Addressing Race and Racism in Early Childhood: Challenges and Opportunities

Color Blind or Color Conscious? White American Mothers’ Approaches to Racial Socialization

“…This may be due to inflated reports by the parents due to social desirability, or the messages may not have been clear and explicit enough for the children to understand that the conversations were about race. Thus, the messages sent are not always the messages that are received (Farago, Sanders, & Gaias, 2015).…”

Counteracting Dysconscious Racism and Ableism Through Fieldwork: Applying DisCrit Classroom Ecology in Early Childhood Personnel Preparation

“…Although preservice educators identified implicit and explicit racial phenomena during a methods course, their student teaching practices were influenced by context (e.g., perceptions of how sites addressed race) and becoming more narrow (e.g., identifying only explicitly racial phenomena) and less critical (e.g., avoiding recognition of power). In addition to these factors, preservice early educators may resist teacher educators’ efforts to address race and racism due to inaccurate understandings of children’s awareness of these topics (Blanchard et al, 2018; Farago et al, 2015). Such resistance may also impede understanding of how race and ability are co-constructed in early childhood settings.…”

“…Finally, we present DisCrit Classroom Ecology (Annamma & Morrison, 2018a) and apply the framework to the context of early childhood fieldwork. As many children’s first school experience, preschool may be the first setting outside of the home where children learn messages about race (Farago et al, 2015) and ability (Lalvani & Bacon, 2019). Although we focus on preschool settings, we recognize that no early childhood context is exempt from racism and ableism, including Part C early intervention, kindergarten, and the primary grades.…”

Using Multicultural Picture Books to Promote Racial Justice in Urban Early Childhood Literacy Classrooms

“…Finally, early childhood teachers who strive to use multicultural picture books teach for racial justice in their classrooms must also make a decision to endure any negative political, professional, and or personal challenges and consequences that may occur as a result openly discussing and challenging issues of racism in the world (Farago et al, 2015). Despite the significant progress that has been made over the last 50 years or so in the United States related to race relations and racial justice, many early childhood teachers in the United States are still quite uncomfortable discussing and confronting racial injustice in an open and explicit manner (Hooven, Runkle, Strouse, Woods, & Frankenberg, 2018).…”

“…Many early childhood teachers (preschool-2nd grade), who believe in and apply a colorblind approach in their classrooms, argue that children lack the cognitive ability to understand issues of racial marginalization and privilege in meaningful and substantive ways (Boutte, Lopez-Robertson, & Powers-Costello, 2011). At the same time, from a political standpoint, other early childhood teachers stress that controversial discussions related to race and racism should be postponed to the later portion of the elementary schooling years (Derman-Sparks & Ramsey, 2011; Farago, Sanders, & Gaias, 2015; Ramsey, 2004). The purposes of this article are twofold.…”