2 minute read
Inform Experiences
Deep inequities across racial lines continue to exist in the United States, which has the greatest incarceration rate of any country in the world (M. Lee, 2015). In 2016, the United States confined more Black adults than were enslaved in 1850 (Carson, 2018). According to a Southern Poverty Law Center intelligence report, following the 2016 presidential election, “a wave of hate crimes and lesser hate incidents swept the country: 1,094 bias incidents in the first 34 days” (Potok, 2017).
In 2020, the United States experienced an uprising sparked by the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, and in response to many other unjust deaths of Black men and women, including Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and Ahmaud Arbery, to name a few. According to data collected by The New York Times, in June 2020, anywhere from 15 million to 26 million people participated in Black Lives Matter demonstrations around the United States (Buchanan, Bui, & Patel, 2020). Protests spread to more than fifty countries around the world, with tens of thousands of people marching in places like London, France, and Australia, holding candlelight vigils in Iran, and attending protests against police brutality in Istanbul and Nairobi (Safi, 2020). These figures make these protests the largest movement in the country’s history.
Because cultural attitudes about race and systemic racism continue to inform the experiences of U.S. citizens, and due to the fact that elementary students need explicit teaching about differences, their education must include learning around race and racism. Schools are faced with the challenge of grappling with how to best engage with students around these topics and include families in the conversation, as we attempt to create environments that promote inclusion as well as antibias and antiracist attitudes among students.
I believe that when we give students information about race and racism and the language to engage on these topics, they become more skillful at talking openly about differences and similarities, more confident in sharing their knowledge and ideas about social justice and racism, and less likely to become biased or to participate in prejudice or stereotyping. When families do this work at home, they reinforce and strengthen this learning. Yet families come to school with differing ideas about racial diversity and its value as a topic for family discussion. There is no common understanding or framework across schools and districts, which leaves educators to construct their own approach to talking to students about race or to avoid the discussion altogether.
