This evening I listened to episode 3 of the All My Relations podcast because I was interested in hearing what the hosts and guests had to say on the subject of Native mascots. I want to be unequivocal: I can’t believe we are still discussing the appropriateness of Native mascots. When we studied Native history and…
This video about intergroup anxiety was really interesting to me. I have found myself in the position described in the video of trying so hard to be fair that I overcompensate by acting weird. Once when I was at a conference, I was so awkward when placed in a discussion group with two women I…
I watched Verna Myers’s TED Talk this evening. Have you taken the Implicit Bias Test? If you do, be forewarned that you may discover things about yourself that you are not ready to deal with. What I found really refreshing in Myers’s talk is that she offers a way to combat implicit bias: simply expose…
White Bred from Ross Tierney on Vimeo. Today, I want to offer a few sources and a story that I think might help White people understand the meaning that being White has. I think a lot of White people tend to group people of other races together and not to see them as individuals. W….
I didn’t post yesterday for the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge © because I needed to sit with something and think about it. Then I needed to decide what to do. Actually, I knew what to do, but I also knew it would be difficult, and I needed to figure out how to say…
One of Dr. Eddie Moore’s challenges is to notice the world around you. Ask yourself why you don’t see certain things. A metaphor I heard recently is that for white people, racism is like being a fish in water. You don’t realize you’re swimming in it. We’re in the midst of a pandemic, and I…
This evening I listened in on a webinar with the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), The Conversation Ignored for Too Long: Race and Racism in Education and Society with a remarkable panel including José Vilson, Liza Talusan, Cinnamon Kills First, and Tia Brown McNair. I joined late and my internet cut out partway into…
In this excellent TED Talk, Baratunde Thurston masterfully uses sentence structure to discuss racism using headlines many of us are familiar with. I am definitely planning to use it in my English classes. Thurston strikes a balance between humor and seriousness. He masterfully draws the line between lynching to calling the police on Black people…
Last quarter I took a wonderful Early Childhood Education course with Dr. Wendy Crocker as part of my graduate school program at Northeastern. My favorite assignment was creating an anti-bias toolkit for educators working with young children. I selected a target age of kindergarten through first grade for mine, but I think these tools could…
Some of my family stories are sad. My grandfather was given up for adoption by his mother after his father committed suicide. The story has become muddled over time. I actually only know my great-grandfather committed suicide because I ordered a copy of his death certificate. The story his children were told is that he…
