Parent Upset That Son’s School Dwells on Racism

[conuly]

DEAR HARRIETTE: Seemingly out of the blue, they are reading lots of books about race at my son’s school. Seriously, they have read three books back-to-back about racial injustice. While I think it is important for the kids to learn about these topics, it is making us uncomfortable. Not everything is about race, but you would never know from this class. I don’t have the knowledge or time to debate these issues with my son every day.

I’m not trying to be rude or insensitive. My husband and I work hard to make sure that our son is thoughtful and not racist, but we also don’t want him to feel super self-conscious about being white. He shouldn’t have to apologize for being himself. I don’t know how to support him as times change. I do teach him to treat everyone with respect, but does that mean I have to allow him to be exposed to so much conversation about the atrocities of racism? -- Too Much Race Talk

DEAR TOO MUCH RACE TALK: I need to respectfully disagree with you on this. Hopefully your son is in the perfect place to engage in a conversation that is necessary for healing in our country. The good news, in my book, is that schools are walking toward the challenge rather than avoiding it. Perhaps our youth will be able to wrestle issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in respectful, creative ways. Consider that this is the way you can think about the curriculum he is engaging, rather than as a burden.

I think you should read the books, too, so that you can have informed conversations with him about what he is learning. Your job as a parent is to guide your child and to help him process whatever information comes before him. The more you equip yourself with the conversations of the day coupled with your own experience, the better you will be able to help him navigate this extremely challenging reality -- that racial injustice is still staring us in the face, and we have to do something about it.

For support, visit courageousconversation.com. This organization is devoted to helping educational institutions -- from administrators to students to parents -- learn how to talk respectfully and honestly about the realities of race, equity, inclusion and diversity in meaningful ways.

https://www.uexpress.com/sense-and-sensitivity/2020/1/30/0/parent-upset-that-sons-school-dwells#disqus-comments

Comments

[watersword]

How is "three books in a row" about a topic a lot?

[cereta]

When I still taught Intro to Fiction on a regular basis, every time, every time I used more than one novel by a woman or even a third of the short stories were about POC/by POC writers, or I had more than two works with LGBTQ+ characters, I would get at least one comment on my evaluations to the effect of "forced diversity" or "political agenda." So I'm not at ALL surprised.

[conuly]

Women are more or less half the freaking population!

[lavendertook]

Same. Even when teaching a women in lit class to undergrads. That was about a decade ago, but it hasn't changed very much from what I've heard.

[conuly]

Yo, don't ask me. This LW probably thinks one was too much.

[melannen]

Well, while I don't disagree about this particular letter or the answer, if you think about reading books in school (especially for younger kids) it does come out to kind of a lot.

When I was in sixth grade, we did three Holocaust narratives + a social studies unit on the Holocaust in a row, and for the record, that was too many. It worked out to about 4-5 months of an hour a day reading and talking about WWII atrocities, and while that's absolutely an important thing to teach and learn about, after about two months of it the 11-year-olds were pretty much deadened to it and either making jokes or tuning it out (including our fairly high proportion of Jewish students) because it was just too much (it might have been okay if we'd had deeply inspiring teachers who were experts and knew how to keep us engaged, but we didn't, we had well-meaning but ordinary ones.) We would have done much better with one atrocity book a semester for several years than five months straight.

If LW's son is that age or younger and the class really has been discussing "atrocities" for three months straight - like, idk, a novel on lynching and a novel on Emmett Till and a novel on surviving the middle passage - it might be on the verge of too much all in a row.

I suspect they are actually reading books that do things like talk about segregation or maybe hint that racism isn't over or maybe just have only black characters centered, though. And that maybe they are reading them as storytime picture books (there have been some really good picture books about racial issues lately) rather than spending weeks as the main reading book. Or the kid is closer to high school age, if he's ready to argue with his parents over it, and at 16-17 things are a little different.

[sporky_rat]

Yup! Four months of WWII and related atrocities was three months too much in elementary school.
(That's almost half the school year.

[melannen]

I might be slightly exaggerating, but given that it generally took over three weeks to do a novel, and it certainly *felt* like half a school year when I was 11, I don't think by much. (Sixth grade is middle school here, though, so that was fine, right...?)