S10E6 – ICYMI: Teaching Hard History

S10E6: ICYMI: Teaching Hard History

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Jaden: And I'm Jaden, a Puerto Rican college student from New York.

Andrew: And this is, In Case You Missed It: The History of Whiteness and How We Teach About Race. And listeners do not fear, Val has not left the podcast, but at the end of last season Val had mentioned this idea of a student takeover. And here we are, student takeover. Jaden, welcome to the podcast. We're very glad to have you. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Jaden: I am a Puerto Rican, I grew up in New York City and I'm currently an undergrad at Yale University. I study linguistics and education studies, and I absolutely love this podcast. And, I jumped at the opportunity to work on it and be here talking with you guys. So, I'm, I'm very excited.

Andrew: Yeah, we're very glad to have you. Listeners, you'll be hearing more from Jaden soon but, we wanted to drop into your feeds with a great episode that actually Jaden came across. And we're gonna listen to that today and then talk a little bit about it. So, Jaden, what are we gonna hear today?

Jaden: Yes. So today we're gonna be listening to The History of Whiteness and How We Teach About Race,from the Teaching Hard History Podcast by Learning for Justice.

Andrew: Yeah, and, we're only gonna listen to the first half, so we definitely recommend listeners go out, there'll be a link in the show notes, and listen to the entire episode. The second half of the episode really talks about kind of the creation of Whiteness, how Whiteness came to be and it's fascinating. We talked a bit about it on the podcast when we covered the Seeing White podcast a while back, we'll put a link to that as well. But for this episode, we're just gonna talk about the first half and what's in the first half, Jaden.

Jaden: Right. The first half is an interview with Dr. Aisha White who talks a little bit about early education and how we teach about race, specifically to young children.

Andrew: The podcast is, I think, designed for teachers, but certainly super relevant to parents and caregivers. Anybody who sort of interacts with young people, I think, dispels a lot of ideas we have about when is or isn't an appropriate time to talk to kids about race, how we should talk about it and, and those sorts of things. So I'm excited for listeners to get a chance to check it out.

Jaden: Definitely.

Andrew: All right. Should we listen?

Jaden: Yes. Let's listen.

Andrew: Cool.

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Bethany Jay: I’m Bethany Jay, and this is Teaching Hard History. We’re a production of Learning for Justice—the education arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This season, we’re offering a detailed look at how to teach the history of Jim Crow, starting with Reconstruction. In each episode we explore a different topic, walking you through historical concepts, raising questions for discussion, suggesting useful source material, and offering practical classroom exercises.

During Jim Crow, whiteness could no longer be defined by freedom from enslavement. And White Americans worked hard to maintain its power in the post-emancipation world. In order to have these conversations in the classroom, it’s important to think about the ways we talk with our students—particularly our younger students—about race. So we’re going to hear from Aisha White, the Director of the Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education Program, or P.R.I.D.E. program, at the University of Pittsburgh. She spoke with my co-host Hasan Kwame Jeffries about how to have positive race conversations with your students. I’m so glad that you could join us. Let’s get started.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: I am really excited today to welcome to the podcast Dr. Aisha White, who is the director of P.R.I.D.E., a program at the University of Pittsburgh in the School of Education. And we're going to dig deep and talk about the importance of teaching kids and talking to kids about race and racism and positive identity. Dr. White, thank you so much for joining us.

Aisha White: It is a pleasure and an honor, trust me.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Well, we're excited, we're excited. I've been thinking about this conversation since we began planning this season, so I'm honored that you are with us. I want to begin by asking you to explain to our listeners just what is the P.R.I.D.E. program at Pitt?

Aisha White: Okay, so P.R.I.D.E. is an acronym for Positive Racial Identity Development in Early Education. And we do that by providing the important adults in young children's lives with the knowledge, resources and skills to actually engage in conversation and activities that do support children's development of a positive racial identity.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: You know, when I have conversations with folk about the importance of race and racial identity and racism in society, you get from those who will push back, why focus on race at all? How come we just can't be colorblind? And I'm sure many of our listeners and teachers who want to engage in this work in thoughtful, honest ways hear that as well. What is your response when folks say that to you?

Aisha White: My first response is sort of like a gut reaction, which is you're not even being real. You do see color. But in thinking more about what we do at the P.R.I.D.E. program, my response is that the research has shown that when teachers take on this colorblind approach, it can be as damaging as actually being racist towards children. If you claim that you are colorblind and there are circumstances in a classroom, for example, where a child is harmed racially, what do you do? Because you're not prepared. Because you've said that nobody has color. I don't see color.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Why shouldn't we wait until kids are in middle school or high school, a little bit older, a little bit more mature to talk about these issues?

Aisha White: At three months, kids are already noticing skin color differences. Three months old. The research says that at three months old, a child will tend to an image that is similar to their primary caregivers, mom and dad. So if mom and dad are White, the child's White, show them pictures of somebody who's White versus somebody who's African American, they'll tend to the white face. That kind of flips, and they'll begin to be a little more engaged in looking at images and better able to see at six months. And so they'll tend to a face that is darker. They begin to look longer at the Black face now. And both of those things are fine, because it's just kids actually noticing things. But very quickly that changes, and the research says that by two and a half years old, they're starting to embrace some of the ideas and attitudes around race that are common in America. And those are commonly bad.

And by two and a half, if you ask a child to choose a playmate, and you show them a picture of somebody who's the same race or somebody who's a different race, they'll choose the same race. That's something that happens across the board, whether it's a White child, an Indigenous child or a Black child. Something happens by three, and the majority of children of color begin to prefer White.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Mm!

Aisha White: Yeah, so by three years old, I think the literature, and it's from Katz and Kofkin, says that about 70 percent of the children begin to prefer White. But then it starts to get even worse. And the literature says that by the time kids are in kindergarten, they have pretty much absorbed and embraced the prevailing attitudes around race in America.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Wow. Before kids get to the first grade, all that has already sunk into their consciousness.

Aisha White: Yeah. We just recently in our team read an article about both gender and racial bias among four-year-olds who, they all had a bias against Black boys. By four years old. So they're already expressing these biases even before kindergarten. So, you know, that's a reason to not wait. Why would you not help a child understand something that causes so much harm to so many people in the country? If you're going to help your child understand other things and help them be better prepared to get along with other people and that sort of thing, then why would you not help them understand race?

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Well, we can understand racial identity. We see it, we can identify it. What do you all mean by positive racial identity? What is positive racial identity, especially when it comes to Black children?

Aisha White: Mm-hmm. So for Black children, you know, the great fear is that they will develop ideas of racial inferiority. Children can easily develop negative attitudes towards their race based on what they see and hear in America. And so what we want to do is counter that. We're not able to prevent them from being impacted by it, but we can prevent the level of impact. So building capacity in children to deflect those messages that they receive. Because you can't stop them, you can't shield them from getting the messages.

So when they have a positive racial identity, they feel okay with their skin color, they don't wish that they were a different skin color. They feel okay with their hair texture, which is a really big issue with Black girls. They feel good about their history because it's full of positive things and people. And we want them to also know about their culture, their culture originating in Africa as well as the African-American culture, and feel good about all those things, experience those things, so that once they do that, then they're able to embrace anybody else's culture because they already understand their own, they know their own and they feel good about their own.

The way we view supporting children in developing a positive racial identity is through it being a core need that children have, and not an add-on. So we're not asking teachers to add on a little bit at the end of the class or once or twice during a year, but make it central to what they do.

So I always suggest that teachers begin working on themselves. And parents as well. So that means not going and grabbing a book and reading a book about race. It means taking time to reflect on their own racial experiences, their own racial history, their own racial—what we call racial narrative. So we have a series of questions that we offer people that they can use if they want to on their own. So we ask them, you know, what did you learn about race when you were younger? Where did those messages come from? What kind of impact did those messages have on you? Have your views about race changed over time? If so, what has caused that change? What things do you want to learn more about?

And I've done those, and it's been really eye-opening for me. So just to give you an example of what it might sound like, you know, we ask the question, "What messages did you get?" Well, I grew up in an all-Black community in the projects in Pittsburgh on the Hill, so I didn't see a whole lot of White people. And so the messages that I got were from television.

So I watched the news when civil rights activists were being hosed and beaten and dogs set upon them. And that was one of my earliest memories of race. And what I felt was, one, people don't like Black people. There's something happening here. And second, they don't really have an interest in Black people. So the other part of that learning from the media was watching television and seeing very few Black people on television. So those were the two original things that kind of informed my understanding of race. And I never talked to anybody about it. My mom and dad never explained it to me. And so for me, what I felt was a need to always talk about it with my children, because I know that they would probably have questions.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: What suggestions do you have for teachers for beginning these conversations in the classroom, beyond sort of the introspection, understand and ask those questions, figure out where you are in this, but then what's that bridge to then engaging in the conversation with students, with young people?

Aisha White: Yeah. Picture books, picture books and picture books. It makes it a lot easier. You pick a book that is—I'll describe it as benign, that simply shows a family that may be different from the mainstream. So I'm a big fan of Ezra Jack Keats's books. He wrote Whistle for Willie, Peter's Chair. He was a groundbreaker because he was one of the first people to write a picture book that portrayed a Black family. I think his first books were written in 1969. And you can use a book like that that is just about an ordinary experience. So Whistle for Willie is about a little boy who's trying to learn how to whistle. He happens to be Black. And so a teacher may not be prepared to talk about the fact that he's Black, so she can just expose the children to the book and let them look at it. And she can also ask them to describe what they see, and see if the children are ready to talk about the fact that the main character is Black. If they feel that they can begin to have these conversations, then they can intentionally talk about the fact that the child is Black, and ask the kids what they think about that, and give them some kind of other extended activities to do to sort of celebrate what that child looks like.

Teachers can begin to use books that include within them some kind of conflict around race. So an example of a book like that is a book called Amazing Grace, where it's an Afro-Caribbean girl who is very creative, expressive and she's always pretending to be different characters. And there's an opportunity for the children to be in a play, a Peter Pan play. And she wants to be Peter Pan, and they tell her she can't be Peter Pan because she's Black and because she's a girl. And she has a conversation with her grandmom who encourages her. She practices positive racial socialization by showing her a Black ballerina, and Grace is convinced that she can try out for the part. She tries out and she becomes Peter Pan.

Teachers who are prepared can talk to children about this conflict that's in the book, Amazing Grace. Was it fair for them to say Grace couldn't be Peter Pan because she was Black? Because she was a girl? What do you think about that? And then the kids will have a whole lot to say, I'm sure.

I'll give you another that's really, really close to home for me, because I started the P.R.I.D.E. work four and a half years ago or so. I would try to use my grandkids as experiments, so as guinea pigs. And so I would bring some books home and I would read them to them and ask them questions about it, have a conversation with them. And so I decided that I was going to pick this one book, it's called Shades of People, I believe. And it's a photo picture book of children of all races, ethnicities.

And I asked my grandson, who at the time was six, to find for me the person in this book whose face you like the most. And so he found a very, very pale White girl who had stark blue eyes and jet black straight hair. And so I said, "Okay, and let's look and see if we can find anybody else that you like." And we turned some more pages, turned some more pages. And I got to a picture of this really cute African-American girl. She looked like she was around three years old. She had a big dimple and she was holding her arm—I can still see the picture. And I said, "Oh, what about her?" And he said, "She's too dark." And I thought I was going to die.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Mm-hmm.

Aisha White: I don't know if you're familiar with the French film Amelie, but there's a scene where she is in a restaurant, and something happens and her whole body becomes liquid and she splashes down to the ground. That's the way I felt when that happened with my grandson. And I just wanted to cry. But I was cool, calm and collected, and didn't react in a way that showed him how upset I was.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Right, right.

Aisha White: And then about a week or two weeks later, he and his older brother came over and I had the book again. I said, "Do you remember what you said when I showed you this picture of the girl?" And he said, "Yeah, I told you that she was too dark." And then I had his older brother come over and put his arm next to the girl's picture to show that he was as dark, if not darker than that girl. And I said, "Wow, look, he's just the same color as her."

And my grandson didn't say anything. He thought for a moment, and then he just looked at me with this slow smile on his face, like he understood the message that I was trying to present to him.

I use that as an example all the time for teachers because I was stuck like a deer in headlights. And they need to understand that that's going to happen, but that you can always go back and revisit whatever happened, because kids don't forget, and you can sort of keep building on that so that you do make up for what you think you may have missed earlier on.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: The times in which we are living today are unique, to say the least. We're in the midst of this hysteria surrounding critical race theory. I imagine that there are more than a few White folk who, if they knew about the work you were doing, they would burst into flames. Could you share a thought, a word or two with our teachers specifically who are headed back into the classroom in this charged environment where you have people mobilizing around not saying anything, not teaching, not talking about race and racism?

Aisha White: Yeah, so the first thing I would say is to be careful and watch out and take care of yourself. So I would never encourage teachers to engage in practices in the classroom if it means that they're going to be fired, because I don't want that to happen to teachers.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Right.

Aisha White: But I would also suggest that they try to be as creative as possible in introducing this content in ways that won't get them fired, but will still support children in learning about race. And I think part of what will help them to have sort of the fortitude to do that is in understanding the benefits that come from this. So when I describe sort of that continuum of children at three months old, you know, noticing someone who looks like them, and then once we get to kindergarten, here are kids embracing the biases. But there's also literature that says that when kids are engaged in ongoing conversations about interracial relationships, it can change their attitudes within weeks. So they can feel positive about being connected to other people who are different from them if you present it in the right way and you do it consistently. And children are open to that.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Wow.

Aisha White: Yeah.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: You can see change within weeks. I mean, it doesn't take a lifetime necessarily to begin to move the needle if you're doing this right.

Aisha White: Right, exactly. Mm-hmm.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Well look, Dr. White, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you so much for the work that you are doing, and really modeling how we can create and foster and develop positive racial identity among our Black children, but really among all children. Thank you so much.

Aisha White: Oh, you're so welcome. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that my daughter, Jamilla Rice, is a huge fan and she told me that I better mention her during this interview. [laughs]

Hasan Kwame Jeffries: Ah, shout out to Jamilla. [laughs] Wonderful.

Bethany Jay: Dr. Aisha White is the Director of the P.R.I.D.E. program, which is part of the Office of Child Development at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. White is also the Executive Director of Rights & Responsibilities, a human rights organization creating awareness about issues impacting people of African descent. And of course, she is the proud mother of Jamilla Rice, who is also an educator in Pittsburgh.

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Andrew: So Jaden, what did you think?

Jaden: Oh my God, I absolutely love this woman. She is so knowledgeable and I thought she made some amazing points about early childhood education. Specifically around race. I think I'm really interested in this idea that like, children are too young to learn about race. I think it's really interesting that that's even a concept. Like I definitely understand how maybe children are too young to understand violence but to like discuss race and, um, to expose children to the nuances of race. I don't think that children are too young for that.

And I think when we as adults, you know, express our tension around race by not mentioning it or by kind of tiptoeing around it, kids are very sensitive to that and I think that that is what really creates the foundation of the ideas that we then like grow up with and the biases that we hold.

Andrew: Totally. Yeah. I think, right, the ways that we lead by example either to better or to worse. Right? That it's one thing to say, “No, I believe this” and hope that your kids somehow just like magically acquire that. But if you're not actually talking about it, and if you're not aware of your own feelings when you're talking about it, then the messages that you're sending to your kid can get mixed up from what you would hope they, they would receive.

I mean, she says, right, like by three months old, kids are already noticing skin, skin color difference. So like, you know, if they're older than three months, they're definitely old enough to start to have conversations, to start to be aware of, of race. And by two and a half, if you ask a child to choose a playmate, they will choose somebody of the same race as themselves.

And that's fascinating and, and definitely puts to bed the idea that we should hold off or that there is some time, you know, when a kid is 20, that is now the appropriate time to start teaching about race. When you think about your, like your history, learning about race, when, when were you first aware of race? When did you first have conversations about race?

Jaden: Oh my goodness. I think about this all the time. So, um, I grew up in a Puerto Rican household, specifically in a mixed racial, Puerto Rican household. And, what I mean by that is my father's side of the family is more of a mix of indigenous and White. It's very clear in their phenotype. And my mother's side is a mix of indigenous and Black. So, I grew up with a very racially diverse family. Um, all of my cousins, I have a ton of cousins, as many Latinos do. And none of us really were the same shade. So I didn't really think about race until I was in school, because it wasn't something that was a defining feature of like me or my family.

I also grew up in the Bronx, so um, I was more accustomed to seeing people who were like me in my predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood. So yeah, I won't say that I wasn't aware of it, but it just wasn't a thing to me. And then when I went to school, um, I went to a public school in the Bronx, so my school was very racially diverse. Then in middle school I went to a charter school that was predominantly Black, and that was when I think I started noticing race which it sounds very late in the game.

I think actually my perception of race as a Latino was more in my language than my, like phenotype. Because when I went to that charter school it was predominantly, African immigrants, not necessarily like generationally African Americans, but, um, the Bronx is a very like immigrant community. So lots of, first, second generation immigrants from African countries, who knew of their nationalities and stuff like that. So again, I didn't really associate Blackness with one identity. Like I kind of saw the diaspora in that. And then, the Latinos they were maybe one or two of us that were much lighter. Um, but I was more concerned with the fact that I didn't speak Spanish like the Dominican kids.

Andrew: Mmmm.

Jaden: Yeah. So that was my discomfort with my race. Then in sixth grade, we actually learned about the civil rights movement. Mind you, most of the teachers at that school were Black. And most of the students in my class were Black and we were learning from a textbook called Grace Abounding. And that textbook is amazing. I like fell in love with it as a sixth grader. But it very much tells history through the Black perspective. I was learning about Black history in America in a classroom of predominantly Black students by a Black teacher. Um, and we were writing essays and, and having these open discussions. There was not an ounce of hesitation in what we talked about. So that was when I first started learning about negative prejudice and bias against Black people in this country.

Andrew: And were there White kids in that class?

Jaden: No, I think there were, um, yeah, I can't think of any. I don't think so.

Andrew: Functionally a non-White space.

Jaden: Right. Functionally a non-White space. Definitely.

Andrew: So that was your elementary and middle school experiences. But I believe things changed pretty dramatically for high school. Tell us about that.

Jaden: So I get into this school in the city. Um, I actually got a standing ovation from my class when I, you know, got in 'cause it was this whole like idea of like, Jaden's making it out. He is going to this great school or whatever. But again, I didn't really have an association with race. I knew that everyone there was White because I had done a shadow day, but not everyone, most, a lot of people. But it didn't phase me. I was so excited because it, it was a beautiful building. It was like everyone looked so happy. I was like, oh my, I remember I did the shadow day and I went back and I cried to my mom that I had to go to school the next day. Um, which is horrible. and very bratty, but whatever.

Andrew: [Andrew laughs] No, right. I'm sure the differences were stark between this all Black and Brown school in the Bronx and then this private, almost entirely White privileged school on the Upper East Side. You, you just see the disparities that exist

Jaden: Exactly. I remember the biggest reason I was crying, this is why I say it was bratty, but actually listening to the school lunch episode that you guys have, like, so hit home for me because, um, I went on my shadow day and they had buffalo wings, like for, for, they were serving like hot buffalo wings for lunch. And I was actually beside myself, like, everything was just… their cafeteria was, I mean, it was ridiculous. And I went back and I was like, I don't want to eat the food. I don't want to. But yeah, so I started at this school. I absolutely loved it. I had rose colored glasses. It was like the Emerald City to me because I didn't, you know, I had a reason to be in Manhattan. The Upper East Side is, you know, a very nice neighborhood. And everyone around me had money and like I just, I wanted to be like all of them.

But as I spent more time in the school, I naturally gravitated towards people who looked like me. So, um, it just so happens that when you go to a school that small, there were only a handful of us who were of color, so we just gravitated towards each other. And then, I became aware of like a fishbowl sort of situation where we were like almost being observed by like the rest of our classmates because we were different, you know? And I was used to, I guess being different racially, you know, for being lighter, but not for being darker. Um, and…

Andrew: Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jaden: …that was very, very interesting.

Andrew: Yeah, that's fascinating. So, so you, you kind of had this like racial evolution, the power of being in a space that was definitely not White, that like allowed for kind of a range of racial identities, but the hierarchy didn't necessarily show itself in quite the same ways. And to bring it back to this conversation with Dr. White, you know, she talks about this it's not just about kind of like setting kids into spaces, but you actually have to have a conversation with them and like how those conversations start is really important.

Jaden: Yeah. I think a really important point that she makes is sort of advising parents and teachers to gauge where students are about race by asking them about race related things. As opposed to projecting your own adult opinions and biases about what you want them to know and what you want them to feel about race. And that will kind of give you clarity on how you speak to children about these things.

Andrew: Yeah, as a starting point, because I mean, I want to teach my kids to think and feel certain things about race, right? Like I do want to lead them, you know, hopefully to something that is maybe counter to the broad messages that they might be receiving from society. I want them to be aware of those messages. But, you have to meet kids where they are. And the best way to do that, like she says, is just sort of start by asking them what do they notice? What are they aware of?

And I think the other thing that was so powerful to me about her story, you know, she asks her kid, what does he think about this, this young African American girl? And he says, “oh no, I don't wanna play with her, she's too dark.” And, and in that moment she knows that she's just like not in a place to have a conversation. You know, she talks about like melting, like in the film Amelie And it was such a powerful metaphor. But, but what I loved is that then she was like, it's okay. I'm gonna calm down and then I'm gonna come back. Because I think that certainly I feel this tension. I know other, other White parents for sure feel this tension, which is like, I, I had to say all the things all at once, and I have to get them all right.

And if I don't, I'm gonna like, wreck my kid. And this goes back to what you were saying at the beginning, right? Like the, the tension that we bring to it makes us really bad at doing this. And so if I go in super stressed out, I'm like, oh my God, I gotta say all the right things. And then the kid doesn't get it. I'm like, well see, this is why we can't have conversations about race. She must be too young. He must be too young. I can't do it. We've gotta, we've gotta abandon ship. And I thought Dr. White's point about going back. You come back in two days, you come back in a week, you come back in a month, the kids are still processing those things. You've planted a little seed and then you can go back and you can check on it and say, oh, well, you know what, what if we kind of nudge this in this way? Or what if we revisit this or whatever.

Jaden: Right. I think what's most important about the way that she resolved that, was how she emphasized that we can't control the content of what kids are consuming in their lives. So you can't control the content of their thoughts, but you can definitely control the approach. And so that's, I think what she was trying to get at is that we're not supposed to be molding these children necessarily to have particular thoughts, but to think a certain way and to think critically about, about, you know, what they're presented with. And so she didn't even have to mention explicitly, in her example that his brother was Black or that he's Black all she did was point it out and she didn't say anything. She let him come to, she was molding more than just planting a thought. She was guiding, you know, an experience, that molds, that, that critical thinking. And I think that that's what she was talking about promoting with asking children where they are, especially in the classroom, it's like positioning them as the thought leaders. And as they grow up, that's extremely important because I think like nowadays when we talk about racism, and injustice and inequity, a lot of people, adults, Black, White, you know, across the spectrum, regardless of their position on those things, they feel almost defeated.

Like, like, like it's this thing that just exists and that, you know, we have to learn to live with it. And that is true to a certain extent, but it's very, it's a very defeatist mentality. And I think the benefit of what she was getting at of guiding these kids to think for themselves and to, to develop their own ideas about that, will benefit them as adults to feel more empowered to lead that cultural shift.

Andrew: That's, yeah, that's so powerful because I, right there, there's hope in that. Right? It's, uh, because you certainly can look at race relations and say it's been 400 years. Like, we can't solve this. Not to say that solving racism is easy in any way and, if you do these things that Dr. White talks about, if you talk to kids when they're really young, you give them not just kind of a broad, diverse, you know, media diet to consume, a broad, diverse set of representations to look at and to relate to, but also talk to them about how do they think about these things, about how do they understand the messages they're getting? That is how, not to say that like the next generation or the generation after that is the one who has to fix it, but like that is how we make progress generation after generation.

And the, the other thing that, that feels relevant in this example, like the way she kind of resolved this, you know, kind of crisis for her, of her kid saying “that girl's too dark” involved, like an actual human interaction. Right. And this is, this is one of the things that I, I think, I think all the work that she talks about is so important. And I know that there is a tendency among White parents for sure to look to the library they have and say like, okay, I'm gonna diversify the library. I'm gonna make sure my kid sees lots of diverse characters in the books that they read.

I'm gonna make sure my kid knows about history. I'm gonna like embrace this piece of talking about race at an early age and then continue to keep kids in racially homogeneous spaces. And I think that the power of her example, which is saying like, look at your brother's skin. Look at the skin of this girl. Let you see this, requires some actual human interaction. I think like part of the work of Integrated Schools is like you have to actually be in community. You actually have to come and know it is super important to have more diverse books. It is super important to expose your kids to the ideas, and I think it's probably insufficient if you really want to kind of create a sense of shared humanity. If you really wanna create a sense where your kids grow up and understand themselves to be equal to people who don't look like them, requires them actually being in community with other people.

Jaden: Yeah, I think a big point there is like, allowing room for mistakes, especially as like children, but even as adults. I think a lot of hesitation among, White people that I, that I observe. White people who are against White supremacy and who want to, you know, better the world and, you know, like create a more equitable world, they're afraid to make mistakes. And so when they're parenting these children, they don't want their children to make mistakes, right? Because it comes from, from a loving place, from a place of, of good. And so they shelter their children from, you know, the possibility of walking out and exercising racial bias or racial prejudice to other children or even to adults. And that's what keeps them maybe in that silo.

I think like we all have to be more gracious, but I, at the same time, we also have to realize that people are very gracious, especially people of color. The population of color in this country is very, we talk often about being like fed up, like all of these things. And those things are true, but at the same time, like our, we've been fighting for generations and generations for equality, equity, and so we are also a very patient people and it's ingrained in our culture and in our, you know, survival in this country. So, I mean, obviously don't go out and be racist, but, but…

Andrew: [Laughs] That is not the message we want you to take listeners.

Jaden: That's definitely not the message. But, but don't let that shelter you or be an excuse to shelter you or your, or your child and, and be gracious with yourself and, and trust that people will be gracious with you because that's how you learn. I mean, as long as you're learning and you…

Andrew: As long as you're learning. Yeah. That part is important. I think the other thing is like the, the, we so often project our own discomfort onto our kids and this three year old, you know, had this realization, had this like growth in racial understanding at the age of three. But my guess is, I don't know the kid, I don't know Dr. White. But my guess is from the story, he was not like racked with guilt about the realization that he had, which speaks again to the power of talking to young kids because you know, for that same leap, for that same realization to happen for a 24 year old is gonna require so much more undoing. It's gonna require so much more self-reflection. It's gonna require so much more potential for guilt and for feeling like distress inside. And I think we project that. We imagine like, well, what would it take for me to make this leap, that's gonna feel so destabilized and it's gonna feel so, uh, like, I don't know. I'm gonna feel, I'm gonna feel uncomfortable about that. I don't want my kid to feel uncomfortable, so I'm just gonna like, keep them from having to do that. But like, when they're three, they don't feel uncomfortable. They're like, oh, what? Oh, cool. All right, got it. What's next? Let’s go.

Jaden: Right. Exactly.

Andrew: Now that’s like internalized in them. That's like part of, part of who they are.

Jaden: And actually, like you asked me earlier about, my own experience in my family, um, I see it all the time because in my family, we have a ton of like little cousins, right? And they're coming up and they're learning about race within their family by interacting with each other because they know that they're family, but they're not the same race, they're not the same color. Like half of them are White and half of them are not.

For example, like some of my younger cousins from Ohio will come and they're White and they like will ask about our hair. Like me, me and my sisters. One of my cousins said that I looked like a poodle, uh, because of my hair. And obviously like I was taken aback. Like, I was like, oh wow. I can't believe you just said that to me. But it was like in the, in the context of her, like three-year-old mind, that was the funniest joke that she could make. You know?

And like, I had an immediate reaction because I've been trained to, you know, see a White person saying that to me and feel a type of way about it, but I almost had to check my, my own bias rather than hers and say like, this may have demonstrated that she doesn't have any bias towards my hair. And so she doesn't, she's not aware of what she just said, you know, but, but you know, I've been ingrained with these insecurities about, you know, what that means.

Andrew: Well, and I mean, again, to the power of relationships, you know her, you know that her intent was not to be nasty, that her intent was not to be derogatory. That she did not think that it was like, you know, a way for her to exert her superiority over you, but it came from a place of genuine love because you were in relationship with her.

Jaden: And we laughed and I was too stunned to speak, but my sister, you know, my sister kind of checked her a little. She was like, she's like, you know, that's not appropriate to say to, you know, someone like that. But, um, but it's grace and it's learning.

Andrew: Yeah. And, and so much easier for your little cousin than, than for me. Right. Like if, if I were to make that joke…

Jaden: Wildly inappropriate.

Andrew: ….we would have to have a real long conversation.

Jaden: I’m going to HR.

Andrew: Right. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, right. Yeah. The earlier, the earlier we start, the better.

Jaden: There was a moment where, Dr. White talked about anti-Blackness in the media, and what I liked is that she takes it a step beyond just Anti-Blackness in media and television and books and whatever. But, it goes into a demonstrated lack of interest in Black people and Black culture. And I think that that lack of interest, you know, is also something to look at because even if you consider yourself not racist or anti-racist or whatever, a lot of times like that, that covert racism still manifests itself in that lack of interest. Like you, you know, if you don't seek anything out, you're gonna get a predominantly Whitewashed media cycle. But awareness is so powerful.

Andrew: Well, I mean, it goes back to where we started, right? Which is like, you, the power of a shift in mindset for a kid around race is really what you're after. It's not about the outcome. It's not about the like, here's what you should think, but it's about the, you know, sort of sparking that curiosity, generating comfort with these topics.

Jaden: Right. Like, um, earlier I was talking about the Grace Abounding book, and what I love so much about that book was like, it went so beyond just the horrors of like, you know, slavery or, racism in this country. It genuinely demonstrated an interest in the culture of Blackness in America and…

Andrew: Right.

Jaden: You know, the diaspora and in many ways, like when we teach about slavery, we teach it from the lens of like this fascination with violence and, and, and racism in the Jim Crow era. Right? Like, like segregation. We're fascinated with the mistakes of White people, but not necessarily in the oppression of Black people.

Andrew: Yeah. It is still a White centered story. Even if, even if we were willing to look directly at the atrocities committed by White people, we are still looking at the actions of White people and we can't excuse the actions of White people, but the story is so much richer if you can actually be curious about everybody else's stories.

Jaden: Right, to me, when I think back to Grace Abounding, and I think back to like my early education about race, those stories hold as much weight as when we learned about the Civil Rights Movement. And that to me is what, first of all, helps me cope with being a person of color, learning about those things, those atrocities. But also, you know, I've kept that with me and like, you know, grown with it, obviously. Like I've also been socialized around people of color my whole life. But it definitely helped foster that, for me even more.

And I think White students should not be excluded from that experience 'cause it's a wonderful experience to learn about the beauty of other cultures. I mean, when you shelter White students from that, out of fear of like racism, you're robbing them, you're robbing the White children of so much beauty. And I mean history and culture. Like, it's, there's so much more than just violence, oppression. You create that association through, through sheltering. So don't do that.

Andrew: That's right. Well, we'll put a link to Grace Abounding in the show notes as well. Um, Jayden, so glad to have you on board. Listeners, you'll be hearing more from Jaden and yeah, just really, really glad to have you, listeners, if you appreciate this work, head on over the Patreon. Throw us a few bucks each month to keep this work happening.

Jaden: Yeah, if you liked this conversation, be sure to spread the word. Like, share… follow us on social media, you know, seek us out.

Andrew: Absolutely. Great. Jaden it was a pleasure to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Jaden: Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

Andrew: And we’re gonna go out with the credits from Teaching Hard History so you can hear about all the amazing people who made this episode possible.

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Bethany Jay: Teaching Hard History is a podcast from Learning for Justice—the education arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center—helping teachers and schools prepare students to be active participants in a diverse democracy. Learning for Justice provides free teaching materials about slavery, Reconstruction, the civil rights movement and more. You can find award-winning films and classroom-ready texts at learningforjustice.org.

Most students leave high school without an understanding of the Jim Crow Era and its continuing relevance. This podcast is part of an effort to change that. In our fourth season, we put Jim Crow under the spotlight—examining its history and lasting impact.

Thanks to Dr. White and Dr. Baptist for sharing their insights with us. This podcast was produced by Mary Quintas and senior producer Shea Shackelford. Russell Gragg is our associate producer. “Music Reconstructed” is produced by Barrett Golding. And Cory Collins provides content guidance. Amelia Gragg is our intern. Kate Shuster is the series creator. And our managing producer is Miranda LaFond.

If you like what you’ve heard, please share it with your friends and colleagues. And let us know what you think. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We always appreciate your feedback.

I’m Dr. Bethany Jay—Professor of History at Salem State University—and your host for Teaching Hard History.