Why & How to Build Racial Literacy with Kids

Day 7: Let’s Talk about Racism with Our Kids, with Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

Friends,

I’m so excited about our focus today! 

“We want [kids] to know what racism is so . . . they feel empowered to dismantle it.” —Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

“Our ‘why’ [for talking about racism with kids] should be rooted in liberation and justice . . .” —Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

For years after antiracism became a primary orientation in my life, if you’d asked me about it, I would have gotten very intense. I would have told you, in no uncertain terms, that antiracism was about fierce protests, speaking truth to power (loudly), and hard-core community organizing.

Those answers wouldn’t have been wrong, of course. Racial justice can and does require those things.

But it would have never occurred to me to consider that how one parented or grand-parented, engaged the young person who lived next door, or talked to kids at church or in a community group was a vital way to be faithful to the work of living racial transformation and taking daily action to co-create a just world where all of us can flourish.

And then?

Then I became a parent. 

Wow, did I quickly realize two things. I realized what our children learn and learn to do now has everything to do with what they’ll be able to do later and how they’ll shape the kind of world we’re creating. I also realized I was woefully unequipped to translate my adult understandings of racial justice into the language and developmental landscape of a two-year-old.  

How to explain why shouldn’t we sing the “1 little, 2 little, 3 little Indians” on the Disney CD? How to teach them to recognize and challenge racism if (when!) they saw it on the school playground? How to teach them to acknowledge racial differences in ways that were truly respectful (in a society that so rarely modeled respect) and about injustice (without making them feel bad for being white)?

Wow, again did I become so grateful for Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry in the last few years.

Dr. Berry has long been at the work—educating, modeling, inspiring, challenging, and equipping adults to increase our racial literacy and capacity for antiracism. But she’s also one of the most powerful and inspiring people I know when it comes to teaching adults how to walk with kids and youth in transformative ways for the sake of liberation and justice.

(If you loved her video in this email, I absolutely recommend you check out her Tedx talk, Children Will Light Up the World if We Don’t Keep Them in the Dark. You won’t be the same.)

Here’s your action for today. “Spark a conversation with your child or students that inspires and liberates them to be more curious about how they can help dismantle racism” (thank you, Dr. Berry!). If you don’t have a child or students, connect with a friend or loved one who does—share what Dr. Berry got you thinking about and ask them about what they do.

(Also, if you’re a parent—go to brownicity or follow them on Instagram to build yourself a community of support and ongoing resourcing for yourself. If you don’t have children, could you give a copy of Hues of You to a friend who does?) 

All of our children deserve many, many adults who are actively and daily creating the conditions in which they can, indeed, light up world! Because, indeed, they will.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene, or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 3: Explore through the work of these projects (read about them, watch the videos) Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project as a way to contemplate generational legacies; learn about current efforts for remembrance and repair; nourish your own moral imagination for where you may be called to plug in.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

Day 6: Do an audit of where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Identify specific choices you could make to shift where you spend your time and your resources from mostly white spaces into Black- and Brown-owned, run or majority spaces.

TODAY, share Dr. Harvey’s new book with your networks so we can continue building our community of folks co-creating the world we want!