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Unpacking Race: An Essential Conversation in Schools and Homes

February 2015, at Gordon and Brown University


How can schools help students examine how race operates in daily life?
 
How can schools and parents partner to break patterns of underperformance among culturally and linguistically diverse groups of students?
 
What roles do white educators and white adults play in creating equitable school communities?
 
How can white educators and educators of color work together on these issues?​

The resource guide from this event, and more, is online at www.gordonschool.org/resources, including links to many of the resources and links mentioned by panelists.
 

The event: February 20th and 21st, 2015
The Providence Journal ran an excellent preview of the weekend, and a report on Saturday's session. 
 
Friday, February 20th, 6:30-8:30pm

Discussion with Michèle Stephenson, co-director of the film American Promise

with a panel of recent Gordon graduates
Anjuwon Spence ’05
Matt Shumate ’05
Lucy Kahn ’06
Brandon Bowman ’09
Meghan Wales ’10

at the Gordon School, 45 Maxfield Avenue, East Providence, RI


Saturday, February 21st, 9:00-11:30am

Keynote presentation with Debby Irving author of Waking Up White and James DeWolf Perry of the Tracing Center

followed by a panel discussion with:

Dr. Francoise N. Hamlin
Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies, Brown University
 
Dr. Maria Pacheco 
Executive Director of the Education Alliance, Brown University
 
Dr. Ralph Rodriguez 
Associate Professor of American Studies and English, Brown University
 
Dr. Kim Ridley 
Assistant Head of the Gordon School

at Brown University's MacMillan Hall, 167 Thayer Street, Providence, RI

Sponsored by the Gordon School, Brown University’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, and the Brown Center for Students of Color
 

Links mentioned at Unpacking Race
The film American Promise, and the work that it inspired, is covered comprehensively at the film's site at 
 
Debby Irving's site, which includes the "21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge":
http://debbyirving.com/
 
James DeWolf Perry is the executive director of 
The Tracing Center
  
Dr. Maria Pacheco is the executive director of
 
 
Dr. Francoise N. Hamlin mentioned the 
The two books that Brandon Bowman suggested for young black men on Friday night were
Black Skin, White Masks, by Frantz Fanon
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois 
 
Debby Irving mentioned the importance of this video as a basic primer on privilege in the US:
Race: the Power of an Illusion www.pbs.org/race
 
James DeWolf Perry cited the results of implicit bias tests that can be sampled here:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html
 
Traces of the Trade is the film that James DeWolf Perry participated in:
 

 

Sponsored by the Gordon School, Brown University’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, and the Brown Center for Students of Color