Heroes

To my surprise, one of my new activities for 2012 is to open a Twitter account! The purpose of AfterGandhiBk isn't chatting (who's got time?), but to share quotes and information on nonviolent resistance.

I'm tweeting references to heroes whose provocative ideas, creative strategies, and courageous activism can inspire young readers, including those portrayed in the book my son and I wrote, After Gandhi: One Hundred Years of Nonviolent Resistance.


In 2011, we said goodbye to two of them:

Wangari Matthai of the Green Belt Movement, the first African woman and the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize, "a towering figure in Kenya, ... renowned as a fearless social activist and an environmental crusader." (The Guardian obituary), 

and Vaclav Havel, playwright, leader of the Velvet Revolution and first president of the Czech Republic, "whose eloquent dissections of Communist rule helped to destroy it in revolutions that brought down the Berlin Wall and swept Mr. Havel himself into power." (NYTimes obituary)


The history, experiences, and ideas of those who've actively practiced alternatives to violence could not be more apropos at this time, with news accounts full of images and stories of people participating in - and reacting to - the Occupy Movement. It's an incredible opportunity to help young people connect the dots between what's gone before and what's happening now and to engage hearts and minds in the quest for justice.

Cheers at Year's End

Earlier this month, Kristi Bernard of Kristi's Book Nook gave me the Versatile Blogger Award. (I was in a musical at the time and then it was the holidays... but I've finally gotten back to posting.) Thanks, Kristi!

According to Kristi, my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to:

a.  Thank the person who gave it to me and link back to them. ✓

b. Share seven things about myself: 

1. I live on an island in Maine - a real island, the kind you have to take a ferry to get to.
2. Intense color makes me happy.
3. I once spent a weekend as a go-go dancer for an American rock band performing at the National Theatre in Seoul, Korea, dressed in a white mini-dress with fringe, in front of hundreds of screaming Korean high school students.
4. I've been studying jazz vocals for a number of years. Some of my favorite singers are Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald,  Carmen McRae and Canadian Susie Arioli.
5. As a young girl, I wanted my name to be Ruby.
6. I love bread. A recent favorite book is Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which taught me to always have a wet dough in my refrigerator with the possibility of a fresh-baked boule or baguette only an hour and fifteen minutes away.
7. I'm a perennial optimist. I love the book The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.

c. Pass this award on to 5 (some posts say 15!) other recently discovered blogs and inform them of the honor. 

I'm not much of a blog reader, as in I don't have many favorites that I go to every few days. (My exceptions: Love Isn't Enough: "on raising a family in a colorstruck world" and my friend Catherine's Mama C and the Boys.) My favorite blogs are ones that are building a body of information and resource that is timeless and worth exploring again and again. Here are 4 nominations:

1.  Sojo's Trumpet: A Culture Blog for Teens. I discovered Sojourner Ahebee several years ago when she reviewed my book After Gandhi. She writes exuberant and important posts about music, books, global activism and cultural events, and has recently added a Zazzle account with beautifully designed Afrocentric greeting cards.
2. Korean American Story.  Essays by Korean Americans cover personal and political topics, creating a collective portrait of this diverse community.
3. Real Kids. Good Books. "Our children are gorgeously diverse and they love a good read." Kate has been blogging for only 9 months during which she's built an impressive archive (beautifully organized as a graphic) of book recommendations. (She had me at the heading illustration from Umbrella.)
4. Diversity in YA Fiction - a celebration!  "DIYA is a positive, friendly gathering of readers and writers who want to see diversity in their fiction." Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, both YA writers of color, have responded to the problem of whitewashing in YA literature by giving attention to the positive side - good books featuring characters of color. I've just begun to mine this resource - lots to look forward to.

I'll notify the winners in the new year.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Racists = Bad People?

Recently I've been collecting nonfiction children's books (mostly from the 1990's, mostly library discards) addressing racism, including these titles: What Do We Think About Racism?; Talking About Racism; Let's Talk About Racism; What Do You Know About Racism; and How Do I Feel About Dealing with Racism. 

As a group, the books have some useful information, but most define racism as a confusing umbrella term that includes prejudice based on ethnicity, culture, religion and nationality as well as race.

But the biggest drawback shared by all the books is limiting the discussion of racism to overt, personal acts. The take-away message: Racism is something that bad people do.

Focusing only on individual racial bias overlooks the reality that racism is a system of advantage based on race. It fails to grapple with the ways in which all of us are socialized to play roles based on the racial group(s) we belong to. It doesn't address institutional racism, white privilege, unconscious bias, or the influence of the dominant racial culture, all of which are far more pervasive than individual acts of personal racism.

And it implies that well-meaning, well-intentioned people aren't likely to say or do something racist. This constricts our conversations because any suggestion that an action, attitude, or statement might show racial bias causes people, especially white people, to get extremely defensive, completely resistant, or deeply ashamed, because it's heard as an accusation that the perpetrator must be a bad person.

Recently, social commentator Jay Smooth gave an engaging and illuminating TED talk at Hampshire College - "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Talking About Race" - addressing the problem of people's resistance to the idea that they might be showing racial bias.

Smooth advocates, with delightful humor, that we move from the "good person/bad person binary" to "the dental hygiene paradigm of race discourse." He suggests that we equate a correction about race to the observation, "You have something stuck in your teeth."

Over the years, I've found the direction of remembering my own goodness to be quite useful in processing any feedback that my bias might be showing. If I know that my intention is good, then I can appreciate the mirror showing me any dissonance, offering me the chance to clean it up so that the impact matches my intention. I can choose to see the intervention as a kindness and respond, "Thanks! I needed that."

But Then Again, They Can Get It from Us

Just read a powerful post on Love Isn't Enough entitled "They Learned It From Watching You," originally posted at CocoaMamas.com. Author LaToya describes exclusionary play at the preschool where her daughter is the only African-American child. She shares her frustration at the school's handling of the incidents which involved responding to the children who were excluded but not addressing the larger problem of the children who were doing the excluding, and what it was they were acting out.

LaToya writes, "(L)et’s please recognize that these children learned this behavior at home... Their parents don’t have friends of other races – they don’t have to. Their kids witness their parents having mono-racial ideas of who is worth hanging out with and who is not... And they make an inference that if Mom and Dad don’t hang out with these people, then I shouldn’t either – for whatever reason."

According to psychologist Krista Aronson, community and dominant cultural norms are indeed stronger than family ones in influencing children's attitudes about race. But when these norms are not only not contradicted in the family but actually upheld through the absence of cross-racial relationships in our lives and our silence about race, children do learn from us.

Absence and silence are powerful teaching tools.

They Didn't Get That From Me!

 

In our joint school visits, as author Margy Burns Knight talks, I often sketch the face of an imagined child in each session, leaving the school with a group of portraits of diverse children. Several years ago, presenting our book Africa is Not a Country at a Maine school, I was sketching a series of children who could be from African countries. As the collection of portraits grew throughout the day, we asked students, "What do you notice about the pictures? What's the same about the children? What's different?" 

A second grade boy pointed to the image of a brown-skinned girl wearing a scarf around her head. "She's so poor," he remarked in a solemn tone. "And she's sad, so, so sad." 

In truth, the portrait was of a smiling girl, at least as happy-looking as any of the other drawings. (To add to the intrigue of the comment, the student making it was brown-skinned himself, an African-American child adopted by a white family.) A conversation ensued, in language appropriate to second graders, about "funny ideas" we sometimes have about Africa, and perhaps brown people - such as that everyone is poor and sad.

Has a child in your care ever burst out with a racial comment that puzzled, embarrassed, or distressed you? The more we explore race with children, the more it's likely to happen. One of the outcomes of getting children to share their observations is that if we're effective, we'll get to hear what children are actually thinking about race - and some of their ideas are not what we might wish. Our first response may be the horrified defense, "S/he couldn't have gotten it from me!" The good news is, you're probably right.

In our presentation, "Books As Bridges" (see previous post), Krista Aronson, psychologist and Bates college professor of psychology, shared research results that "children rely more on community norms than parental norms." As an example, she noted that parents new to a community may speak with an accent, but their children will soon sound like their classmates. 

So where do children's ideas about race come from?

1. Socialized Roles

Children are keen observers. If they see people segregated in distinctly different types of housing, jobs, classrooms, positions of authority, etc., they absorb this information.

2. The Soup

All day long, all of us, including children, are surrounded by and bombarded with images and information. Children notice, without the skills to deconstruct why, who's portrayed and how.

3. Silence

When adults respond to questions and comments about race with discomfort and shushing, or never raise the subject at all, children learn that race is something not to be discussed, like something bad or dangerous.

This is why talking about race is so crucial for children's development. If we don't engage kids in conversations that give them permission and language to say what's on their minds, to voice the associations they're making and the conclusions they're reaching, all of this conditioning goes unchallenged. When we provide a safe place for children to speak, we get the opportunity to engage with them and offer them the skills to break the silence, to interrogate the Soup, and to challenge socialized roles.

How to Talk About Race: A List of Books

Next week I'll be leading an educators workshop and co-leading a community event on talking about race with children. A book sale will accompany the presentations, with a small selection of children's books that are natural catalysts for starting a conversation on race. (Update: Here's a short TV interview about the programs.)

My co-presenter, Bates College psychology professor Krista Aronson, and I have identified three core categories of books that are useful in addressing race, in order of their developmental application:

1.  Celebration of differences (CD)
  Simply naming and appreciating difference is an essential foundation for conversations about race. Children are already making these observations; talking about them gives children permission and language to voice them. The goal of these interactions is not so much to teach as to create an open forum for children to say whatever they see. Supportive adults then have the opportunity to assist children in developing positive racial associations of both themselves and people different from them.

2. Cross-group (CG)
  In psychological research studies, books portraying positive interactions across racial difference have been shown to reduce prejudice (see the work of Rupert Brown). These books show cross-racial friendships which can strengthen children's developing appreciation of and sense of connection to people who look different from them.

3. Racism
  Stories of prejudice, mistreatment and discrimination are an essential part of any reality-based education about race, but not as the only or the first story. Too often, when well-intentioned adults want to introduce concepts of race to children, they start with books about the civil rights movement. This is problematic in several ways: Children learn to associate discussions of race with discomfort, conflict, and possibly guilt, and African-Americans may be seen only in the light of a difficult history. In other words, children may absorb the idea of race as a problem and people of color as victims.
  However, when presented by a relaxed and practiced facilitator in the context of a broader, ongoing conversation, these stories can be powerful catalysts for provocative conversations, memorable learning, and the development of empathy. Again, the focus of discussion should be on eliciting children's thoughts and feelings and on developing their critical thinking skills.

Here are some examples of books in each category (grade levels are suggestions only).

preschool - Gr. 2
All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka  - CD  (Multiracial)
Amazing Faces compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins - CD, CG (Multiracial)
Bein’ With You This Way by W. Nikola-Lisa  - CD  (Multiracial) 
Come On, Rain by Karen Hesse - CG  (Black/Asian/White)
Jamaica & Brianna  by Juanita Havill  - CG  (Black/Asian)
Shades of People by Shelley Rotner  -  CD  (Multiracial)

Gr. 1 - 4
Baseball Saved Us - R (Japanese-American)
The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida - R, CG  (Japanese-American)
Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco - CG  (White/Black/Jewish) Jacqueline Woodson
Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles -  R, CG  (White/Black)
The Other Side  by Jacqueline Woodson - R, CG  (Black/White) 
Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey - R  (Black) 

Gr. 3 - 7
The Basket Counts Matt Christopher -  R, CG  (Black/White)
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson  - CG, R  (Black/White)
The Friendship by Mildred Taylor  -  R  (Black/White)
The Other Half of My Heart  by Sundee Frazier - CG, R (Black/White/Biracial twins)
Witness by Karen Hesse  -  R, CG  (White/Black/Jewish)

Gr. 7 - 12
The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie - R, CG (Native-American)
American-Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang - R, CG  (Chinese-American)
Face Relations: Eleven Stories About Seeing Beyond Color edited by Marilyn Singer - R, CG (Multiracial)
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow - R, CG (Biracial/Black/White) 
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson -  CG, R (Black/White)

How to Talk About Race: Expert #3

If you believe - and want to keep believing - that children "don't see race," don't read this book.

The First R: How Children Learn Race and Racism, by Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin, is a fearless, sometimes searing look at how young children not only see race, but are processing in many complex layers the experience of growing up in a society defined by race.

Van Ausdale spent nearly a year in a "racially and ethnically diverse day care center" where she "gathered experiential data of how preschool children use racial-ethnic awareness and knowledge in their social relationships." Her constant, unobtrusive presence (she responded to children but never initiated contact, intervened or engaged in any teaching) meant that she was privy to interactions of children navigating their relationships that she might never have witnessed in the role of a "sanctioning adult."

This book is the field report of that experience. "In our data," the authors report, "we see white children experimenting with and learning how to be white and how to handle the privileges, propensities, and behaviors associated with the white position in society. We also see children of color learning how to deal with the reality of being Black, Asian or Latino in a white-dominated society."

In one typical incident, Van Ausdale observed three young girls, two white and one Asian, playing with a wagon. When the white child who had been pulling the other girls in the wagon dropped the handle, the Asian child jumped out to begin pulling. The white girl responded, "No, No. You can't pull this wagon. Only white Americans can pull this wagon." There are dozens of examples of such behavior, including the use of racial slurs and demeaning language, sometimes with the clear intent to cause hurt.

Again and again Van Ausdale witnessed children playing out the racial roles assigned them by the larger society. "Modern racism is fundamentally about a severe imbalance of power - the power of whites to control society's social resources. Being white means having power over Blacks and other people of color. Significantly, in our observations no child of color used racist epithets to control white children. They did fight back when challenged and sometimes used constructed racial distinctions to create their own exclusive play groups... [T]he exclusionary actions carried out by the white children replicate and reproduce similar exclusionary actions that children of color and their parents face in the larger society."

The other source of data was the interactions of the daycare staff with the children around incidents of which they were aware, and their response to the reports of what was observed. These teachers were trained, experienced child care workers who taught an anti-bias curriculum. To a person, they expressed shock at the incidents Van Ausdale reported, as did parents of the children. A significant portion of the book describes and analyzes the gap between what the adults thought about children's awareness of race and what the researcher actually observed.

"Adult explanations often maintain that young children either have no consciousness of racial distinctions or hold naive and shallow conceptions easily amenable to change," the authors write. "... [T]he parents, teachers, and volunteers routinely dismissed or denied the extent of children's racial-ethnic knowledge... For their part, most of the children seemed aware that adults did not expect them to understand racial and ethnic matters. The children would regularly disguise or conceal their activities from adults when there was a racial or ethnic component, especially if they were acting in negative ways."

Whew. What an eye-opening, disturbing, yet ultimately necessary and liberating message. I've barely touched on its breadth and depth (if this issue concerns you, read this book!), but let me conclude with my take-aways, what its findings suggest for having conversations about race with children:

1. By preschool age, children growing up in our racialized society have absorbed, are experimenting with and are acting out many layers of complex information about race and racial roles (way more than their caregivers suspect), including the denial and silence of many adults on the subject.

2. If the adults caring for them do not offer concrete, direct, and bold language, guidance and models for counteracting the dominant culture's messages about race, children's attitudes and behaviors will be formed by these influences, and they will act out the racial roles that society has assigned them.

3. Conversations about race are not complete if they do not address the reality of power, especially for white children. We need to get past the definition of racism as individual acts of meanness by bad people, and get more real about how advantage and disadvantage, privilege and exclusion are color-coded in our society, how all of us are socialized into roles based on our racial groups, and how these roles keep racism functioning. "The more children know about the seriousness of racial-ethnic oppression and its consequences, the more they will be equipped to contest it in their present and future lives."

5. Children need empowering strategies and tools in order to build healthy racial identities and relationships across race.

"Watching children at work with racism is like watching ourselves in a mirror," the authors conclude. "They will not unlearn and undo racism until we do."