Full Description
Grounded in the life experiences of children, youth, teachers, and caregivers, this book investigates how implicit bias affects multiracial kids in unforeseen ways. Drawing on critical mixed-race theory and developmental psychology, the authors employ radical listening to examine both how these children experience school and what schools can do to create more welcoming learning environments. They examine how the silencing of mixed-race experiences often creates a barrier to engaging in nuanced conversations about race and identity in the classroom, and how teachers are finding powerful ways to forge meaningful connections with their mixed-race students. This is a book written from the inside, integrating not only theory and research but also the authors' own experiences negotiating race and racism for and with their mixed-race children. It is a timely and essential read not only because of our nation's changing demographics, but also because of our racially hostile political climate.
Book Features:
Examination of the most contemporary issues that impact mixed-race children and youth, including the racialized violence with which our country is now reckoning.
Guided exercises with relevant, action-oriented information for educators, parents, and caregivers in every chapter.
Engaging storytelling that brings the school worlds of mixed-race children and youth to life.
Interdisciplinary scholarship from social and developmental psychology, critical mixed-race studies, and education.
Expansion of the typical Black/White binary to include mixed-race children from Asian American, Latinx, and Native American backgrounds.
Contents
Contents
Series Foreword James A. Banks x
Preface xv
Introduction: "It's hard speaking about race...especially when you're mixed because there are so many sides!" 1
Radical Listening as Theory: Creating a Children-and-Youth-Based Frame 3
Radical Listening as Method and Intervention: Collecting and Sharing Stories 7
Who We Interviewed 10
Language, Terminology, and Radical Listening as Epistemology 13
Grounding Our Work in Critical Mixed Race Studies 15
We Hope You Will Listen to Our Book 20
Radical Listening with Your Critical Friend 23
1. From (G)race to Race: Racial Identity Development and Mixed-Race Kids 25
How Do You Understand Race? 26
Radical Listening Exercise: Remembering Race, Listening to Race 27
Seeing Difference/Hearing Difference 28
Difference as Bad Versus Difference as Special 30
Children's Brains and Race 32
What About Your Friends? 35
What About Your Siblings? 38
Racial Socialization 40
2. Changing Team(s): Mixed Kids' Agency in Choosing, Moving, and Sticking with Racialized Identities 44
But First, a Radical Listening Exercise in Salient Identities 46
Racial Identity Development Meets Mixed-Race Kids 47
The Psychology of Mixed-Race Kids and Racialized Choice 51
Supporting Mixed-Race Kids in Racial Identity Even When They Don't "Make the Team" 56
Checking the Box 58
(Sometimes) Choosing Whiteness: White Adjacency 60
Radically Listening to Mixed-Race Identities 62
Listening to Racial Identity Development 64
3. "He Didn't Even Know My Name": Singling Out Mixed-Race Kids Through the Forces of Implicit Bias 66
Assessing Your Own Implicit Bias: A Radical Listening Exercise 69
Choking on the Smog of Implicit Bias 71
Media and the Smog 75
Smog Kills 77
Implicit Bias and Mixed-Race Kids 79
Perceptual Ambiguity, Cognitive Depletion, and Mixed-Race Kids 83
A Closing Dilemma, and a Caveat 86
4. "Relationship Is Key": How Teachers Are Radically Listening to Mixed-Race Kids in Schools 89
School Climate 91
Affinity Groups: Forging Mixed-Race Kinship in School 92
Radical Listening Activity: Affinity Group Time 96
Centering Students' Voices in the Classroom to Foster Positive Relationships 97
Deepening Relationships in the Classroom: Expectations and Accountability in Relationships 98
Wise Feedback 99
Empathy 101
Student Connectedness 103
An Example That Works: GREET-STOP-PROMPT 104
Sharing Who We Are with Our Students 106
Interrupting Racism for Positive Relationships 109
"Teachers, I Want You to Know . . . I Think It Starts with Education" 111
5. "We Were Taught": Family Practices of Radical Listening, Positive Friction, and Talking Race 113
Friction Without Positivity: Refuting a Child's Racialized Identity 115
Listen to Your Child Even When You Don't Think They "Look" Like How They Identify 118
Performing Color Blindness: On Not Listening to Race Talk 122
Being Vulnerable with Your Children 125
Providing Role Models for Mixed-Race Children 126
The Work: Parents Bringing Radical Listening into School 128
Radical Listening Exercise: Race, Listening, and Family Mission Statements 131
Coda: "I Just Raise My Hand All the Time": Keep Listening and Talking with and for Generation Mixed 134
Appendix A: Generation Mixed Dialogue Questions 139
Appendix B: Generation Mixed Participants 141
Appendix C: Sample Guide to Affinity Groups 143
Appendix D: Table Describing GREET-STOP-PROMPT Practices 146
References 148
Index 162
About the Authors 174
