Giving Compass' Take:

•  Cooperative Nursery School in West Mount Airy is teaching young children how to talk about race at an early age.

• The author mentions that this type of focus on unpacking race and diversity issues might not continue as kids get older and attend elementary and middle school. How can donors help expand programs that are encouraging students to think through these topics?  

• Read about how racial bias conversations help teachers to interact with students of color. 

Lindsay Edwards was delighted when her 4-year-old son, Grey, came home from school wanting to talk about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “He was killed because people didn’t agree with what he was saying,” said Grey, who attends the Cooperative Nursery School (CNS) in West Mount Airy.

For Edwards, who is white, the conversation was proof that the school’s diversity efforts, highly unusual in a preschool, were having an impact.  She found it a breath of fresh air because when she was growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, “Racism wasn’t discussed in our family.” And in school, ”I was never taught proper history.”

Current research indicates that children as young as 2 years old show awareness of racial differences and may express racial prejudice by age 4.

“It’s about having those tough, awkward conversations,” said CNS parent Jasmine Miller, the school’s diversity committee chair.

“We try to create different opportunities and spaces to have conversations about diversity. And because cooping parents and caregivers are present on a daily basis, the workshops help all the adults have a common language when interacting or addressing issues with the children.”

School director Leah Corsover points out that for teachers and parents, “When a kid says, ‘I don’t like people with brown skin,’ you have to deal with it right at that moment.”

Deidre Ashton, a licensed clinical social worker who has led parent workshops about race at the school, said that this is a skill parents have to work on.

“To end racism,” she said, “we have to educate children to see race,” beyond just celebrating diversity. “It’s beyond personal bias. It’s a system. It’s helping them name what they see and giving meaning to that,” talking in terms of groups rather than just individuals. By starting earlier with discussions of race, she said, as the children get older, “that conversation becomes richer and more complex.”

Read the full article about conversations about race and difference by Paul Jablow at The Notebook.