Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0001-6809-7740
Abstract
Studies have shown white parents actively avoid talking about race as the primary method of racial socialization of their white children (Bartoli et al., 2016; Pahlke, Bigler, & Suizzo, 2012). This limits children’s ability to talk about and therefore think about race in nuanced ways, resulting in white children who consider their own race meaningless and do not identify racially (Bartoli et al., 2016). Antiracist education breaks these white discourse norms, and directly addresses systemic racism (Escayg, 2018). This paper describes how one white family attempted to enact antiracist education in the home with a focus on developing a shared and accurate racial vocabulary. Within this context, two white children, aged five to eleven years during the study, initially confounded skin color and race, created race labels for people of Color to describe proximity to Blackness, learned to call themselves white, developing an understanding that being white comes with power and relative safety.
Recommended Citation
Thomas, Rhianna K.
(2019)
"Developing a Vocabulary to Talk about Race in the white Home: One Family’s Experience,"
Journal of Curriculum, Teaching, Learning and Leadership in Education: Vol. 4:
Iss.
2, Article 8.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/ctlle/vol4/iss2/8