11 Children's Books About Racism And Activism To Help Parents Educate Their Kids
When it comes to raising children who will fight against racial injustice across the world, it’s obvious that silence does not work. “Colourblindness” does not work. And putting off conversations about privilege and racism does not work.
Yet, talking to children about racism and police brutality is never easy. And many parents feel like they should head into those heavy conversations with a perfect script. Thankfully, as Dr Harold S Koplewicz, medical director and founding president of the Child Mind Institute, said in a Monday blog post on talking to kids about the current protests, questions are a good thing.
“Encourage questions — and don’t worry if you can’t answer them,” he wrote.
Then, seek out tools that can help you and your kiddo(s) grapple with systemic racism. Over the years, many children’s authors (and rappers!) have written books that can help spark conversations about racial justice, empathy and what it means to be actively anti-racist — and keep those necessary conversations happening again and again.
Here are 11 to consider.
1. “Our Home, Our Heartbeat”
Award-winning Indigenous Australian artist Briggs’ newly released children’s book is inspired by his celebrated 2015 song “The Children Came Back” featuring Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and Deway. To tune was an homage-style follow up to Archie Roach’s 1990 song “They Took the Children Away”, written about Roach’s experience with one of the darkest periods in Australia’s history: the Stolen Generations. The government policies saw Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families and institutionalised in order to assimilate Indigenous peoples to the “white community” in hopes First Nations would “die out” through a process of natural elimination.
Illustrated by Kate Moon & Rachael Sarra, the yarn highlights “past and present Indigenous legends, as well as emerging generations, and at its heart honours the...