No Excuses for Racism

There are no excuses for Racism.

R. Rosaldo said "When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing."

Educating children and youth against racism is our responsibility as teachers, educators, librarians, and paraprofessionals. Educating teachers, librarians, and paraprofessionals against racism is also the responsibility of every school director or directress.

Race and racism are complex topics with long histories. Therefore, we need to have a curriculum adapted to this complex topic which will help us educate our students to become aware of racism.

We've got to teach our students that racism is wrong.

First of all, we, as educators, should focus on basic concepts that are fundamental to understanding race and racism and their impact on our society. Secondly, we need to explore how these concepts relate to and can be applied to our school environment. Finally, we need to fight the popular theories of racism.

Our anti-racism curriculum must provide teachers with the resource materials that will help them assist students with class discussions and to help make concepts clear.

Concepts like

• stereotypes
• tokenism
• character roles
• lifestyles
• power
• heroes and heroic traits
• self image
• dominant perspective
• representation
• knowledge representation
• language 

Evaluating class materials is very important. 

We should teach our students how to use their critical thinking in order to detect racist language or stereotypical characters. 

The book "If a bus could talk (The story of Rosa Parks), is a non-fiction book which every library must have! It is written by Faith Ringgold. 

If a bus could talk, it would tell the story of a young African-American girl named Rosa who had to walk miles to her one-room schoolhouse in Alabama while white children rode to their school in a bus. It would tell how the adult Rosa rode to and from work on a segregated city bus and couldn't sit in the same row as a white person. 

This book is a valuable introduction for children to learn about the discrimination people of colour were forced to face in the United States not so long ago, as well as highlighting the continuing struggles and efforts being made to gain equal rights.