Reply to Anti-racist training for parent groups and teachers

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We all should agree that telling kids that their parents are bad and making bad choices is at best, not productive, and at worst harmful to the kids and to the relationship between the school and family.

There is a difference between stating facts when teaching nutrition, "here are some nutritious foods that are recommended to form the bulk of your diet" and judgment ("Lunchables are a terrible choice for school lunches in that they are lacking in nutrition and have too much sodium and fact"). Even worse is the suggestion that "good parents" don't send their kids to school with food that is not healthy and nutritious. This anti-racist training is informing volunteers and staff that they should not make disparaging comments about a child's food or parental choice of food.

What is interesting to me is that concerns about judgment and alienating kids from their families in this context mirror concerns expressed about other anti-racist teachings, where the privilege and racism of individual children and their families are pointed out publically, as opposed to teaching about general examples of racism and acts of anti-racism in a way that is not critical of any particular child or the child's parents or family. Why is it ok in one setting and not the other? [/quote]

Can you give an example of such an activity?  Because I would consider myself a pretty anti racist teacher and I can’t think of a thing in my curriculum that resembles what you describe, unless you mean that addressing racist behavior that happens in front of me is somehow the same as telling a kid to go home and correct their mother for serving a convenient food.[/quote]

Not the person to whom you are responding but I am chiming in to suggest that this is an interesting point that is worth fleshing out. I think it is possible that what was meant was something my white friends sometimes express; that they find it challenging to reply to their kids when part of what the kids may internalize from lessons in school about slavery or the treatment of black Americans (Did you know black people couldn't vote!) is that somehow they (the kids) are responsible for what was perpetrated by white people who came before. I kind of rebuffed the idea until one of my friends asked me how I would feel if I sat in a room and someone repeated that "black people did this horrible thing to me, and black people did this." I was eventually able to understand (after getting out of my own way and backing off my reflexive response to scream "I'm really sorry if my ancestors being enslaved makes your kids uncomfortable") that if a teacher speaks with a broad brush (or doesn't, but a caring and kind hearted kid misinterprets) they might wonder whether they are responsible for those behaviors.

FWIW, I think what they settled on was to clarify that while the kids didn't engage in that behavior, the legacy of those behaviors live on today so it is important that they be aware of that and some of the systemic inequities that may have come from that history [/quote]

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