stop fearing me, and terrorizing me with their fear. Wherein they strive to get to know who I am, to get to know Ahmaud Arbery.

Or they don't. They just wave. They just let him run on by.

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Americans don't see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road-they see their fear.

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J. A. Vargas

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My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant (Published 2011)

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A reporter talks about his illegal American dream.

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Each winter (in January or February), the Coretta Scott King Book Awards are given to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values. The committee that selects the awards is part of the American Library Association. The author or illustrator must live in the United States or maintain dual residency/citizenship, and the book must have been published in the preceding year. Check out our list, with the 2022 winners and honor books at the top. And for more excellent picks, try these Award-Winning African American Books.

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Common Sense Media editors help you choose Coretta Scott King Book Award Winners. These award-winning books for kids and young adults show an appreciation of African American culture.

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Teaching Your Child About Black History Month

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Teaching Your Child About Black History Month

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N. Austin

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Teaching Your Child About Black History | Parenting Tips & Advice

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Introduce children to books and stories that reflect cultures and ethnicities and celebrate Black history and cultural diversity all year long.

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Talking About Racism and Violence with Students

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Talking About Racism and Violence with Students

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Colorín Colorado

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What's on This Page

This resource page includes the following topics:

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

Lesson plans

PBS NewsHour Extra / Share My Lesson

See additional lessons related to Social Issues from NewsHour Extra.

Other recommended lesson plans

Video

Communication, conversation, and responding to racism

Multimedia / social media
Kojo For Kids: Jason Reynolds Talks About Racism And The Protests
Best-selling YA author Jason Reynolds has grappled with racism personally and in his writing. The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature also recently co-authored a book for young people on fighting racism: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. Public radio host Kojo Nnamdi, based at WAMU in Washington, DC, asked Jason Reynolds to join this edition of Kojo For Kids to help listenders understand what has led to the tensions we've seen over the last week, and to talk about why racism persists and what we can do to build a less racist society.

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

Kwame Alexander, Jason Reynolds, and Jacqueline Woodson organized a Kit Lit Rally for Black Lives on Rally featured inspiring words, music, and numerous calls to action in support of equity and justice. A list of recommended The Brown Bookshelf. The anti-racist materials has also been compiled as part of the rally.

Understanding the impact of racism and violence on mental health

Tips for talking about violence

Talking about tough topics in the news

See more parent resources on talking race and racism below.

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

Teaching about racism and violence

Resources: Racism and violence
Lesson plans Articles and blogs
Resources: More about race and racism

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

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

Articles and multimedia

Reflecting on perspective
Teaching Tolerance Resources Video
Culturally responsive practice

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

Teaching Tolerance

Edutopia

National Education Association

More recommended resources

Guides and tips

Bilingual resources

Talking about current events

Books for students

Talking about race
Booklists Books for Young People Guidance on Choosing and Using Books
Racial injustice and violence

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

Read more in the following:

Finding diverse books: Mirrors and windows

Books and resources for adults

Race and education

See more titles in this Race and Education booklist from Social Justice Books.

Race and racism
Books
See more in:
Additional resources

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Talking About Racism and Violence: Resources for Educators and Families

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

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Publisher's Weekly, 2020

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Activists across the United States are encouraging book lovers who want to show support for the ongoing protests against police violence to buy books from black-owned and African American-focused bookstores. PW has compiled a list of black-owned stores for readers to shop at. Any of the following stores would surely appreciate the business.

44th and 3rd Bookseller, Atlanta, Ga.

A Different Booklist, Toronto, Ont.

The African American Literature Book Club, online

AfriWare Books, Maywood, Ill.

Amalgam, Philadelphia, Pa.

Ashay by the Bay, Vallejo, Calif.

Atomic City Comics, Philadelphia, Pa.

Babycakes Book Stack, Online

Between the Lines Bookstore, Baton Rouge, La.

Beyond Barcodes Bookstore, Kokomo, Ind.

Black Garnet Books, Minneapolis, Minn.

Black World Books, Killeen, Tex.

Blackstone Bookstore & Cultural Center, Ypsilanti, Mich.

Book Boutique, Atlanta, Ga.

Books and Crannies, Martinsville, Va.

Brian Lair Books, South Bend, Ind.

Brave and Kind Books, Decatur, Ga.

Cafe Con Libros, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Carol's Bookstore, Sacramento, Calif

Cultured Books, St. Petersburg, Fla.

Da Book Joint, Chicago, Ill.

Dare Books, Longwood, Fla.

Detroit Book City, Southfield, Mich.

Enda's Booktique, Duncanville, Tex.

Eso Wan Books, Los Angeles

Eye See Me, University City, Mo.

For Keeps Books, Atlanta, Ga.

Frugal Bookstore, Roxbury, Mass.

Fulton Street Books & Coffee, Tulsa, Ok.

Harambee Books, Alexandria, Va.

Harriett's Bookshop, Philadelphia, Pa.

Hakim's Bookstore, Philadelphia, Pa.

Loyalty Bookstore, Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md.

Lushena Books, Bensenville, Ill.

Mahogany Books, Washington, D.C.

Marcus Books, Oakland, Calif.

Medu Bookstore, Atlanta, Ga.

MeJah Books, Claymont, Del.

Mocha Books, Tulsa, Okla.

Nubian Bookstore, Morrow, Ga.

Olive Tree Books-n-Voices, Springfield, Mass.

Pyramid Art, Books, & Custom Framing, Little Rock, Ark.

Revolution Books, Berkeley, Calif. ( editor's note: Revolutionary Books is "a revolutionary Communist store" that eschews traditional ownership models, and instead is "run and operated collectively by multiple nationalities and genders," and maintains "an important focus and rich collection of books on the history and present day reality of black people in America, on mass incarceration and the police, on novels and literature and other writing about black people in America," according to curator and manager Reiko Redmonde)

Riches in Reading, Maryland City, Md.

Sankofa, Washington, D.C.

Semicolon Bookstore, Chicago, Ill.

Sister's Uptown Bookstore, New York, N.Y.

Sistah Scifi, Online

Smith & Hannon, Cincinnati, Ohio

Solid State Books, Washington, D.C.

Source Booksellers, Detroit, Mich.

Source of Knowledge, Newark, N.J.

The Dock Bookshop, Fort Worth, Tx.

The Black Reserve, Lansdale, Pa.

The Key Bookstore, Hartford, Conn.

The Listening Tree, Decatur, Ga.

The Lit. Bar, Bronx, N.Y.

The Tiny Bookstore, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Turning Page Bookshop, Goose Creek, S.C.

Willa's Books, Kansas City, Mo.

Uncle Bobbie's Books and Cafe, Philadelphia, Penn.

Underground Books, Sacramento, Calif.

Yoruba Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Zawadi Books, Columbus, Ohio
Correction: We have removed some entries from this story of stores we mistakenly believed were black-owned. In addition,this story has been updated with further stores.

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Activists across the United States are encouraging book lovers who want to show support for the ongoing protests against police violence to buy books from black-owned and African American-focused bookstores. PW has compiled a list of black-owned stores for readers to shop at. Any of the following stores would surely appreciate the business.

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Coshandra Dillard, 2019

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McKenzie Adams and Maddie Whitsett should still be here with us today. But after being tormented at their respective schools last year, the two girls, both 9 years old, died by suicide. According to the girls' families, McKenzie was the victim of racist bullying, and Maddie was taunted because she had ADHD.

These two children represent the human faces behind a disturbing study published in JAMA Pediatrics in 2018: Although the overall suicide rate for Black youth is about 42 percent lower than for white youth, that number represents all young people under 17. While Black teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are 50 percent less likely to die by suicide than white teens, the suicide rate for Black children between the ages of 5 and 12 is about twice as high as that of their white peers.

The study, which analyzed data from 2001 through 2015, does not describe reasons for the disparity, but it points to the need for culturally informed interventions. In a 2015 study published in JAMA Pediatrics, which analyzed data from 1993 through 2012, researchers came to a troubling conclusion: Because there was no significant change in the overall suicide rate among youth, the fact that the suicide rate had decreased among white children but increased among Black children had been obscured.

While youth advocates note that these statistics are disturbing, they welcome the much-needed and long-overdue conversation about the well-being of Black children. This awareness of suicidality among Black youth is why the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) established an emergency Taskforce on Black Youth Suicide and Mental Health in April 2019. It aims to determine the reasons for the significant increase in suicide, recommend ways to improve Black children's access to mental health care and create solutions to better protect and support them.

Black people, including youth, are less likely to receive adequate care for mental health issues for a number of reasons: disparities in access to care, stigma about mental illness and lack of culturally competent mental health practitioners. According to a study published in the International Journal of Health Services, Black children are about half as likely as white children to get mental health treatment. As the CBC task force, mental health experts and policy makers mull over ideas to address this gap, it's also crucial that schools devote significant attention and space to mental health literacy and provide mental health services in the form of counselors and psychologists.

Schools Must Fill the Gap

Because the racial disparities in mental health access and treatment affect children, schools necessarily play a major role in helping to mitigate those disparities. This inequity "perfectly underscores schools as the de facto providers of mental health services to students," says Charles Barrett, a school psychologist and multicultural committee chair for the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). "Because systemic issues related to race and poverty disproportionately affect Black children and families, schools, due to having access to large numbers of children, are a practical way to meet a significant need."

Advocates agree that school administrators and educators must be part of this work. School faculty and staff are likely to notice signs and symptoms that something is amiss and refer students to the help they need. But schools often fail in this effort when it comes to Black students-and sometimes cause even more harm.

When Black students exhibit negative behaviors or become withdrawn, educators often label them as problems and subject them to reactionary, zero-tolerance policies and other practices that disproportionately affect Black students but don't address the root causes of such behavior.

This harm manifests in a number of ways: adopting curriculum that isn't culturally responsive, lowering academic expectations, tracking Black students into remedial or special education classes and seeing Black youth as older and less innocent than their white peers-a bias known as adultification.

"Kids who don't feel safe, engaged or supported cannot show up in schools and demonstrate what they know and have learned," says David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black LGBTQ and same-gender-loving communities. "In particular, those who have been terrorized by [educators'] indifference and our ignorance-and the hate that is often birthed from that-suffer and are suffocated."

We see this suffering play out regularly in news reports of egregious assaults on Black children's dignity at school: A Black student is humiliated when made to clean feces off a bathroom wall; a teacher rips the braids from a Black girl's head; groups of Black kids are forced to act as enslaved people while their white classmates pretend to trade them as property; Black students are turned away from school because they have dreadlocks or some other "unacceptable" hairstyle.

These stressors are serious. And sometimes they rob children of their lives, especially if they're compounded by underlying mental health issues.

"I'm acknowledging that the world often doesn't allow Black people to simply be," Johns says. "But it's incredibly important for parents, family members and educators to protect the ability for our babies just to be babies-to laugh, to make mistakes, to color outside of the lines, to create things with blocks that don't make sense to those of us who have forgotten how to dream. Too often we snatch them from Black kids in ways that are unfair and undeserved."

Johns leads a policy committee for a working group commissioned by the CBC's task force. He leverages his experience as a former kindergarten and third-grade teacher into policy work and activism. He spent a decade crafting federal policy, from serving as a congressional fellow to directing the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans under President Barack Obama. His work has focused on education and health care issues as they relate to children and families.

In his postgraduate work at Teachers College, Columbia University, Johns describes how schools themselves are sources of trauma for kids who are not white, cisgender or heterosexual.

Too often, he says, academic researchers and policymakers approach conversations about issues Black youth face with a deficit mindset-treating Black students, their families and communities as perpetually problem-ridden despite the fact that these conditions were forced on them. "We need to invert that. Black feminists a long time ago talked about the reality that there are signs, symbols and systems that work to make white privilege real and work to preserve it and often make it invisible," Johns emphasizes.

Johns notes that there is urgency in the establishment of the CBC task force, which is expected to produce a report with recommendations by the end of the year.

"The emergency in this context also signals that it's not designed to be permanent," he explains. "This isn't going to be a standing caucus. We are working through the first quarter of next year to accomplish as much as we can and to plant seeds that will continue to bloom."

"We're Still Healing"

Gabriel Bryant, coordinator for Engaging Males of Color, a Philadelphia youth initiative, sees firsthand how under- or undiagnosed mental health issues can add to the challenges Black students might have at school.

"Oftentimes, there are added stressors for young people when they don't feel that they have an outlet with which to cope, with which to manage the grief, the loss, the anger, the sadness," Bryant says. "And what happens is that it's compounded when that young person recognizes that they also have just a whole host of social determinants to navigate. That can be overwhelming."

He argues that these added stressors-the causes of that grief, loss, anger and sadness-must be addressed before there can be real change. Such stressors include the effects of poverty, environmental issues, living in a food desert and having disabilities.

The growing awareness of mental health concerns for Black children doesn't mean something new is happening. Educators and mental health advocates note that perhaps the increase in Black youth suicidality may be coming to light now because previously there wasn't a collection of such data specific to Black children.

"And in particular," David Johns points out, "we have a lot of work to do to overcome the stigma that's still associated with mental health, which is still seen in too many communities as a 'white people thing.'"

Charles Barrett encourages school psychologists and school counselors to help Black families understand how depression and anxiety look in children, which may be different from adults.

"Relatedly, school-based mental health professionals need to assist Black families with accessing culturally responsive community-based resources-for example, counseling and therapy," Barrett says. "And although it's improving, school-based mental health professionals can also work with Black families to reduce the stigma that is associated with mental health in the Black community."

Trust has to be built, though.

"Whenever possible-and it's not always feasible-I think identifying other Black providers for families could be very helpful," Barrett says. "I think sometimes I've shared the same message that they've heard from others, and it's received better from someone who looks like you."

Another aspect of that lack of trust has to do with Black communities' historical and ongoing struggles for equal rights. On top of that, some communities must also tackle issues that are exacerbated by these inequities, such as violence, poverty and substance abuse. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, an associate professor of English education with Teachers College, Columbia University, says Black people are often left out of critical conversations about these problems that plague families of any race.

"As Black people, we're still healing," she says. "We've been ignored for so long. The issues that have been in other communities-let's say issues of abuse or incest or whatever-always seems to get public media attention when it happens to white families. Some of these same ills have always been happening in our community and probably more so because of the vestiges of enslavement and captivity in this country."

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McKenzie Adams and Maddie Whitsett should still be here with us today. But after being tormented at their respective schools last year, the two girls, both 9 years old, died by suicide. According to the girls' families, McKenzie was the victim of racist bullying, and Maddie was taunted because she had ADHD.

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 "What Does It Mean to Be Young, Black, and Female in America?"

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 "What Does It Mean to Be Young, Black, and Female in America?"

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The new question-of-the-week is:
How should schools and districts respond to discipline disparities affecting black girls?
Part One of this special series guest-edited by Dr. Terri N. Watson examined the voices and perspectives of black girls. Dr. Watson and Yolanda Tomlin contributed responses in that first post. Dr. Watson, along with Drs. Yolanda Sealey- Ruiz and Venus Evans-Winters, also participated in a 10-minute conversation on my BAM! Radio Show about this topic.

Part Two featured practices schools and districts have and/or should implement to improve the schooling experiences of black girls. Gholdy Muhammad, Shannon R. Waite, Marquitta T. Speller, and Valerie Kinloch shared their commentaries.
The third and final part of this series will spotlight the work of education researchers and social-justice activists to improve the schooling experiences of black girls: Response From Venus E. Evans-Winters Venus E. Evans-Winters is an associate professor of education and faculty affiliate in Women & Gender Studies, African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Illinois State University: Black Girls & Education Research: When Racialized Gender Bias and Resistance Collide
Across the U.S., black school-age girls are twice as likely to be suspended from school as white girls, and we know that girls' are not being pushed out of school for more frequent or serious misbehavior. Data reveal that most black girls are being singled out and pushed out for subjective or minor offenses (e.g., insubordination or "talking back," dress-code violations, tardiness, etc.). Education researchers are just now beginning to understand the complexity of the black girl push-out problem, teacher bias, and how zero-tolerance policies affect black girls' overall educational development and socio-emotional health.

In my own research, I seek to better understand black girls' schooling experiences and the adversities that they may endure inside and outside of schools. Zero-tolerance policies in schools, policing in schools, and racially segregated schooling leave many black girls vulnerable to, or at higher-risk of, racial and gender harassment at the hands of adults in schools. Harsh discipline policies coupled with teacher bias place undue stress on black girls. Sadly, black girl students from working-class families, and/or black girls with disabilities, those who identify with the LGBTQ community, or nongender confirming youths are more likely to be negatively impacted by racialized gender bias in schools.

Studying black girls' experiences in families, communities, and schools for nearly 20 years, I still find it interesting that education for most black girls serves as both a protective factor and risk factor. Protective factors can be defined as (1) characteristics or conditions present in the individual, family, community, or in larger society that can improve a girl's health and well-being; or (2) supports that can help alleviate or mediate negative outcomes. Alternatively, risk factors are conditions present at the individual, family, community, or societal level that may cause undesirable life outcomes and threaten a girl's health and well-being.

Oddly enough, a positive educational experience and resistance to oppression in school can actually be a protective factor for some black girls! From an education research perspective, teacher bias and black girls' resistance strategies and agency deserve to be explored side by side. Nevertheless, discipline disparities in schools not only threaten black girls' academic achievement but also their socio-emotional health. For example, segregation from the curriculum and one's peers can lead to social isolation, contribute to peer-to-peer bullying and teacher-to-student bullying. Both positive peer relationships and academic rigor are very important to black girls' development.

Furthermore, education research is beginning to reveal the long-term consequences of discipline disparities in schools. Education researchers and mental-health practitioners, like myself, witness firsthand in our data and in our offices the strong relationship between adult poverty, mental-health issues, and adult criminalization amongst black women marginalized from school. Stated differently, black girls' schooling experiences do shape positively and negatively their social, economic, and health outcomes. Our school environments are simultaneously reproducing, contributing to, and reinforcing currently existing racial and gender disparities in our nation.

Drawing from current research in education and related social-science fields, we can make the following recommendations for policy and practice:

Professional development for school staff, including administrators, teachers, and support staff, that centers on the unique learning and socio-emotional needs of black girls.

Education and curriculum that acknowledge and celebrate the achievements and forms of resistance that black girls and women utilized to fight against racial and gender oppression in society.

Culturally affirming education that decenters whiteness and encourages all students to explore the histories and traditions of black Americans and Africa in the U.S. and abroad.

Recruit and retain more black women and men teachers, and other teachers of color, who are highly skilled and knowledgeable about the diverse cultural needs of black students and other students of color.

Facilitate opportunities in school environments for black girls to develop their individual and collective leadership skills. Allow opportunities for girls (and boys) to foster positive peer relationships.

Teachers should read black girls' and women's stories; visit and interact within black girls' and women's cultural spaces; and study the ideas of black scholars (not simply white diversity experts), so that they can foster authentic interactions and relationships with their students and students' families.

Put in place resources that serve to cultivate the whole child-mental health, physical and nutritional, financial education, etc.

Advocate for more research and funding that supports initiatives to engage black girls in meaningful educational research that serves to explore and solve problems in their families, schools, and communities.

Explore with black girls alternative forms of expression to showcase their ways of knowing, like spoken word, poetry, art, drum, story writing, dance, theater, etc.

Stop criminalizing black girls' bodies, ways of dress, language, hair, nails, and words!

Response From Zakiyah Ansari
Zakiyah Ansari is the advocacy director of the New York State Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), the leading statewide organization that has been fighting for educational justice in New York state. Zakiyah is the mother of eight children and grandparent of three. Zakiyah has dedicated almost 20 years of her life to the fight for educational justice and ending the oppression of black and brown communities: To Honor Black Girl Joy, We Organize for Education Justice
Like many parents, my journey as an education justice advocate began with a focus on raising my own children and ensuring they each had the best education possible. I joined the Parent Teacher Association at their school in the 2000s, and that connected me with other parents. Through the meetings I regularly attended, I heard about many different inequities affecting our children. Our school doesn't have art or music; we need guidance counselors; we need books; the safety agents treat our kids like crap. These shared experiences ignited my passion for education justice for all students and a deep commitment to ensure justice specifically for black and brown children. Education justice work has been an almost 20 year learning journey for me, and it includes a comprehensive set of policies that would support and advance black and brown children such as equitable funding, culturally responsive pedagogy, and reducing suspensions and promoting restorative alternatives.

While my children have never been suspended, I've heard hundreds of stories in New York and across the country of both the harshness and disparities of school suspensions of students who attend public and charter schools. With the explosion of privately run but publicly funded charters that "sweat the small stuff," we have seen a militaristic culture in many of those schools, with black students as young as 5 years old suspended upwards of 30 times often with little to no accountability. There is no reason that 12-year-old black girls laughing and giggling at lunchtime should result in the strip search of their bodies. There is something terribly wrong when a school is suspicious that Black girl joy must mean they are on drugs. If you care about children and believe their educational experience should be a liberating one, then we must do something to change the status quo.

We also need equitable funding. Public schools don't often have the funds needed to provide the very things that keep children engaged-like art, music, sports, and technology, a culturally rich curriculum, not to mention caring educators who reflect the students. When we starve schools of funding and resources we set them up for failure. Coupled with implicit bias and the downright racist policy of zero tolerance, it's a recipe for disaster.

Let's get this out of the way. Is there ever a time a student should be suspended? Yes. But suspensions don't help the students learn or allow the teachers to teach them. At the end of the day, zero tolerance sends a message that children specifically black and brown can't make mistakes. It leaves no room for alternative ways of discipline, and as we know from the research, zero tolerance funnels black and brown children into the school to prison pipeline.

A big part of our work at the Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) is to provide relief from the educational racism that exists and begin to address and heal the trauma experienced by our children. At AQE, we have real solutions created by those most impacted with strong allies. In collaboration with the youth organization, Urban Youth Collaborative, we are committed to getting the Safe and Supportive Schools Bill passed this year.

The Safe and Supportive Schools Bill in New York is designed to decisively reduce suspensions in the hopes that instead of using suspension as the quick fix for wrongdoing, schools will become equipped to identify the root problem and help students to overcome it, rather than limiting students' education and later opportunities while ignoring the real problem. We also encourage schools to use a restorative-justice framework, a whole school approach that will consider students and families' input and will require teachers and staff to be trained. We must call out all state-sanctioned violence perpetrated on our black and brown girls and boys: disparities in suspensions, exclusionary curriculum, and the systemic underfunding of our public schools.

It is the mother in me that pushes me to protect all of our children, but it should be the compassion in all of us that leads us to fight for justice. We need all hands on deck-educators, parents, students-to build this movement together. I believe in the power of humanity, and while we wait for everyone else to catch up with ending the school to prison pipeline, we gonna keep organizing. Education Justice is Racial Justice!

Response From Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz is an associate professor of English education at Teachers College, Columbia University (TC). She is the founder of the Racial Literacy Project at TC: Doing Self-Work & Doing Right by Black Girls
Before deeply investigating the disparities in their suspension data, school districts must first acknowledge and affirm the humanity of black girls. They must understand how their practice of disproportionately suspending them is an infringement on their humanity. Black girls deserve to be seen for their complexity and should not have certain aspects of their behavior stereotyped as defiant and deviant. Stereotypes flatten their experiences.

Districts must move away from hackneyed stereotypes and deficit models when describing the needs, desires, and areas for growth of black girls. To move away from this, an acceptance of and appreciation for their unique attributes connected to their ethnicity, cultural and familial practices, language diversity, social class, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other positionalities must be considered when discussing black girls and planning for their academic, emotional, and social success. Educators must also do deep self-work around their biases.

When I founded the Racial Literacy Roundtables 10 years ago, it was for the purpose of creating a space to talk about race. Psychologist Ken Hardy offers an eight-step model of working with youths, like black girls, who have and continue to experience wounds from racism. The steps to his model are: Affirmation and Acknowledgement, Create Space for Race, Racial Storytelling, Validation, The Process of Naming, Externalizing Devaluation, Counteract Devaluation, and Rechanneling Rage. It was clear to me, when the first group of black high school girls facilitated a roundtable on Dec. 9, 2015, at Teachers College, two months after a black girl at Spring Valley High School in South Carolina was viciously body-slammed and dragged across a classroom floor by a white male school security guard, that the young women were embodying Hardy's framework. These four young women asked all of us: What does it mean to be young, black, and female in America? They held space with over 100 participants in the community to share their stories, validate their worth, and suggest to the teachers, clinicians, parents, and all others in the room what must be done to properly support the social, emotional, and academic success of black girls. They affirmed that we need to listen to black girls more. That next year, I dedicated the roundtable series to black girls speaking their truths.

Numerous researchers continue to provide insight into the discipline disparities affecting black girls: Kimberle Crenshaw, Monique Lane, Bettina Love, Monique Morris, Terri Watson, and Venus Evans-Winters are a few scholars whose work challenges the overdisciplining and undereducating of black girls. They have shed light on the frequency and severity of disciplinary interventions for black girls because they are perceived to be loud and unmanageable. These beliefs give teachers and school officials permission to apply harsh discipline that is intended to control the movement of black girls' bodies, as was witnessed in the 2015 case of a Milwaukee teacher who cut off the braid of a 1st grader in front of the class because she was playing with the beads in her hair [1]. In the end, the 1st grader was removed from the class, and the teacher only received a $75 fine for disorderly conduct.

The (mis)reading of black girls' bodies and movements leads to harsh disciplinary actions and, often, suspensions. For school personnel to be imaginative in new ways to relate to black girls, they must engage in the archeology of the self-an excavation to discover where negative feelings about black girls live within them. Before they engage in sanctions and damaging practices against black girls, they must first look within.

We live in a racist society. At the federal and national levels, we are aware of the mistreatment black girls endure in their educational settings. The second Obama administration was moving ahead in powerful ways toward funded initiatives that responded to this reality, but we have once again regressed to Draconian zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately affect black girls. We all must call for a commitment from school districts to invest in eliminating barriers to black girls' academic and social success. For one, districts that enroll a large number of black girls need robust professional development for their teachers and staff that will lead to meaningful change and support of black girls. In addition, districts need to be more deliberate in creating a college-going culture for their black female students. State accountability measures (for example, a possible My Sister's Keeper initiative) that are modeled after the national My Brother's Keeper initiative are a good and just place to start.

[1] See: Teacher Cuts off Girl's Braid in Front of Class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Aq1WeS6VCs

Hardy, K.V. (2013). Healing the hidden wounds of racial trauma. Journal of Reclaiming Children and Youth, 22(1), pp. 24-28, spring.

Thank you to Venus, Zakiyah, and Yolanda for their contributions to this third-and-final post in the series. And thanks again to Dr. Terri N. Watson guest-editing all three columns!

Look for the next question-of-the-week in a few days.

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Response: "What Does It Mean to Be Young, Black, and Female in America?" (Opinion)

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The new question-of-the-week is: How should schools and districts respond to discipline disparities affecting black girls? Part One of this special series guest-edited by Dr. Terri N. Watson examined the voices and perspectives of black girls. Dr. Watson and Yolanda Tomlin contributed responses in that first post. Dr. Watson, along with Drs.

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Glenn Singleton

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Foreword by Gloria Ladson-Billings

1. Breaking the Silence: Ushering in Courageous Conversation About Race

Part I. Passion: An Essential Characteristic of Racial Equity Leadership

2. What's So Courageous About This Conversation?

4. Agreeing to Talk About Race

Part II. Practice: The Foundation of Racial Equity Leadership

5. The First Condition: Getting Personal Right Here and Right Now

6. The Second Condition: Keeping the Spotlight on Race

7. The Third Condition: Engaging Multiple Racial Perspectives

8. The Fourth Condition: Keeping Us All at the Table

9. The Fifth Condition: What Do You Mean By "Race"?

10. The Sixth Condition: Let's Talk About Whiteness

Part III. Persistence: The Key to Racial Equity Leadership

11. How Racial Equity Leaders Eliminate Systemic Racial Disparities

12. Exploring a Systemic Framework for Achieving Equity in Schools

13. Courageous Conversation as a Strategy for Achieving Equity in Schools

References and Selected Bibliography

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Promote cultural responsiveness with this updated edition of the highly acclaimed bestseller that explains the need for candid, courageous conversations about race so that educators may understand why the achievement gap in education exists and learn how they can develop a curriculum that promotes true educational equity and excellence.

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Project READY: Reimagining Equity & Access for Diverse Youth

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Project READY: Reimagining Equity & Access for Diverse Youth

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University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science

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What is Project READY?

Project READY is a three-year program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create professional development for school librarians and other educators focused on racial equity and culturally sustaining pedagogy.

Over the 2017-2018 school year, Project READY staff worked with teams of school librarians, literacy coaches, and classroom teachers in Wake County, North Carolina to implement the professional development curriculum. In 2018, we took what we learned from the face-to-face curriculum and began work on this online version. For more information about the full project, visit projectready.web.unc.edu.

Why is this curriculum important?

For librarians in the United States - the majority of whom are middle-aged, white, English-speaking females (American Library Association, 2012) - the recent and rapid demographic changes in youth populations have left many of them "struggling to connect with a completely new set of learners, with cultural backgrounds distinctly different from each other and from their teachers" (Mestre, 2010). New research has found that while youth services librarians recognize the need for cultural knowledge and awareness in developing effective instruction and services for BIYOC (Black, Indigenous, and Youth of Color), they also feel they lack the knowledge and experience necessary to enact such practice (Hughes-Hassell & Stivers, 2015). As a result, many youth of color "feel like outsiders in library spaces" (Kumasi, 2012),compounding the extensively documented challenges and inequities BIYOC face in school in general - inequities that to be redressed require comprehensive changes in practice in classrooms and libraries. This curriculum also responds to recent guidance from national professional organizations in the library field. The emphasis on teaching and collaboration in the most recent set of AASL national professional standards for school librarians means that they are now expected to take a direct role in the instruction of students to an unprecedented degree (American Association of School Librarians, 2017). The most recent versions of professional competencies standards for library staff serving children and teens from ALSC and YALSA reflect a greater emphasis on inclusion, teaching and learning, and relationship development compared to earlier versions (Association for Library Service to Children, 2015; Young Adult Library Services Association, 2017).

Who should work through the Project READY curriculum?

The Project READY curriculum is designed to support school and public youth services librarians committed to working toward racial equity both personally and professionally. While the curriculum has been developed with librarians in mind, it may also be useful for teachers and other school staff members, library or school administrators, instructors in library science programs, or anyone else interested in improving their own understanding of racial equity issues. Parts One (Foundations) and Three (Continuing the Journey) of this curriculum are relevant to a broad audience, while Part Two (Transforming Practice) is focused specifically on issues related to libraries and education.

How is the curriculum organized?

The curriculum is organized into three sequential sections. The first section (Foundations) focuses on basic concepts and issues that are fundamental to understanding race and racism and their impact on library services. The second section (Transforming Practice) explores how these foundational concepts relate to and can be applied in library environments. Finally, the third section (Continuing the Journey) explores how you can sustain racial equity work and grow personally and professionally in this area after completing this curriculum.

Why does the curriculum include so many foundational modules?

Imagine that one day, you walk into your bathroom to find two inches of standing water. What would you do? You may call an expert, or spend time trying to understand the problem by tracing the source of the water, or consult the Internet for advice. You may try to recall any recent activities that could have caused the problem. Unless you happen to be a plumber, though, your first reaction would probably not be to grab your tools and start taking apart the bathtub - attempting to fix this problem by yourself without learning more about it first may lead to more damage in the long run.

Race and racism are complex topics with long histories. Yet, when we first become aware of racial inequity, our first reaction is often to grab our tools and take apart the bathtub: to jump straight from awareness of a problem to trying out potential solutions.

When we approach institutional racism with this shortcut approach, often the result is that we end up doing more harm than good. Even worse, when we use a trial-and-error approach in our work with youth of color and Indigenous youth, they disproportionately bear the weight of our mistakes. Three related "shortcut" approaches to addressing racism are also ultimately unhelpful or harmful:

dealing with the immediate problem (e.g., using a towel to soak up the water in the floor) without considering its source.

ignoring the problem entirely (closing the bathroom door) and hoping it will go away on its own.

getting defensive or angry ("I didn't do anything to cause the leak!") and refusing to think further about it.

To truly make progress toward racial equity, something more than a shortcut solution is required. We view the process of racial equity work not as a straight line, but as an iterative cycle:

We have designed the Project READY curriculum around this cyclical model. Specifically, in the context of racial equity work, this curriculum will require you to:

Work to understand the problem's foundations (Modules 2 - 6): Institutional racism has a long, complex history in the United States. Understanding this history is critical to understanding our present circumstances. The first modules in the Project READY curriculum provide an overview of the history of race and racism, as well as current and past definitions of race and racism and how these issues manifest in systems and institutions today as well as how they impact BIYOC.

Work to understand your own relationship to the problem and how the problem relates to your own context/community (Modules 7 - 16b): Your own racial identity and life experiences will impact your racial equity work. It is critical that all people engaged in racial equity work understand their own positions in the systems and institutions that perpetuate racism, and how their own identities and cultures shape the ways they view others. White people, in particular, may never have spent much time exploring their own racial identities and cultures, and this curriculum has been designed to encourage that exploration. Similarly, racism manifests differently in different contexts. Inequities encountered by students and staff in an urban elementary school library may be distinct from inequities encountered by teens in a rural public library. Accordingly, strategies to address those inequities must be grounded in a thorough understanding of one's own context and community.

Work to understand what has already been tried to address the problem (Modules 17 - 20): For as long as racial inequities have existed, there have been people trying, with varying levels of success, to correct them. Historically, much of these efforts have been led by racially marginalized people themselves, and communities of color and Indigenous communities already have a wealth of knowledge about racial equity work. Connecting with those communities and learning from and with them is the best way to gain an understanding of specific strategies that may be successful within a local context. Other ways to gain knowledge about strategies that have already been found to be successful or unsuccessful include reading research from a range of disciplines, connecting with like-minded colleagues or other professionals, and speaking directly to the children and teens you serve.

Consider multiple options for how to address the problem within your own context (Module 21): Complex problems like racial inequity resist simple solutions. After taking the time to understand race and racism and your own role within systems of inequity, you can begin to think about strategies to address this issue within your own local context. Each strategy should be carefully evaluated before implementation, with a focus on its potential impacts - positive and negative - on the communities you serve. People of color and Indigenous people should be involved in this brainstorming and evaluation process.

Implement one or more strategies to address the problem (Modules 21 - 24b): Only after steps 1-4 have been explored will you be prepared to begin effectively implementing changes to your professional practice. Just as with earlier steps, the most successful implementations will involve working alongside people of color and Indigenous people - working with instead of working for.

Evaluate whether the strategy has successfully addressed the problem (Modules 21 - 24b): Of course, racial equity work must be undertaken for the long haul, and no single strategy will "fix" structural racism. With that said, all strategies we use in the classroom or library to try to improve our practice should be assessed in terms of their impact on the youth we serve.

Share your experiences with others working to address the same problem (Modules 25 - 27): There is a large and growing community of librarians and educators who have also undertaken the racial equity journey. Some will be ahead of you (in the sense that they have been working through iterations of this model for longer than you have), and some will be behind. All can benefit from an open exchange of knowledge about what is working, or not working, for other people. Becoming part of a community of people working toward racial equity can sustain and inspire your own journey, especially when setbacks occur. This community does not need to be limited by geography or discipline; digital learning environments have made it possible to share with and learn from a wider variety of people than ever before.

As we mentioned above, this cycle is iterative. As communities, social issues, organizations, and your own personal knowledge evolve, you will need to repeat this cycle of learning, action, evaluation, and sharing. And although we have presented this framework as a neat circle, you may also find that you need to jump "backward" at times, for example by going back to foundational topics when you are struggling to implement a particular strategy.

How should I work through this curriculum?

The curriculum is self-paced and is presented in a series of self-contained modules. We recommend that you start with Module 1 and work your way sequentially through all modules, especially if you are new to racial equity work. If you already have a strong grounding in foundational topics related to race and racism (for example, if you have taken a multi-day racial equity training course or a graduate-level diversity course), you may choose to skip some of the foundational modules. However, we would still encourage you to skim through all modules, since later modules build on earlier ones and you may find new information within a familiar topic.

Should I work through the modules alone?

We have designed the curriculum so that it can be used by individuals or small groups. Working through the modules within a Professional Learning Team could be an excellent way to extend your own learning through interaction and discussion with others and to provide a measure of accountability. However, the modules will still be effective for individual learning, and we have integrated opportunities to connect with others and discuss the module content at several points within the curriculum.

Can I use this curriculum to facilitate professional development sessions for my entire school/school district/library system?

Facilitating large-group racial equity trainings requires a great deal of expertise. Learning about race and racism can be difficult and can challenge long-held worldviews; effective trainers must be knowledgeable about not only foundational concepts and theories and their applications but also theories of adult learning, conflict management, and critical pedagogy. In addition, we have found that racial equity training is most effective for people who already recognize that racism is a problem and are ready and willing to change their own views and practices to help address it. When such trainings are mandated for entire staffs, resistance among even a few individuals can easily derail critical conversations among the entire group. For these reasons, we do not recommend that these modules be used to facilitate large-group trainings in most settings.

What materials will I need to work through the curriculum?

All modules will require a computer, laptop, or tablet with internet access. You will also need to download or print a copy of the Project READY journal [PDF] and keep a pen or pencil handy as you work through each module. This journal will provide you with a space to take notes, respond to prompts, and plan for action as you work through the curriculum. Each module will indicate when you should make an entry in the journal.

How long will it take to work through the entire curriculum?

It is difficult to estimate a total timespan for the entire curriculum. Many modules contain recommended action items that may take you days or even weeks to complete. You may find it useful to spend several days reflecting between modules, or, if you are working with a group, you may structure your progress through the curriculum according to your group's meeting schedule. We do recommend that you take your time with this content, and use the provided additional resources in each section as necessary to reinforce your understanding of challenging topics before moving on.

Can I reproduce the materials on this website?

All of the original text and images on this website are licensed for reuse with attribution under Creative Commons. [ CC BY-NC-SA 4.0]. Under this license, you are free to:

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Attribution - You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

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No additional restrictions - You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Embedded or cited content (for example, embedded YouTube videos) should be used and shared according to the original copyright holder's guidelines.
References

American Association of School Librarians (2017). AASL national standards framework for learners. Chicago, IL: American Library Association.

American Library Association (2012). Diversity Counts 2012 tables. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/offices/sites/ala.org.offices/files/content/diversity/diversitycounts/diversitycountstables2012.pdf.

Association for Library Services to Children (2015). Competencies for librarians serving children in public libraries. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/alsc/edcareeers/alsccorecomps.

Hughes-Hassell, S. and Stivers, J. (2015). Examining youth services librarians' perceptions of cultural knowledge as an integral part of their professional practice. School Libraries Worldwide, 21(1), 121136.

Kumasi, K. (2012). Roses in the concrete: A critical race perspective on urban youth and school libraries. Knowledge Quest, 40(4): 32-37, p. 36.

Mestre, L. S. (2010). Culturally responsive instruction for teacher-librarians. Teacher Librarian, 36(3), 8-12, p. 9.

Young Adult Library Services Association (2017). Teen services competencies for library staff. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/yalsa/sites/ala.org.yalsa/files/content/TEEN%20SERVICES%20COMPETENCIES_Chart.pdf.

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What is Project READY? Project READY is a three-year program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create professional development for school librarians and other educators focused on racial equity and culturally sustaining pedagogy.

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Stamborski, Zimmermann, & Gregory, 2020

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Robin DiAngelo

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In this "vital, necessary, and beautiful book" (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and "allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people' (Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.

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In this "vital, necessary, and beautiful book" (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and "allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to 'bad people' (Claudia Rankine).

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How Indigenous, Black and POC Educators Envision a Better School Experience

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How Indigenous, Black and POC Educators Envision a Better School Experience

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Newhouse, 2020

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When organizing the series, Ebarvia and Parker asked contributors to pick a date and left the choice of what to write about open. During a month when the U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 100,000 , with disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities, and when the and harassment of Black men and women dominated non-COVID news, they said their project had to be able to hold both pain and joy. In a post addressed directly to Black joy , second-grade teacher Aeriale N. Johnson pointed to how this duality has long been necessary for marginalized communities:

"That a people could rail againstthe horrors of chattel slaveryfor centuries,spend every moment since emancipationfighting for our humanityand have you remain,unspeakable,in our heartsis nothing short of a miraculous

gift from the ancestors."

And it's the joy that motivates the cofounders of #31DaysIBPOC. Parker said what she loves most about the posts, along with the retweets and comments they generate, is the chance to celebrate IBPOC educators. "We've always known they're excellent," she said. "It's nice that other people can know that, too."

With that recognition, Parker and Ebarvia hope the series will challenge teachers to reflect and to adopt anti-racist and culturally responsive practices . They also hope education leaders will ask families what they need from education during the pandemic and how their assets can be leveraged to transform schools. "Especially at this time, I think that there is a need to recenter education on a ethos of community and collectivism and organizing around those principles that has not traditionally been the mode of operation of most American schools which function on individualism and competition," said Ebarvia.

"You have to show people what it could look like to be different," said Parker. "[#31DaysIBPOC] is what is created just by asking people. And so, more people can do this."

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How Indigenous, Black and POC Educators Envision a Better School Experience - MindShift

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When organizing the series, Ebarvia and Parker asked contributors to pick a date and left the choice of what to write about open. During a month when the U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 100,000 , with disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities, and when the and harassment of Black men and women dominated non-COVID news, they said their project had to be able to hold both pain and joy.

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Worth the Risk: Towards Decentring Whiteness in English Language Teaching

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Worth the Risk: Towards Decentring Whiteness in English Language Teaching

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Gerald, 2020

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Keywords: Whiteness, Racism, White Supremacy, White Fragility, Altruistic Shield, English Language Teaching

Abstract

The field of English language teaching (ELT) has long centred whiteness without acknowledging as much. Practitioners accept the field's racial disparities under the guise of the search for profit, yet hegemonic whiteness controls our institutions, our curricula, and our pedagogy unless we, as members of this field, consciously seek to counteract its influence. White ELT professionals are incentivized to maintain the racial status quo and many exhibit fierce resistance when efforts are made to discuss white supremacy in English teaching. In this article, I demonstrate how ELT frames whiteness as both a prize and a goal, explain the deleterious impact whiteness has on racialized students and teachers, argue for the necessity of decentring whiteness, and provide suggestions for ways we can push our field towards a future where whiteness no longer reigns supreme.

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Worth the Risk: Towards Decentring Whiteness in English Language Teaching

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Keywords: Whiteness, Racism, White Supremacy, White Fragility, Altruistic Shield, English Language Teaching The field of English language teaching (ELT) has long centred whiteness without acknowledging as much. Practitioners accept the field's racial disparities under the guise of the search for profit, yet hegemonic whiteness controls our institutions, our curricula, and our pedagogy unless we, as members of this field, consciously seek to counteract its influence.

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Dana Williams

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Colorín Colorado

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This resource collection provides a number of tools for addressing bullying and bias, as well as for exploring bigger topics in the classroom. Links to related lesson plans and booklists are included below.

Bullying: Resource Collection

Bias: Resource Collection

Resources from Anti-Defamation League

Empathy: Resource Collection

Immigration Topics

Welcoming Immigrant Students

Related headlines

Immigration: Classroom Resources

Related topics: Lesson plans, booklists and more

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How to Address Bias and Bullying: Resources for Schools

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This resource collection provides a number of tools for addressing bullying and bias, as well as for exploring bigger topics in the classroom. Links to related lesson plans and booklists are included below. Related headlines

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Teaching Tolerance

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Vocabulary

charged [chahrjd] ( adj) filled with excitement, tension or emotion

tone [tohn] ( noun) the general attitude communicated in a piece of writing

bias [ bahy-uh s] ( noun) prejudice; favoring one person or point of view more than others

point of view [point uhv vyoo] ( noun) a particular way of considering a matter; the position from which an event or topic is observed

implicit [im- plis-it] ( adj) suggested or assumed but not obvious or explicitly stated
Sources: Google Dictionary, dictionary.com, en.oxforddictionaries.com
Series Overview

As technology advances and the social landscape shifts, it is crucial for students to become digitally literate citizens. In this series, students will learn the ins and outs of media literacy, from choosing reliable sources and understanding online searches to navigating online security and participating in digital communities. More lessons in this series are listed below under "Related Resources."

Lesson Overview

This lesson addresses the importance of locating and verifying reliable sources when working with online information. Students will compare and contrast different sources on the same topic and think about what makes one source more reliable than another. They will then work collaboratively to develop a checklist of questions for source evaluation.

Students will also zero in on the significance of evaluating sources for bias. They will learn to identify the author's or designer's purpose in online information and use this skill to search out biased viewpoints. Students will react to sources presented online and identify common reasoning errors in reactions to digital information.

Procedure

Give students one news story about an event. Put students into groups, and ask them to collect a list of facts from the article using the exact words the author used in the article.

Give students the second article about the same event, ensuring that this one has a different tone. Ask the same groups to make a list of facts from the article, again using the exact words the author used in the article.

For the whole class, model creating a t-chart with words from each article that depict the same fact or event. For example, you might write murdered in one column and killed in the other. Ask students to complete their own t-charts independently.

As a class, define and discuss tone and charged as these ideas apply to word choice. Then, ask students to discuss in their groups what biases they identify in the two articles based on the tone and charge of the words. Allow them to use the Evaluating Bias in a Newscast handout to record their observations.

Pose two questions to the class: (1) How do we figure out what really happened? (2) Why is it important to be aware of both stories? Discuss as a group or have students write their responses to each question.

Tell students they will now practice writing their own "charged" article based on a given scenario that is relevant to current events. Together, review the Creating a Biased News Story handout, which they can use to guide their process.

Finally, have students share their pieces with each other. Ask them to highlight the charged words and identify the bias in each other's work and explain how the bias is expressed.

Alignment to Common Core State Standards CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6
Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.6
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

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This lesson, part of the Digital Literacy series, focuses on teaching students to identify how writers can reveal their biases through their word choice and tone. Students will identify "charged" words that communicate a point of view. Students will understand how writers communicate a point of view implicitly by writing their own charged news stories.

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Talking to Kids About Racism, Early and Often

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Talking to Kids About Racism, Early and Often

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Jessica Grose, 2020

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Talking to Kids About Racism, Early and Often (Published 2020)

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These books can help start the conversation.

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Facing History and Ourselves

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Students define explicit, implicit, and confirmation bias, and examine why people sometimes maintain their beliefs in the face of contradictory information.

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

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Peggy McIntosh

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'White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack' and 'Some Notes for Facilitators' - National SEED Project

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack Downloadable PDF © 1989 Peggy McIntosh 'White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack' first appeared in P...

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Cory Collins, 2018

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Recognizing white privilege begins with truly understanding the term itself.

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31 Children's books to support conversations on race, racism and resistance

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31 Children's books to support conversations on race, racism and resistance

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embracerace.org

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

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

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

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As scholars, writers, and parents who use books to connect with our children and spark conversations with them, we've developed this book list to help...

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Looking for books about racism? Experts suggest these must-read titles for adults and kids

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Looking for books about racism? Experts suggest these must-read titles for adults and kids

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Anika Reed & Hannah Yasharoff

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Books about Black history and antiracism have regularly been in the news (and on bestsellers lists) since the death of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent nationwide protests that centered racism and police brutality.

They're back in the headlines again as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the country's first Black female Supreme Court nominee, faces grilling from conservative senators. On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas brought props to the hearing, cycling through posters of children's books he said were used at a Washington, D.C., area private school where Jackson is a board member. He questioned whether Jackson knew the books, including Ibram X. Kendi's children's book " Antiracist Baby," were taught at the school, and whether or not she supports the teaching of critical race theory.

"Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids, that babies are racist?" Cruz asked.

After a long pause, Jackson said: "I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or as though they are not valued."

"You know Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has impeccable credentials - and you know you're doing the work - when @tedcruz questions her about your books since he can't touch her record," Kendi wrote in a tweet.

"Antiracist Baby," a picture book that introduces young readers and their parents to the concept of antiracism and encourages discussion, was one of many books by Black authors that made waves on the USA TODAY Best Selling Book List following the rise of Black Lives Matter protests, debuting at no. 49 in summer 2020 and rising as high as no. 16. It was released a year after Kendi's guidebook for adults, "How to Be an Antiracist," which spent 29 weeks on the bestsellers list and reached as high as no. 2.

Such books have proven an important resource to learn more, providing a valuable look at the past and an avenue for continued research when protests are no longer front-page news.

"A lot of people don't really know the history of why things are the way that they are," City of Los Angeles Director of Branch Library Services Chad Helton told USA TODAY in June 2020. "What I would recommend is really looking into the scholarship of Black history. That way you can really understand how racism has manifested itself and how it's become structural and institutional. ... All of what is happening is connected to systemic and institutionalized racism."

If you're looking for titles to help expand your knowledge, we've rounded up options for beginning or continuing your reading quest:

Nonfiction reads

If you're looking for resources on how to talk about race or to brush up on history and important Black figures, experts say these books are a good place to start.

"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander is a "great book to read," because it talks about the systemic problem of the criminal justice system, says Lorenzo Boyd, associate professor of criminal justice and assistant provost of diversity and inclusion at the University Of New Haven.

Dr. Beverly Tatum, psychologist and author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race" and "Can We Talk About Race? And Other Conversations About Race in an Era of School Resegregation," recommends checking out "How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi, "White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism" by Robin DiAngelo or "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla F. Saad.

"From Slavery To Freedom: A History of African Americans" by John Hope Franklin offers a comprehensive look at how the foundation of the United States has dictated racism in the present, Helton added.

Expert recommendations, picks from the bestsellers lists and more:

"How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi

"Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

"Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson

"Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

"Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption" by Bryan Stevenson

"The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

"Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" by Reni Eddo-Lodge

"They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America's Racial Justice Movement" by Wesley Lowery

"Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

"Raising White Kids" by Jennifer Harvey

"So You Want to Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo

"The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America's Law Enforcement" by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris

"Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That The Movement Forgot" by Mikki Kendall

"Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism" by bell hooks

"Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People" by Ben Crump

"From Slavery To Freedom: A History of African Americans" by John Hope Franklin

"The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear" by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and William Barber II

"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander

"Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America" by USA TODAY reporter Charisse Jones and Dr. Kumea Shorter-Gooden

"Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement" by John Lewis and Michael D'Orso

"White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism" by Robin DiAngelo

"The Burden" edited by USA TODAY Network columnist Rochelle Riley

"Sister Outsider" by Audre Lorde

"This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color" edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa

"Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That a Movement Forgot" by Mikki Kendall

"The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement" by Dr. William Barber

"Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower" by Brittney Cooper

"When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America" by Paula Giddings

"Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism" by Patricia Hill Collins

"Wandering in Strange Lands" by Morgan Jerkins

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

Impactful fiction from Black authors

The learning doesn't stop with nonfiction works. Black authors have made notable and creative contributions to the worlds of fiction and poetry writing over the years, including Pulitzer Prize-winning titles.

Real-world issues are the basis for these bestselling stories and poems:

"Transcendent Kingdom" by Yaa Gyasi

"The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston

"Passing" by Nella Larsen

"The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison

"Sula" by Toni Morrison

"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

"White Teeth" by Zadie Smith

"For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" by Ntozake Shange

"An American Marriage" by Tayari Jones

"The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett

"Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe

"Such a Fun Age" by Kiley Reid

"The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead

"Luster" by Raven Leilani

Four-star review: Yaa Gyasi's 'Transcendent Kingdom' a profound story of faith, addiction and loss
Books of poetry by Black writers

"Selected Poems" by Gwendolyn Brooks

"I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood" by Tiana Clark

"Finna: Poems" by Nate Marshall

"Coal" by Audre Lorde

"Citizen: An American Lyric" by Claudia Rankine

"There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé" by Morgan Parker

"The Tradition" by Jericho Brown

"The Black Unicorn: Poems" by Audre Lorde

"And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems" by Maya Angelou

More: Amanda Gorman performs powerful poem at inauguration: Read the full text of 'The Hill We Climb'
From historically-significant works of prose (Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1950 with "Annie Allen") to contemporary dissections of culture, these award-winning and bestselling books of poems offer a lyrical approach to sharing Black stories.

Help explain race to kids with these children's books

Talking to kids about complex world issues can be tough, but these books can help young people learn in a gentle, thoughtful way.

"I've seen a surge in different books to help with this situation," Ashay By the Bay founder and CEO Deborah Day told USA TODAY. "There's a lot going on... Children need storybooks and they need the parents to sometimes sit down and read with them. That's just that closeness - that opportunity is a great way to begin the healing process."

"The Colors of Us" by Karen Katz

"Let's Talk About Race" by Julius Lester

"The Skin I'm In: A First Look at Racism" by Pat Thomas

Sesame Street's "We're Different, We're the Same" by Bobbi Jane Kates

"Something Happened in Our Town: A Child's Story about Racial Injustice" by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard

"I Am Enough" by Grace Byers

"Happy in Our Skin" by Fran Manushkin and Lauren Tobia

"Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement" by Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes

"Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America" by Jennifer Harvey

"Daddy Why Am I Brown?: A healthy conversation about skin color and family" by Bedford F. Palmer

"A Terrible Thing Happened" by Margaret Holmes

"Antiracist Baby" by Ibram X. Kendi

"Hair Love" by Matthew A. Cherry

"Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights" by Rob Sanders and Jared Andrew Schorr

"The Proudest Blue: A Story of Hijab and Family" by Ibtihaj Muhammad and S.K. Ali Hatem Aly

"Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter" by Shani King

For preschool and elementary school-age kids, Dr. Tatum recommends sharing "Something Happened in Our Town" by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard. For teenagers, Angie Thomas' "The Hate U Give" is a good place to start, she told USA TODAY.

"The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas

"Harbor Me" by Jacqueline Woodson

"This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work" by Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand

"Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson

"Dear White People" by Justin Simien, illustrated by Ian O'Phelan

"The Black Kids" by Christina Hammonds Reed

"Dear Martin" by Nic Stone

"All American Boys" by Jason Reynolds

"The Black Flamingo" by Dean Atta

"This Is My America" by Kim Johnson

"Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves" by Glory Edim

"I'm Not Dying With You Tonight" by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

'First look for sameness':Kristen Bell's new children's book urges kids, adults to focus on commonality
Bestselling stories to help younger kids:

For teens:

Black-owned bookstores to support

Bigger retailers may be selling out of the book you're interested - but don't forget about local shops! These bookstores run by Black owners also offer a slew of titles if you're looking to shop local.

Marcus Books: The nation's oldest Black-owned bookstore, located in Oakland, California.

The Listening Tree: A children's bookstore in Decatur, Georgia, that also offers a young entrepreneurs program for kids

Mahogany Books: Bookstore based in Washington, D.C.

Ashay By The Bay: San FranciscoBay Area kids bookstore

Harriett's Bookshop: Philadelphia-based store named after Harriett Tubman

Semicolon Bookstore: Chicago's only Black woman-owned independent bookstore

The Lit Bar: Bronx-based bookstore and wine bar

Sister's Uptown Bookstore: Family owned and operated bookstore and community space in Manhattan
More: Contributing: Sara M. Moniuszko, Barbara VanDenburgh, Mary Cadden and Richard Rouan, USA TODAY. Inside historic Black bookstores' fight for survival against the COVID-19 pandemic
Sankofa: Washington, D.C.-based bookstore that celebrates Pan-African culture and offers book clubs and children's events

Hakim's Bookstore: Philadelphia's first and oldest African American bookstore specializing in Black history

Cafe con Libros: Feminist, independent bookstore based in Brooklyn, New York

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Ted Cruz grilled Ketanji Brown Jackson on 'Antiracist Baby': Here's why you should read it

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Books about Black history and antiracism have regularly been in the news (and on bestsellers lists) since the death of George Floyd in 2020 and subsequent nationwide protests that centered racism and police brutality. They're back in the headlines again as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the country's first Black female Supreme Court nominee, faces grilling from conservative senators.

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These Books Can Help You Explain Racism and Protest to Your Kids

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These Books Can Help You Explain Racism and Protest to Your Kids

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Jessica Grose, 2020

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The conversation about race needs to start early and keep happening.

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Credit... Loris Lora

As protests over the killing of George Floyd (and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor) spill into a second week, many parents are wondering how to talk about the deaths and unrest with their children. But just as important in the long run, especially for nonblack parents, is how to keep the conversation about race and racism going when we're not in a moment of national outrage, and to make sure all children see black people as heroes in a wide range of their own stories, and not just as victims of oppression.

In this moment, try to address the killings and protests honestly and in an age appropriate way, said Y. Joy Harris-Smith, Ph.D., a lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary and the co-author of the forthcoming " The ABCs of Diversity: Helping Kids (and Ourselves!) Embrace Our Differences."

You can start having conversations about race in preschool, said Jacqueline Dougé, M.D., a pediatrician and child health advocate based in Maryland - children can internalize racial bias between the ages of 2 and 4, according to an American Academy of Pediatrics article that Dr. Dougé co-wrote.

Dr. Collins gave the example of a white child asking why another child had brown skin. A parent can take this opportunity to explain what melanin is, and to talk about how wonderful it is that the world has so many different kinds of people.

Older children will be much more aware of what's going on right now. So find out how much your child knows about the protests, Dr. Harris-Smith said, because kids may know more than we think they do from overhearing the news, their parents talking, or simply noticing what is going on outside in their neighborhoods.

Once you assess what they know, you can have a conversation about the violence against black people without being too explicit with elementary-age children.

Dr. Dougé suggested starting with something like: "There are things happening in the news that are upsetting us. Unfortunately there were police officers that made bad choices for the wrong reasons because of the color of our skin." Dr. Collins said that with children in elementary school, you should focus on how unfairly black and brown people have been treated throughout American history to the present day, because fairness is something all children can understand.

If you live someplace where people are actively protesting and your children have observed some destruction, "First and foremost, reassure them you're there to keep them safe," Dr. Dougé said. But also explain why people are protesting, and show them positive images of protesting now and from history, she suggested.

Make sure to create space for your child to feel however they need to feel about what you're discussing - they may be angry, sad or scared. "When we're not validated in how we feel, it makes it difficult for us to be active participants in our lives," Dr. Harris-Smith said. Dr. Collins suggested that parents can let a child know, "The important adults in her life are working really hard to make sure these injustices don't continue to happen in our city, country and world." Respect your children's feelings if talking about it is too upsetting, but make sure to leave the door open for future conversations, she continued.

In addition to keeping an open dialogue about racism, a way to raise children who are anti-racist is by making sure your home library has books with black people at the center of their stories. Christine Taylor-Butler, the prolific children's author and writer of The Lost Tribes Series, said that she got into children's literature because she wanted to see more stories of black joy. "I want stories about kids in a pumpkin patch, and kids in an art museum," she said. "Not only do we want our kids to read, but we want white kids to see - we're not the people you're afraid of."

"I see students clamoring for books that speak to heart, not oppression based on civil rights," Taylor-Butler added. And she is also a fan of books that tell stories of black triumph and invention, like " Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions, " by Chris Barton and illustrated by Don Tate, which is about the black engineer behind the Super Soaker water gun.

With that in mind, I asked several authors and Times editors to offer suggestions of books to read to children. Some are explicitly about racism, but others are stories with nonwhite protagonists. They are broken down roughly by age range; see our list below.

Ultimately, words and books should not be the end of your child's education about race and racism. "The best advice I can give parents is to be models for the attitudes, behavior and values that they wish to see in their children," said Nia Heard-Garris, M.D., an attending physician at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

"It is not enough to talk about racism, you must strive to be anti-racist and fight against racist policies and practices," Dr. Heard-Garris said. If you have the privilege, "make space, speak up or amplify issues of inequity and injustice." Children see everything.

Ezra Jack Keats's books about Peter ("The Snowy Day," "A Letter to Amy," "Hi, Cat!," "Whistle for Willie")

"I love all of Ezra Jack Keats's books about Peter, because they show a black boy in the city and the stories are just about his curiosity, his bravery and his being a kid. They are beautiful meditations on the interiority of black childhood without trauma while still feeling very black." - Kaitlyn Greenidge, NYT Parenting contributor and author of the novel " We Love You, Charlie Freeman "

" Saturday, " written and illustrated by Oge Mora

"This book is pure joy. A mom and her daughter, Ava, always look forward to Saturdays because it's the one day of the week they get to spend together without school or work. On this particular Saturday, though, they experience a series of disappointments. Nothing seems to be going as planned. Still, thanks to Ava they figure out a way to enjoy their time together. A quiet yet profound picture book."

- Matt de la Peña, a Newbery Medal-winning author of seven Young Adult novels and five picture books, including " Last Stop on Market Street "

" Hair Love," by Matthew A. Cherry. Illustrated by Vashti Harrison.

"Written by a former N.F.L. wide receiver and now an Oscar-winning short film, 'Hair Love' tells the story of a black father learning to do his daughter's hair for the first time and the special bond they share."

- Meena Harris, author of " Kamala and Maya's Big Idea "

" Each Kindness," by Jacqueline Woodson. Illustrated by E.B. Lewis.

"A new girl, Maya, shows up at school, and the whole class, including Chloe, our main character, shuns her because she's shabbily dressed and seems different. This goes on for a while, and then Maya is suddenly gone, and Chloe realizes she's missed her chance to be kind. This is a powerful picture book that bravely ends with regret."

- Matt de la Peña

" The Youngest Marcher, " by Cynthia Levinson. Illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton.

"It's one of the more shocking and little-known stories of the civil rights movement: In 1963, the City of Birmingham jailed hundreds of kids for joining the Children's March. Among them was 9-year-old Audrey Faye Hendricks, taken from her family to spend a week behind bars, eating 'oily grits' and sleeping on a bare mattress. Levinson and Newton keep her story bright and snappy, emphasizing the girl's eagerness to make a difference and her proud place in her community."

- Maria Russo, former children's book editor at The New York Times

" Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up Against Tyranny and Injustice," by Veronica Chambers. Illustrated by Paul Ryding.

"Chambers, who is the senior editor of special projects here at The Times, has pulled together 35 inspiring stories from the past 500 years of history, each with a lesson for our kids about how to fight injustice in their own lives."

- Jessica Grose

" Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness," written and illustrated by Anastasia Higginbotham

"An honest explanation about how power and privilege factor into the lives of white children, at the expense of other groups, and how they can help seek justice."

- Meena Harris

" All American Boys," by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

"This is a brilliant look at the effects of police brutality from the perspective of two teen boys: one white and one black. We get inside both of their minds and watch them grapple with the weight of something that is way too familiar in our country. "

- Matt de la Peña

" Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You " by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

"Reynolds and Kendi have created a book that slyly draws attention to the page itself. 'Uh-oh. The R-word,' they write. The word that 'for many of us still feels Rated R. Or can be matched only with the other R word - run. But don't. Let's all just take a deep breath. Inhale. Hold it. Exhale and breathe out' - and here, the text breaks apart to give us the dangerous word - 'race.'"

- Kaitlyn Greenidge: Read her full review here.
If you have other books you love on this theme, email us with a list of your favorites and we will run an article with your suggestions.

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These Books Can Help You Explain Racism and Protest to Your Kids (Published 2020)

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The conversation about race needs to start early and keep happening. As protests over the killing of George Floyd (and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor) spill into a second week, many parents are wondering how to talk about the deaths and unrest with their children.

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What does "white anti-racist" mean? How can guilt get in the way? And what's all this talk about being "colorblind"? Learning for Justice, then Teaching Tolerance, asked community activists to share their thoughts on these questions, and others. Their answers shine light on the concepts of comfort, power, privilege and identity.

Perspective:

This Q & A delves into the "finer lines" of white anti-racism and should be used with older students and adults.

The Participants:

Diane Flinn, a white woman and managing partner of Diversity Matters.

Georgette Norman, an African American woman and director of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum

Sejal Patel, a South Asian American woman and community organizer in South Asian immigrant communities

Yvette Robles, a Chicana and Community Relations Manager in Los Angeles

What does "white anti-racist" mean to you?

Diane: I associate this terminology with action and behavior more than an identity or subject position. Anti-racist, for me, is more indicative of a process of coming to a healthy and functioning sense of a white racial identity.

One of the functions and privileges of racism is that white people don't, as a whole, carry race as an identity -- you get to be individual, you get to be "yourself," you get to be the norm, you get to be whole and not partial or hyphenated. You do not have to make "adjustments" or "modifications" to know or name yourself.

I also think my discomfort [with the term anti-racist] is fueled by it being based on what I am not. It is the proverbial "I'm not a racist" disclaimer used by whites to separate themselves from the realities of racism and race-based privilege.

What are common mistakes white activists make when trying to be allies to people of color?

Yvette: Not acknowledging that they have power and privilege by the mere fact that they are white. That is not to say that other parts of their identity can't lead them to feel powerless, for example, being white and gay, or being white and working class. Another mistake I see is when white activists try to emulate a different culture by changing how they act, their speech or style of dress. It's one thing to appreciate someone else's culture; it's quite another to adopt it.

Georgette: The most common mistakes white activists make are 1) setting an agenda with the illusion of inclusion, and 2) having to have a franchise on comfort. God forbid a person of color says or does anything to make white activists feel uncomfortable. That means there can be no discussion of race and no challenge to their privilege, which means no challenge to their power.

Sejal: White anti-racists make a mistake when they shut out the poor and uneducated and keep in those "in the know" to decide what's good for people of color. No movement can work where there is divisiveness.

Also, if people of color want to have their own space and place in certain aspects of society -- say for a weekend or a month -- they shouldn't have to feel like they are being exclusive for doing this. White activists need to understand that society is their space and place every single day, and they shouldn't feel threatened or left out.

When attempting to be allies to people of color, is there a point when white people "get it" (and what does "getting it" mean)?

Sejal: "Getting it" is the biggest point, I feel. Getting it means many things: the ability for white activists to understand that they have a space and place of privilege. It really is up to white people to give up their privilege and be okay with that. Giving it up will make white people truly sensitive to the issues of racism, classism, sexism and homophobia.

White activists need to understand that they can't completely understand or "get" the experience of a person of color. They should trust that their allies, people of color, are not being too sensitive or complaining. Everyone, especially U.S. citizens, has some sort of privilege in their lives, and, as a person of color, I make sure that people have space to express themselves in a way they feel is right. I need to trust that my white allies will do the same for me when I need it.

Diane: I believe that white allies can "get it" if we define "getting it" as becoming attuned to the subtle effects of racial bias in everyday interactions and environments. We can "get it" if we recognize the systemic presence of racism and how race-based oppression is allowed to continue. If we identify and own racial privilege and, as white people, have our own experiences of exclusion so we can authentically empathize, then we are "getting it." We "get it" when we value equity, human rights and social justice.

How would you describe the stages of becoming a white anti-racist/ally?

Sejal: 1) Realize the meanings behind privilege, racism and whiteness. 2) Look within before you look outward. How do you relate to the definitions? Pinpoint the ways in which you experience privilege as a white person. 3) Look outward, find out the historical, global and social patterns of the effects of racism and other forms of oppression. 4) Act. Realize that you want to do something about this system, and come at it with a sensitivity and understanding that you come from a privileged background whether you like it or not.

How does guilt affect white anti-racism?

Diane: Guilt allows white people to maintain the status quo. Guilt creates paralysis. Guilt transfers the responsibility to people of color. Guilt continues the aspect of racism wherein white people put people of color in a situation of taking care of us.

By saying, "I feel so guilty, so bad," it puts the other person in a position of comforting. The other person is then silenced, must reposition or restate their truth. Or worse -- maintain their truth and risk being viewed as mean, insensitive and angry.

Guilt is where most white people get stuck. Guilt is the ultimate obstacle in the personal journey to being a white ally.

How can white privilege get in the way?

Georgette: Privilege and power perpetuate and maintain the hierarchy in our society. It defines 'being' by virtue of skin color. It also defines the kind of relationship you have or are allowed to have and with whom. While many white activists won't admit it, a black person would only have to call them on any issue, and they will promptly remind you of your place and your guest status at the table.

The question, then, becomes how does one get knowledge and access to that power? How does one rise above powerlessness and dependency? Self-determination is one component, but equally important is for white people to yield access to power.

Diane: It is challenging to recognize how my way of doing things and the rules of conduct that I understand are informed by privilege.

Privilege, by its very nature, will "get in the way" as white people move toward and work as allies.

Unfortunately, the more a white person works through his or her whiteness and toward being an ally, the more difficult it becomes to self-identify privilege. You usually can't see it when you are in it; in other words, do fish know they're wet?

What do you think of the concept of being "colorblind"?

Yvette: I hate it. While I think I get the "intention" behind the comment, the reality, when applied, is that a whole segment of the community -- people of color -- are disregarded. When I hear that we should strive for a colorblind society, I hear that we should all adopt to one norm, which may be the most familiar or comfortable for American culture. American culture in the U.S., in my opinion, translates directly to white mainstream culture.

There is no room for diversity in that statement. As a person of color, a Latina, a woman, it means that I need to let go of all that makes me who I am in order to blend into what is acceptable. A colorblind society reminds me of the melting pot theory. I would rather be a part of a "tossed salad," where all different types of people can coexist and live together while maintaining their own personal identities.

Diane: To be "colorblind" implies the invisibility of race, something we all know to not be invisible. My experience of the world is informed by being white; other people experience and interact with me informed by my whiteness so, for me, colorblindness feels like an erasure. To be colorblind is to not see my family, where we come from, our history, and our ways of being. "Colorblind" avoids difference rather than recognizing and valuing it. I do not see how a white activist can be an ally from a position of colorblindness. I understand that many people use this term to challenge racial stereotyping, to not see people "as" their color and the associated racial stereotypes, but it functions as assimilation. If we become "colorblind," than to which worlds and ways of being are we being blinded? What are we not "seeing?" And in which "hue" will we be operating?

Georgette: I personally find it offensive. The largest organ I have is skin, which happens to be brown and rather than accept it, some who call themselves allies want to be blind to it.

Sejal: Of course we have differences and its okay. Let's be realistic -- as much as it would be nice to have a colorblind society, that's not the way it is given our historical landscape. That's not the way we are socialized to think.

Discussion Questions

Diane says: "Anti-racist, for me, is more indicative of a process of coming to a healthy and functioning sense of a white racial identity." Why is the word "functioning" important?

Sejal says: "If people of color want to have their own space and place in certain aspects of society -- say for a weekend or a month -- they shouldn't have to feel like they are being exclusive for doing this." Why might people of color sometimes want their "own" spaces? Are there ever instances when white people should do anti-racist work in isolation? Why?

Guilt and white privilege, these activists say, can sometimes get in the way of white people being effective allies in the struggle against racism. What qualities or actions can help white people be effective allies?

The activists all reject the idea of "colorblindness." Many people contribute the "goal" of colorblindness to a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Was Dr. King advocating that people ignore color? Ignore racism? Why?

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What does "white anti-racist" mean? How can guilt get in the way? And what's all this talk about being "colorblind"? Learning for Justice, then Teaching Tolerance, asked community activists to share their thoughts on these questions, and others. Their answers shine light on the concepts of comfort, power, privilege and identity.

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Teaching Tolerance

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Select the parts of your Learning Plan you'd like to print. If your Tasks or Strategies have PDF handouts, they'll need to be printed separately. These are listed on the left side of each Task or Strategy page.

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The Urgent Need for Anti-Racist Education

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The Urgent Need for Anti-Racist Education

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Christina Torres, 2019

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Many of the recent shootings-including in El Paso, Texas; Pittsburgh; potentially Gilroy, Calif.-are linked to white supremacist hatred. And hate crimes have been on the rise nationwide for three consecutive years, according to FBI data released last year.

This growing hatred seeps into our classrooms. Like many teachers, I read these stories and statistics and wonder: What can I do to help my students feel safe and ensure that the next generation no longer operates from a place of hatred and fear?

These mass shooters were once students sitting in our classrooms. It's an unsettling thought, and I don't raise it to scare teachers about the students they have. Rather, it serves as a reminder that we as teachers have a role to play in combatting hate. More than just making our students aware of racism, we can do anti-racist work.

Even the best SEL programs on the market don't address the deeper roots of hatred we're seeing in our nation. Until we provide focused education about the history and current iterations of racist beliefs at the root of this hatred, we cannot claim we are actively working to solve the problem in our classrooms.

As educators, we don't just teach content; we teach life lessons. Here are changes we can make to ensure we are breaking down racist beliefs and systems of white supremacy in our own classrooms:

1. Educate ourselves about anti-racism work.

We can't do this work well with students if we don't understand it ourselves. We must acknowledge that we have all been shaped by a system built on inequality and racism-one that consistently bombards us with stereotypical images of certain cultures and excludes voices from different backgrounds.

Rethinking Schools provides multiple resources and readings about using schools to break down racial biases in our country. Christopher Emdin's , bell hooks' , and Cornelius Minor's are a few books that address how to create more equitable education in our classrooms, as well as the internal work teachers must begin to do to get there.

It's also essential to understand racism outside our classrooms. Reading books like Robin DiAngelo's (with an excellent educator guide), by Ibram X. Kendi, and Beverly Tatum's seminal text is another way to take ownership of our own journeys toward becoming aware and active against racism.

2. Reflect on the voices we're sharing.

We can build empathy by listening to and studying other people's stories. Unfortunately, there is very little diversity and inclusion in the stories many of us share in our classrooms. We need to reflect on whose voices we give power to and how we create a more inclusive space with the texts we use.

Online organizations like #DisruptTexts and We Need Diverse Books provide resources and materials about the importance of diversifying the texts in our classrooms. Reflecting on whose viewpoints are given power-in all subjects, including math and science -is an essential way to start breaking down biases and harmful perceptions.

3. Don't be afraid to discuss current events-and ask for help, too.

The work we do in our classrooms may feel like a small drop in the ocean, but we know that what we teach our students can help turn the societal tide. Teaching anti-racism may not directly stop a mass shooting, but it can support a cultural shift that helps dismantle racist beliefs in ourselves and each other. If we teach our students to work against white supremacy and racism, we can help create a world that no longer nurtures hatred, but actively challenges the hateful beliefs that lead to targeted violence.

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The Urgent Need for Anti-Racist Education (Opinion)

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Many of the recent shootings-including in El Paso, Texas; Pittsburgh; potentially Gilroy, Calif.-are linked to white supremacist hatred. And hate crimes have been on the rise nationwide for three consecutive years, according to FBI data released last year.

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6 Considerations for School Leaders Making a Statement About George Floyd

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6 Considerations for School Leaders Making a Statement About George Floyd

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Dorinda J. Carter Andrews & Shaun R. Harper, 2020

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Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children

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Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children

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Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard

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Community Q&A

​EmbraceRace: Thank you so much. It's an awesome book. We won't even play coy and pretend that we don't think it's fabulous. The illustrations are amazing. The story is amazing. As you were saying before we came on and as was noted in the chat by some of the folks who are watching and listening, it's a really rich book. There are so many points of departure for different conversations with young kids in this book.

Let me start with a question. We know that you've all been going out and talking to a range of audiences. Marietta, let me start with you. You were saying that you have especially engaged African-American audiences, others as well, but certainly African-American audiences and I wonder if you could just give us a taste of the feedback you're getting? ​

Marietta: Sure. I've been fortunate enough to be able to go out and read our book in different settings with African-American kids and it's been positively received. I've read it in urban schools. I read it in a church setting where kids were as young as, I would say probably about age 6 and up to about 10 or so, with teenagers listening in the back. Kids, when you read the book to them, prefer to be really interactive, asking questions, pointing at the illustrations that are in the book and just really relating to it. I have a couple of mentees that are probably second graders, and they really loved the book. Generally speaking, the subject of race is something that is talked about fairly early on in the lives of many African-American families. So this book has really gotten a very positive response with people saying that it's very bold and much needed.​
EmbraceRace: Ann and Marianne, you are speaking to audiences as well, more likely to be white audiences, mixed race audiences. What are you hearing
Ann: In general the children also respond very similarly. They're engaged in the discussion and they get the message of the book- that it's not fair to treat people differently due to the color of their skin or their race. And they feel empowered that they can make a difference and they can help people treat, and they can treat people fairly.

I think the challenge is sometimes with white parents and white institutions. We've had a mixture of responses obviously since we've read the book in a variety of settings. Some individuals and settings have been welcoming and very positive. Others have been a little cautious. I think that perhaps not seeing this as a priority area or worried about stirring up controversy. I've actually heard from both white and black parents sometimes some parents have worries about wanting their children to stay "innocent," really is the words I've heard. So I think some folks that are doing more of a colorblind or color muted parenting approach are initially not sure they want to go there, where our book goes.

Marianne: I would add to that that some parents have said, white parents and black parents, have said that they're grateful for not just the story but the content in the back for ways to approach this difficult nuanced subject with their children. They've wanted to discuss this but they haven't really been sure how to do it. So I've heard that. And I've also had some questions from some parents who wonder about the right age to introduce this content. Is 4 too young? Is 10 too old? That has come up as well

EmbraceRace: Many folks have written in with similar concerns, those that you're already speaking about, Marianne and Ann. Besides parents, we've gotten so many questions from teachers at the Pre-K level, older, elementary school wanting to use this book or wanting to have that conversation and feeling and being anxious about their colleagues, about administrators' reactions. Do you have any anecdotes about how people are using the book and what they're doing when colleagues are reluctant or even not super progressive on race

Marianne: Yes I'll start with this one. In part, we're just starting that journey because the book came out in May. It was supposed to be released in June but the publication date was pushed up to be May 1st after Stephon Clark's tragic death. So we didn't get a chance to read it to too many schools in May - schools in Atlanta end before Memorial Day. That's just now starting up again.

I can say that if a school has an explicit anti-bias curriculum, if that's part of their curriculum, they have been more receptive to having us come in and they're not just interested in having us read the book. They want a workshop for the teachers. They want to have total buy in and they want help to develop a plan that's suitable for their specific needs and specific grades. Sometimes they say come in and read it. They don't have a plan after that.

Ann: We've had two schools like that. I think the age question is an important question and we have after we've read it with kids of ages from 4 to all the way up to 10 and had discussions with preschool educators, I think we're all generally on the same page that probably for most settings and most kids it makes sense to read it to 4 to 5 year olds in a family situation or a very small group situation. That's because of attention span issues and just in a large group I think there's more opportunity for misunderstandings or questions, kids have questions or confusion that doesn't get addressed. But it's been very successful to read it to 6 to 9 year olds and obviously you have a somewhat more sophisticated discussion with the older kids. But it's gone fine with with all the kids in groups of those ages.
EmbraceRace: One thing that's wonderful about the book of course is that there's a lot of modeling for adults. We all wish we were those parents who respond so well! And the portrayal of the older siblings are also spot on. But there were a couple places that that gave me pause, two places in particular. So one is when Emma's family is talking about really white peoples, the complicity of white people in slavery and in other historical wrongs, and the little girl responds.
Marietta: I'd also like to comment on reading our book in a school system. What's happening now is I've approached one of the larger private schools here in Atlanta and the racial composition is pretty diverse but more African-American now then it was in the past. And what they've asked me to do is to wait and let them meet with their parent advisory board to get buy in and then have us come in and talk with teachers. So it really does vary but reception so far has not been surprising or particularly negative.

"Did our family do those bad things a long time ago?" asked Emma.

"Yes," answered her mother. "Back then many white people thought they were better than black people even though it wasn't true."

This! We know there are lots of reasons why many white people want to hedge against any responsibility for things that happened in the past. Of course you talk about the present, too, which is hugely important. That's the next line. But staying with the taking responsibility for historical wrongs for a moment, most people of any stripe, certainly whites in this country, don't want to acknowledge that to, much less embrace that with their children. I wondered if that's come up and if you have anything to say now, perhaps to those of white parents who might be listening and wondering, "Could I really acknowledge that to my children?"

The other thing I want to say very quickly is at the end - you said you didn't want to give a spoiler. But I think it's fair to say that the children in the story step up. In our experience, we've found that you young children like our kids who are 7 and 10, as well as younger children, in some ways have an easier time right standing up for fairness even with their peers. But as they go on it will become more difficult, not just to be kind themselves but to be proactive, agents for justice especially when it means confronting peers and friends. So I just wonder if you could say a little bit about each of those. Can we start with the white parents acknowledging?

Marianne: Thank you for pointing out that text. As you are talking about it, I'm thinking of another way we could have made it even better. Basically Emma says, "Did our family do those things a long time ago?" And mother said, "Yes." What I think would be even better that we did not put in the book was, "Yes, and our family continues to do things." Right?

Marietta: That's great, Marianne.

Marianne: I mean so many white people say, "Oh well, you know, my family, we were immigrants. I wasn't here when all those terrible things happened." Or come up with some other excuse. Or someway of making it less relevant to their children's lives or to their lives. So we wanted to take a very different approach which was, "Yes. Our family did do this a long time ago."

Ann: But I think your question was has that created resistance in white families. I don't know the answer because, and maybe y'all have had an experience with a particular. Often when we are trying to engage institutions or families in reading the book, they haven't read it yet. So I don't know if that line is preventing them from reading it. No one has directly had a negative reaction to that with me but they may not have not spoken up.

Marianne: I've had two.

Ann: You have?

Marianne: I've had one person in my family. This family member said, "Well there's white slavery, too, Marianne." And then I had some after our newspaper article came out in our local newspaper here in Atlanta, someone called in and confronted me about the part about police officers making mistakes. So there has been a little bit of negative pushback.

EmbraceRace: Let me say a quick thing about that because, I think, certainly yes, people will say, "we weren't even in this country. My people came to this country in the 20th century," and those sort of things you've said. But I think a big part of it, too, is really that families typically don't pass on those stories. You will hear about the people who did wonderful things back in the day and embrace those, lift those up. Great granddad was ... whoever. Our family stories are sort of like Facebook!

Marianne: They're curated.

EmbraceRace: As history is curated, right. So it makes it then a lot easier for people to not acknowledge it because they honestly may not know. And everyone wants to think that they were on the side of the angels. Marietta, I wonder if you can speak to that but I'm also wondering about the end where the children stand up. You know even though it means telling their peers to step off. And has anyone spoken to that? What do you think about the challenge that, say, a 12-year-old child is probably going to have standing up for Omad in this case?

Marietta: I'd love to speak about that. You know I guess I have two responses. First, I've had children who I've read the book to who really relate to that situation. They can connect to the fact that it's not right to treat people unfairly, based upon the fact that they're a girl or they're a boy or that they look different - that that is not right. And so they really gravitate towards that. That's a concept, you should be nice to people. It's not right to be unfair.

In terms of what you were saying about recognizing the not so positive parts of our history. It was really important to us that this book served as an example of how to engage families in difficult conversations. It may be that, even with young kids, they don't get "the big picture." But the fact that the conversation is started leaves the door open for future difficult conversations. That's what was really important to us. We knew that just writing one story wasn't going to solve the problem. But we thought that it would be really important to model how to have these conversations and to leave the door open for future ones.

EmbraceRace: We're getting a lot of questions about police and about how you all would advise people to talk to kids about police. The police could harm or kill you, right, especially if you're in a targeted group. How do you think about talking to young kids about approaching police?

Ann: This is another reservation that some families have expressed of wanting their children overall to still see the police as helpful. Or not wanting kids to be worried about whether police officer A is a bad person or a good person.

We did try to present a balanced view of police, that they're not all bad or all good, while remaining true to the fact that most African-American families view police officers with a great deal of suspicion and anger for very understandable reasons. But I think in our experience what most kids have come away with is an understanding that police officers can make mistakes and that sometimes those mistakes may be racially motivated.

I did ask couple of groups of kids follow up questions after we've read the story. Questions like, what what are police for? What do the police do? What are some of their duties? Do you know any police officers? Have any police officers ever helped you? One was in a school settings where they had a police officer at the school. Most of the kids, this is a primarily African-American school, they had pretty positive views of their school police officer even though he was the person who they got sent to sit next to when they were misbehaving. I think if you ask those kinds of questions kids emerge with what I want them to emerge with: police have some helpful roles but some make mistakes. That's the view they end up with and I think that's an okay view.
I'm just wondering what's your general thinking about the way that this book promotes, understands that there are meaningful dynamics among children of color, and among adults of color as well. Have you gotten any response to that? It's not just a black/white thing or a white/non-white thing.
Marianne: You know it's a hard conversation to have and it's uncomfortable for us. But development is a little bit on our side because while young kids tend to be more rigid in their thinking, as they get older their beliefs get more nuanced and more articulated and integrated. And we discuss other things with our kids that are uncomfortable. We teach them who's allowed to touch their private parts and who isn't. And we do that because we believe that our temporary discomfort is outweighed by the need to keep them safe. Personal safety is really important so we discuss that with our kids even as young as 5 and 6. We also believe that the outcome of racial justice is important enough to have discussions that might make us a little uncomfortable.

EmbraceRace: Thank you for that. You mentioned earlier, Marietta I think when you were describing the book about wanting to expand it beyond black and white. So you have Omad and you've talked about how he's of an indeterminate of race, ethnicity, nationality and so on. And you did that very deliberately.

One angle on that which I really loved is you're interest not only in promoting inclusive racial sensibilities among kids. But also having them be proactive in their racial justice work, which I love. And I love the fact that you have here you have Josh and Emma, a black child and a white child who are both taking the responsibility of reaching out to a child of color. Josh in particular is not simply a victim who needs to be resilient. He is also an agent of social justice and change. You talk about how together they can help change the pattern of interaction in their school. I think that's phenomenal.

Marietta: I would say that the responses have been varied. Kids have really liked the fact that there's a black kid, there's a white kid, and there's somebody who's not black or white and how important it is that we all play together and that we all be nice to each other, which is what they like to say time and time again. What was important to us in writing the book is that it really reflects the importance of being fair and being involved in social justice and not discriminating, but also that it can be relevant to other kinds of "isms." You know be it sexism, discrimination against people who are LGBT, because of socio-economic status. But we really thought this could be a platform to have discussions which not only are related to race but are much more in context as well.

EmbraceRace: Marianne or Ann, did you want to come in on this point?

Marianne: I think we wanted to give kids specific concrete suggestions for things they can do in their own lives right to step up and to fight racial injustice when it occurs. And I was listening to you before when you said it's not so hard when you're 5 and 6 but it's so much harder when you're you know 13 or when you're 20 and you're standing up to your boss. So it's in some ways easier for little kids to do it than it is for older people to do it. But we wanted them to have something to do. We didn't want the lesson to be "don't do this." We wanted the lesson to be "do this" and you're going to reap the rewards. So it was very important to have both kids join together and helping Omad at the end.

EmbraceRace: Thank you for that. We have some questions that came in early about your partnership and really someone basically asking before reading the book, is anyone a person of color among the writers. There is. [Ann and Marianne identify as white and Marietta identifies as African American.] My question is how you all came together to write this book and also whether you get questions about that when you present separately. There is such a need and a lack of kind of #OwnVoices stories right #OwnVoices (twitter.com/hashtag/OwnVoices) that I wonder how you're differently received and whether you get questions about that?

Ann: We all worked at Emory School of Medicine together for over two decades. Marietta is now at Morehouse. But we got to know each other well as colleagues and as friends during that period. We were working with a primarily African-American population which helped Marianne and I become more fluent in the issues that were important to those families. I think that knowing each other that long and having a shared commitment to underserved populations was the glue that brought us together and enabled us to talk openly as we were writing some passages and deciding what to say. And I think that helped. The book couldn't have been what it was without an interracial collaboration. Certainly when I present alone I make sure from the get go to acknowledge my coauthors and to talk about how we know each other and that we are an interracial team. Because it would be presumptuous of me to try to write a book that in part was targeted towards African-American families without that collaboration.

Marietta: Sure. I agree 100%. What we've tried to do when it's possible is for all three of us to be together and it really, when all three of us are together people commented on how wonderful it is to see us talking openly about these difficult subjects across races. When it's not possible for all three of us to be together, especially presenting to African-American groups of people, I think it's really important for me to be present with one of my coauthors. Again so that people can understand the perspective from which it came. It was really a multiracial effort.

EmbraceRace: Thank you for that. We're getting a number of questions about pushback and the context in which that pushback comes from for a lot of people is with their own people, it's not with the kids. It might be with a partner. It might be with certain extended family or friends. It might be with a teacher or if you're a teacher it might be with some of your students' parents.

We touched on children standing up with their peers but sometimes we're the ones who might be mustering the courage to stand up with our peers. And I wonder if you could offer any wisdom to those of us listening for how you might do that.

And let me add one little bit of detail. You know there's a lot going on in the book. Clearly there's a message of inclusiveness and of nurturing resilience in kids of color, which are two of our goals with EmbraceRace. I think a large number of people could embrace those goals. Not everyone. But my guess is that fewer people embrace the message of proactively fighting for racial justice. That means putting yourself out on a limb a little bit more. So how do you stand up with people who might accept some of the message, "I would go this far" but aren't going to accept the whole message?

Marianne: So this is where courage is needed and sometimes patience with yourself and I'll give an example that doesn't come from the book but it comes from my teaching activities at Emory.

So I lead this cultural competence 4-session sequence and I have the students introduce themselves culturally at the beginning. But I typically have a white person who introduces him or herself by saying they grew up in the suburbs and they've led a sheltered life and so on and so forth and other people may say I grew up in that city. So this has happened for years.

And then sometime during the time we wrote the book, I had a woman say she was sheltered when she was young. And so I thought about it and I said, "Something bothers me about that word." So I got up and I wrote the word "sheltered" on the white board. And when she was done I said, "What if instead of this word, we used this word?" And I wrote the word "deprived." And she just kind of looked, she gave me this deer in the headlights look. And then I just said to her, "You know I think I've used that word, too, and I didn't realize until a few years ago what I was communicating with that word." And so now I don't use that word anymore. There are opportunities that come, that probably have come 15, 20, 100 times down the pike that I've let go. And I just don't let them go anymore.

Ann: I think with respect to our book specifically, we're in the early stages with this but, as we're negotiating with institutions ... Part of what you learn to do as a psychologist is meet someone where they are, so we're trying to find ways to meet institutions where they are.

That might mean proposing before they read our book proposing that they read some books that celebrate diversity but don't get into racial injustice as much. Or anti bullying books or books that promote empathy. Another direction is maybe negotiating to introduce our book later, to a later age group than we think is required. So maybe we do these softer diversity celebration books in grades 1 and 2 and get to our book in grades 3. That's a more prolonged timeline than then we would ideally set out. But if that's what it takes to make an institution comfortable then that may be a way to go. Because I mean the other thing we're aware of is we obviously don't want to encourage an institution to do something that they are uncomfortable with and their teachers are uncomfortable with. So teacher training and parent workshops and all those preparatory things may be another important part of what we need to do.

EmbraceRace: Thank you for that answer. There's a great question here about the book and the pictures that you showed that involves playing chess. What is additional layer of meaning of the chess pieces? When Josh, the young African-American boy, is talking to his family about the police shooting, his father and his older brother are playing chess and sometimes angrily because they are having this conversation about racial injustice and demonstrating anger and frustration. So I wonder what the significance of those chess pieces was for you all?

Marietta: That's a very interesting question. The chess pieces were really proposed by the illustrator, Jennifer Zivoin. We didn't propose them and we certainly had lots of discussion as to whether or not it playing chess is "typical" in many African-American communities and what did it in fact suggest. And after many discussions we ended up really liking the chess pieces. Because they're black and white. And it really allows the dad to show some emotion. So it was really our illustrator who came up with the idea. And we discussed it back and forth as we did with most things and ended up really liking how it portrayed that family's interaction.

EmbraceRace: Mhm. Don't all black men play chess? Andrew and I met in Chicago and all black men play chess in Chicago, including him. Really, by the lake there are a million chess games!

In the book, the chess game becomes a place to express frustrations at obstacles but as the conversation progresses, Josh starts to see a way forward, seeing what he can do. So the chess board comes to represent that strategy piece that his family supports him in developing, too.

Ann: And he's holding up a black chess piece as he talks about his own personal power. So I think it ended up being a visual metaphor that worked.

EmbraceRace: Right. In the chat, there's a wonderful sort of observation and question from Christiana. So let me read part of it. She says, "This is an important book. One thing that gave me pause, however, was the introduction of slavery and the concrete associations of Africa with slavery without any positive counterbalance in terms of where African people who were enslaved by Europeans came from. How do you think the presentation of Africa in reference to slaves rather than the enslavement of African people will contribute to children's understanding of Africa and Africans?"

I'll add what I think is a complementary point or really maybe underlining the same point which is this. I do think that the text of conversations in classrooms about slavery - where they happen - is, "Well, of course, that was a terrible thing." A dark episode in our history and so on.

We also hear from African-American students sometimes that this part of any American history course is what they dread most. Not all, certainly. And of course it can be done better than worse. But I do think we really teach our children and each other [however unintentionally] that it's better to be the one who enslaves than to be enslaved, that the worst thing to be is the enslaved. And if there are really good empowering ways to talk to African Americans and to talk somehow conscientiously to whites and others about slavery, it's certainly not widespread. I'm underlining Christiana's point that there are certainly some pitfalls perhaps to talking about slavery or to not talking about it well? Her suggestion is a counterbalance to slavery. To talk about resistance of the enslaved people and to talk about what African-Americans were able to do in spite of the phenomenal hardship of slavery, etcetera. She's asking for more context and a richer, fuller story. And she's wondering if there are pitfalls to not offering that.

Marianne: Yeah. I love this point. And thank you so much for sharing it. I think there's a couple things I take from it. First of all I totally agree that the use of the term enslave which focuses on the reprehensible actions of the oppressors is better than using nouns to describe people from a continent. However we doubted, I doubt that 4 to 5 year olds know the word enslaved. So we had to make a concession to development there. I get and agree with the point. The other point, that Africa comes up only when we're talking about slavery. I would hate for this book to be the only book that anyone reads about Africa or people from Africa. In Africa there's so many different cultures and there's just so much more than the fact that they've figured in our history of slavery right in the United States. So there's a couple thoughts I have about that. One is we should probably, when we update our additional resources because those will be updated every few months, is that we might want to add some text there and talk about that potential pitfall in the book and here are some other books to read that address Africa in a more comprehensive way.Marietta, you probably have some ideas too.

Marietta: Well I certainly appreciate your comments. Just given the limitations of how much space we had and the age that we were targeting, we weren't really able to address it as fully as we possibly could have. But I do think that we tried to make a connection by talking about really strong black leaders. There's Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela and there's a little picture of the Civil Rights Movement with the signs from marches. So we did try to make that connection but I think that was a great question.

EmbraceRace: We've referred to the illustrations which again are wonderful and they are such an integral part of the story. You'll miss a lot right if you're not engaging the pictures and talking about the photos and what they add to the story with the child.

We have a question about today, bringing it back today. Have you had children make connections once you've read them the book to current events, such as Colin Kaepernick and taking the knee at NFL games?

Marietta: The thing that comes to mind for me is the trip that Anne and I took out to Sacramento right after the shooting of Stephon Clark. We met with his little sister, his mom, family members and some of the sister's friends as well, older kids. One girl talked about the fact that since that shooting she's really afraid when her stepfather goes to work. Their car is broken. Now he has to take public transportation. And suppose he puts his hand in his pocket to pick up his cellphone, to call her mom to let her know that he's on the way [and he's approached by police]. She told us she's having a really hard time sleeping. But hearing this story we wrote really allowed her to begin talking about this. So certainly, I think that the book has served that purpose to begin to open up conversations which are difficult for people to have in some settings, sometimes in families and outside of families. You know so we're really pleased that it's been able to stimulate conversations for social justice.

EmbraceRace: Thank you. Thank you. Our time is at an end. We told you it would move quickly. We really appreciate the book and the conversation.

Marietta: We really enjoyed it.

Marianne: We appreciate it.

Ann: Bye!

EmbraceRace: Bye everybody!

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Addressing Racial Injustice with Young Children

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​EmbraceRace: Thank you so much. It's an awesome book. We won't even play coy and pretend that we don't think it's fabulous. The illustrations are amazing. The story is amazing. As you were saying before we came on and as was noted in the chat by some of the folks who are watching and listening, it's a really rich book.

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Several Antiracist Books Are Selling Out. Here's What Else Black Booksellers and Publishers Say You Should Read

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Several Antiracist Books Are Selling Out. Here's What Else Black Booksellers and Publishers Say You Should Read

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S. Haynes

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Several Antiracist Books Are Selling Out. Here's What Else Black Booksellers and Publishers Say You Should Read

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Indie booksellers want readers to select a range of books on anti-racism and novels to educate themselves and take action. Here are their suggestions.

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On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was suffocated by a police officer in Minneapolis, while three other officers looked on. George Floyd has joined a long list of black men, women, and children who have been killed in recent years by police officers. Here is a list of some of the names of black people killed by the police between Eric Garner's murder in 2014 and George Floyd's murder this year. Protests have erupted across the United States-and even across the world-in response to these deaths.

This Teaching Idea is a guide for teachers to begin conversations with their students about George Floyd's death and the events that surround it. Such conversations are always difficult for teachers to facilitate, and distance learning presents added challenges to teaching sensitive material. Despite these challenges, it's critical to make space for students to process the difficult and deeply painful events of the past week.

Start with Yourself

Self-reflection is important preparation for facilitating sensitive conversations with our students. As educators, we have to process our own feelings and become aware of the way our own identities and experiences shape the perspectives we hold. Read the "Start with Yourself" section on page 2 of our Fostering Civil Discourse guide. Then reflect on the following questions:

What emotions do the recent events surrounding the death of George Floyd raise for you?

What perspectives will you bring to your reflection on these events with your students?

What can you do to ensure that students with a range of perspectives are supported in your reflection?

As this story develops, how will you continue to learn alongside your students?

Prepare for Teaching

A remote learning environment poses particular challenges for difficult conversations. These ideas will help you to plan a sensitive and effective conversation with your students:

Plan where and how you will hold this conversation. Will it be a live discussion on Zoom or another platform? Will you use a moderated discussion board or other asynchronous platform?

If you don't regularly meet with your students online, consider setting up office hours when students have the option to call or message you to discuss their thoughts or feelings about the killing of George Floyd and the protests that have followed.

Tell students ahead of time what to expect from your conversation about the events surrounding George Floyd's death, so that they can emotionally prepare. For example, let your students know if they will be assigned to break out rooms or other discussion forums. Consider giving students the opportunity to opt-out of talking during the conversation, in order to provide students who need it space to process what they are experiencing and learning.

Determine whether you might be able to refer students to school wellness staff for additional support if needed.

Consider communicating with parents and caregivers about the conversation you are planning to hold. How might you help to bridge and support connections between school conversations and those happenings in students' lives outside of school?

Create Space for Student Reflection

In the midst of traumatic and violent events, it can be beneficial to focus first on emotional processing, addressing the "heart" before the "head." Give yourself and your students space to reflect on your emotional responses to the event.

Let your students know that their learning environment is a safe space. Begin with a brief Contracting activity if you have not already forged that safe space in your distance learning environment. Invite your students to add to or modify the contract to support this conversation. Then follow with an acknowledgment of the event and its emotional impact.

Consider sharing a resource from a trusted news outlet to establish baseline knowledge of the events and dispel misinformation. You might choose to share an article from a local news source to focus on the impact of recent events in your area. (Many students may have watched the video of George Floyd's murder. We do not recommend showing this graphic video to your class, in part because it risks retraumatizing students.)

Give your students an opportunity to reflect individually in their journals. Students should have the option to keep their journal reflections private. Potential journal prompts include:

How is the news of the past week, including the murder of George Floyd and the resulting protests, affecting you?

What would you like others to know about what you are thinking, feeling, and experiencing?

What do you need from others to understand, cope, process, and be safe as this story continues to unfold?

What can you offer to others to support them in how this story is impacting them?

Invite students to share any reflections they wish to, but also give students the option to keep their reflections private. Possible ways to share include:

One-on-one or small group office hours with teacher

Small group discussions among students on a video or chat platform

Voice recordings (sent directly to the teacher or shared in a student forum)

Excerpts from journal entries, chosen by students (sent directly to the teacher or shared in a student forum)

Go Deeper: Learn about the History of Police Violence towards Black Americans

The following resources can help your students better understand the historical roots of police violence towards black Americans:

You might have students synthesize what they have learned from one or both of these resources by having them create an iceberg diagram. At the top of the diagram, students can write "the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer." Next to the bottom part of the diagram (under the water), students should write their answers to these questions: What are the historical roots of police violence toward black Americans? How does this history impact policing today?

Finally, ask students to share their diagrams. (If students drew their own diagrams, they can take a photo to share.)

Go Deeper: Reflect on Protests Today

Play Trevor Noah's video George Floyd, Minneapolis Protests, Ahmaud Arbery & Amy Cooper for your students. ( Note: In the first few minutes of the video, Trevor Noah focuses on the video of Amy Cooper taken in Central Park last week. You may choose to play the video from the beginning or start the video at 5:40, when Trevor Noah begins discussing the death of George Floyd.)

Then, reflect with students:

How is Trevor Noah making sense of the news from the past two weeks? Why does he believe that the pandemic and the series of high profile incidents of racism and racist violence are connected?

How does Trevor Noah define a social contract? How does he use the idea of a broken social contract to explain the protests and unrest we have seen across the United States?

In Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech The Other America, he talks about how "a riot is the language of the unheard." Play a video excerpt of his speech or share the transcript with your students.

Then, reflect with students:

What do you think Martin Luther King Jr. means when he says that "a riot is the language of the unheard?"

What examples does Martin Luther King Jr. give of problems he believes are going unaddressed during his life? What are examples of problems you believe are going unaddressed today?

Raise Students' Voices

Conclude your discussion by inviting students to step back and consider what is at stake in the aftermath of George Floyd's death and in the midst of widespread protests. Ask students to imagine that they have the chance to communicate directly to one or more of the key figures in this story, such as George Floyd's family, the chief of police in Minneapolis, the mayor of any city where protests are taking place, Joe Biden (the presumptive Democratic nominee for president), President Donald Trump, or another national leader. What questions would they want to ask? What perspectives would they want to share? If students would like to share reflections publicly, our partners at the New York Times' The Learning Network are inviting comments in their Student Opinion section: What Is Your Reaction to the Days of Protest That Have Followed the Death of George Floyd?

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Reflecting on George Floyd's Death and Police Violence Towards Black Americans

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On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was suffocated by a police officer in Minneapolis, while three other officers looked on. George Floyd has joined a long list of black men, women, and children who have been killed in recent years by police officers.