Let's Look - Racial Equality

This month's topic for Let's Look Wednesday was your carry on bag, but Shay and Erika changed it to "How we can make sure we're encouraging racial equality at home". This is obviously a more timely topic than travelling

I like to think we have done a good job of this here at my house; we certainly haven't supported the opposite idea, but something that I've learned over the past week or so is that we (white people) need to go beyond being not racist, and be anti-racist and take the extra step(s) of being explicit that racism is a problem even if aren't seeing examples in our own lives everyday.  So this will be a long term shift in our practices, our habits, and our words, but what we have done in the short term is this:

Bought some new books:
For me: "The Skin We're In" by Desmond Cole.  The author is a Black Canadian (so I liked this book more than others I saw being recommended lately).

For the kids: "Counting on Katherine" by Helaine Becker by Katherine Johnson who you may know from the movie Hidden Figures.

"Be Kind" by Pat Zietlow Miller.

(Quick sidebar, funny story - I tried to put a hold on Desmond Cole's book at the library, and got this message:

I was kind of like, "my white privilege has expired?".  But I think it just means that I can only hold 5 books at once so I was at that limit already.  End sidebar.)

Watched some YouTube videos, like this one.

And we will find the CNN Sesame Street program to watch this weekend.

We will use the videos and books to start conversations about some hard things.  Things that the kids should know about because they are citizens of this world.

Examining my own prejudices and biases, and also considering what friends and family are saying and how I can engage with them.

Making donations and asking others to do the same.  The ones I chose help people with precarious housing and food insecurity - two things that disproportionately affect Black and Indigenous people in my city (and other communities).

Sanctuary Toronto - shelter

Foodshare TO

I am looking forward to checking out other posts so I can get some more ideas, while also remembering this is a marathon, not a sprint.