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Being an Anti-Racist Educator

According to Ibram X. Kendi, in How to be an Anti-Racist, an antiracist is “one who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea” (13). Being an anti-racist educator means developing or growing an anti-racist mindset and agenda, and using that to shape your teaching practices.

Learn How to Be an Anti-Racist

This guide contains suggestions to help you learn about and combat the systems that reinforce racism. The way that you enact an anti-racist agenda in your classes and on campus will depend on your subject matter and role at the University. These are some examples of how you might engage in anti-racist practices, adapted from Wheaton College’s Anti-Racist Pedagogy and Columbia University’s Anti-Racist Pedagogy In Action guides.

Learn about how racism has shaped and shapes lives. Interrogate your role in White supremacy, and learn some ways to be an anti-racist.

Read, Watch, and Listen

DePaul’s Anti-Racist LibGuide contains many resources for learning about racism, including resources dedicated to racism and psychology and racism in healthcare.
Chicago Public Library’s Anti-Racist Reading List, is described by Ibran X. Kendi as an “anti-racist syllabus is for people realizing they were never taught how to be anti-racist.”
Wheaton College's antiracist pedagogy resources are shared in the context of other key frameworks, like Inclusive Pedagogy and Student Success Pedagogy.
Andrea Aebersold, from the University of California, Irvine, has compiled an anti-racist pedagogy reading list.
The Atlantic has a list of all their writing about race and racism titled “How Did We Get Here?”.
In “About Race,” a podcast, Reni Eddo-Lodge, author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, explores how recent history has lead to today’s political climate.
“13th” (2016), a documentary directed by Ava DuVernay, explores the history of racial inequality in the United States.
Kimberlé Crenshaw in "The Urgency of Intersectionality," a TED Talk, emphasizes the importance of intersectionality in the fight against systemic racism.

Take a Class or Workshop

DePaul’s BUILD Diversity Certificate is a professional development diversity certificate available to all DePaul University faculty and staff. BUILD provides participants with the "building blocks to an inclusive campus."
7 Anti-Racist Classes Developed by Black Women are designed to help leaders recognize and combat racism.
Stanford’s RaceWorks ToolKit is built for educators and facilitators who want to develop students’ or coworkers’ racial literacy.
5 Anti-Racist Courses You Can Audit for Free are meant to help equip people with “the knowledge and skills to fight racial prejudice and challenge intolerant attitudes.”
University of Michigan Online offers free courses to help learners understand their civil rights and how to make a difference in their communities.

Adopt inclusive teaching practices.

See Inclusive Teaching for suggestions on designing and facilitating inclusive classes.

Consider using trauma-informed pedagogy.

In “Leveraging the Neuroscience of Now," Mays Imad identifies seven ways to help students learn during traumatic times.
Columbia University's trauma-informed teaching guide provides a one-page overview of trauma-informed teaching and learning principles and practices to support educators during a global health crisis.

Identify changes that could be made at your department or unit level to advance an anti-racist agenda.

Read “Is Inclusion Even Possible?”, an article in which educators and administrators explore how institutions can improve their equity and inclusion.
Seek conferences and professional development opportunities with your peers that help you to advance your racial literacy and inclusive teaching practices.
Build student internship opportunities with organizations fighting against systemic racism.

Seek examples of anti-racist and inclusive teaching practices in your field and role.

Yale's Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning compiles teaching resources tailored for specific disciplines.
In “How to Challenge Systemic Racism” faculty and administrators describe short and long term steps for challenging system racism.
In “'Dear Professor': On Anti-Blackness and Learning” non-Black scholars define ways they are working to challenge Anti-Blackness in academia.
Brown University explains that the best teaching is anti-racist teaching in Effective Teaching Is Anti-Racist Teaching.

The following examples are more specific:

Labs and STEM

DePaul faculty explain how to build an anti-racist stem lab.
Professors and STEM graduate students at University of California at Berkeley developed a toolkit for instructors that want to make their courses more antiracist and inclusive.
San Francisco State revised their biology lab activity in order to ground the curriculum in equity and inclusion. Read about that in “A Rapid Response to Racism in STEM” (2021).

Athletics

Joshua Meyer explores how athletics can be “a productive environment to engage white students, coaches and others in ways that help them become more aware of privilege and institutional racism.”

Writing Workshops

Felicia Rose Chavez, in The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop (2021), explains how to create and facilitate an anti-racist creative writing workshop.

References

Aebersold, A. (2021). Antiracist Pedagogy Reading List.

Baez, J.C., Marquart, M. S., Garay, K., & Chung, R. Y.E. (2020). Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning Online: Principles & Practices During a Global Health Crisis.

Brown University Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Effective

Teaching is Anti-Racist Teaching.

Burrus, L, et al. (2021). "A Rapid Response to Racism in STEM." Inside Higher Ed.

Chavez, F. (2021). The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books.

Chicago Public Library. (n.d.) Anti-Racist Reading List from Ibram X. Kendi.

Chronicle Staff. (2020). "'Is Inclusion Even Possible?’". Chronicle of Higher Education.

Crenshaw, K. (2016). The Urgency of Intersectionality. TED Talk.

DePaul University Library. (2021). Anti-Racism Lib Guide.

DePaul University Newsroom. (2020). "Building an antiracist lab: Scientists offer steps to take action now."

Duvernay, A. & Moran, J. (2016) 13TH . USA.

Eddo-Lodge, R. (2020). About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge.

Imad, M. (2020). "Leveraging the Neuroscience of Now." Inside Higher Ed.

Kendi, I. (2019). How to be an Anti-Racist. One World.

Learning Scientists for Racial Justice. (2020). "'Dear Professor': On Anti-Blackness and Learning." Inside Higher Ed.

Meyer, J. (2020). "Why Coaching for Social Justice Matters." Inside Higher Ed.

Ritter, Z., & Raphael, V. (2020). "How to Challenge Systemic Racism." Inside Higher Ed.

Stanford University Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. (n.d.) RaceWorks Toolkit.

Svinicki, M., Nicol, D., & McKeachie, W. (2014). McKeachie’s teaching tips : strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (Fourteenth edition.). Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

University of Michigan Center for Research on Teaching & Learning. (n.d.) Overview of Inclusive Teaching at Michigan.

Wheaton College Center for Collaborative Teaching and Learning. (2020). Anti-Racist Pedagogy.

White, G. B. (2020). "How Did We Get Here?". The Atlantic.