Title: How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?
Headings: How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?
How Should I Talk about Race in My Mostly White Classroom?
1. Set up group guidelines.
2. Help students accept discomfort and uncertainty.
3. Clarify that the goal is not to be “colorblind.”
4. Acknowledge that learning about race and racism is a process.
5. Provide opportunities to learn about others and foster empathy.
6. Address white privilege in non-defensive ways.
7. Connect to ally behavior and engage in social justice.

Content: Students can reflect on the ways that they, as young people, lack privilege in these situations. This discussion will help them understand the concept of privilege without getting defensive and will help to foster empathy. You can then make the connection to white privilege and since you’ve set the groundwork, hopefully the leap to white privilege isn’t too far a reach for them. It will be important to identify dominant identities (i.e. being white) because students may not accept that they have white privilege by saying they belong to another marginalized group (“but I’m gay, poor, female”). While that may be true, it doesn’t erase their white identity. 7. Connect to ally behavior and engage in social justice. As your students discuss race, some of them may be interested in addressing the racism they have learned about, both in their interpersonal relationships and in society. Helping your students understand what it means to act as an ally and learning the different ways to engage in ally behavior is an important next step. White people can act as allies by identifying racism when they see it, calling it out and challenging it in a myriad of ways.