March 27, 2015
In one of her recent columns for The Guardian, feminist writer Jessica Valenti told of opening a library book her young daughter had brought home from preschool, planning to read it as a bedtime story. But upon turning a few pages, Valenti was shocked to see the book contained offensive caricatures of black people in both words and pictures. She immediately sprang into action because, she says, “If we want to raise anti-racist children, we need to tackle racism head-on.”
She writes:
“Research has consistently shown that proactively teaching your children (and white children especially) about racism—telling them that discrimination exists in the world —is far more effective than ignoring race and pretending as if the world is “colorblind.” As tempting as it is to think of even our young children as innocent, they are exposed to the same racism and biases that adults are in culture. The best thing that we can do for them as parents is to arm them with information about the reality of racism —historic and present— and teach them that it is unacceptable.”
Read Jessica Valenti’s full post here.
