Last fall, I received a phone call from a friend asking for some advice. Her first grade white son had said something racially insensitive towards the only Black child in the class. My friend wanted to make sure that she responded in a way that made sure the Black child felt safe and that her son learned why what he said was wrong. Just as importantly, she was thinking about how she was raising her White children to become more conscious and conscientious about the experiences of others.

When I grew up, and even when I was raising my daughter, the idea was that we should all be “color blind” so that we treat everyone equally. We assume our children are unaware of race and difference and that we adults can raise children to be non-prejudiced if we support this “color blind” approach. In fact, young children begin to absorb their cultural and racial identity in infancy and notice physical differences such as skin color, hair texture, and gender anatomy as toddlers. A color-blind approach reduces our ability to see difference.  If we do not see race, we cannot play a role in working to create a world with greater equity and justice.

At 276, a key component of our vision for our students is to help them become compassionate and caring individuals.  This means that we need to help children navigate the issues of race and difference that permeate our society.  Children hear about race and racism in the news, in the books they read, and on the playground. As adults, we need to help them process this information.

At the February PTA meeting, my principal report focused on the anti-bias and anti-racism work we are doing at 276.  This work is essential to achieving our goal of educating for respect. It helps us teach children how to live and work in a diverse world, builds empathy leading to children who are happier and more successful, builds strong social relationships and collaborative skills, acts as preventive measures to reduce mean behaviors and bullying, and will help us leave our children a kinder, more compassionate and humane world.  This is especially important because, according to FBI data, we have seen a 17% increase in reported hate crimes in the US in 2017. This was the third consecutive year of an increase! Of the more than 7,100 hate crimes reported last year, nearly three out of five were motivated by race and ethnicity.  The other two major causes were religion and sexual orientation.

Our faculty takes the social responsibility of educating children seriously. Together, we study our own identities, read widely, study history, and think about how we respond to acts of bias. The Southern Poverty Law Center publishes educational resources on anti-bias and social justice education that we find useful. In addition to social justice standards, they also have resources that help us be proactive in helping students become aware of bias and help us react in educational ways to acts of bias.  In order to effectively engage our students in learning about race, identity, and difference, we have to thoughtfully examine our own experiences, conscious and unconscious beliefs, and knowledge of race and differences.  This can be messy work, but we are committed to it.

There are three areas that we focus on at 276. In ways that are aligned with student age and readiness, we work to build

• Accurate knowledge and pride in one’s own identity. This includes understanding history and the contributions of one’s group to society.  It also means that we have to help children understand the diverse stories that people within a group have.
• Accurate knowledge about and appreciation of the history and contributions of other groups. Again, we have to make sure that children understand the diverse stories and experiences of individuals in a group.  In the US, we have a tendency to focus on only one aspect of a story. For example, African American history is confined to slavery and the civil rights movement and Jewish history is limited to early immigration stories and the Holocaust. We can counter this single story narrative by reading widely in fiction and non-fiction.
• Understanding of how racism has shaped history and current social issues (this tends to happen as students get older.)

But sometimes children make mistakes as they grow and become aware of their identities and navigate social pressures.  When necessary, we apply the following four steps in responding to biased behavior.

• Interrupt – Clearly tell the speaker or actor “I don’t like words like that. They are hurtful.”
• Question – Reflect with the speaker about their actions/words. “Why do you say that? What do you mean? Tell me more.”
• Educate – Help them understand the history and impact of those actions. “Do you know the history of that word? How else could you say that?”
• Echo – When others speak up, thank them for speaking up. “I agree that is offensive and we shouldn’t act/talk that way.”

As I have been learning more about this topic, I have been finding some resources that I have found helpful.

1. Raising Race-Conscious Children: this is a resource to support adults who are trying to talk about race with young children. This is a link on their website for strategiesto help your children become race conscious.
2. Embrace Race: this is an online community to discuss and share best practices for raising and caring for kids, all kids, in the context of race.
3. SURJ Families: This Facebook group for families is a subgroup of Showing Up for Racial Justice. It provides resources and an opportunity to share experiences.
4. Raising White Kids: A recent book on how white children navigate race in their schools and communities.