Tag Archives: Race

“My Goal Would Be To Go Out of Business and Go Back to the Classroom”: An Interview with Nancy Dome

By Sabrina Völz

At the din­ner table, on the train, or at work, we wit­ness dis­crim­i­na­to­ry lan­guage or racist remarks from time to time. We often know that we should say some­thing, but we – for one rea­son or anoth­er – do not always get involved. Many peo­ple would like to do more but don’t always know how. Dr. Nan­cy Dome, who has worked with chil­dren and edu­ca­tors for over 20 years, has lit­er­al­ly made that quandary both her busi­ness and mis­sion. This week’s blog fea­tures an inter­view with the CEO of Epoch Edu­ca­tion about fos­ter­ing the under­stand­ing of diver­si­ty and the devel­op­ment of inclu­sive cultures.

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More Than Just a Blurred Ethnic Identity: Teaching German American Day

By Andreas Hübner

It is one of the found­ing myths of “Ger­man Amer­i­cana” that the first migrants from Ger­man-speak­ing ter­ri­to­ries arrived on Octo­ber 6, 1683, on North Amer­i­can soil. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Ger­man Amer­i­cans have always sought to cel­e­brate this par­tic­u­lar date in order to pro­mote and to secure Ger­man Amer­i­can tra­di­tions and inter­ests. Such cel­e­bra­tions, for­mer­ly often called “Ger­man Day,” flour­ished dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry and ceased after the world wars. After the 1983 tri­cen­ten­ni­al, Ger­man Amer­i­can stake­hold­ers were able to revive and to con­tin­ue the cel­e­bra­tions: On August 18, 1987, Con­gress approved a joint res­o­lu­tion to des­ig­nate Octo­ber 6, 1987, as Ger­man-Amer­i­can Day.

Since that time, most Amer­i­can pres­i­dents have issued annu­al procla­ma­tions to cel­e­brate the achieve­ments and con­tri­bu­tions of Ger­man Amer­i­cans to our Nation with appro­pri­ate cer­e­monies, activ­i­ties, and pro­grams. Also, Ger­man Amer­i­can soci­eties have tak­en on the ‘task’ and includ­ed annu­al Ger­man-Amer­i­can Day cel­e­bra­tions into their cal­en­dars, often in com­bi­na­tion with the famous Oktoberfest.

Source: Pitts­burg Dis­patch, 17 Sept. 1891. Chron­i­cling Amer­i­ca: His­toric Amer­i­can News­pa­pers. Library of Con­gress, accessed: Sept. 24, 2020,  <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024546/1891–09-17/ed‑1/seq‑8/>

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The Long March to Justice

By Bobbie Kirkhart

Pho­to Cred­it: “Mia­mi Protest, June 7, 2020” by Mike Shaheen

When I was five years old, I announced my new dis­cov­ery: “Negroes (the polite term at the time) are bad.” My par­ents tried to cor­rect me, but I felt my log­ic was unshak­able: When the radio report­ed a crime, the per­pe­tra­tor was often black. They nev­er said that a sus­pect was white. I didn’t know any black peo­ple in our seg­re­gat­ed town, but I knew many white peo­ple, and none of them were crim­i­nals. This was an open-and-shut case in my five-year old’s mind.

A few weeks lat­er, my father took me down­town to see a parade. He struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with a black woman we were stand­ing next to. She had a baby, who cap­tured my inter­est, though I was more entranced by her Kraft Caramels (my favorite can­dy at the time) she shared gen­er­ous­ly with me. This, of course, com­plete­ly shat­tered my baby bigotry.

When I was approach­ing mid­dle age, I reflect­ed on the inci­dent. Only then did I real­ize that when I was young, parade-view­ing areas – as well as every­thing else – were strict­ly seg­re­gat­ed in Enid, Okla­homa. It must have tak­en some plan­ning and more than a small amount of courage to arrange for us to stand in the “col­ored area” next to a friend­ly woman who just hap­pened to have a cute baby and my favorite candies.

The issue of race did not come up often in our small, most­ly white town (at least not in the white com­mu­ni­ty), so I had lit­tle need to reflect on what I had learned until Emmett Till’s mur­der on August 28, 1955, made nation­al news and pro­voked nation­al outrage.

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A Call for 60s-Style Teach-ins on Anti-Racism

By Sabrina Völz

 

Pho­to Cred­it: “DSC8902 – The Ele­phant in the Room” by damienconway30

Let’s start off with a few telling facts: The ori­gin of the word “racism” stems from the French word racisme which appeared dur­ing the last decades of the 19th cen­tu­ry. In Eng­lish, how­ev­er, accord­ing to the Mer­ri­am Web­ster Dic­tio­nary, “Racism appears to be a word of recent ori­gin, with no cita­tions cur­rent­ly known that would sug­gest the word was in use pri­or to the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.” Now, let that sink in. The peo­ple at Web­ster are also quick to point out that just because the word is “fair­ly new” doesn’t mean that “the con­cept of racism did not exist in the dis­tant past.” No won­der we – and with we, I mean all soci­eties – have a prob­lem with racism. So let’s get to the root of it and root it out.

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