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The books we read, the videos we watch, the friends we make, the doctors we visit, and the conversations we’ve had at home shape our children’s criticisms of race.
By Tara Parker-Pope
When the teens at the Roblox game site darkened the color of the outside in their avatars for Black Lives Matter, Garvey Mortley, 12, made a direct decision to speak. He created a video that explains the offensive story of the black face and presented the audience with more appropriate tactics to convert them.
“Changing your complexion to a darker skin color in Roblox or an Apple game is necessarily depicting your face with bitumen,” she explains in the video. “It’s like putting on a black face.” He suggested that a better way to convert virtual support would be to dress up in nature in a Black Lives Matter T-shirt.
It was a small step of a child opposed to racism, founded on the sessions he had learned at home. Her mother, Amber Coleman-Mortley, is the Director of Social Engagement at iCivics, a non-evident compatibility organization founded through Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for civics through virtual games and resources. Ms. Coleman-Mortley marched with her daughters and mother at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington and created podcasts with her 40-year-old teens. Even a verbal exhibition about a favorite singer (“Cardi B is the greatest witness of all time!”) It was an opportunity to talk about other greats, such as poet and civil rights activist Audre Lorde or Oprah.
“People get beaten up and think, “I can’t stand it. I am a person,” said Ms. Coleman-Mortley, who writes about social justice on her blog, MomofAllCapes.” But there are spaces where we approach racism in our lives, even assuming you live in a homogeneous community, you can be able to combat racism and attack it.”
“We are all a foreign civics lesson right now, and we’re not looking to walk the streets to grab a small play station to move around and raise the most conscious and anti-racist friends.” Joon your P.T.A., attend school board meetings, learn more about the program. Demand explicit hitale sessions about race. Complete your child’s education with books and documentaries, and feel free to talk about race.
“When a child says, ‘This child is black or Asian,’ I think a wonderful variety of white parents is silencing their child,’ Coleman-Mortley said. You don’t want to silence your child. This creates a negative connotation in that child’s mind, and they think, “Wait, there’s something wrong with brown skin.” Just say, “Great. Let’s meet this boy. What else have you learned about them?”
Ibram X. Kendi, of the best books “How to be anti-racist,” has compiled a playlist that he calls a “ladder to anti-racism.” It’s never enough to be “non-racist,” he says, as it’s a “neutral” statement.
“Those who must be anti-racist realize that this is never an identity,” said Dr. Kendi, Cinput’s founding director for anti-racist research and politics at American University. “It’s everything they strive to be, to be bound at one and at any time to be anti-racist concepts and anti-racist policies.”
Dr. Kendi recently published a children’s book, “Antiracist Baby”. The book, written in rhymes, proposes nine steps: seeing the color of the skin, celebrating differences and becoming an anti-racist. “Parents use books to love or love, or to be clean. Why not do the same as any of our teens to be anti-racist,” Dr. Kendi said. He points out that other Americans who don’t seem comfortable talking about race come from houses where it wasn’t a topic of conversation.
“Our parents didn’t talk to us about it in a controlled construction environment,” he said. “Nor did it give us how to start these conversations because our parents had always taught us that it was something that is not talked about. There’s a cycle.”
Conversations about the race have had a gigantic influence on Winona Guo, now a Harvard student, and in Priya Vulchi, which has a tendency to Princeton. They don’t forget in the confusing and not-so-confusing way that racism influenced their own vision of themselves as teenagers and made them feel inferior. Ms. Vulchi, who is a Native American, was told to whiten her skin. Ms. Guo recalls asking for an appointment to play with a classmate who said, “I don’t play with Chinese girls.”
The first time they remembered a verbal exposure on race at their h8 school in New Jersey was in the Grade 10 Hitale class, when an instructor announced a lecture on The Death of Eric Garner in 2014. The verbal exposure led them to travel a gap year. to all 50 states to talk to other Americans about race, which has become a book, “Tell me who you are: sharing our stories of race, culture, and identity. The duo also announced a non-evident compatibility organization called Choose, and the Book, InstructionAl Representative, and Folder have been used through many educators across the country.
“Schools are critical because they allow us to succeed in all children, adding white scholars who have mistakenly learned that race has nothing to do with their lives,” Guo said.
“Don’t define anti-racism paints as an extracurricular activity, but as an integral component of life, whatever career you choose,” Vulchi said. “Art, coding, politics, statistics: all of this is also used daily for anti-racist paintings.”
Parents can start conversations about race with books, documentaries or perhaplaystation films like “Black Panther” or “Crazy Rich Asians”, two hits that reveal the strength of diversity in cinema.
“Bring it into your house and say to your kids, ‘Let’s talk about why that movie was different than every other movie we’ve seen,” said Julie Lythcott-Haims, whose books include “Real American,” a memoir about her life as a black and biracial woman living in predominantly white spaces. “Don’t ask leading questions. Let kids fill the space with their thoughts. They might not even mention race. Then tell them why it was different for you. After the movie is over, that’s where you show up with your values.”
Parents living in homogeneous communities can place tactics to make their children’s lives more diverse. “Who are your children’s doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and music teachers and guardians?” said Traci Baxley, a coach and educator who provides courses on Instagram and her website, SocialJusticeParenting.com.
“You can expand how your teens perceive black people,” said Dr. Baxley, associate professor and multicultural education program coordinator at Florida Atlantic University. “I hear moms tell me that ‘my whole region is white.’ Then, for example, drive an additional 20 minutes to travel to a black dentist or drive a little more to travel to another grocery store. If you are serious about the practice, this will require a little extra effort.”
A common mistake for some parents is to mention that they don’t “see the colors” and that they raise their teenage children to be color blind.
“Say,” I’m color blind, that is, “I have the privilege of never having to worry about color,” says Lythcott-Haims, former corporate lawyer and dean of Stanford. “People who wear brown skin don’t have that luxury. The correct technique is to recognize that humans are held in countless shapes of hair color and texture, eye, nose and lip shape, h8 and w8. There’s a big apple differences. The key is to tell our teens that the differences don’t seem to be bad.”
Join me on Wednesday, June 2 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time for a verbal exposure with Amber Coleman-Mortley about raising a socigreatest, attentive and anti-racist friend. Rsvp. Here.
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