"They Need to Say Sorry": Antiracism in First Graders' Racial Learning

• In Event: (Re)Defining Social Studies in the Elementary Classroom

Abstract

Young children of color in the United States are experiencing the material effects of racism on a daily basis. There have been for anti-bias and anti-racist education across the field of education, yet most recommendations are based on older students or studies in laboratory settings. In this critical ethnography, the author examined the wide variety of strategies one class of first graders used to learn about race and of the socio-political and racial climate in which they live. In this paper, the author argues that children carefully consider racial conditions in society and imagine anti-racist praxis as part of their racial inquiry.

Author

• Anna Falkner, University of Memphis