Coloring Between the Lines

Heroes

2012-01-21T11:57:00.000-05:00

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

2011-12-31T19:32:00.006-05:00

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:

I live on an island in Maine - a real island, the kind you have to take a ferry to get to.
Intense color makes me happy.
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.
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.
As a young girl, I wanted my name to be Ruby.
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.
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:

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.
Korean American Story. Essays by Korean Americans cover personal and political topics, creating a collective portrait of this diverse community.
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.)
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?

2011-12-01T01:10:00.001-05:00

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

2011-10-27T00:30:00.000-04:00

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!

2011-10-24T22:34:00.004-04:00

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

2011-10-14T13:15:00.004-04:00

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

2011-09-10T23:42:00.001-04:00

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."

How to Talk About Race: Expert #2

2011-09-07T22:00:00.000-04:00

Louise Derman-Sparks, author of the seminal Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children (1989), has co-authored a more recent book, "What If All the Kids Are White?" Anti-Bias Multicultural Education with Young Children and Families (2003). This title, written with Patricia Ramsey, is packed with both conceptual and concrete guidance for doing anti-bias work in all- or mostly-white settings.

The title question, the authors explain, "has been one of the most frequently asked questions in our workshops ... over the past 2 decades. Almost always posed by white teachers, it echoes the persistent confusion about the role of whites in the multicultural movement and, in particular, the engagement of white children, families and teachers in multicultural education." This book discusses why an anti-bias curriculum is essential for white children as well as children of color, and how to create a school climate that gives all children the skills to function in a diverse world. Critically, Derman-Sparks and Ramsey address the need to give white children information about how racism works.

"It is not enough to teach [white children] to embrace racial and cultural diversity; children must also develop individual and group identities that will recognize and resist the false notions of racial superiority and racial entitlement," they argue. With the caveat that, "the focus on white children in no way implies that their needs and interests should be the 'front and center' of anti-bias/multicultural education," they point out that we can't shift to a more equitable society unless white children are taught how to recognize and step out of the roles they are socialized to play.

The book advocates a "new vision of white identity" that is actively working against the privileges conferred by whiteness, and includes ideas on working with resistance and a chapter on "How Children Construct White Identities." It calls for "shifting the focus of early childhood multicultural education from 'appreciating diversity' to working toward social justice."

There's no way to convey the depth of information in this book in a short post, but here are a few of the "Strategies for Working with Children" that directly address childen's books and conversations about race:

- "Model inclusive practices... If your visual and material environment is filled with diverse images, it immediately tells children and families that this is a priority for you."

- "Make an inventory of your current educational materials and work on building a collection of materials that accurately depict the diversity within all groups (including whites) in the United States."

- "Use these materials regularly in your ongoing curriculum, not just at 'special times."

- "Regularly schedule people from different racial and ethnic groups to do a series of specific activities with your children. Ongoing face-to-face contact is probably the best way to break down barriers, recognize similarities and see differences as enriching rather than frightening or distasteful."

- "Enhance children's sense of connection with others by exploring how people meet similar needs in different ways."

- "Talk about why people have different skin colors."

The theoretical framework of the book is supported and illuminated with extensive suggestions for applications, case studies, and study questions for reflection and further exploration. Some of the richest teaching is in examples of language used by children, displaying both their confusion and misinformation about race, and their passion about making things fair for everyone.

"Use children's biased remarks as teachable moments," the authors advise. "Although children may not understand the full meaning of their biased comments, these can become the basis for more developed prejudice if adults do not respond to them. When you hear such a comment, immediately follow up with exploratory questions to gain a deeper understanding of the child's thoughts and feelings ... Use an exploratory, rather than accusatory, tone... Then plan both immediate and long-term experiences" to address the bias.

This is a practical, invaluable handbook.

Thanks

2011-08-29T12:56:00.001-04:00

Wow, amazing to see that, as of this morning, this quiet little corner of the blogging world has gotten 10,000 hits . If I remember my stats correctly, more than half of them have come this year, the last quarter of the 2 1/2 years I've been posting.

I never set out to keep one of those personal up-to-the-minute blogs with daily I-can't-wait-to-see-what-she's-saying now posts. (I'm in an alternate universe: I don't have a Facebook account, I don't use Twitter, I don't even use a cell phone.)

Instead, my intention has been to build an archive of thoughtful entries - and comments - that people could discover at any point and return to as needed over time when the topics addressed were useful to them. I also hope to expand the experience with illustrations that model the principles I'm exploring.
It's very gratifying to know that those discoveries and returns happened 10,000 times. So if you're reading this, welcome, and thanks for stopping by.

As always, I'm delighted to hear other people's ideas, and ideas for related topics to address.

Jamaica Turns 25!!

2011-08-28T21:15:00.000-04:00

Twenty-five years ago, the first picture book about a young girl named Jamaica was published by Houghton Mifflin (original cover above, 20th anniversary edition below).

Written by author Juanita Havill and illustrated by me, Jamaica's Find has been published in Spanish, in England and New Zealand, in book-tape and book-cd editions, and as an e-book, and reprinted in school book clubs and curriculum programs. It was recommended on Reading Rainbow, and read by former first lady Barbara Bush on her radio program. (As a result, Juanita and I were invited to the White House for tea, with everyone else connected to the radio show. We met there and have been in touch ever since.) This week Publisher's Weekly included Jamaica in an article on book anniversaries.

Best of all, the first Jamaica is still in print, and has been joined by six other titles about the same character:

Here's my announcement of #7.

The Jamaica books feature a young protagonist who happens to be African-American, so they are always on lists of "multicultural" books, but there's actually no cultural content in them. Jamaica is Everychild, facing small, everyday ethical dilemmas common to young children. She goes to school, she makes friends (one white, one Asian), she interacts with her loving, intact family, she figures out how to do what's right. That's precisely the significance of the series, and perhaps a clue to its longevity.

Juanita and I interviewed each other here and here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMAICA!

How to Talk About Race: Expert #1

2011-08-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

On October 18, I'll be presenting two sessions at the Friends School of Portland, Maine: "Mirrors & Lenses: Racial Identity Formation in the Classroom," an afternoon workshop for educators, and, with Bates psychology professor Krista Aronson, an evening community event, "Books as Bridges: Children's Literature and Anti-Racism Education."

In preparation for the event, I'm reading a stack of books on these topics, seeking out the latest research and theory. I began with one of our best thinkers on the topic of race, Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and Other Conversations About Race.

Her newest book, Can We Talk About Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation, isn't as much about how to talk about race as I'd anticipated from the title (a large section addresses the implications of school resegregation), but there are valuable teachings on what needs to be included in conversations about race, especially in schools.

I found the most useful information in the "ABC Approach to Creating Inclusive Learning Environments." Tatum argues that children need environments that "acknowledge the continuing significance of race and racial identity in ways that can empower and motivate students to transcend the legacy of racism in our society even when the composition of their classrooms continues to reflect it."

The ABCs are Affirming identity, by allowing children to see themselves reflected in the environment around them; Building community, in which everyone has a sense of belonging; and Cultivating leadership, preparing citizens for active participation in a democracy.

I was particularly interested in Tatum's thoughts about educating white children, who she says need schools that are "intentional about helping them understand social justice issues like prejudice, discrimination and racism, empowering them to think critically about the stereotypes to which they are exposed in the culture."

Tatum notes the essential work of white parents and teachers in understanding Whiteness: "When White adults have not thought about their own racial identity, it is difficult for them to respond to the identity development needs of either White children or children of color." "The good news," she goes on to say, "is that those who have engaged in a process of examining their own racial and ethnic identity, and who already feel affirmed in it, are more likely to be respectful of the self-definition that others claim, and are much more effective working in multiracial settings."

Her message is clear: the ability to navigate race is an essential skill for all students of all races in the 21st century.

The book has extensive footnotes from many sources - more resources to explore.

A Week of Comics

2011-08-25T18:20:00.000-04:00

At the beginning of August, I got to spend an entire week in the Cartooning Studio, an intensive workshop for adults at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. What fun!

My goal was to further develop the graphic novel that my daughter Yunhee and I have been creating, a fictionalization of her middle school experience - being teased, loving to read and draw manga (Japanese comics), and learning to stand firm in her identity, including being Korean and adopted. It's called Manga Girl.

Here's one of the images I went in with:
and here's what I came out with, after the inspired teaching of the young, phenomenally talented staff (biggest change was switching from marker to brush line):I also completed the outline of the story and 13 spreads of thumbnails (small sketched layouts of double pages). Now it's in my daughter's hands for scripting.

Some of the interns posted an account of the entire workshop on the CCS Schulz Library blog, from Day 1, through Day 5 (my project is mentioned - and that's me in the turquoise shirt).

Africa is Not a Country, Redux

2011-08-18T18:37:00.000-04:00

Last January, author Margy Burns Knight and I spent a week-long residency at Fiske Elementary School in Lexington, MA, where we led 400+ students in the creation of a book about their daily life, entitled Our Corner of the World. With the help of the faculty, staff, and parents (especially Cynthia Wimer and Songyi Kim!), each class participated in writing the text, I illustrated their stories in full color, and each student contributed a b&w spot drawing. The book was printed and every student received a personal copy.

Our Corner of the World was a response to our own book, Africa is Not a Country, written by Mark Melnicove and Margy and illustrated by me, about the daily lives of children in 25 of Africa's countries (then 53, now 54, since the Republic of South Sudan became a nation on July 9, 2011).

Market in Benin, illustration from Africa is Not a Country

Since the completion of the Fiske book, the two books have been sent, through people who had personal connections with schools, to students in seven African countries: Uganda, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Tanzania, Benin, Kenya, and Zambia. Here's the book being delivered to the head of a school in the rural community of Simikanka, Zambia:

Lest anyone think the book and the information is no longer needed, here's a teabag my brother found last month and passed on to me:

For a closeup:

(This from a tea company in the nation that colonized a number of Africa's countries!)

For more on the book and the topic, see the inaugural post of this blog, as well as this one about how the book was created, and this one about programs Margy and I do in schools.

The Skin I'm In: A First Look at Racism

2011-07-12T17:51:00.000-04:00

A reader (thanks, Reena) brought this book, The Skin I'm In: A First Look at Racism by Pat Thomas, to my attention. In an Amazon search, it's the only picture book I found that directly mentions racism as the topic of the book.

Age: 4-8

First lines:
page 6
"Imagine a world where only people with blue eyes could go to school. Or a world where only people with brown eyes could get a job."
(Double-page illustration of a classroom full of happy, active children - oddly, all with reddish hair, and all white-skinned except three with brown skin - and a brown-skinned, black-haired teacher. Outside, many sad children - with a variety of skin and hair color and racial features, some dressed in ethnic clothing - look through the window. Eyes are drawn with black dots, so no eye color is visible.)

page 7
"If we lived in a world like this many people would be treated unfairly. They would miss out on the chance to learn and work and feel good about themselves."

page 8
"The way you look is decided by your family background. Sometimes this is called your culture, or race. The most common way race is judged is by the color of your skin." (Illustration of dark-skinned family with curly black hair.)

page 9
"Your race tells the history of your family. It is where your ancestors come from and the religion and traditions your family has followed for many years." (Illustration of Jewish family with yarmulkes and menorah.)

Central idea:
"Some believe that people from their race are worth more and should be treated better than people from other races. A person who thinks and acts this way is called a racist. Racists want to stop people of other races from living, working and learning together. Anybody of any skin color can be a racist."

My take:
This is a well-meaning book in the First Look series, which includes titles on teasing, honesty, death, disability, and other issues, all written by "psychotherapist and counselor" Pat Thomas. The book brings to minds a statement I once heard Native American author Joseph Bruchac make about the book Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: "Its heart is good but its mind is lost." I've quoted more first lines than usual because I wanted to convey the sense of the text, which I find choppy and sometimes incoherent, and the content, some of which is confusing and at times downright misleading. The biggest problems I see are:

1. There is no clear definition of race. The implication that race includes culture, religion and traditions only complicates a topic that is already confusing to children (and adults).

2. The text defines racism as synonymous with individual acts of racial prejudice. There is no attempt to address in-groups and out-groups, and the reality of racism as a pervasive and systemic societal problem, not just people being mean. Granted, tackling this topic for young children in a developmentally-appropriate manner is very challenging, but many kindergarteners have heard the story of Rosa Parks and been exposed to the idea of laws based on race. If only individual attitudes and behaviors are mentioned, it should be called racial prejudice, not racism.

3. The illustrations, though pleasant and appealing, are sometimes more distracting and confusing than illuminating. For instance, the text, "Have you ever been afraid of somebody that looked different from you?" is accompanied by two children (one brown, one white) looking nervously at an adult clown. In addition, as a friend pointed out (thanks, Kim), all the children's features are drawn identically, different only in skin color, hair style and color, and clothing, which seems an exceptionally odd choice for a book about race.

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The book does have some useful language and ideas: that a trusted adult should always be told when a child encounters racist behavior; that "sometimes racist behavior ... can be hidden in the way people treat each other or talk about each other;" that "Most people want the world to be a place where each of us gets the same opportunities to make friends and to learn and grow." A knowledgeable adult could use portions of the book as the springboard for a discussion with young listeners.

But clearly, we need more books that address the topic of racism for young children.

The Different One: Racial Identity Development

2011-07-03T10:09:00.000-04:00

"Yoh-roh-bun-dul, ahn-nyung-ha-shim-nee-ka." I open many of my school presentations with this photo and a greeting in Korean: "Hello, everyone. This is my picture. When I was seven years old, I moved to Korea. From then I learned two languages and two cultures. This is my eighth birthday."

After I've translated the introduction, I go on to share a little about my childhood: how conspicuous I was as a tall, light-skinned, light-haired, large-nosed, round-eyed American, growing up in South Korea in the 1960s when few foreigners lived in the country. When I went to the market, a crowd of people would gather around me, marveling at how different I looked. It was kind of like being a princess, I tell the children.

This early experience provides an ideal segue for a discussion of difference. "I was treated as if I was special. What do you think I learned about being different? That it was fabulous! It was certainly working well for me. But is this how we always treat people who are different?"

I ask the students how many of them have ever been "the different one" - because of skin color, body size, learning style, language, the only boy, the only girl, and so on. Usually most children in the classroom raise their hands. "How did that feel? What happened to you?" I ask. We talk about being left out, being teased, being called names. I've had this discussion with children as young as first and second grade.

With older children, I then go on to share a simple explanation of Racial Identity Development - how each of us comes to understand race and to think about our own race:

"As we grow, each one of us gets ideas of who we are by the mirrors that are held up for us, including mirrors about race. You're having this experience right now. If you're one of many, like one of the boys on a soccer team, you don't think much about being a boy. But if you're one of a few, like the only girl on the soccer team, you think about it all the time, because everybody tells you you're a girl, you're different.

"Race is like that, too. In the United States, if you're white, you usually don't notice it because the majority of people are white. But if you're a person of color, you tend to notice it a lot more. Everyone reminds you all the time that you're the different one. So our different experiences of race give us different ideas and different ways of thinking about race.

"When I was young, the mirror of responses of other people to my difference - 'You're American! You're American!' - made me notice that I was white. Do you think that my friend Ok-soon, on my left in the photo, thought much about being Korean? No, because everyone around her had similar hair, skin color, and features. She blended in."

Any racial experience in the lives of older children can be an opportunity to introduce the concept of racial identity development, individually or with a group, with lead-in questions such as:

- Do you notice skin color? When do you notice skin color? Why do you think certain skin colors stand out more? (Usually when a person is different from the group.)
- Do people with majority skin color stand out? Do they think about their skin color much? Why or why not? (When you blend in with the group, your skin color is taken for granted. It's the norm.)
- How do people get treated when they are seen as different?

Racial Identity Development has much to recommend it as an introduction for young people to the topic of racism:
1. It's a non-threatening approach that doesn't automatically provoke defensiveness.
2. It sets up a level playing field by including everyone in the discussion and the groups that are being examined.
3. It offers a way to get white kids thinking about themselves racially, to counteract the silence and invisibility of race in the white community.
4. It's a natural segue into the concept of socialization, including in-groups and out-groups.

For an in-depth explanation of racial identity development, see Beverly Daniel Tatum's book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

The Color of Their Skin

2011-06-26T09:42:00.000-04:00

When our son Perry was young, South African apartheid was regularly in the news. One day in March 1986, the month he turned four, he saw me crying in response to a report of a brutal attack by white police officers on unarmed black school children. When I explained why I was so sad, he responded, "Is it the color of their skin that makes them do that?"

At just four years old, not only was our white son aware of skin color, but he was grappling with questions about racial dominance and injustice. Whether or not he saw himself as "white," it seems he had begun to absorb, and to puzzle over, a sense of white people being on the wrong side of history.

(As children often do, he also voiced so simply a profound question that can be unpacked on so many levels: Is our racial identity our destiny? Are we the unconscious victims of our socialization? Is whiteness like a toxin, instilling a tendency toward inhumane actions?)

All of our children deserve information on how racism works. It's essential knowledge for navigating our 21st-century world, for building relationships with all kinds of people, for becoming culturally competent, and for building a future with more freedom and justice for all. Children need basic guidance in separating the falsehoods of racism - in attitudes and words, actions and policies - from the truth about the common humanity and mutual dependence of all people.

But how do we impart this information without instilling guilt, anger or hopelessness? Crucially, we must not burden children with responsibilities that belong to adults. I never want to imply, "Something terrible is happening in the world, there's nothing I can do to stop it, and whether you like it or not, you'll get caught up in it."

Instead, children need positive messages of passion and power: "We want all people to be treated fairly. Sometimes people are mistreated because of their skin color. I'm working with other grownups to change that." Young people need to see that there are solutions and that adults are engaged in tackling the issue, within themselves and in the wider world.

Children also need affirmation that their actions matter. When we listen to them and support their impulses to act, they gain a sense of their own power to change things for good.

Perry's question was so striking that it's all I remember of the conversation that day. I don't recall how I responded. Today, I imagine I'd say something like: "No, our skin color doesn't make us do things. It's the way we think about skin color. Some people are very confused. They think that people with different skin colors aren't as good as they are. Really, they are scared of people who are different from them. That's why they act that way. But when we remember that people of all skin colors are one family, we can make a different choice. We can treat everybody well. We can stand up for each other."

I do remember what Perry did soon after. He announced that he wanted to write a letter to South African Prime Minister Botha. "Let black children and white children play together," he dictated solemnly. "And hire more black policemen. They will understand." We put the letter in an envelope and mailed it.

There's no evidence that Botha ever received the letter, much less that he was touched by it. But what matters is that this four-year-old acted positively, with passion and power.

Talking with Children About RacISM

2011-06-15T22:14:00.001-04:00

This is going to be another series. I've been musing on how to approach this for several weeks. One thing is clear: Talking about racism with children makes talking about race (see last two posts) look easy.

Over the next group of posts, I'll share my ideas about when and how to approach the subject, some stories, guidance from some experts, articles to read, and reviews of some books.

As usual, I'll be reflecting from the perspective of a white American, focusing particularly on white patterns, and particularly addressing the white community. I'm interested in figuring out how to talk about race and whiteness so that the next generations of white children don't continue to absorb unexamined racism and white privilege. As always, I welcome comments, questions and dialogue on this.

To start, here are some of my assumptions on addressing the topic of racism with kids:

1. We should. Next to overt racist behavior, not saying anything is the worst response. In fact, silence is one way to teach our kids racist attitudes.

2. Children's comments, questions and experiences are opportunities to talk and to learn.

3. As with all conversations with children, developmental and emotional readiness should determine what we do and don't say - what's appropriate and what's effective. Our responses should be concerns-based, tailored to the particular child(ren) and particular situation.

4. Racism is not the same as "being mean." Prejudice based on skin color and racial features is a universal human tendency, but racism is not just personal, it is collective and institutional as well. In order to process their own experience and to develop effective skills, young people need age-appropriate information about how U.S. society gives white people racial advantages and people of color disadvantages.

5. Conversations about racism should always include ideas about how children can respond and that adults are available to help.

6. The most essential teaching for children to absorb is a sense of hope and possibility. The content can be hard and heavy, but we can address it lightly. Provoking guilt or fear does not empower young people to tackle the challenge of prejudice.

7. In order to do all this, we adults have to be willing to examine and shift our own attitudes and behaviors, and offering our process of addressing racism in our own lives as a model that children can look to and learn from.

Books on Skin Color & Race

2011-04-27T18:25:00.001-04:00

In this post I'm focusing on young picture books which directly and generally address skin color and racial features which could be used to start a discussion about race with children ages 3-8. I've listed the titles from youngest to oldest reading level.

Shades of People by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly (2009)

Age: 3-7

First lines: "Have you noticed that people come in many different shades? Not colors, exactly, but shades. There's creamy, ivory, sandy and peach, coffee, cocoa, copper and tan."

A simple concept book with minimal text, naming many shades of skin color, illustrated with dozens of photographs of a wide range of irresistible children's faces.

Central idea: "Our skin is just our covering, like wrapping paper. And, you can't tell what someone is like from the color of their skin."

My take: This is the best overall concept book on skin color I've found. The text is direct and plain-spoken, with no value judgments, no need to sell the concept. (I have a few quibbles with photo choices, text placement, and which colors come first, but these are minor.)

All the Colors of the Earth by Sheila Hamanaka (1994)

Age: 4-7

First lines: "Children come in all the colors of the earth / The roaring browns of bears and soaring eagles, / The whispering golds of late summer grasses, / And crackling russets of fallen leaves, / The tinkling pinks of tiny seashells by the rumbling sea."

A joyous and poetic celebration, "inspired by her own two children's multi-ethnic heritage," of the range of colors in skin and hair, depicted in oil paintings of realistic children in fanciful natural settings. Several spreads show biracial families.

Central idea: "Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea."

My take: This book is an old favorite, exuberant in its appreciation of the beauty of difference, and I love Sheila Hamanaka's tender portraits of children. It may seem too flowery and sentimental for some tastes.

The Colors of Us by Karen Katz (1999)

Age: 4-8

First lines: "My name is Lena, and I am seven. I am the color of cinnamon. My mom says she could eat me up."

When Lena says that "brown is brown," her artist mother ("the color of French toast") takes her on a walk to find all the colors of brown in their neighborhood. Bold flat color and bright patterns.

Central idea: "Look at everyone's legs, Mom - all the different shades."

My take: The nonfiction-masquerading-as-fiction format is a pet peeve of mine, and the adult neighbors have stereotypical ethnic roles (Mr. Pellegrino makes pizza, Mr. Kashmir "sells many different spices" and has a turban and a curling mustache, and the only dark-skinned black adult, Candy, is a babysitter who "looks like a princess"). The story has a fun ending, with Lena making charming portraits of everyone in "all the colors of us."

The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler, illustrated by David Lee Csicsko (2005)

Age: 4-8

First Lines: "Hey, look at your skin ... The wonderful skin you live in! The skin you're all day in; the skin that you play in; the skin that you snuggle up, cuddle up, lay in."

A rollicking rhyming book about skin, including its variety of colors, produced by the Chicago Children's Museum.

Central Idea: "... the skin you live in, so beautifully holds the 'You' who's within... We all make a beauty, so wonderfully true. We are special and different and just the same, too!"

My take: The text is bouncy, playful and entertaining, with amusing and surprising rhymes ("It's face the rain bold skin and snow-angel cold skin"), good for keeping the attention of a story hour. The references to colors come only in the middle of the book, in the context of what we all have in common.

The art is graphically pleasing but sometimes puzzling in content: almost all children have football-shaped heads with ear knobs on the ends (see cover). The only exceptions are a few faces, particularly the recurring Asian girl (the only Asian character), whose head is rounded with only one ear. Given the topic, it seems odd to set up such a strong pattern and then break it in this random way, bringing to mind the Sesame Street song, "Which of these things is not like the other?"
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Despite my caveats, I'd use any of these books to start a conversation about skin color and race (and with older children, topics like stereotypes can be part of the discussion).

Got any other recommendations for books that directly address skin color and racial features for children ages 3-8?

(At this point I'm not including books such as Black is Brown is Tan, about a particular biracial family, though of course it could be used to spark a discussion on race; I'm saving it and similar titles for a post about books featuring biracial and multiracial families.)

Race Talk with Young Kids: How to Start

2011-04-27T15:21:00.000-04:00

When our Korean-born daughter was four or five, one of her favorite adults was Hyo-Jung, a young Korean-American friend.

At some point during each visit with our daughter, Hyo-Jung would lift a strand of her glossy, straight black hair, then a similar strand of Yunhee's, and sing, "Same hair!" The game never failed to delight Yunhee and I'm sure helped forge a deep bond with this lovely woman who looked like her, as none of her immediate family members did.

Hyo-Jung was simply pointing out the obvious, in a relaxed, playful, affirming tone. For people who've been dealing with race every day of their lives, as many people of color do in the U.S., this might not be a difficult feat; it's an everyday topic.

But research shows that, by some counts, "75% of white families never or almost never talk about race with their children." Obviously, if statistics like that cover your experience, breaching the topic may not come out relaxed, playful, and affirming the first few times. But it's a good standard to reach for.

Here are some first steps for talking about race with very young children:

Start with the assumption that our children DO notice race. Just because they don't appear to based on what they say doesn't mean they're not categorizing. Many studies have documented that children - and even infants as young as four months - detect differences in skin color.

Where in the world did we get the idea that they don't see it? Children are natural sorters. They see, and we teach them, the "green car, pink pig, yellow flower, red ball, brown shirt ..." but all of a sudden when the color is on skin, it's invisible?

Of course, one of the reasons that children don't voice their observations is that the adults around them have given them implicit but clear messages that it's not to be talked about.

Include colors of skin and shapes of features in sorting games, as naturally as referring to the grass, the cat or the ball. Color identification, comparing and contrasting, alike and different ("Same hair!"). That's all that very young children are seeing. Those categorizations don't yet come with the charged complexity or value judgments that older people bring to the topic.Tailor the conversation to children's ages and developmental stages. As with so many other topics, adjust the amount and type of information as children mature, and as needed in response to their questions and comments.

And, picture books are a great way to introduce the topic.

Next up, six titles that can start the conversation.

Further reading:
Here's a terrific short article, "5 Tips for Talking About Racism with Kids," including a Q&A with Dr. Beverly Tatum, president of Spelman College and author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race, one of the nation's foremost authorities on racial identity development and race conversations. (My only quibble is that to accurately reflect the content of the piece, the title should say "Race," not "Racism." Talking about racism, though it can overlap, is another topic for another post.)

Noticing Race

2011-04-04T16:03:00.000-04:00

Of all the essays in the book Are We Born Racist?, about which I'm writing this series of posts, the one I wish everyone would read is child psychologist Allison Briscoe-Smith's "How to Talk with Kids about Race." (Here is a shorter version, as it originally appeared in "Greater Good" magazine under the title, "Rubbing Off").

We can engage in all kinds of efforts to unlearn, reprogram, override and free our adult minds from the bias we've absorbed, but surely one of the most fruitful and effective applications of the new data about how prejudice is formed is to figure out how to prevent it from forming in our children's minds in the first place.

Briscoe-Smith's advice: Talk about race. She cites studies with babies and toddlers demonstrating that when presented with faces of people of a different race, they gaze longer at them, which is how young children process new information and "suggests that racial difference is salient to them." Various kinds of studies indicate that children of all races notice race much earlier than we think they do, and long before they have the language to voice their observations.

Here's why it's so important to talk about race with children:
1. Children do notice race, and sort people based on it, but without the judgment we adults ascribe to those divisions.
2. If we are silent, awkward or anxious about the issue of race, children begin to absorb our tension, the message that it's something to be avoided.
3. When we fail to give our children language for understanding the differences their brains are already processing, we limit their opportunities to build skills for connecting across race.

And the cycle repeats itself.

For those of us who were never given language to address race, and in fact taught that it was impolite, dangerous or wrong to address it, beginning those conversations with our children can be daunting. Briscoe-Smith suggests practicing with other adults to increase comfort with the subject.

It's worth the effort. First of all, it's good for us as adults. Briscoe-Smith's own research suggests that "children of parents who talked more about race were better able to identify racism when they saw it, and were also more likely to have positive views about ethnic minorities."

Best of all, talking about race can make a big impact in children's attitudes. "A study by Aboud and Anna Beth Doyle took 9-to-11-year-old children who held prejudiced attitudes toward ethnic minorities and placed them with other 9 to 11 year olds who held less biased beliefs. They asked the kids to talk for two minutes about some of the race-based beliefs they had endorsed earlier in the study. The results were remarkable: After these conversations, the high-prejudice kids demonstrated lower prejudice and more tolerance. Given this impact of a two-minute conversation with a peer, imagine what a childhood of conversations with parents could achieve."

Here's more on the topic:
"Talking About Race with Kids" on "Wild Thoughts from Uganda"
"See Baby Discriminate" from a 2009 Newsweek

Next posts, how to talk about race with children, and five picture books that might begin the discussion.

We Can Change Our Minds II

2011-03-28T12:57:00.000-04:00

Are We Born Racist? (see intro post) offers further insights into how we can affect the prejudices our brains automatically manufacture.

I've gleaned from the book that there are two sources of implicit bias. I'll call them Sorting (the instantaneous calculations our minds use to place people into in-group - "Us" - and out-group - "Not Us"), and Associations (the cultural messages we absorb.)

Sorting seems to be hardwired into human brains and therefore not a function we can turn off. "Conditioned by millennia of tribal warfare and fierce competition for limited resources, we are always looking for cues to help us make snap judgments about others," Susan Fiske writes in the book's title essay.

But an automatic "Not Us" snap judgment about another person doesn't mean an automatic value judgment; it's just data to the brain. We can consciously direct what our minds do with information that is categorized unconsciously.

"In the neuroscience studies looking at race, ... amygdala (vigilance-related) reactions vary by individual, corresponding to other signs of prejudice... (T)he alarms in whites' amygdalae do not go off to famous black faces. Likewise, their brains grow accustomed to new black faces after repeated exposure," Fiske writes. We can affect the brain's recordings by having more interactions with the people it labels "Not Us."

These interactions can also change our Associations. "Years, even generations, of explicit and implicit cultural messages - gleaned from parents, the media, firsthand experiences, and countless other sources - link particular physical appearances with a host of traits, positive and negative," Fiske reports. It is, it seems to me, another form of hardwiring, often invisible tracks laid down throughout the foundation of society, in our manners and mores, our ideals and our institutions.

Choosing to be vigilant about uncovering what we've internalized - rather than denying that those messages are there because they don't match our intentions or our self-image - is a powerful step towards loosening the grip of automatic bias on our behaviors. And building significant cross-racial relationships and meaningful connections, such as working together towards a common goal, can gradually override even the most fundamental prejudices.

We Can Change Our Minds

2011-03-21T20:09:00.000-04:00

My first encounter with brain research on bias was a talk entitled "Mind Bugs: The Science of Ordinary Bias," presented by Harvard researcher Mahzarin Banaji at Bates College in February 2010.

Banaji explained that as our brains categorize people into "like us" and "different from us," a universal function, we have "zero experience that this is happening." Because it's unconscious, we can't control the implicit bias that is the brain's method of imposing order.

What we can influence is what we tell the brain to do with that information. We can choose behaviors that are "in line with what we intend, not with our unconscious prejudices." "New methods for self-discovery are available," Banaji said, such as the Implicit Association Test, or IAT. "With these methods, anyone can line up behavior with intention." According to Banaji, we can "use our big, fat prefrontal cortex to decide: which biases do we want to keep?"

Our minds are shaped everyday by the associations we create. Our current society and culture is white-dominant. A constant exposure to such a diet will nurture White Mind. But we don't have to simply accept this status quo.

Banaji's advice: Choose models - books, music, movies, friends, images, etc - "that give you data contrary to what society is giving you." These models contradict and balance out the bias we're being fed and that our brains are forming. (It's a powerful argument for exposing children to books with positive images of all kinds of people, especially those who are often portrayed negatively or are invisible in the media; more about that in the next few posts.) As we change the associations in our minds, this will naturally flow into our behaviors, especially the unconscious ones of voice tone, facial expression and body language.

Even without testing, we can take inventory of our own lives. We can look at the choices we make - the books we read, the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the friends we hang out with and invite into our homes. Then ask ourselves, do the patterns of our lives match our intentions?

The Research on Bias

2011-03-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

"(P)eople usually resist the notion that they might be perpetrators of prejudice. Their resistance often rests on the fundamental assumption that prejudice and racism are all-or-none qualities, where one is either racist or not. Yet this assumption leaves no room for the possibility that one might sincerely hold egalitarian goals and simultaneously be at risk for perpetrating racism."

from the introduction to Are We Born Racist? (see previous post)

Over the past several decades, hundreds of studies have been mapping bias of all kinds, including bias based on race. Here's a taste of a few of the findings:

* In 2007, NBA referees were more likely to call a foul against a player of a different race, and MLB umpires were more likely to call a strike when the pitcher is of the same race, despite extensive training on how to make fair calls.

* When white people see unfamiliar black people, their brains show an activity spike in the amygdala, the region that lights up when a person or event is perceived as threatening (see this study, among many).

*Implicit racial attitudes are conveyed through body language and other nonverbal behavior, despite the white subjects' intentions.

What brain research documents is automatic or unconscious racism. You don't have to want it, believe it, think it or feel it to have it - and to act on it. Bias is simply the result of how our brains categorize people.

"Neuroscience has shown that people can identify another person's apparent race, gender and age in a matter of milliseconds," Susan Fiske writes in the book's title essay. "In this blink of any eye, a complex network of stereotypes, emotional prejudices, and behavioral impulses activates. These knee-jerk reactions do not require conscious bigotry, though they are worsened by it."

The research corroborates the witness of people of color who have been calling attention to white bias and its impact for centuries. Because much bias is implicit, or unconscious, it's often undetectable to the person who has it but can be quite apparent to someone who's experiencing the impact of it.

This seems like an enlightening explanation for why people of color and white people so often find themselves on opposite sides of a racial divide, yawning between them like a chasm, seemingly with no way across. It explains how it can be that again and again people of color detect racism in certain attitudes or actions, statements or stands, inclinations or institutions, while white people deny it, absolutely certain that there's not a trace of race in what they say, think or do.

The more we stop resisting and start acknowledging the possibility and prevalence of white bias, the more we free ourselves to examine what we can actually do about it.

Our Brains on Race

2011-03-12T10:01:00.000-05:00

Recently I read Are We Born Racist? New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology, a collection of short essays originally published in Greater Good Magazine. It's a highly accessible overview of recent findings documenting the prevalence of implicit, or unconscious, bias, and offering concrete steps to ameliorate the prejudices our brains form.

There are so many juicy ideas packed into this slim volume, divided into three sections: The New Psychology of Racism, Overcoming Prejudice, and Strengthening Our Multiracial Society.

The book has inspired a series of posts sharing some of the information I gleaned from the essays and adding my thoughts to the conclusions reached by the authors and editors.

Here's what I'm planning to post over the next month or so:

1. The Research on Bias

2. We Can Change Our Minds

3. Noticing Race: Conversations and Strategies

4. Reviewing Picture Books About Race (6 titles)

5. Trying Too Hard

6. Smile

7. Getting to Know You: What Groups Can Do

Please join in the conversation.

Yay

2011-02-15T08:21:00.000-05:00

One of my recent picture books, What Will You Be, Sara Mee? by Kate Aver Avraham, is a CCBC Choices 2011 (download here) title, one of "the best children's and young adult books published in 2010" in the opinion of the Cooperative Children's Books Center.

Here's the first character sketch I did of Sara Mee,

and here's her brother Chong,

who narrates the story.

Thanks, CCBC!

Thanks, Janet

2011-01-29T18:28:00.000-05:00

Just read this September 2010 post, "Justice for All: Some Thoughts on Character Education," by poet and children's writer Janet Wong, on Unabridged, Charlesbridge Publishing's blog.

"The start of the school year is the perfect time to think Grand Thoughts," Janet writes, "and few thoughts are grander than those in our pledge of allegiance. Just for fun, you might try to write a variation that emphasizes what is most important to you. Here's mine:

Liberty

by Janet Wong

I pledge acceptance

of the views,

so different,

that make us America

To listen, to look,

to think, and to learn

One people

sharing the earth

responsible

for liberty

and justice

for all."

A Grand Thought indeed, a piece of wisdom for these fractious times.

Moving Forward

2011-01-20T21:31:00.000-05:00

I live in Maine, so I've spent many hours over the last week thinking, reading and talking about our newly elected governor's response, which made national news, when he was questioned about his refusal of multiple invitations to attend events sponsored by the local NAACP chapter.

I've reflected at length on what I wanted to say that hasn't already been said wonderfully by others, including some brilliant friends of mine, Rachel Talbot Ross, state director and local chapter president of the NAACP, and Catherine Anderson of "Mama C and the Boys."

There is the dismay of hearing such coarse and dismissive language coming from the state's highest official, to some of those he is supposed to be serving. There is the concern - beginning with LePage's very first executive order, to rescind the previous governor's order that state agencies could not inquire about the immigration status of individuals seeking services - that the new governor doesn't see constituents of color as true Mainers. There is the distaste of hearing LePage offer up the young Jamaican man who has become part of their family as proof that he doesn't have a problem with race (though nobody had suggested he did). There is the disappointment of once again hearing a white man accuse people of color of "playing the race card." There's the thought of four long years ... Where to start?

But a few days later, I see opportunities.

On Monday, people kept streaming into the Preble Street Resource Center in Portland for small-group discussions before the planned Martin Luther King Day march to City Hall. Originally envisioned as a conversation about economic justice, the conversations kept returning to the issue of LePage's remarks, and many people said that's what had motivated them to attend. Propelled by our reaction against what we didn't want, we were moved to show up, stand up and speak up for what we did want: welcoming, connection, unity.

That same Monday morning, Effie McLain, a black minister, offered reconciling words, an outstretched hand, and an invitation to dance when LePage unexpectedly showed up at the MLK breakfast in Waterville. She acknowledged that his "foolish" words had caused pain, but urged people to stop beating up on him and to move forward.

LePage's remarks are a wake-up call that we still have a lot of work to do. When people behave like this, our first response is often to distance ourselves as quickly and as far as possible from them. Especially if we're white, we want to make it clear that we're not like them. One of the trickiest yet most essential pieces of the work is not to divide ourselves from anyone as we work to overcome division. Instead of judging, how can we reach out a hand to those who feel that our increasingly diverse population is somehow a threat to them?

We can have the honest, ongoing conversations about race that we avoid for fear of discomfort. We can recognize the places in ourselves where we are fearful, defensive, blind. Then, with humility and without judgment, we can listen and talk to others until we create what we want: welcoming, connection, unity.

Yum!!

2011-01-19T13:21:00.000-05:00

Last week, just before a joint school visit with author Reza Jalali in Brunswick, Maine, we received this email:

The Jordan Acres staff is cordially invited to a buffet lunch

served in the library Friday January 14 from 11:45 – 1:00.

Please help the library welcome authors

Reza Jalali and Anne Sibley O’Brien.

A Middle Eastern inspired menu has been selected to celebrate the book

The Moon Watchers written by Mr. Jalali and illustrated by

Ms. O’Brien.

Menu

Iraqi Flat Bread (freshly baked Friday morning)

Curried Chicken Soup with Carrots (an Israeli recipe)

Tabouli (Lebanese salad)

Vegetable Dol Made (Arabic recipe with wrapped grape leaves, rice, & vegetables)

Hummus (freshly made by StarEast Café in Portland)

Fatima’s Fingers (Tunisian recipe using egg, ricotta cheese, & phyllo)

Ghorayyibah (Egyptian sugar

cookies)

Dates (from Saudi Arabia)

The feast was a delicious treat for everyone, and a good chance to relax with staff members between presentations to grades 3, 4 and 5. The students had been well-prepared to engage with us, all thanks to librarians Margy Soule and Persephone Ditzel. I love my job!

Moon Watchers: Shirin's Ramadan Miracle, about an Iranian-American family's observance of Ramadan, is, of course, about fasting, but it's also full of the delights of the special foods prepared to break the fast.

For the next decade or so, Ramadan dates will fall during summer months when schools are not in session, but learning about the observance can happen anytime during the year. Find an extensive list of internet resources on Islam, and activities, discussion questions and a recipe for Persian Rice, in the Teachers Take Note section of Tilbury's website.

Looking for Loopholes

2011-01-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

One of the blogs I've been enjoying recently is Resist Racism, an Asian-American male perspective - sharp, smart, fierce and funny. One of the features of the blog is Racism 101, "an ever-expanding list of common understandings we share as anti-racists." ("1. White privilege exists.")

Number 8, "Defensive responses to issues voiced by people of color are invocations of privilege," has provoked a long exchange of comments, mostly between one questioner (whose race is never identified but is clearly speaking out of the white experience) trying to clarify definitions, and a very generous and patient person providing a lot more information.

It's a rich and substantive conversation, but eventually the white person concludes: "At this moment, as a person open to hear the more nuanced perspectives on racism, I’m walking away from this with a sense that it’s over-thought excuse making."

From the overall exchange and the outcome, it appears that what the questioner was seeking was not true understanding, especially of the discomfiting type, but justification. All his/her effort was concentrated on dissecting what words meant, rather than imagining how the idea might pertain to his/her own experience. What a missed opportunity, all the more ironic because the person was engaging in the very defensive responses that #8 describes.

This is familiar territory to me. I've spent many uncomfortable hours twisting my brain and heart into pretzels, trying to construct a reality that justified ... me. This is indeed "an invocation of privilege," because I'm making it all about me.

And, blessedly, over the years I've discovered that I can choose another path. Seeking racial awareness and understanding can be a process of liberation, a continually unfolding journey. When a person of color raises an issue of race, you can:

Start with the assumption of your own goodness.

When we feel compelled to defend and justify ourselves, it usually means that we're afraid we might be guilty. Harmful patterns of white socialization exist, and denial, guilt and blame hold them in place. The way out is to respond not from your socialization, but from your authentic humanity. If we trust the goodness of our intentions and our hearts, we don't have anything to prove or defend. (More on defensiveness here.)

Assume you know almost nothing, as if you were a new arrival in a foreign country with biases which might blind you to other ways of seeing things. Consciously choose to place your assumptions aside. Be curious.

See an opportunity for learning and growth. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. You don't have to agree, but use your imagination: What if this person's perceptions were accurate? What a chance to see what things look like through someone else's eyes!

At any moment, we can make the choice to walk in the direction of freedom.

A White Christmas

2011-01-08T15:13:00.000-05:00

My favorite ornaments on our Christmas tree, which we just took down this week (following my husband's family's tradition, we put it up on Christmas Eve), are a lovely collection of multiracial angels which I've gathered or made over the years.

Why are angels so often depicted as exclusively blonde and fair-skinned? Of all symbols, surely angels should reflect the glorious range of human skin tones and features.

photo by Hannah Dunphy, angel by me

The same is true for books about the holiday. From angels to Santa to depictions of the Holy Family, all of our children should be able to see themselves in the images, but I'd be willing to bet that Christmas picture books as a whole are even less diverse than the rest of children's literature. Christmas is celebrated by Christians of all races and ethnicities, as well as by many non-Christians who enjoy its beauty and rituals. Why should a holiday that is observed the world over have an all-white cast?

In December, my friend and fellow blogger Cat, at Mama C and the Boys, linked to this great post, "Christmas Books for Our Multiracial Family", with a fine list of books.

Here's a few I'd add:

What A Morning! The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals

Ashley Bryan's brilliantly colored illustrations look like stained glass, with a black Holy Family and multiracial angels.

A Northern Nativity

Canadian painter William Kurelek depicts a series of dream images in which Mary and the Christ Child appear as Huron Indians, as a black family at a soup kitchen, as seal hunters in an igloo, among cowboys, fisherman, and farmers, in box cars, barns and garages.

Too Many Tamales

Gary Soto tells an everyday story of a modern Latino family at Christmas, with deeply colored, expressive illustrations by Ed Martinez.

Spirit Child: A Story of the Nativity

Barbara Cooney illustrates a lively Aztec version of the Christmas story, complete with cultural details and beautiful brown angels.

If you observe Christmas, and especially it you share the holiday's traditions with children through books, why not spend the next year adding more color to your collection?

For the children of Kenya

2010-12-17T08:15:00.000-05:00

In September of 2009, I received an email out of the blue.

"I am working on a special children's book project for a charity," the sender wrote. "(More specifically, my goal is to continue to support orphaned children in Kenya through this and other similar projects). I have admired your illustrations and so have my children. Your illustrating style is a perfect fit for this short picture book that will excite children and parents/narrators from all cultures while fulfilling a worthy cause. I would be honored if you would be available for the project."

Published illustrators are regularly approached by strangers who, knowing nothing about the field, want them to illustrate their book. (Here's a funny take on such an interaction, courtesy of Melissa Sweet). We tend to respond with extreme skepticism. The chances of the manuscript being a good fit with the illustrator's actual work, not to mention of the project being viable, are slim to none.

But for every rule, there's an exception.

I responded to the email with a long list of questions. Author Wamoro Njenga had all the right answers. She wanted to produce a print-on-demand book with the profits from the project benefitting children's homes for AIDS orphans in Kenya.The more I learned, the more I felt I was indeed a "perfect fit" for this book.

Fast forward fourteen months, and the vision Wamoro laid out in her emails is a reality. Our book, Goodnight Kuu-Kuu: My Cozy All-Day Village Safari, is now available on Amazon, and through her project website, Prop-Abilities.com.

The story follows a young child from morning to night, as he experiences life in his Kenyan village from his perch on his

mother's back. In our email exchange, Wamoro spoke of her appreciation for the Kenyan custom of carrying babies close to their mothers' bodies throughout the day, and her wish that she could give this experience to every child orphaned by AIDS. I was moved by her impulse to create a book to transmit this essential human and cultural bond, while raising money to support homes for these children.

The first thing that the Kianjogu Mercy Home in Limuru, Kenya, hopes to do with proceeds from this book is to build an underground tank to supply water for the home and adjacent medical clinic. I hope the book sells millions of copies.

Voices of Adoption

2010-11-22T10:55:00.000-05:00

Anyone connected to adoption from any angle should check out the first issue of a brand-new magazine, The Adoption Constellation. It will be a quarterly print publication from Adoption Mosaic, a website which seeks "to create a safe space where adoption community members can voice their experience, dialogue about issues, and learn from one another."

I'm honored to have been invited to adapt my "White Mind" columns, directly addressing white adoptive parents of children of color. Many of the articles in the magazine touch on aspects of transracial adoption.

(Sketch of young dancers at a New Year's celebration sponsored by the Chinese & American Friendship Association of Maine, 2010)

Becoming the parent of a child of color is often (and should be!) a radicalizing experience of seeing the significance of race and racism, and of becoming committed to racial justice and awareness. Such families are often on the front lines of the discussion about the importance of diversity in children's books, seeking stories in which our children can see themselves reflected.

White Mind III

2010-10-18T20:51:00.000-04:00

The following piece appears in my column, "The Illustrator's Perspective," in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. (See also "White Mind" and "White Mind II"). As always, I welcome reader comments and perspectives.

______________________________________________

This final installation examines what illustrators can do so that all kinds of children can see themselves reflected in our books. If that’s our goal, what do we need to know about White Mind in order to achieve our vision?

1. Good intentions aren’t enough, or if the stuff is unexamined, it will leak. Take a look at a selection of picture books, even recently published ones, and it quickly becomes clear that there are ways of getting it wrong despite meaning well, such as:

creating an all-white world without even realizing it
“coloring in” faces with varied skin tones, but all Caucasian features
portraying people of color in stereotypical ways
adding background children and adults of color, none as significant characters
always situating white children front and center
featuring children of color only in “ethnic” roles, never as Everychild or hero

2. We can’t see what we can’t see. This one applies to everyone portraying people across race and culture lines. But for some of us there’s the added veil of White Mind, which posits white as normative and race as something that “people of difference” have. Having no experience of "racialization" is like wearing blinders without realizing they’re there; you can’t even imagine the questions that need to be asked.

The solution: Do extensive research to get the necessary references to create an authentic visual portrait. Then show your sketches to at least one person who’s a member of that group. The core of the question to ask: Do you recognize yourself and your people in this image?

While illustrating Who Belongs Here? An American Story, by Margy Burns Knight, I was challenged by one spread picturing the Six Nations Convention of the Iroquois Confederacy. I had excellent National Geographic photos of the convention, the representatives, and the longhouse interior. Despite this primary source reference material, I knew I could still get it wrong, so I called an Iroquois cultural center in New York. If I faxed a sketch (this was 1992), could someone comment on the authenticity? The response: the details were fine, but how about showing some people smiling and cracking jokes? I had drawn everyone looking serious, as in the noble savage stereotype. It was obvious, but until it was pointed out I couldn’t see it. (See notes on carefulness, below.)

3. White should not be the default. Don’t limit the inclusion of children of color to roles that have been identified as “ethnic.” Any character without specified racial or cultural details offers an opportunity to add more color to your palette. This is one place where a certain colorblindness, like race neutral casting in films and plays, can be useful. What if all races of children got auditions for all picture book roles that didn’t require particular racial identities to tell the story truly?

Which children rarely get to see themselves pictured as pirates or mermaids, princesses or wizards? Here’s your chance to make their dreams come true. (Put in the sketching time to draw varied racial features with authority and delight, not duty.) Elizabeth Bluemle’s “A World Full of Color” list at LibraryThing has many examples of Everychild books in which the hero happens to be a child of color.

4. Don’t just be careful; care. White Mind misleads by labeling those who are not white as Other - unconsciously, so that we’re not even aware it’s happening. Without a strong sense of race (because white is “normal”), white people often have little experience in navigating racial territory. Unfamiliarity can lead to discomfort and overcompensation in the form of extreme caution, tiptoeing around trying to avoid doing something racist. But reproducing the outward surface of other lives is not enough. Though every detail may be “correct,” if our illustrations aren’t alive with the sense of other human beings with liquid eyes and feeling hearts, the work won’t be authentic.

Beyond all the essential research and checking of assumptions and expert help, we can reach for our core human connection, which White Mind would deny us. When we are drawn to or touched by something or someone of another race or culture, we can dare to follow our hearts’ responses and let this love shine through our images.

Again, Simunye: We are one.

A New Year

2010-09-22T19:48:00.000-04:00

I've thought for years that Judaism has it right: September is definitely the beginning of a new year. It most certainly seems so this year after such a deeply engaging summer, the highlight of which was the consuming experience of our daughter's wedding, a far bigger event psychically than I had anticipated.

Earlier this month I got to mark the beginning of the new year with the students, staff and faculty of Hebron Academy, where I was invited to give the keynote address at this year's convocation, marking the start of their academic sessions.

The time I spent at Hebron was a delightful introduction to a remarkable school, "a small, independent, college preparatory boarding and day school for boys and girls in grades six through postgraduate. At Hebron students from across the United States and around the world are challenged and inspired to reach their highest potential in mind, body, and spirit through small classes, knowledgeable and caring teachers who provide individual attention, and a friendly, respectful, family atmosphere."

I drove an hour north from Portland to rural Hebron to share stories of the life I had created in the forty years since I graduated from a small international high school not unlike theirs.

One third of Hebron's student body are international students from 11 countries. One of the highlights for me was connecting with the 14 students from South Korea, with whom I got to share dinner. Afterwards they all walked me back to my car and one student snapped photos on his cellphone.

I ended my convocation address with one of my two lifetime favorite quotes (the other is here), from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, from his Letters to a Young Poet:

“And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle that tells us we must always trust in the difficult, then now what appears to be the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

We live in mythic times. This seems a proper invocation with which to begin a new year.

Dreams 2

2010-08-10T19:00:00.001-04:00

Our daughter, the bride. photo by Angela Tran

Dreams Coming True

2010-08-06T22:06:00.000-04:00

This week I'm transported with love, joy and wonder: Our daughter Yunhee married her beloved Josh (ours, too) on July 31. The night before we held a Korean ceremony complete with traditional wedding hanbok and ritual bows.

Tomorrow I arrive at Camp Sejong in northwestern New Jersey, where I'm the creative writing teacher for the Korean-born campers, ages 7-14, from both adoptive and Korean-American families. (For an account of my first year at Sejong in 2007, see "Hong Kil Dong Goes to Camp".)

We'll be creating vision maps, titled "A Bridge of Dreams," imagining their lives in the future and how they'll pull from the strengths of both their cultures. I'll be using Yunhee's wedding photos as an example of what that can look like.

White Mind, Part II

2010-07-22T21:42:00.000-04:00

This piece appears in my column, "The Illustrator's Perspective" in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators:

Part I defined White Mind as the unconscious patterns of thought and behavior resulting from socialization as a white American, and one of the causes for the low representation of people of color in all aspects of the children’s book field today. Part II offers ways to make White Mind conscious and change resulting behaviors. (I directly address white readers here, though I hope it's provocative for all.)

***

I remember an exercise from college drawing classes in which we first viewed a still life as volume, then line, and finally, as white space. For the first time, I saw, then drew, the shape of the space around the objects, which had been invisible to me until my attention was drawn to it.

White Mind can be hidden in plain sight, too, and trying to catch a glimpse of its presence can be like tracking a ghost. Here are some ways to gather clues, learn its tricks, and get your own mind back:

Explore what happened to you.

Learn about racial identity development. In Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, she posits that identity is formed by what is “made salient,” the mirrors that are held up for us when we are young. Racial identity therefore develops differently for different groups. For instance, people of color tend to have racialized identities; white people, as the majority, don’t.
Study the invisible “pass” that comes with white skin, as described in Peggy McIntosh’s seminal essay, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”
Tell your own story of growing up white. Investigating and expressing the truth of your experience around race is a significant beginning and can be a lifelong journey. What were your mirrors?
Look for clues and identify patterns. What did adults around you say and how did they behave in relation to race when you were a child? What ideas did you internalize as a result? How do these unconscious ideas affect your behaviors?

Change the Script.

Connect across racial difference in ways that stretch you. Work to overcome the conditioning of white centrality. Choose books and blogs (see Mitali Perkins, Amy Bowllan, The Brown Bookshelf, Neesha Meminger, Zetta Elliott and many others), movies and other materials to expose yourself to non-white voices and viewpoints. Make friends across race and culture. Step outside of your comfort zone; discomfort can be growth pains. Ask questions, but do your own homework; don’t expect people of color to educate you.
Let go of defensiveness so you can listen deeply. Unconscious white bias is not your fault; you can take responsibility for it without needing to protect yourself. Don’t waste time justifying your intention; it’s the impact of words and actions that is critical. Trust people of color as the experts about their own experience. Become an ally.

Change the World.

Diversify your cast of characters. Once your own world gets more colorful, that will flow naturally into your words and images. Many people of color have requested that white writers not appropriate cultural material and experiences, but we can and should fill our book worlds with all kinds of kids. When portraying a group you’re not part of, get feedback from someone who can see what you can’t.
Create a demand for books by and about people of color, like those in Elizabeth Bluemle’s “A World Full of Color,” at Library Thing. Request them from libraries, donate them to schools, and purchase them for yourself and as gifts. Ask five friends to do the same. Host writers and illustrators of color for school visits, workshops and conferences.
Nurture the next generation of diverse storytellers. Offer to present at underserved schools, for a discount or as a donation. Mentor beginning writers and illustrators of color. Introduce them to your editors and agents.

A Zulu phrase that describes our destination: Simunye! We are one.

Trying

2010-07-15T16:53:00.001-04:00

In response to the ongoing discussion on racial representation in children's books, I'm continuing to reflect directly (beginning with this post) on the topic of white socialization and racial identity (especially the unconscious parts), for clues about how we got to this point and how we might move forward.

White people need to talk more about the topic of race - with other white people.

We can examine the messages we got (or didn't get), express the thoughts we have (but don't dare say), admit the mistakes we've made (or are making), and be candid about our ignorance and fears. All these attempts give us practice getting comfortable with a topic that many of us were raised to avoid.

It can feel awkward and artificial; as in learning any new language, some of the attempts we make may seem silly or forced. But the alternative is to continue to demand that people of color deal with race in a way that keeps us comfortable, mostly by not calling attention to it. (And I have doubts about the depth of that comfort. In my experience, many white people carry deep anxiety about race just below the surface, but the fear that we'll be exposed keeps us from daring to address it.)

Refusing to directly address race is one more way of insisting on a white world view. One of the reasons white people are uncomfortable with a lot of race talk is because most of us didn't grow up racialized, so it feels unfamiliar or difficult or even dangerous (how soon before I put my foot in my mouth and say something that appears racist?). But when we object to that frame, when we complain about people playing the "race card," when we talk about not "seeing" race, we're once again imposing white privilege (see this quote).

In this country, just about everyone else's identity is racialized - to a great degree, by the white majority. For most Americans of color, race consciousness is a daily, unavoidable fact of life. White people are the only ones who have the option of thinking about race or not; choosing remedial racialization is one way of stepping away from white privilege.

Here's a vision of what it can look like when white people get comfortable with the topic of race: transracial adoption expert John Raible's "Checklist for Allies Against Racism."

We can't get to the beloved community - to "just human" - by ignoring all the stuff that's in our way and pretending it's not there. We can begin the journey at any moment, shedding the accumulated baggage so that we can experience true community.

Critiques and Defenses

2010-06-22T11:35:00.000-04:00

Whenever white conditioning is discussed within the white community, I find two reactions to be the most common:

1. One is a defense of being white, along the lines of "I shouldn't have to feel bad because I'm white."

Let me be clear: Identifying White Mind doesn't mean being guilty or ashamed to be white; on the contrary, I see it as a mark of strength and pride in fighting for the humanity of white people.

Here are the assumptions I begin with:

- It's great to stand rooted in and to take pride in my own version of being human. Being white is a particular ethnic and cultural experience, with infinite personal variations, each story as unique and valuable as any other human story. That is not what I'm referring to when I talk about White Mind.

- White Mind develops not as a result of us being white, but as a result of white people being the majority and dominant race. It's what our brains have internalized from all the unconscious things we've absorbed based on being the norm and the reference point in this society.

- White Mind is not what you believe, what you value, what you think, or what you intend; it's what sneaks out sideways despite your best intentions. It becomes visible in the impact and the outcomes. And in the testing of brain researchers.

- A critique of White patterns is not an attack on white people. It's an attempt to bring our social conditioning to consciousness so that we can make changes if we choose to. (Just as when women - and men - call attention to sexism, it's not, usually, an attack on maleness itself, but on the attitudes and behaviors that result from the ways males are socialized.)

2. The second response is distress that racial difference is being emphasized, because after all, "there's only one race: the human race."

Absolutely.

The problem is that at this time there are social structures, institutions, and a lot of confused people who make it impossible to live this truth. The object of the exercise is to clear the obstacles that are in the way of equity, justice and common humanity for all.

It's precisely because I believe that we are all one human family that I want to remove anything that's in my way, keeping me from acting on this truth. I want to be able to look at anyone of any race and connect deeply with the complete humanity that is there, person to person. I've discovered that the patterns I've absorbed unconsciously as a result of being socialized as a white American sometimes keep me from doing this fully. I've noticed that some of my internalized attitudes, behaviors and habits are problematic. I want to be free of them.

My assumptions:

- Recognizing the common humanity of all people in all our glorious colors is the destination we're all aiming for.

- Unfortunately, racism is still alive and active. If I personally believe in and practice not judging people by race, I have a responsibility to join in the work of freeing all of us from all the ways in which people currently are judged by race.

- Living in a society defined and divided by race affects us all. Whether I can see it or not, I, like everyone else, have developed patterns and coping mechanisms in response to this society. Some of these aren't useful, and contribute to divisions. It is within my power to become conscious of and work on freeing my mind from anything that isn't aligned with my belief that we are all one family.

- Practicing colorblindness is not an effective way to address where we are now; it doesn't honestly address the current reality, which is nowhere near colorblind. Practicing colorblindness allows white centrality to remain unchallenged.

For me, it's love that motivates this work - love for my sisters and brothers of every race, and love for myself. I want us all to have each other.

Talking Race

2010-06-18T15:31:00.000-04:00

I had a racialized childhood. Racial identity and awareness was a major part of my upbringing, in my case because I was growing up as a highly visible member of a tiny minority: white Americans in 1960s Korea. I couldn't escape noticing that being American (which was assumed based on my being white) was different and conspicuous, because people called attention to it nearly every day.

As a result, I think about race all the time. If I'd been raised in the States, it probably wouldn't be the case. Especially if we'd remained in our family home in New Hampshire, I would've blended in and would likely have had few experiences that called attention to my own race or my experience of it.

I bring this up in relation to the current lively discussion about race in children's books, much of the latest talk in response to Elizabeth Bluemle's terrific PW post, "The Elephant in the Room." There is nothing new about this discussion; writers and scholars of color have been making similar observations and raising similar concerns about the children's book field in a continuous unbroken chorus for decades (see Rudine Sims Bishop, to mention just one voice).

It's an unfortunate truth that often the white community sits up and takes notices when a white person speaks, in a way they never do when the point is being made by a person of color. But it's still useful for white people to speak up on the subject of race, particularly because they have complete freedom not to.

As the majority and the norm, white people always have the option

of simply being themselves. They can say things like, "I just want to be seen as an individual," or "I'm not comfortable with labels; I'm just human." The assumption underlying these statements is that anyone is free to make the same choice. But the essence of minority identity is that the majority defines you by your difference from them.

Growing up in Korea, I might have wished, "I don't want to be seen as American, I just want to be myself." But no matter how I insisted on it, every Korean who encountered me was first going to notice - and to some extent define me and their expectations of me by - my race.

A constant barrage of expectations that

you will embody and represent your race can be exhausting. (Because the status of white Americans in Korea was highly privileged, my experience of being a minority was overwhelmingly positive. The worst I had to endure was regular requests to "please speak English conversation with me," and occasionally being chased by crowds of children yelling, "Hello-yah!")

Book creators of color, like all people of color in this country, are often consigned to a racialized world. Editors expect manuscripts and art directors assign images about cultural experiences, not fantasy worlds. Sales reps only pitch their books in communities of people who look like them. Booksellers shelve their titles in special sections, presumably only of interest to people from the same ethnic group. And they are expected to be continuously concerned with and to lead the charge on issues of race (while being criticized for doing so).

If those of us in the white community can pick up the ball and, with fierceness, persistence and creativity, make concerns about lack of diversity in children's book our issue, it might create a little slack so some of the rest of us can "just be ourselves."

My Newest Book!

2010-06-18T13:11:00.000-04:00

Moon Watchers: Shirin's Ramadan Miracle, by Reza Jalali, is just out this month from Tilbury House Publishers.

Nine-year-old Shirin wants to join her family in the ritual of fasting for Ramadan, but her father says she's too young. This story portrays a middle-class American family in a Maine suburban town, focusing on universal issues such as sibling rivalry, while introducing readers to the experience of living the Muslim faith in the U.S.

It was a treat to work with Iranian-American writer Reza Jalali, a friend and fellow activist in the southern Maine area, who gave me all the references and feedback I needed to render the visual details of his story accurately. The portraits of the family members are inspired by his own family, and many of the objects in the book come from his home.

The Myth of Innocence

2010-06-11T12:47:00.000-04:00

More than a decade ago, I participated in an "Undoing Racism" workshop run by the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.

During a workshop break, I had a conversation with an African-American woman about the phenomenon of white people being so unaware of the bias they carry and their frequent passionate defense that since they didn't intend to do anything racist, it couldn't have been racist. Yet the impact of their attitudes or actions remains harmful.

In the course of our discussion, this woman challenged my characterization of this process as being completely unconscious. She commented that it was a willful blindness, that people were capable of seeing their bias but chose not to. I've been pondering this idea ever since.

I suppose that this aspect of white conditioning is like an addictive pattern. My understanding of the process of freeing oneself from an addiction is that one must first become so aware of the harm one is causing that the pain of continuing is greater than the pain of letting go of the addictive substance or behavior. This is the catalyst for change and the beginning of recovery.

Anyone observing from the outside the devastation caused by full-blown addiction would find it hard to believe that the addict could be unaware of the impact. Denial is an essential cog in the machinery that maintains addiction. The same case could be made for the ways in which white people spend so much time defending and justifying our behaviors (and our books) rather than examining and working to change them.

Of course I was innocent when as a child I began to absorb the patterns of whiteness. But as an adult, whether or not I've been complicit in my lack of awareness, I always have the option of choosing to see. The most useful response when someone points out the gap between the intention and the impact of my actions is not to defend my intention but to invest my energy in closing the gap, to do whatever it takes to ensure that the impact matches my intention.

My deepest commitment and most engaged work to free myself from White Mind began once I realized the harm I was causing myself, how much of me I had lost in allowing these patterns to speak and act for me. I wanted my self back. I've discovered that my journey is furthered by two inner companions: one, a fierce and relentless warrior whose eyes are always open; the other a wise companion who reminds me to reach for my own goodness and humanity.

My journey is fueled by my knowledge of the ways white patterns dehumanize others and myself, and lit by the hope that I can break free of them. And I have discovered that, moment by moment and day by day, when I choose to see these patterns, they become visible.

In a Nutshell

2010-05-30T10:21:00.000-04:00

From the blog "We Are Respectable Negroes," in a post by Chauncey DeVega declaring May 26 a "Be White for a Day" Holiday:

"The ultimate power of white privilege is the ability to determine when and how one will be uncomfortable."

And a useful distinction from a comment to the same post:

"... notice the difference between white and 'White.' It is a huge one... This isn't about white people it is about Whiteness. "

White Mind

2010-05-28T21:29:00.000-04:00

The article below appears in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, in my regular column, "The Illustrator's Perspective." With SCBWI's permission, I am posting it here to open it to a wider audience.

Also, I've been receiving quite a few emails in response to the column, each with stories of experiencing and wrestling with white conditioning. These personal examples really help to illuminate the nature of White Mind and deserve a wider audience. If you would like to respond to this column, I encourage you to post your comments here as well as contacting me directly. Thanks!

***

We belong to a field full of well-meaning people who care about children. If asked, most would surely agree with poet Lucille Clifton (Some of the Days of Everett Anderson) that “the literature of America should reflect the children of America.” I have never met an aficionado of children’s books who I can imagine wanting those books to misrepresent, marginalize or render invisible whole groups of our nation’s children.

So how can it be that in 2010, this is where we find ourselves:

The percentage of published children’s books featuring characters of color is far smaller than - perhaps less than half - the percentage of people of color in the U.S. population, and the majority of these books are still created by white writers and illustrators.
Many of the most popular book series, particularly in fantasy, have no significant characters of color at all.
Cases of “whitewashing” book jackets, of editors requesting that an author erase a character’s ethnicity so that a book “can reach a larger audience,” of booksellers or librarians passing on certain titles because “our community doesn’t respond to those kinds of books,” suggest an assumption that white readers won’t respond to characters of color.

And so on.

I want to suggest a cause for the gap between our intention and the reality we’ve created: the patterns formed by white American socialization, which I’ll call White Mind.

By White Mind, I do not mean conscious prejudice or racist attitudes. It is not what you believe, what you intend, the values you are committed to or how you choose to behave. I’m speaking instead of the unconscious patterns that result from social conditioning as the dominant and majority race in the U.S. for the last several hundred years. Being a dominant group member is like having a free pass that members of out-groups don’t have, but with no awareness of having it. Given such conditioning, developing White Mind is pretty much inescapable.

Brain researchers such as Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University (implicit.harvard.edu) have documented the presence of implicit bias as a universal human experience. When we think about people like ourselves, they report, a certain part of our brains light up; when we think about people different from us, a different part lights up. This kind of bias is completely unconscious, Banaji states, present in people who are absolutely positive they don't have it and who are committed to treating everyone fairly (and think they do). According to Banaji’s studies, 80% of whites show bias for the white race; people of non-majority races do not show this bias for their race. These implicit biases can drive our behaviors without our awareness.

White Mind shows up in the stuff we have no idea we’re doing (as in those studies in which a majority of teachers of both genders were shown to call more frequently on male students than female, even though they were committed to and convinced they were being fair). It’s usually invisible to white people, though often quite visible to people of color.

It’s part of the explanation for how scores of thoughtful white writers could create so many books with no significant characters of color, or how so few manuscripts by and about people of color get accepted. It’s one of the reasons why our children’s book conferences and conventions are overwhelmingly white, and why I might walk out of a bookstore or library with a stack of picture books, not even noticing that not a single one of them starred children of color.

From writing and illustrating to hiring publishing staff, editing and marketing to selling, buying and reviewing, White Mind affects children’s books today. Unless we become aware of and develop strategies to directly challenge these patterns, white norms will continue to prevail.

***

Sometimes, when facing puzzling and seemingly intractable problems, we can find clues in myth. Picture in your mind the lovely Snow White, asleep in her glass coffin, with the piece of poisoned apple stuck in her throat.

White Mind is a kind of sleepwalking. It can be as obscuring as fog, as ineffable as mist, as taken-for-granted as breath or gravity. So how do I break the spell? I wake myself up, cough out the poison, and step out of the coffin.

More about that in the next column.

The Center of the Universe

2010-05-20T20:41:00.000-04:00

Growing up in 1960s South Korea, I was a spectacle. Tall for a white American, I was a giant compared to the average Korean child, whose nutritional intake might still have been limited by post-war hardships. My round eyes, high-bridged nose, honey-colored hair, and pale skin were all amazingly exotic to the children - and adults - who often exclaimed over me in the market. Every day of my young life, I felt the spotlight on me, just because of how I looked.

In addition, Korea's ancient tradition of gracious hospitality to the guest, combined with the South's gratitude for the U.S. role in the Korean War, meant that Americans were welcomed nearly universally as VIPs. Everywhere we went, we received special attention and special service, intensified when we spoke Korean and expressed appreciation for Korean life and culture.

As I often tell students during my school visits, it was a lot like being a princess. One of the results of this conditioning was that I developed an exaggerated sense of my own visibility and significance. Returning to the States on furloughs, I felt the strangeness of walking through airports and attracting no attention at all.

This early experience of being on a pedestal, so accentuated that I couldn't help becoming conscious of it, has helped me notice some ways in which I am accorded status as a white person in the U.S. The constant affirmation white Americans receive is neither as overt nor as exuberant as what I experienced in Korea, but it is pervasive. What the two experiences have in common is the assumption of being the center.

Absorbing a sense of centrality is a subtle process because it's usually unspoken and unconscious. It's a combination of being the norm - the reference point from which all other racial groups are viewed - and of constant validation through the prevalence of images of whiteness. But because those images don't provoke the thought "white people," but simply "people," we often don't notice them. (One example: from news articles to novels, people are usually identified by race only if they're not white.)

When there is constant reinforcement of the idea that one is the center of the universe, it develops into entitlement and expectation. It feels familiar and natural, so much so that the withdrawal of it causes anxiety. When Welcoming Babies came out, one of author Margy Burns Knight's relatives looked at the dozen babies pictured on the endpapers, five of whom are white, and asked, "Aren't there going to be any white people in this book?"

I've heard repeatedly from people of color that often the most difficult people in anti-racism work are liberal whites who proclaim their commitment to the cause, but want the process to be on their own terms, in ways that keep them comfortable.

As I work on releasing myself from the biases I've internalized, I've found the assumption of centrality to be one of the trickiest things to see and to reframe. I may be working on it for the rest of my life. Catching myself again and again expecting it to be all about me is disheartening. But I can take heart from the knowledge that if I'm seeing it more, it must mean my awareness is growing.

Transracial Adoption & Discussions About Race

2010-05-18T14:04:00.000-04:00

A few of our daughter Yunhee's thoughts (comment #11) in response to the same clip (see previous post) on not discussing race with transracially adopted children:

I struggled with identity, and the idea of why I was put up for adoption. I went through phases of sadness, anger, and every other emotion along the way. The idea of my parents telling me not to worry about it, because no one cares about race anymore is unfathomable! That would have destroyed me.

My parents were understanding, supportive and ALWAYS willing to talk about what I was feeling. That is how I moved through each phase into something healthier and happier. Not by them ignoring my questions, emotions, and pain. They nurtured both cultures in my life, and let me explore both. I have since found a happy balance between my two cultures, and I claim both.

...Children are very observant. It is why we watch our language and behaviors around them, because they will pick it up. Children are curious, observant and very, very, blunt. A child will notice if they are not the same race as their family, and even if they don’t notice, some other person will, and then that becomes the mirror for the child. And the people in the world are not always the kindest.

At one point I was at a holiday party with my parents and a woman saw me, and then stated to her friend loudly, “Yes, you have to be white to be American.” Those mirrors are there, they are real, and they are painful.

Rant

2010-05-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

At the website, Love Isn't Enough, there's a post entitled "Race Is Not an Issue for the Young?", in response to a CNN news story discussing transracial adoption and the public reaction to Sandra Bullock's adoption of an African-American baby. The commentator at one point observes that transracial adoptees may experience confusion as children but grow up to say, "Thank goodness someone saved me!", and the white psychologist being interviewed made statements that "adoption is colorblind," "I think race should really only be examined if you’re over 40," and that "I happen to have biracial children; they don't self-identify as black or white."

Here's the comment I posted:

Although I could only get my laptop to stream part of this clip, I found the first half of it infuriating, on so many levels. I feel anger as I struggle to find the clarity to express what feels so wrong about several statements in the clip.

My husband and I are white. Our daughter, now 24, is Korean. (We also have a white son by birth.) If our daughter, as the commentator suggested an adult adoptee would, ever uttered the phrase "Oh, thank goodness, someone *saved* me!" I would be appalled, and convinced that I had done something wrong as a parent.

Our daughter's adoption was not a "rescue" of some poor thing in need of being "saved." It was a complicated negotiation to make the best of a tragic human situation by placing an infant whose young mother could not care for her and whose father didn't know she'd been conceived with parents who dreamed of adopting her. The result is a family in which all of us are deeply blessed and enriched by having each other.

But all of us also recognize that our daughter's adoption represents tremendous losses: of the family, culture, language, and country that should have been her birthright. We have all done well at holding onto all we can of her ethnic and cultural heritage (I grew up in South Korea and speak fluent Korean). We have supported her through stages of grieving and exploration. But none of this is the same as being raised Korean by her Korean family.

We have understood connection to Korea and education about racism - our own and our daughter's as well as her white brother's - to be as essential to her health and wellbeing as a vaccination or teaching her to brush her teeth. She is simply our *daughter* - not our "Korean daughter" - but we celebrate her Koreanness as we do all of the particular aspects of her singular personhood; to overlook it would be to deny one of the gifts of who she is, a disrespectful diminishment of the complexity of her whole self. It would also represent abdication of one of our chief responsibilities as parents: to equip our children to live and thrive in the larger world - as it is, not as we wish it would be.

The white psychologist's characterization that adoption is "colorblind" and that "race should only examined if you're over 40" is chilling. Imagine what happened every time her biracial children noticed race: their mother, who didn't think it was a necessary topic for children, must have deflected, denied, and suppressed their curiosity, their questions and their confusion. (Given young children's intuitive ability to pick up unspoken cues, the curiosity, questions and confusions may have never even been voiced.) Of course her children don't identify as either white or black - racial identity is formed by the mirrors that people hold up for you when you are young. If their mother's statements are indicative of how she raised them, the mirror in which her children saw themselves reflected rendered their race invisible.

The ignorance represented by this approach is an expression of unconscious white supremacy. (It's also a handy dodge: avoiding the examination of race spares us the discomfort and sometimes real pain of acknowledging white racism and white privilege.) Race invisibility is an aspect of white conditioning; because we are the majority and the dominant group, we see ourselves as the norm, essentially as raceless. One way white supremacy operates is when we assume that what is true for us - the racial "pass" - applies to everyone else as well.

Because this psychologist, as a white woman, has the privilege of ignoring race without cost to herself, she presumes the same for her children, as if her willful obtuseness could give them a cloak of invisibility.

But whiteness with all its power can't erase the race of transracially adopted children. Just because their mother refuses to acknowledge the reality of her children's skin color and racially-defined features doesn't mean society will be so blind. And her children have been given no tools to stand strong in their knowledge of who they truly are, no connection to the black people from whom they were birthed, no claim to that part of their cultural and racial legacy. With no affirmation of the beauty and significance of their blackness and their whiteness, as well as every other aspect of their identities, they will face uninformed and undefended a world that is all too quick to label and diminish them based on race alone.

The Colors of My World

2010-05-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

Today I talked about race with 350 children. Approximately 330 of them were white.

The occasion was the statewide conference of Maine's Civil Rights Team Project. Maine has the nation's most extensive network of school-based civil rights teams, from 3rd to 12th grade, involving more than 3000 students in helping to create safe, welcoming school communities for all kinds of difference. Bravo to them!

More than 1000 students and their adult advisors attended today's conference. In two sessions, I presented a workshop entitled "The Colors of My World" to all the 3rd-5th graders and their advisors.

Beginning with my own photo (the one from Seoul 1960 on the home page of this blog), I shared my own experience of race in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. I talked about how my consciousness of being white and American developed from having Koreans notice my difference every day of my young life. Every time I went to the market I drew a crowd of onlookers who exclaimed over my light hair ("it looks like gold!"), my light skin, my large, round eyes and prominent nose, my height - everything that made me look astonishingly different to them.

This led to a discussion of Racial Identity Development (see the book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?) - a mirror that other people hold up for you which forms your ideas of who you are racially - and Majority/Minority identity in relation to race (crucial to understand for those of us in Maine, currently the nation's whitest state), including:

Majority group members (one of many)

- experience self as the norm; minority members as different, sometimes Other

- strength: get to be seen as an individual; challenge: lack of awareness of race

Minority group members (one of a few)

- experience self as different

- strength: awareness of race, see things majority group members don't see

challenge: often seen as representative of racial group rather than individual

(I briefly noted that my experience of minority identity was unusual - both positive and privileged - but that's a big topic for another workshop.)

Then I led them in the following exercise:

Each student was given a blank card and packets of dot stickers. (This exercise is often done with jelly beans, but 350 students would have used more than 6000!) Using the color code here, I asked each of them to choose a dot to represent the race(s) of:

1. yourself

2. the family you live with (parents, siblings, etc)

3. the rest of your extended family

4. your closest friends (inner circle)

5. your friends (the wider circle)

6. most of your teachers

7. most of the students in your school

8. most of the people in your neighborhood

9. most of the people in your town

I instructed them to turn over the card for the final categories:

The race(s) of the characters in

1. your favorite TV shows, movies and video games

2. your favorite books

3. your imaginary worlds - the stories you write or pictures you draw

The culture(s)/race(s) of

4. your favorite music/musicians

5. your favorite foods

6. the holidays you celebrate

Students paired up to share what they noticed about the "colors of their worlds." Finally, we brainstormed lists of strengths, challenges, how they could share their colors with others, and things they could do to make their worlds more colorful. Some of their suggestions: get to know people of other races (in person or as pen pals); try foods of different cultures; visit churches, synagogues, mosques and temples; and watch movies and read books about people who don't look like you.

Catching Up

2010-04-18T15:25:00.001-04:00

A short break from the focus on white conditioning to share some recent happenings in my publishing life:

1. NEW BOOK!

What Will You Be, Sara Mee? by Kate Aver Avraham, was released in February from Charlesbridge. In it, six-year-old Korean-American Chong tells the story of his baby sister's tol, the traditional celebration of a child's first birthday.

I got a lot of help with visual details from my friends here in Portland, Won-Bae and Ip-bun Park of Sun Oriental Market, and their son Se-jong and his wife Ji-yun, whose daughter Chae-hee was the model for Sara Mee. Yesterday I took copies of the book to the Parks. Chae-Hee, now three years old, instantly recognized her baby self , and her six-year-old brother Tae-soo clasped the book to his chest, claiming the book as his own.

I'll be mailing out a copy this week to my friend Noah in Michigan, who was the model for Chong. In June of 2008 I spent a week with his family in Flushing, MI, while presenting at the Korean Culture Camp of Eastern Michigan.

Last month, the book was awarded the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Book Award.

2. After Gandhi: One Hundred Years of Nonviolent Resistance (Charlesbridge 2009), which my son Perry and I wrote and I illustrated, has been getting a lot of wonderful recognition, including:

- Notable Books for a Global Society from the International Reading Association

- 2010 Teachers' Choices List from the International Reading Association

- NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People

- CCBC Choices 2010 - Historical People, Places,

and Events

- The Maine Literary Book Award, Children's/Young Adult Category, from Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance.

3. Earlier this month, Catherine Anderson,

wonderful writer, poet, mother, teacher, friend and co-explorer of the world of race, whiteness, and multiracial families, who posts at her blog, "Mama C and the Boys," gave me a fabulous gift - a Beautiful Blogger Award!

I am belatedly completing her challenge to post this. The next part of my challenge is to find other bloggers to award it to. I'm on the lookout.

For the children

2010-04-08T10:36:00.000-04:00

The other day my massage therapist made a comment that got me thinking: "Every thought you have is lodging in the cells of your body."

That idea connected with something an artist, Joel Rivers, commented on my February 25 post on white privilege (it's worth reading his entire comment here): "You have to do a lot of soul-searching, and view your conditioning dispassionately in order to confront any prejudices that hide in there. As an artist, they WILL come out, and people WILL notice."

This all relates in my mind to why the exploration of what you've internalized about race is so important if you're working with children - as a parent, a children's book creator, a teacher, a librarian, a child care provider, in any other capacity. No matter how unaware we are or how we try to compensate, children pick up on what's in our minds, often without our even knowing it.

In February I had a conversation with Rupert Brown, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex, who has been conducting studies in prejudice, stereotypes and changing intergroup attitudes for thirty years. He reported that studies of families had shown that children express explicitly the implicit views of their mothers (interestingly, the fathers' views didn't have as much influence). In other words, no matter what the mother said, her children ended up absorbing the unconscious messages she was communicating, and holding these views consciously.

Yikes! What an argument for getting to know the inside of your own mind.

If we're uncomfortable about race, the children we live and work with will pick this up, no matter how we try to hide it. It will leak out of our cells, through our odd voice tones, our panicked eyes, our stiff and practiced smiles, our earnestness, our effortful and careful sentence structure, our trying too hard. They will take in our tension, our brittleness, our tiptoeing about the subject, our silences - in our bodies or our books.

And they will internalize the lessons: Race is difficult, dangerous, to be avoided. Or even: People of other races are difficult, dangerous, to be avoided. Instead of creating the world we all long for, we will have passed on the toxic patterns of the one we have.

Children need us to give them water, nourishing, life-affirming. Yet so often around the subject of race, we are like ice. We need to let go of our resistance, to melt. If we can't figure out a way to do this work for ourselves, let us do it for the children.

Privilege & Pain Avoidance

2010-03-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

Our daughter Yunhee was adopted from Korea as an infant, joining a white American mother, father and older brother, who was born into our family. (One of our oft repeated family jokes is the story of her middle school classmate who asked me, "Does Yunhee know she's adopted?")

Race was an often daily topic in our family. I'd had fifteen years of anti-racism education by the time Yunhee came home, not to mention growing up in Korea as a highly visible person of racial difference, so I was certainly comfortable addressing the topic. But I remember on so many occasions, when Yunhee expressed intense emotion about the subject (often as the result of a comment by a classmate), and even as I might be giving her my full, sympathetic attention, I was aware of a little voice in my head asking, "Can it really be that bad?"

Of course, as Yunhee's mother, I had many tangled emotions and longings as I witnessed her distress. I didn't want my child to hurt - ever, for any reason. I wanted her to learn appropriate social customs, which include containing and channeling the expression of emotion in consideration of others. But that little voice was a result of my own conditioning as a white American: racially, I have had it easy.

Without my having done anything but be born with this color of skin, I have automatically (and usually unconsciously) been granted a measure of status, advantage and influence. I have grown up surrounded by social structures, media, interactions and institutions which reinforce the centrality of my racial identity, so much so that I don't even notice them. I have never endured a steady barrage of negation about my race. In general, the experience of being white in the U.S. is comfortable, unchallenged, affirmed and taken for granted. It's no wonder that I don't notice it, and no wonder if I can't imagine what it would be like to be a person of color in this society.

Privilege plays out in many concrete ways, some explored here, but it's also pervasive as a state of mind. This diminishing of the experiences of people of color, as expressed by them, is one of its more insidious aspects. There are so many versions of this avoidance:

"Why are you playing the race card?"

"I understand your concerns, but I have a hard time hearing you when you're so angry."

"I know there are some problems, but we elected Barack Obama!"

In other words, "Please reframe that so that I can stay comfortable."

***

Because it can be really tricky trying to see my own invisible patterns, I find it useful to borrow some awareness from other aspects of my life. I can get a clue about privilege in thinking of my experience as a self-employed artist.

I'm often made aware of the fact that people with salaried positions, benefits and health insurance don't seem to be able to imagine what it's like to live without these. (I'm fortunate to currently have health insurance through my husband's job, but have gone for years without it when we were both self-employed.) I notice that salaried people frequently make requests for unremunerated services or time that show that they're completely unaware of what it's like not to have a steady income. For instance, teachers' conferences expect presenters to pay for the privilege of attending, assuming, I guess, the support of a school district to cover registration and travel. Most writers and illustrators don't have the extra resources for this, unless they have other jobs as well. The feeling I often have is that salaried people can't even imagine what the questions are that those of us who are self-employed have to ask all the time.

(This is not to suggest that self-employed people are the targets of anything, but merely to point out an example of privilege in the oblivion of people who are salaried about the lives of people who are not.)

***

Once I've identified that part of my avoidance around race, particularly my discomfort in listening to people of color express their feelings about being mistreated, is a privilege I no longer want to participate in, I've made a start.

The next part is a human one. Open my heart, and let it break.

And keep listening.

Silence

2010-03-24T10:49:00.000-04:00

In the pre-cell phone era, here in Maine, I was out with two friends, one white and one black. The black friend ducked into a local bar to find a pay phone. She came out a few minutes later, stony-faced. The bar patrons had called out comments the whole time she'd been trying to make her phone call

- "Look, it's Whoopi Goldberg!" "Hey, Whoopi!" She was sunk inward, both angry and disheartened, all the stuffing knocked out of her by one-too-many encounters of being Othered. I, who'd been at ease in conversation with her the previous hour, could find nothing to say in the face of her distress.

At a chapter meeting of a diversity leadership training group (NCBI), a member of color voiced a concern about being tokenized. All the white members (including me) - all skilled, experienced trainers - sat silent.

How many times have I heard a comment - a racial slur or epithet, or something less hostile but still "off" - and found myself incapable of responding?

As I've been writing about this topic in the last month, two white friends have written directly to me, and although they were each simply recording how they experienced being white as a child, they both ended with something like, "I could never say this in public." I notice a curious lack of comments on listservs and blogs - except ones that are about race and therefore attract an audience that wants to talk about it - when the topic of race is raised directly.

Why do I and other white people lose our voices at such times?

In my own experience, this is the inside of my brain at such moments:

1."OMG what just happened what should I do what if I say the wrong thing was it something I did what if I say this no that might be taken the wrong way no I can't say that yikes somebody save me this silence is really uncomfortable but I have absolutely no idea how to respond no matter what I do it's going to be wrong;"

or 2. -- (blank screen)

Responding with silence can be a symptom of many other reactions: carefulness, self-consciousness, nervousness, avoidance, numbness, going "stupid," freezing, guilt, shame. Whatever the cause, it doesn't move anyone or anything forward.

If we want to be allies in pursuit of a world of books that represent and celebrate all children, white people must find our voices around the topic of race. (One of the most useful things that white people can do to is practice by telling our stories of being white to each other.)

Take the risk of making mistakes, dare to make ourselves vulnerable, and begin to build bridges with our words.

White Patterns

2010-03-18T00:13:00.000-04:00

Most white Americans rarely think about race, and less still about being white.

There's a good reason for this. Because white people have been both the majority and the dominant group in the U.S. for the last several hundred years, being white has been the norm. When you're the norm, you hardly notice. One of the defining characteristics of a majority identity is its invisibility to those who belong to the group. In the case of race in America, white is the default, the presumed, the given.

Therefore, the experience of being socialized as a white person is largely INVISIBLE to people who are white. Even trying to write about it is tricky; I keep revising this post just to try to get my thoughts clear. Unlike many people of color, most white people don't talk regularly about race, their own or other people's. Other people don't usually remark on or draw attention to the fact that someone is white. Whiteness itself is the reference point; other races are defined by their difference from whiteness.

As a result, many white people have very little experience in thinking about, discussing and navigating issues of race. Naturally, when the topic of race is raised, particularly in a charged way, many white people feel uncomfortable. They don't have much practice in or resource for responding authentically, flexibly, creatively, and effectively.

These are some of the (mostly unconscious) behaviors and attitudes that can result:

- Silence.

- Carefulness.

- Self-consciousness.

- Nervousness.

- Avoidance.

- Denial.

- Pretense.

- Numbness.

- Going "stupid."

- Freezing.

- Sense of entitlement.

- Defensiveness.

- Resistance.

- Ignorance.

- Making assumptions.

- Overcompensation.

- Trying too hard.

- Guilt.

- Shame.

Recognize any of these? Got any others to add?

(If you want to learn a lot about how white people behave, just ask a friend of color. One of the defining characteristics of a minority identity is its visibility. As a result, most people of color have been thinking and talking about race their whole lives. Non-dominant group members also need to observe and become experts about the dominant group, for their survival. People of color can often see clearly the patterns that are invisible to white people.)

Now, imagine what happens when a whole lot of people are walking around behaving in all those funny ways in relation to race, often with no awareness of what they're doing. Is it any wonder that reality - say, the representation of race in children's books - doesn't match our vision?!?

The most effective way I know to change unexamined behaviors and attitudes is to first notice they're there, then examine them. In the next several posts, I'll explore these patterns in some detail, with examples of how I've seen them in myself and other white people.

Connecting the Dots

2010-03-10T12:28:00.000-05:00

In 1960, our family moved to South Korea, a country struggling to recover from a war that had devastated and divided the peninsula just seven years before.

Every time I walked the city streets or went to the market, I saw children my age, dressed in rags, begging. Some families, refugees from the north, were still living in mountain caves on the outskirts of the city. Nearly everyone I met had less than our family did. (Over the next twenty years, we witnessed South Korea's rise, like a phoenix from the ashes of war, to become one of the world's economic superpowers, but that's another story.)

My parents were actively engaged in trying to relieve suffering through delivering medical care and supporting women's groups. In fifth and sixth grade, I spent many after-school hours playing with the orphan babies who were patients at the hospital where my father worked.

Fast forward to my arrival at an American college campus, straight from the rural health care project my father directed on a remote Korean island. Though I wasn't aware of it at the time, I was carrying some extra baggage along with my trunks.

I had deep and loving relationships with many individual Koreans and by then knew many who were well-to-do, but my early childhood experiences had ingrained within me the idea that the task of a privileged white American was to be a helper. The little I'd been exposed to of the experiences of African-Americans - mostly slavery, civil rights, and Martin Luther King - only confirmed my unconscious impulse to respond to people of color by trying to help.

It wasn't hostile, it wasn't hateful, but it was still a way of viewing people of color as less than. It made me see Them primarily as victims and myself as some kind of caretaker, which is a "benign" form of white supremacy. It caused me to behave oddly, especially around African-Americans: self-conscious, careful, effortful, earnest, overcompensating - twisting myself into a pretzel instead of just being myself. (Because of my comfort level and sense of belonging with Koreans, I was much more relaxed with Asian Americans.) I spent a great deal of time earnestly trying to prove how good I was, that I wasn't one of those white people. None of this was any help at all in developing equitable, authentic bonds across race.

Fortunately, I had also gained some strengths from my upbringing, including awareness of race and knowing that cross-racial relationships were essential to me. So in spite of all the baggage, I developed friendships with black students and began learning. Watching myself repeatedly behaving in peculiar ways gradually brought me to awareness of the unconscious stuff, how it was in my way, and what I could do about it.

I share all this only as an illustration: In a similar manner to the work done by Adult Children of Alcoholics and other groups, we can examine the experiences of our upbringing to uncover the patterns we have formed around race. We can become witnesses of our own implicit attitudes, behaviors and actions, without judging ourselves, and ask, "Why in the world do I think/feel/do that?"

Once we see the patterns, we are freed to make conscious choices.

Tracking Everyday Bias

2010-03-07T14:48:00.000-05:00

In late January I attended a fascinating Bates College lecture entitled "Mind Bugs: The Science of Everyday Bias," by Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard. She shared that brain research has now documented with conclusive evidence that bias is a universal human condition, and that testing shows a high degree of racial and gender bias (as well as many other types) in human brains (for instance, 80% of whites show bias for the white race).

Researchers can watch the brains of test subjects. When you think about people like you, they report, a certain part of your brain lights up; when you think about people different from you, a different part lights up. This kind of bias is completely unconscious, present in people who are absolutely positive they don't have it and who are committed to treating everyone fairly (and think they do). But it affects our actions, from hiring decisions to proscribing medications to book purchasing. The higher the degree of prejudice, the more it affects behavior.

To me, all this was great news. It give us the opportunity to get beyond the defensive arguments of whether or not bias is present (though some people will hold onto that forever), accept that it's in all of us (each of us with our own unique pattern), and get on with what to do about it. It's not a question of if you have bias, it's what yours looks like.

As Banaji said, you can discover from testing that "the data are coming out not in line with my conscious intention," realize that "you are shaping your mind and creating associations," and take responsibility for, literally, changing your mind.

At the Project Implicit website, you can "assess your conscious and unconscious preferences for over 90 different topics ranging from pets to political issues, ethnic groups to sports teams, and entertainers to styles of music," (joining the 12,000,000 people around the world who've offered themselves as subjects).

White Privilege & Children's Books

2010-02-25T07:25:00.000-05:00

In the 1980s, Peggy McIntosh, a Wellesley professor, was working with a group of colleagues, both male and female. She kept noticing the privileges these male friends of hers took for granted and how they couldn't seem to see it even when their female colleagues drew their attention to it.

One day, she had an aha moment: If my male colleagues have unearned privileges and benefits that I as a woman don't have (and they can't see), perhaps I as a white person have similar privileges that my colleagues of color don't have (and I can't see). As an experiment, she began keeping a list, recording social benefits that she could count on, but that she was pretty sure the people of color she worked with couldn't count on.

Her 1989 essay, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" has become essential reading for understanding how race works in American society.

Making your own white privilege list can cause a permanent shift in awareness.

Here's my attempt at one related to the field of children's books:

As a children's book reader -

1. In any mainstream bookstore across the country, I can be certain to find children's books with protagonists from my race.

2. On the jacket flaps of children's picture books and novels, if there is an author/illustrator photo, I can expect that the majority of the creators will be of my race.

3. Purchasing a gift for a white child of my acquaintance, I never have to wonder if I can find an appropriate book with characters who look like her.

4. If that child imagines herself as a princess/magician/pirate/astronaut, I can find a book to feed her dreams with characters of her race.

5. If a child I love struggles with an issue of any kind - fear of monsters, grief or loss, tantrums - I can be pretty sure there's a book out there to help him starring a boy he could imagine to be himself.

6. Reading books that are wildly popular - Harry Potter, Twilight - I never have to wonder why there's no one in them who looks like me.

7. If race is not mentioned in a children's novel, I can usually assume that the characters in it are the same race as I am.

8. I've never had the experience of reading a book about people of my race by an author of a different race and discovering it to be full of stereotypes, misunderstandings, and ignorance about white people.

As a children's book creator -

9. Attending children's book conferences, book fairs and conventions across the country (except for those specifically multicultural in design), I know that the majority (here in New England, usually about 99%) of the authors, illustrators, editors, agents and other professionals attending will be of my race.

10. Submitting a book I've written or illustrated to a publisher, I can be pretty sure that an editor will judge my work based on its literary merits and/or marketability. I never have to wonder if an editor will reject it simply because they have no experience or understanding of the cultural and racial framework I'm working from and/or don't value it.

11. If I write a book with a protagonist of my own race, I can be certain that the publisher will not change the character's race on the jacket to improve sales.

12. When a book of mine is reviewed, I can expect that most reviewers will be people whose own race and life experience won't make it impossible for them to understand what I've created.

I welcome additions to this list, as well as questions and challenges.

Writing Whiteness

2010-02-24T10:06:00.000-05:00

Get a pen and paper. Sit down in a comfortable place and get quiet.

Imagine yourself as a child.

Remembering your young life, ask: What is my earliest memory of noticing that my skin was a different color from someone else's, or that theirs was a different color from mine?

In other words, if you're white, in what circumstances did you first notice that you were "white?" (This is an enlightening exercise for anyone of any race, but particularly so for white people because so often the subject of race simply isn't raised in the white community.)

Other racial differences - hair, shape of eyes, etc. - may be more relevant than skin color, depending on the memory.

Doing this exercise the first time, some people find a memory from when they were six or seven. Others can't remember any awareness of race until they went away to college. Your story can be from when you were three or when you were nineteen; any memory will do to start.

Let the details come. Picture yourself at that age. Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? What happened? How did the awareness come? What did others say or do? What did you feel?

Begin to write. Get down the vivid details, as if you were writing a scene in a novel. Rather than carefully composing, try free writing, throwing the story down onto the page without stopping to think.

When you've finished capturing the scene, read back over what you've written. Reflect on the experience and what it meant for the child/young adult that you were. Ask yourself some questions, such as:

- What did I pick up, perhaps unconsciously, from this experience?

- If adults were present, what did their behavior tell me - what they said or did not say, did or did not do, with all the nuances of gesture, body language and tone of voice?

- What did I internalize about race, about myself, about people like me, about people different from me?

Some answers might be:

- Race is a taboo subject and it's not polite to notice it.

- I love and am loved by this person whose race is different from mine.

- Those people are ___________ (scary? exciting? needy? forbidden?).

- I'm better than/less than others in these ways: _______________.

***

This process, repeated over and over, with the same memory and many others, can give us back ourselves. There's a way that recalling our young selves reminds us of our innocence. It makes it possible to see the patterns we began to internalize when we were young, without blaming ourselves for them.

"Awareness requires a rupture with the world we take for granted; then old categories of experience are called into question and revised."
Shoshana Zuboff

On the Path

2010-02-23T09:37:00.000-05:00

Years and years ago, I asked a dear friend what I should read to get a true picture of the history of his people, the Lakota. He recommended Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

It's more than twenty years later and I still haven't read that book. Why not? Fear. Fear of knowing something unbearable.

I've tried to live up to a standard I've given myself: If they can bear to live through it, the least I can do is dare to listen to the story. But sometimes I fail to meet my own standards.

That's the place to start on this path, the place where I duck, flinch, shrink or cower. Where I feel defensive. Where I resist. Where I have a thousand explanations, justifications, arguments and rationalizations.

The process of liberation from conditioned responses to race (or any other aspect of living and relating) is a path, not a destination. The first step can be paying attention. Discovering where I am, where the patterns I've learned are limiting my life (lots of tools for this coming up in the next few weeks). Looking at what I don't want to see, what I can't bear to feel.

The next step is to make one move, into the discomfort.

Pick up a copy of the book and read it.

Be the Change

2010-02-21T10:56:00.000-05:00

I write this phrase every time I autograph a copy of After Gandhi. But Gandhi's statement, "Be the change you want to see in the world," is so often quoted that it's hard to hear it.

What does it actually mean to be the change?

My early image of what it meant to fight racism was to work with people of color, being "helpful." Realizing - with some reluctance - that the real work was in the white community, I tried to be a righteous warrior, raising awareness of how whites are implicated in institutional and personal racism. With people of color, I worked hard to prove that I wasn't one of those white people.

None of this was very effective.

Finally, I was guided to turn the spotlight inward, on myself. What was my experience of being white? How has racism impacted and shaped me? I began a lifelong exploration of the veiled realm of my own unspoken thoughts, attitudes and associations.

The more I investigate, the more I discover, and the more I feel small knots loosening, little gummed-up places unsticking, muddied thoughts clarifying. The process creates a little more room to breathe, to see, and to be. As the unconscious becomes visible, I'm empowered to act based on my conscious choices, in line with my intention. Bit by bit, I am transforming myself. In subtle but significant ways, it has transformed my relationships, both same- and cross-race.

There's another Gandhi quote that addresses this:

"The only devils in our world are those running around in our own hearts, and that’s where all our battles ought to be fought.”

I think both quotes are simple statements of reality: For things to change, we must change.

Being White in a World of Color: Guilt and Goodness

2010-02-17T17:44:00.000-05:00

You can't very far into a discussion of being white without plowing into the question of guilt.

Many might read the statement in my previous post about the places I've gotten it wrong as being spoken out of guilt. But I don't feel guilty when I say it.

I've posted before about the National Coalition Building Institute, and much of what I'll be writing about white patterns was learned from twenty years as a local associate in the Maine chapter of NCBI. One of the pillars of NCBI theory is, in the words of founder Cherie Brown, "Guilt is the glue that holds prejudice in place."

In a workshop years ago, I heard a woman of color - I'll call her Miriam - share a story about how she'd been mistreated because of her race. Moved to tears by her account, I also felt uncomfortably implicated. Afterwards I approached her and urgently expressed how sorry I was, saying, "if there's anything I can do..." Miriam's response: "Annie, just be yourself."

It was guilt that made me feel that I was somehow personally responsible for Miriam's pain. It was guilt that made me turn her story into something about me. It was guilt that made me seek reassurance and absolution from Miriam so that I wouldn't feel bad anymore.

Over the years, I've gradually worked on letting go of guilt and tried instead to remember my own goodness. I've noticed that I didn't ask to be raised in a system that would separate me from other people, that would divide us by our differences. I didn't ask to be taught patterns that would make it difficult to have authentic, loving connections to all kinds of people; in that way, it's not my fault.

The patterns are there, though, and it's goodness - the knowledge that we are one human family - that makes them my responsibility. I don't want any obstacles in the way of seeing the value, significance and wonder of any person I meet.

So instead of a guilty cataloging of sins, I consider this journey more of a detective investigation. I'm fascinated by the evidence I gather, and glad for every new clue that adds one more piece to the puzzle.

The more of the puzzle I see, the more I'm freed to just be myself.

Being White in a World of Color: Groundwork

2010-02-16T11:09:00.001-05:00

Thirty-nine years ago this fall, I was a first-year studio art major at Mount Holyoke College. I'd come to South Hadley, Massachusetts from my family's home on a rural island off the coast of South Korea, so I was experiencing deep culture shock, though I had no language for it at the time.

Somehow I found my way to a campus workshop on racism, presented by Judith Katz, a UMass-Amherst professor who was developing the material that became her 1978 book, White Awareness: A Handbook for Anti-Racism Training.

Katz led the workshop participants through a series of exercises designed to help us see how we as members of the dominant group were socialized in often unconscious patterns of behavior, and participated and benefited from a system that gave preference to whites. I was introduced to the definition, "racism = prejudice + power." The goal, according to Katz, was to become "anti-racist racists" (one can see why the term didn't catch on).

It all made sense to me. The crowds of curious onlookers who gathered around me on childhood forays to the open-air market had made me highly conscious of my race. The shocking gap between our family's prosperity and the poverty of postwar, early 1960's Korea had been a troubling experience of the color line and the class line. And the chosen segregation by American missionaries from the people they had come to "save" had been a clear demonstration of white supremacy.

Everything Katz taught us that day was a revelation, an answer to questions I hadn't even formed yet. It was the conscious beginning of a lifelong pursuit to unlock the puzzle of race, culture and human difference.

Over the years, I've observed that white responses to such descriptions of white racism tend to fall into three predictable categories:

1. Adherence. A small but growing number of whites consider definitions like Katz's to be anti-racism orthodoxy.

2. Resistance: "Don't try to make me feel guilty for the sins of my fathers," "Don't try to pin this on white people. What about all the things that African-Americans do that are racist?" or "How can you paint all white people with the same brush? That's racism, too."

3. Defensiveness and guilt. Many white people are committed to racial equality but want reassurance that they're not personally part of the problem.

In my experience, none of these responses (all of which I've recognized in myself) really move us forward. I've heard innumerable testimonials that the hardest people to deal with are liberals who believe that they are in solidarity with people of color, but may be blind to the ways they're still operating within racist patterns.

The assurance of being right can appear as, and so quickly become, self-righteousness.

The only consistently useful approach I've found in nearly forty years of exploring the topic is to keep my focus on what I don't know. The other day I had a conversation about this with writer Catherine Anderson, in which I found myself stating my intention "to start from all the places where I have got it wrong."

That's what I'll be trying to do here.

"The literature of America should reflect the children of America"

2010-02-10T18:23:00.000-05:00

I heard poet Lucille Clifton say this at a children's book conference in the 1980's. There was a growing interest in multicultural literature at the time, and a growing body of books by and about people of color.

Recently, it seems as if we've lost some ground. Though the makeup of our national community is more diverse than ever, the books being published for our children aren't. Conversations are raging in the blogosphere about recent examples of "whitewashing" jackets of books with protagonists of color; about popular series like Harry Potter and Twilight having all-white casts of main characters; about children of color too often appearing only in books about race or painful periods of history; about authors being urged to drop a character's ethnic or other difference in order to "appeal to a wider audience."

As I wrote in December 2008 in launching this column, it's high time we became a consciously multiracial nation. Conversations like this are part of it. One essential topic to examine is white socialization, how it creates unconscious bias, and what we can do about it. It's one thing that writers, illustrators, editors, publishers, marketing staff, parents, teachers and readers can explore, toward the goal of having our outcome match our intention: that the body of literature for children should include all of our children.

Last May I presented a workshop at the New England regional conference of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, entitled, "Being White in a World of Color." That's the topic I'll be exploring on this blog this winter and spring.

(The images accompanying these posts will be taken from my sketches, roughs and published illustrations.)