Parents: This School Year, Get into "Good Trouble"!

I have always considered education to be a partnership. For example, our local public school taught our boys how to read and then we as parents made sure they read at home. Teachers taught the mechanics and we made sure that they put their iPads away and read 10 books over the summer. If the school had not done its part and we had not done our part, our kids would not be the strong readers that they are today.

There is, however, one area where we’ve had to do a disproportionate amount of work: exposing our boys to non-white authors and the contributions of non-white people. Without our intervention, they would graduate subconsciously thinking that white people and white people alone wrote the important books and did the important things and that would have tragic consequences on their view of themselves and the world.

Now with our president and his administration's negative attitude towards DEI and Black history, I fear that kids will learn about Black and Brown excellence even less. He has made it clear, again and again, that he has little regard for representation, and he sees no value in Americans learning uncomfortable parts of our history. I’m here to tell you, both of those are vital to the development of our kids.

How powerful it would be for kids, ALL kids, to read a little less of the alcohol and opium addicted Edgar Allan Poe, and a little more of the brilliant David Walker, William Wells Brown, or Francis Watkins Harper. How wonderful for kids to know that, yes, Dickens is important but so also are Paul Laurence Dunbar, WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington, that Black people have keen, magnificent minds. White kids need to know these things too, because subliminally believing that you’re at the center of the universe also has terrible consequences.

How tragic that middle schoolers all over the country spend months learning about 13-year-old Anne Frank hiding from the Nazis and not one day learning about Henry “Box” Brown, the enslaved young man who mailed himself to freedom after his family was sold. Kids learn empathy towards the former but not the later. In truth, kids should be sobered by both the horrors of Auschwitz and the horrors of the American slave plantation, perhaps even more by the plantation because that happened HERE.

How many kids graduate knowing that it was Africa which civilized Europe and not the other way around? That North African Moors brought libraries, public education, math, medicine and astronomy, regular bathing, running water and toilets to Spain at a time when most of the rest of Europe was illiterate and living in filth. 

As long as school curricula excludes facts like these, we cannot be surprised when white kids say to Black kids, “Go back to picking cotton!” as has happened to one of my sons. There can be no pearl clutching or tears when gross racism reveals itself - because every day kids are subliminally learning that white people are better and more important.

And of course I’m not just advocating for the stories and contributions of Black people. If we want kids to respect and include Brown boys with thick accents and Brown girls wearing hijab, schools have to normalize their stories and communicate through their actions the equal value of Brown people.

So here’s the good trouble I’m proposing: show up at your school board meetings and boldly advocate for BIPOC authors and BIPOC contributions. Respectfully demand representation in curricula, AT ALL GRADE LEVELS.

And in the meantime, remember that this is indeed a partnership and we parents have to do our part. Require your kids to read non-white authors over the summer and during school breaks.  Seek out opportunities for your kids to be SURROUNDED by BIPOC excellence.

This past summer, our youngest attended a prestigious camp at Juilliard for Black and Hispanic youth who play classical music. Funded by private donors like the NBA Foundation, the program is completely free to those who get accepted. At the end of camp, our son said, “That was the best two weeks of my life!” For once he was taught by teachers who look like him. For once, he was surrounded by extremely talented kids with the same skin color as his.

Black and Brown parents, seek out those opportunities for your kids, and watch with satisfaction as they stand taller, square their shoulders more, and walk with just a little bit of righteous attitude.  White parents, seek opportunities for your kids to be the minority amidst BIPOC excellence.

That’s some good trouble we can all get into.