With the recent deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police, I was left questioning what I could do to fight against racism. During my bi-weekly meeting with Marie Benner-Rhoades, I mentioned how I would be attending an Embrace Race webinar called "How do I make sure I'm not raising the next 'Amy Cooper'?" The guest speaker was Jennifer Harvey, who is a social activist, professor, and author. Marie had read Harvey’s book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America and recommended it to me. We thought the book had useful information that parents, educators, and other community members could use to raise race conscious kids. So, we reached out to our Racial Justice Organizers Grace Cook-Huffman and Tamera Shaw and Youth and Young Adult Assistant Laura Hay to develop a webinar series that uses Harvey’s book as a guide.

For the webinar series, we will be meeting every Thursday at 8 PM ET starting on July 23rd through August 13th.Topics will include how parents and teachers can address race, the myth of color-blindness, the role of racial scripts, and the future of racial justice. Even though the book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey will be used to guide the discussions, reading the book is not required. This webinar is a space for all community members to join in conversations about raising all kids to be race conscious, not just for people raising white kids.

In each session, participants can expect to share their personal experiences in the larger group and in breakout pairs, have open conversations about the role of parents, teachers, and other community members in raising race conscious kids, and receive resources and action steps for raising race conscious kids. If you are interested in attending a webinar session, please register here https://www.onearthpeace.org/webinar_series_raising_race_conscious_kids. Contact me at [email protected] if you have any questions.