Class Talk II

For my White Privilege Conference workshop (see previous post) on using children's books to talk about class, I prepared this handout, an adaptation of the one I've posted previously on talking about race:


Key Points for Talking About Class & Race with Children

1. Be welcoming, open & inquiring
Children's comments, questions and experiences (including the things we wish they wouldn’t say) are opportunities to talk, listen and learn. The goal is to find out what children are thinking and to give them permission and language to voice their ideas and impressions.

2. Be concerns-based
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 tailored to the particular child/ren and particular situation.

3. Be empowering
 Conversations about economic and racial injustice should always include ideas about how children can respond and that adults are available to help.
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 challenges of prejudice and injustice.

4. Be inclusive
Class and race should be framed as about “all of us,” not through the majority group lens of “Us/Them.” Though our experiences may be very different based on the groups we belong to, everyone has a class and racial identity and everyone’s life is affected by class and race, whether we are aware of it or not.

5. Address systems, social roles and power
Classism and racism are not the same as "being mean." Prejudice based on economic status, and on skin color and racial features, is a universal human tendency, but classism and racism are not just personal, they are 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 advantages upper income and white people, and disadvantages lower income people and people of color.

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 class and race, children's attitudes and behaviors will be formed by these influences, and they will act out the class and racial roles that society has assigned them.

6. Offer ourselves as role models.
In order to lead these conversations, we adults must be willing to challenge and shift our own attitudes and behaviors, and offer our process of examining class and race in our own lives as a model that children can look to and learn from.



 Resources:

• Teaching for Change - Building Justice Starting in the Classroom: Teaching for Change  encourages teachers and students to question and re-think the world inside and outside their classrooms, build a more equitable, multicultural society, and become active global citizens.
• "A World Full of Color" - resource library of books featuring people of color
• “An Updated Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children's Books” by Louise Derman-Sparks

How to Talk About Race: A List of Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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