Not talking about racism is not a solution. How do we have this conversation and how do we unravel assumptions about racism? Even if you don’t have the expertise we can create safe space for the conversation. How do we get started and move forward? How can these talks bring us together? 

The Heinemann Fellows recently hosted a panel about racism in education facilitated by Heinemann authors Sara Ahmed, Sonja Cherry-Paul and Cornelius Minor. After the panel we sat down, alongside Heinemann General Manager Vicki Boyd, to talk about what racism looks like and how do we breakup the assumptions we make about racism. 



Be sure to follow Sonja Cherry-Paul, Sara Ahmed, and Cornelius Minor on Twitter. A special thank you to The Heinemann Fellows and author Ellin Keene for creating the space for this conversation. 

Sonja:    One way that we can define racism is going beyond this notion of racism being simply conscious hate. That it is individual acts of hatred or bullying. But to think about racism systemically and the ways in which it really is the fog over all of our lives, and making a list of those things. For me, as an educator, racism looks like certain people's stories being included in curriculum and in texts that we read, while others are being omitted. Racism looks like telling children of color or teaching children of color to celebrate and honor men, white men in particular, throughout history who were racist and oppressors. Racism looks like teaching children that race doesn't matter when in fact race does matter, to borrow from Dr. Cornell West.
    When we teach kids these sort of canned narratives that race doesn't matter, we're all the same, we're all equal, there really needs to be a paradigm shift where we're teaching our children race does matter in this society. It shouldn't, but it does. And for some of your peers and for some citizens, they're having a very different experience because of the color of their skin. In our household, we see that as unjust and unfair and we are pushing back against that, but it's important for you to know that as you are going to school and celebrating the uniqueness's of your peers. That racism is real and it does matter in this society because there are people who make it matter. I wish that was the narrative that parents were taking in their homes and then teachers can pick up in schools, in developmentally appropriate ways to help kids understand this.

Brett:    Cornelius, you talked about how we need to dismantle the assumptions of racism. We typically think of it as acts of violence or acts of hate. At one point, I can't remember who said it, somebody said, "There's an insistence of innocence among white people." And you helped us think through the systems in place that allow racism to continue, the systems in place that are racism. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Cornelius:    Yeah. I'm really into the idea that systems can be examined and we can look at them and take them apart and add parts to it. When I say system, I'm looking specifically at the rules, the policies, the procedures, the customs that govern a specific place.