Research from Harvard University suggests that children as young as three years old, when exposed to racism and prejudice, tend to embrace and accept it, even though they might not understand the feelings. By age 5, white children are strongly biased towards whiteness. To counter this bias, experts recommend acknowledging and naming race and racism with children as early and as often as possible. Children’s books are one of the most effective and practical tools for initiating these critical conversations; and they can also be used to model what it means to resist and dismantle oppression.
Beyond addressing issues of race and racism, this children’s reading list focuses on taking action. It highlights resistance, resilience and activism; and seeks to empower youth to participate in the ongoing movement for racial justice. These books showcase the diverse ways people of all ages and races have engaged in anti-racist activism, and highlight how race intersects with other issues, such as capitalism, class and colonization. The majority of books center activists of color, whose lives and bodies have been on the front lines of racial justice work, yet whose stories often go untold....
THE ENTIRE LIST OF BOOK TITLES IS REPRINTED HERE just in case the website goes away as it did from the first place I saw it.
The authors' names, descriptions and age appropriateness of each book at the link at the bottom of the list. Most of the books on this list are for small children as young as 4 to 8 years old, and some can be read to children even younger
Let It Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters
Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation
When We Were Alone
The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, A Young Civil Rights Activist
Fred Korematsu Speaks Up
Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday and the Power of a Protest Song
Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom
Malcolm Little: The Boy Who Grew Up to Become Malcolm X
Preaching to the Chickens: The Story of Young John Lewis
She Stood for Freedom: The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez
Nelson Mandela Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom We March That’s Not Fair! Emma Tenayuca’s Struggle for Justice Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement Josephine Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers Rosa Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down
I don't think any black girls library should be without books on Ida B Wells, Daisy Bates, or the black women who won the space race for the United States ( of HIDDEN FIGURES movie fame) So here are a few more titles I found at Amazon. But I haven't read them. So, they may be for older children Ida B Wells: Let The Truth Be Told by Walter Dean Myers Hidden Figures Margot Lee Shetterly The Power Of One: Daisy Bates And The Little Rock 9 Dennis Brindell Fradin Little Leaders: Bold Women In Black History Vashti Harrison
Apparently Izabel had done a few things she shouldn't have. When her father decided he'd had enough, he shaved her head and video taped it. The following is the audio from recording:
“The consequences of getting messed up, man, you lost all that beautiful hair,” a male voice can be heard saying from behind the camera. The video pans down, where long locks of black hair are scattered on the ground. “Was it worth it?”
“No,” she responds quietly.
“How many times did I warn you?” he asks.
“A lot,” she replies, barely audibly.
She jumped from a bridge onto an interstate a few days later. One news article calls Izabel a "troubled teen"
Troubled by having an abusive parent doesn't always end in suicide. But this is still a form of abuse.
Anybody who would
1) shave her head
2)put the head shaving on video for others to see
OR
for Izabel to see for herself over and over again
IS LIKELY ALSO
3)hollering at her, or glaring at her, or beating her over the head with what she did wrong multiple times a day. Because that's what self-righteous abusers do.
The psychological beating in addition to the shame of exposure took a few days to do its work. She killed herself a few days after the video was published.
There a few websites around the way that say Izabel didn't kill herself because of getting her head shaved. They are saying the father is blameless because he didn't actually put the video on the web himself. They are saying that, based on her practice suicide notes, Izabel killed herself because of what she did.
Clearly, Faux News and the rest do not understand what how shaming someone works.
Successful shaming gets the child to be ashamed of what they did - not angry at the shame-er.
Furthermore, a successful child abuser gets the child to angry at what they did not angry at the abuser. Abused children are torn screaming from the arms of a mother or father that has broken their arm in anger 3 different times. The child will apologize for being bad over and over and over.
It doesn't look to me like Izabel was much different from the abused child so far. She wrote 8 suicide notes. At least one of them absolved her father.
If this was this father's first time into the abuser's circle, I feel sorry for him. I actually do. I cannot imagine the pain. Even if he denies his role in his daughter's death I have to imagine I wouldn't be able to stand up under the weight of that knowledge either. Maybe I'd have to deny it to myself in order to go on living.
But we should not stop telling Izabel's story because this isn't about him. It's about other parents out there thinking about doing the same thing.
We'll never know if Izabel was mentally ill outside of the abuse she suffered. From what I've read it she seems like she was an angsty, lonely teenager even before the shaming video. However, lots of girls are at 13.
The thing I do know is this. Other children are not mentally ill outside of the abuse they suffer. I know other children can be crushed by this father's behavior - and not always in ways that are immediately discernible to the untrained eye. Sometimes there isn't a suicide to point at and say, "Ah Ha!" I would not dismiss Izabel Laxamana as mentally ill. And even if you do, I wouldn't dismiss her father's treatment of her as anything less than abusive and having had a costly effect.
Let me say it again: Izabel Laxamana was shamed to death.
Her father shaved her head in order to punish her and convince her that what she did was horrible and shameful. He was so successful that Izabel even showed friends the video - either she herself or one of her friends put it on the internet. Her father was so successful that in her 8 suicide notes, Izabel said she couldn't live with what she'd done and told her father she loved him and that it wasn't his fault. A successful shaming gets the child to be ashamed of what the shamer says they did - not angry at the shamer.
A successful child abuser gets the child to angry at what they did not angry at the abuser.
Note: *Most child abusers are reportedly women because the primary caretakers of children in the world are primarily women. But I can't help but think when men go over the top with an aggressive and/or abusive punishment that a lot of women think it's okay to stand around wringing their hands.
I reposted this because I saw video of another man doing this just last month. Rumor has it he is in jail. I hope that's true and that this "seemingly" mild form of abuse that isn't mild at all is the reason why.
" A Tennessee boy's viral video about being bullied inspired celebrities to share messages of love and support. Now questions are being raised about the family over allegations of racism and fake fundraisers.
Keaton Jones, a sixth grade student at Horace Maynard Middle School in Maynardville, tearfully asked his mom why kids bully him as she filmed him. He said his peers poured milk on him and put ham down his clothes.
"Why do you find joy in taking innocent people and finding a way to be mean to them? It's not OK," he said in a video posted Friday. "They make fun of my nose. They call me ugly. They say I have no friends... People that are different don't need to be criticized about it...." "
In other words, Keaton may have been treated as if he were a little black girl in a predominantly white school in the good ole United States.
Except little black girls don't have white supremacist Daddy in jail and a Mama educating him in the fine art of white denial, idolizing cowards who tried to maintain the slavery that likely kept most of the poor whites that fought for the confederacy as poor as church mice. These three photos of Keaton and/or his mama, tell Keaton's story
Here's what Keaton's Mom had to say in the facebook post.
“Dear butt hurt Americans, If you aren’t bleeding, no bones are sticking out & you can breathe, STOP crying! For the love, some folks clearly never picked a switch. And before y’all start talking to me about metaphorical, emotional, financial or historical blood & brokenness, Don’t. Join a group.”
*****************
This from a mother whose son went viral because of bullying.
MMA fighter Joe Schilling also posted on Instagram showing a conversation he had with someone claiming to be Kimberly Jones in which she said, “What happened to us whites sticking together and helping one of another against the predator?”
The go fund me page was frozen due to the racism accusations last I checked. And I'm glad. When I try to feel sorry for Keaton --and I really do have to try-- it is because his mother has increased his life chances of being a jackass in 8 to 10 years once he's an adult -- if he's not one now.
I have to wonder
...if any black kids go to his school?
..was Keaton flappin his lips at the black kids at school -- just like his confederate flag-wavin' mama taught him at home?
..if he is wearing the required confederate t-shirt when he sees the black kids at school?
And what are the chances that Keaton IS the bully whenever he see's black children at school...and he's calling justifiable retaliation "bullying" now that his butt is the one that's hurt? I truly do hope black kids are giving him what for.. I hope black parents are not teaching their black children to let white supremacy wash over them without challenge because white kids can't help how ignorant their parents are. If black parents are still doing this, we will soon see pictures of Keaton and his one white-racism-ignoring black friend sometime soon. That black friend will likely be the only one I'll feel sorry for because my sorrow for this little white boy only seems to last seconds at a time. I can't help but think that Keaton seems 90% guaranteed to be a future racist ...if he hasn't been fully indoctrinated already.
When I was a kid they showed us a film at school of white kids my age, 10 or 11 years old, at KKK rally's with burning crosses. Those grinning little white kids, damn near glowing in the dark with blond hair, telling the interviewer behind the camera how proud they are of their superiority. Some white people I've seen on social media want me to be nicer or softer in regards to Keaton. But that's because a lot of white people want to think white supremacists spring up whole out of the ground. They don't. All of the most horrible white racists you've seen were Keatons at one point. When I look at that picture in the middle of the panel, I imagine his all white friends and all white neighbors taking a walk, riding bikes, and driving cars all of them pausing to wave while he and those other kids stand on A FRONT PORCH flying that traitorous / murderous flag that the KKK uses during their marches. Their entire white community must be okay with him holding a confederate flag -- a symbol of black enslavement. Or maybe there are a few white people it bothers that don't say anything. And maybe there's one black or brown family that knows better than to say anything. Mild terrorism, that flag is.
Keaton doesn't have much of a chance to NOT become a card-carrying member of that race-based bullying group called "racists."
So, I really don't know that I have an obligation to feel sorry for Keaton because 8 years haven't passed yet.
For those who might say, "He's just a kid" all I can say to that is "So was Tamir Rice." Keaton hasn't done anything yet. All he has are racist attitudes he doesn't recognize as bad....same as Officer Timothy Loehmann in the hours, days, weeks, and months before he murdered Tamir Rice.
The racist assumptions that white Officer Timothy Loehmann took with him inside his head and heart on the day he murdered Tamir Rice may have been born inside a mother-son relationship not unlike the one you see here between Keaton and his mother.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if Officer Loehmann was born further north, to parents who taught him the most subtle, covert, love-everybody (while pretending racism doesn't exist) version of white supremacy you've ever seen.
Whichever way you look at it, Loehmann had to have such disregard for black life that he snuffed out the life of a tall 12 year old that he saw standing alone on a playground within seconds of confronting, not having had the time to utter a single word of real warning.
Loehmann was badly trained and a bad officer. That much was made obvious over time. He tried over and over again to become a police officer before a department took him on. But what is also obvious is that Loehmann's white culture taught him well. He didn't hesitate or ask any questions before killing someone with dark skin....same as the dozens of "good cops" that shot unarmed black people before him
RACIST IDEATION KILLS, even the seemingly mild forms.
RACISTS KILL
AND LOVERS OF BLACK ENSLAVEMENT, LOVERS OF THAT FLAG ARE RACISTS
WARNING: VIDEO OF TAMIR RICE'S DEATH
Too many black people have died as a result of unacknowledged white supremacy. And too many of us have simply lived with it, trying to be gracious to vicious white children because they are "just children."
I don't know if Keaton is vicious (as rumor has it) or if he's an innocent lamb living with vicious adults. But I have been on receiving end of white racism from young children while white parents laughed "he's just a kid" I've experienced this when I was a child myself and as an adult too. So have most black people in this country. I gave a bitter laugh when I heard black twitter ripped Keaton and his mama a new one the other day. And, I felt a little guilty. But tearing them a new one is as it should be. It's way past time that the "butt-hurt" is on the other ass. Keaton's mama responded with the usual white claims of "We're not racists" Read it below if want...if you can stop yawning long enough https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5119410/keaton-jones-mum-confederate-flags-ironic/
P.S. You have no idea how much self-control to NOT petty-pick this boy's appearance apart TOO in face of the likelihood that this is yet one more racism-repeating little white supremacist in the making. No idea.
As teachers and students return to classrooms this fall, together we have to try to make sense of a tumultuous presidential campaign and a summer of racial violence that have forcefully surfaced the racism that plagues our nation.
"Elementary and middle school students have grown up with an African American as president of the United States. This is a historic milestone. But these same students have also grown up in a nation that’s increasingly unequal, a country where police killed more Black people in 2015 than were lynched during the worst year of Jim Crow." **
In the past several months, students have watched Donald Trump use racist, Islamophobic, misogynist, and anti-immigrant vitriol to whip up a terrifying level of support, with ominous repercussions no matter who wins the election.
It's probably not true that the shootings now are worse than lynchings during Civil Rights. White people, including white researchers, tend to low ball their own tribe's genocidal tendencies. And I do tend to read higher lynching numbers when the researchers doing the research and writing the articles are people of color.
In my mind, it's very clear who has more reason to lie. So I think lynchings were likely severely underestimated by white researchers from 1863 to 1963 and beyond. And "estimating" is what you have to do because sometimes a black person was gifted more land than the white man next door and all of sudden the black person disappeared, never to be heard from again. More importantly, the ability to estimate improves as research methods improve. The lynching body count gets higher every time somebody does a sociological study.
By the way, in the 1970s and earlier most school children were taught in public schools that there were 1 million Native Americans here to be nearly wiped out by white people from western Europe. However, DNA evidence has showed us that there were more like 20 million Native Americans.
So, again, it's clear in my mind who has motive to lie the numbers down -- because they've been doing it all along.
Today’s children have it harder than children of the ‘70s and ‘80s did when we were their age! Much harder!
For one thing, we didn’t have high stakes standardized tests hanging
over our heads like the Sword of Damocles to the degree these youngsters
do. Sure we took standardized assessments but not nearly as many nor
did any of them mean as much. In Pennsylvania, the legislature is
threatening to withhold my students’ diplomas if they don’t pass all of
their Keystone Exams. No one blackmailed me with anything like that when
I was a middle schooler. All I had to do was pass my classes. I worried
about getting a high score on the SAT to get into college, but it
didn’t affect whether I got to graduate.
Nowadays, kids could ace every
course for all 13-years of grade school (counting Kindergarten) and
still conceivably only earn a certificate of attendance! Try using that
for anything! Moreover, my teachers back in the day didn’t rely
on me so they could continue being gainfully employed. The principal
would evaluate them based on classroom observations from time-to-time to
assess their effectiveness based on what he or she saw them doing. But
if I was having a bad day during the assessment or if I just couldn’t
grasp fractions or if I was feeling too depressed to concentrate – none
of that would affect my teacher’s job rating. None of it would
contribute to whether my teacher still had an income. Think of
how that changes the student-teacher relationship Now kids as early as
elementary school who love their teachers feel guilty on test day if
they don’t understand...
While the parents of black children have little or no choice but to initiate a conversation with their children about the precariousness of black life, the parents of non-black children can and often do shield their kids from the knowledge of anti-black violence, which is foundational to the continuation of white supremacy and that violence.
"[And] until now, no authoritative text designed to teach black and nonblack children alike about historical-structural inequalities productive of antiblack violence in U.S. law and society has been made available for commercial consumption. " (paraphased)
Fox and Friends, using the black face of Larry Elder, are busy trying to redefine the Black Lives Matter Movement as one group trying to out-victim another. So get this textbook and take it to a school near you. If you're going to live here, pay taxes here, and have children here then be proactive about changing this country from the roots.
When this little girl's parents start bickering over a fallen shoe rack, this little girl starts talk about something fairly simple but hard to articulate.
In her own way she's talking about pride, ego, love, and friendship.
"Not too low" at one point about bringing yourself down (calming down?). In that moment, she seemed to acknowledged that people get angry but you have to make an effort to reduce it down in order to go forward.
I see God in this child. I think there is an empirical reality of human nature that God puts inside all of us that can be nurtured by parents, neighbors, friend, and society for good or ill. But some children, like this one maybe(?) seem to be made of sterner stuff...possibly from birth.
Must watch!! After came back from badminton I Open the garage door try to drive my car in and heard Tiana voice yelling "stopped mama"!! my shoe rack fallen down in the garage all over 50 pairs of shoes and the rack are on the ground.I get out of the car walk into the garage And Alfred came out yelling to me that my shoes rack was suck!! Complaining I bought a cheap shoes racks good for nothing!on and on..And I told him to just move get out of the way if he doesn't want to help then go away!as I get upset so didn't make it sound nice and friendly. Tiana offered to help me put up shoes on the rack That I rebuilt after all it done I am going to move the car in but Alfred offered help to tight up some lopes to help stabilized while he do that......Tiana said in front of both of us,Why you guys don't try to be nice to each other... Like a friends helping each other don't get mad and be happy!! Lots more I was stunned by it! She is teaching me!!Woke me up!!! And then we sit down only me and Tiana And this is part of it as didn't think she could think like that!! She brought me tear and feel guilty Amazing little girl Her name is TIANA!!
Posted by Cherish Sherry on Wednesday, September 16, 2015
After came back from badminton I Open the garage door try to drive my car in and heard Tiana voice yelling "stopped mama"!!
My shoe rack fallen down in the garage all over 50 pairs of shoes and the rack are on the ground.I get out of the car walk into the garage And Alfred came out yelling to me that my shoes rack was suck!! Complaining I bought a cheap shoes racks good for nothing!on and on..And I told him to just move get out of the way if he doesn't want to help then go away!
as I get upset so didn't make it sound nice and friendly. Tiana offered to help me put up shoes on the rack That I rebuilt after all it done I am going to move the car in but Alfred offered help to tight up some lopes to help stabilized while he do that......
Tiana said in front of both of us,Why you guys don't try to be nice to each other... Like a friends helping each other don't get mad and be happy!! Lots more I was stunned by it! She is teaching me!!Woke me up!!! And then we sit down only me and Tiana And this is part of it as didn't think she could think like that!! She brought me tear and feel guilty Amazing little girl Her name is TIANA!!
A few days ago, when I read this for the first time, all I could really think about was
how hurt I was as a little girl when things like this were
directed at me.
I was trying to imagine how upset I would have been if my friends parents, Laura Watt's parents had been different. If Laura's parents hadn't been kind, generous white people with one foot inside always inside hippy culture, if they hadn't been as open as they were, I wonder how many different shades of devastated I'd have been if Laura had given me a card like this in 4th or 5th grade....or any grade.
Looking at this story again, I see that a 10 year old white
girl drew her friend a pretty card; knows that being a racist ("races")
is a bad thing; and hopes her mother will change her father's mind.
Judging by the video, the little white girl's hopes were dashed.
In the video, Harmony's Father said that the birthday party went off
without a hitch. And maybe it really did. Everything probably was okay during the party itself. But Harmony wasn't okay. I know she wasn't because I wasn't. My parents always wanted to believe the same thing when I was targeted because of my skin color. And
I helped them believe everything was "okay." As young as 7 or 8 years old I knew what I was supposed to say. I knew how to make my parents less upset on my behalf.
It still amazes me when parents say 'bad thing *x* happened yesterday,
but then we did fun thing *y* immediately afterward. So she forgot all
about it' ...especially when bad thing *x* contains a suitcase full of
racism that weighs more than the little person expected to carry it.
Still, I'm hoping Harmony genuinely did have the happiest of birthdays this year. Maybe her mind really
didn't travel back to the moment she opened this card/folded note---
not during the party anyway. And I hope she won't remember reading the note
OR the reaction of her parents when they first read it... not too often, anyway.
I also hope the little white girl was at least somewhat distracted the
night of the party. But better she had a night full of tears over being
left out than lose the knowledge that her father's actions were
indeed racist and hateful --even though she loves him. Ten years old is
rather a young age to figure out that you can love a person but despise some of what is inside them.
But
she can do it. Others have. Others can. Others will.
More than anything, I hope that neither one of these girls ever completely forgets this incident and that we don't either.
I wonder what kind of artwork was drawn on the cover of the card?
