Show Notes
Tuesday and Tim are joined by friend, co-founder and co-director of EmbraceRace, Andrew Grant-Thomas, to talk about the founding of EmbraceRace, its work in the world, the future of a multiracial democracy, advocacy and how we can talk (and listen!) to our children about race.
About Andrew Grant-Thomas:
As co-founder and co-director of EmbraceRace, Andrew Grant-Thomas (he/him) helps lead the organization's efforts to support parents, educators and other caregivers to raise children who are thoughtful, informed and brave about race.
Andrew is dad to Lola and Lena, a partner to Melissa, an only child, a long-time racial justice guy, a Black man of Jamaican origins in the United States, born on the 4th of July.
His main commitments are to promoting racial and social justice and he is grateful to have worked with or otherwise had his thinking shaped by such brilliant, fierce advocates as Michelle Alexander, Cathy Cohen, Angela Davis, Christopher Edley, Gary Orfield, bell hooks and john powell. In stops that include the Harvard Civil Rights Project, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity, and the Proteus Fund, he has worked on issues from mass incarceration to PK-12 educational segregation, immigration to death penalty abolition, race and redistricting to structural racialization. Through it all, and now at EmbraceRace, he champions efforts he believes can make a meaningful difference for real people and communities - not 100 years from now, but in his lifetime and the lifetimes of his two tween children.
Andrew earned his BA in literature from Yale University, his MA in international relations from the University of Chicago, and his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.
Resources:
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EmbraceRace - There is a growing body of research and evidence that makes clear that children’s racial sensibilities begin to form in infancy, that almost all children develop racial and other biases by kindergarten, and that those biases become fairly entrenched by adolescence. And yet, most national organizations dedicated to children’s racial learning direct their resources mainly to middle and high school educators. There are too few resources for young children available for parents, grandparents or other caregivers or for early childhood educators. EmbraceRace helps fill that gap.
Quote that Andrew loves, from Max Lerner: “I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist, I'm a possibleist.”