I am continuing my journey to better understanding by watching and I want to share the most interesting with you. We should keep learning and pushing ourselves while we actually work to dismantle the racist systems in place that keep people of color from succeeding at life. We need to push our schools, banks, city councils, police departments, landlords, and neighbors to do better. If you work in an area that should help more get your people on board. If you are a parent, teacher or administrator you need to push for real change in what and how we teach. This video shares how students in the South were explicitly taught to respect the Confederate flag, and it’s so-called “heritage”.
Also I read this great article, When black people are in pain white people just join book clubs, by Tre Johnson in The Washington Post about how easily white people dismiss the struggle. I feel like I’m stuck in this myself by how much information I’m taking in yet in order to be a better ally and teacher I have to understand how and what to say. I was asked to be on our district’s equity committee, which I understand has been in place for years w/out getting much done, so we are still dealing with a lot of old/same hurt, outrage, and anger.
Teaching Hard History in K-5 is a webinar I watched from the Teaching Tolerance website, which is filled with valuable resources. This webinar already took place but if you register they will send you a link to it within a few minutes. I’m going to keep an eye on other webinars they may host as I would like to be part of the real-time Q/A
This video with Emmanuel Acho is helpful and he has several others to watch. I either stumbled upon this one or someone shared it on their FB feed. It’s shocking that people still don’t understand the mental trauma and racist systems that Black people have experienced. This is one of many areas where the race has not been fair for generations. I encourage you to subscribe and take a look at each of his videos.
And one last one that I found on our list of resources for the school equity committee about micro aggressions. I love the dialogue that happens in this particular classroom. My head cannot wrap around things that people say out loud; like stop people and think before you speak and also how about a little mind-you-own-business! What would it look like to be more welcoming and accepting of people who don’t look just like you.
Be kind out there and seriously do better. There are many ways to get involved and help even if just by donating or making phone calls. 8 can’t wait is a great tool to help you. Breonna Taylor’s murderers are still out there and here is a good article talking about this. And Elijah McClain in Colorado. We need to stop this before the list continues to grow…
Thank you for continuing on this journey with me…
Peaceful Reader 