Topic Content
- Discuss how the very idea of talking about race is often taboo or brushed off as unimportant
- Many of us could be sheltered in our community and could not exposed to much of the racism that exists in America, especially the racism that the Black community is facing
- But we shouldn’t be afraid of it, we have been dealing with issues of race from childhood
- Emphasize that we should and will be focusing on black lives and how we can be allies to the cause in this discussion and not make the conversation centered around racial issues the South Asian community faces
- Discuss why simply being “colorblind” is not helpful
- Teaching ourselves and our children to be colorblind is teaching them to say all races are already treated equally and color doesn’t exist. But what we want to do is raise our children to be aware. Professor Adia Harvey Wingfield explains that:
- “By claiming that [we] do not see race, [we] also can avert [our] eyes from the ways in which well-meaning people engage in practices that reproduce neighborhood and school segregation, rely on “soft skills” in ways that disadvantage racial minorities in the job market, and hoard opportunities in ways that reserve access to better jobs for white peers.”
- Teaching ourselves and our children to be colorblind is teaching them to say all races are already treated equally and color doesn’t exist. But what we want to do is raise our children to be aware. Professor Adia Harvey Wingfield explains that:
Questions asked by the Community
1. “Is racism happening the same way all over the country? (College, states..)”
2. “On social media there are a lot of posts about All Lives Matter and I know that right now we should be focusing on Black Lives, but a lot of other races are feeling like they should also matter. I just wanted to know your thoughts on this.”
- Most people in the group already knew the differences in types of racism, but we wanted to reinforce this point
- We asked group members to discuss their thoughts on this:
- Kids made distinctions between micro-aggressions and violence and how some communities are more discriminated against than others
- Parents also discussed their opinions on the context and the time in which the actions were taking place
- Some examples they gave: the rise in racism against Asian Americans because of COVID-19
- We also made sure to make the distinction clear among the different BIPOC groups so people avoided conflating the general racism against POC across all communities
2. “On social media there are a lot of posts about All Lives Matter and I know that right now we should be focusing on Black Lives, but a lot of other races are feeling like they should also matter. I just wanted to know your thoughts on this.”
- This question was asked by one of the older kids and in response we provided the comic (availble in Topic 5) to illustrate the importance of saying “Black Lives Matter” vs. All Lives Matter.