Here is a great annotated list of books to help you have important conversations with your children or simply educate yourself about racial issues.
How to Talk to Kids About Race: Books and Resources That Can Help
by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
excerpt:
Not too long ago, my daughter described a conversation at school, during lunch, in which another’s student’s race was mentioned.
“That’s racist!” someone else cried.
We live in a time when we are confronted with the complex realities of race, racial identity, and racism every day, but are also advised and often encouraged to avoid discussing it. Even the mere mention of someone’s race is “playing the race card,” or, as that child believed, “racist.” We talk about the need to be “colorblind” or the idea that there is “just one race — the human race.”
“Most Americans believe in racial and gender equality and reject discrimination in any form. Yet stereotypes embedded in our brains, shaped over time by history and culture, can lead us to view the world through a biased lens and behave contrary to our deeply held egalitarian values,” states The Perception Institute, an organization working to “reduce discrimination and other harms linked to race, gender, and other identity differences.”
While “I don’t see color” may come from a well-meaning place, studies show that it more likely does a great deal of harm. If we look closer, we often find that much of our reluctance to address race directly stems from our tendency to want to avoid discomfort. Yeah, it’s hard to talk about why #BlackLivesMatter has become a rallying cry, the legacy of our government’s relationship with its Native citizens, or why some individuals are called “illegal” and “alien.” Clinical psychologist, author, and professor Beverly Tatum asks us to “Think about these stereotypes, these omissions, these distortions as a kind of environment that surrounds us, like smog in the air. We don’t breathe it because we like it. We don’t breathe it because we think it’s good for us. We breathe it because it’s the only air that’s available.”
This is the world that we inhabit; we talk about needing to talk about race without ever actually talking honestly about race. I believe that it’s vital that we help our children (and ourselves) walk and talk in a way that clears that air and breathes new life into these conversations and our world. Sharing stories, real, fictional, our own, and others’, is a powerful tool for that purpose. Here are a few resources and books to help us have those hard conversations with the young people in our lives.
CHECK IT OUT: http://www.readbrightly.com/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-race-books-and-resources-that-can-help/
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