How to Be an Anti-Racist Parent: Real-Life Parents Share Real-Life Tips (PDF)
Here are a few excerpts from the How to Be an Anti-Racist Parent e-book:
You can’t protect your children from racism. You need to be able to show them how ugly racism is, or they won’t be able to recognize it for themselves. If your children are kids of color, they’ll need to have survival skills – verbal, intellectual, and physical. And these survival skills aren’t just about driving while Black or confronting skinheads – your kids will need to know how to survive the racism embedded in our educational, economic, judicial and occupational institutions.
–Jae Ran Kim
Tags: anti racist, Race, Social JusticeParents need to open up their own horizons and start connecting with people. You can offer all the toys and books in the world to them, but if they never see or get to know another person who isn’t like them than what good are you serving? From day one, I have tried to seek out people of other races to interact with my babies. Lifestyle of the parents is really key … you have to do what you preach. Sometimes, for parents, it means leaving our own comfort zones for the sake of our children.
–Shawn Fink
Sounds like excerpts from the “How to be a Politically Correct Parent” handbook. How are we ever going to see racism be stemmed if we keep teaching kids to look for things and then see things as racism which are often (and perhaps usually) not?
Ok. First of all, let’s try to recognize that as white men, we are often taught to ignore or dismiss racism.
I feel that racism will be “stemmed” when white folks start recognizing their role in the perpetuation and institutionalization of racism. When white folks say that we should not teach kids (and I am presuming that you’re including white kids too) to see racism, then we are basically saying that those same kids should ignore the voices of those who speak out about racism.
Also, I’ve posted about using the terms, PC, Political Correctness, Politically Correct, etc. on previous posts. The best debunking of PC that I have ever read can be found over at Zuky.net.
Here’s an excerpt:
Because all charges of “racism” are valid and merit our careful consideration right? Like Rep. Cynthia McKinney, former Congressperson from my state of Georgia, who slaps a Capitol police officer and then starts yelling “racism.” Right..saw that one coming from a mile away. Or how about this gem this week when Isaiah Washington, Dr. Burke on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, claims that his dismissal from the show was due to…here we go again….”racism” and that he “didn’t speak like [he]’d just left the plantation.” (The ironic part here is that he was canned because he made a comment against what, we can only assume from this, is an even more protected class!)
This is what “voices…speak[ing] about out about racism” are often talking about. The charge of “racism” is too often used as a “Get out of Jail Free” card after a black person screws up in the public eye (see McKinney’s actions and Washington’s comments for example). The sad thing is that these usually meritless and often silly charges obscure the rare, but legitimate, highlighting of racism in our society. However, when the left and their friends in the media, given credence and coverage to charges of the type made by McKinney and Washington, they are likely do more to harm the cause of identifying and exposing real racism in America. I think most Americans will respond to real racism but will sit back and roll their eyes and laugh at the McKinney/Washington type claims.