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Racism and Choices

Blogpost: Find a young adult novel/book or a comic/graphic novel that addresses issues of race/racism, and explain how you might use it in the classroom as part of an antiracist teaching practice.

 I'm always the person that when asked for a good book for YA I will immediately pick The Hate U Give obviously because of its amazing narrative, and #Blacklivesmatter movement ideas. But I wanted to broaden my horizons for this assignment, and find some other material that could be used to help fight racism in schools. The first book that I came across was a similar one. The book Dear Martin is also a great book to teach parallel to The Hate U Give.


Both of these texts are about young Black students who are extremely smart and talented and are racially profiled in one way or another. The best thing about these is that one is in the perspective of a girl who witnesses a friend shot by police, and the other is a boy who is arrested and assumed dangerous by police. Both offer some great insight into the different ways that racism affects them in their worlds.

To use these texts in the classroom I have a few ideas for a unit I could do on these for two to three weeks. Here are my ideas:
  • Give students the choice. Which would they prefer to read? Maybe have them do a quick write about why they choose the one they choose. Allow the students to read them parallel to each other.
  • Read a Martin Luther King speech together. Listen to the song "THUG LIFE" by Tupac and discuss the two different messages that each one of them is saying is important and compare and contrast their viewpoints.
  • Have students explore the ideas of the #Blacklivesmatter movement. Talk about the history involved with the Black Panthers and the idea of police brutality today.
  • Get students to watch some of the current footage from some of the police brutality that we see today and compare that with old photos of slavery and the abuse that the African American has faced. Have them write about personal feelings towards it.
  • Have students write a paper at end of the unit. Leave it really open ended and encourage creativity. Write a song, a letter to someone in power, a journal, a narrative of their own experiences with racism, etc. This can be the summative assessment at the end of the unit.
These are obviously just some random ideas for a few week long unit that would take some serious time and work to really get into. However, it's really worth the work to let our students have so much freedom and choice here. These two books are SO important to our current society that they should both be read, but there isn't enough time for that. So this way students can have a choice to relate to one over the other.

That's all I have for today anyway! Have a great weekend everyone, and stay safe.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 23, 2018 at 5:42 PM

    I love your lesson ideas. Letting students choose what books they read can be the best idea so they feel they have more freedom in their learning. I'll have to look into these two books. I've heard a little about The Hate U Give but not Dear Martin.

    ReplyDelete

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