Reflections on Children's Racial Learning

You’ve seen the videos and read the headlines - angry parents yelling at bewildered school board members about “critical race theory” running rampant in their kids’ classroom. (It’s not.) State legislatures passing laws to suppress honest teaching and learning about race and history in our schools. Those videos and headlines don’t tell the full story. The forces of racial regression may capture the headlines, but beneath the waterline a powerful, color-brave countercurrent is gathering momentum. This first-ever Reflections on Children’s Racial Learning begins to tell the story of that countercurrent.

Here, we begin to chronicle the emergence of a field of learning and practice centered on children’s racial learning — how and what children learn about race, including but not limited to our explicit efforts as parents and caregivers to teach children about race. We reached out to leaders in five key sectors in which the seeds of field-building have deep roots: Parenting Practice, PK-12 Education, the Health Professions, Children’s Media, and Social Science Research. We asked them to reflect on the movement they're seeing to support healthy children's racial learning in their sectors.

We're proud of this offering and grateful to all our collaborators on it. Download the full report, give it a read and let us know what you think!