- Community Connection
Adoption Identity Race Exploration (AIRE)
AIRE was created out of the need for an inclusive space for BIPOC adoptees (of all genders, identities, and experiences) to build and collaborate. AIRE also offers holistic emotional and spiritual counseling and partners with other organizations to provide consultations about programming, curriculum development, and workshop planning.
- Race Education
Child Mind Institute: “Trauma & Grief”
This webpage features countless articles about the basics of recognizing and addressing trauma in children. It includes topics like the effects, causes, and treatments of trauma and grief. It also includes some common traumatic diagnoses and how trauma affects children in academic settings.
- Race Education
CNN: “How to talk to your children about protests and racism”
This article explains how to discuss racism and protests with children. The article breaks down how to lead discussions by age group (toddler, tweens, teens).
- Race Education
EmbraceRace: “‘I [STILL] Can’t Breathe!’: Supporting Kids of Color Amid Racialized Violence”
This conversation and Q&A led by child psychologist Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith explores policing, violence, safety, justice, and race. She also considers how to approach conversations with children of color about institutional and racial violence.
- Race Education
Nursing License Map with edX: “Anti-Racism Resources for Students and Professionals in Healthcare”
This article explores the history of mistreatment and discrimination in healthcare that puts people of color at a disadvantage. It also discusses the changes that are necessary for health professionals and students to be anti-racist and eliminate healthcare inequities.
- Race Education
Today: “What Black adoptees want white parents to know about transracial adoption”
This article features the voices of Black adults who were adopted by white families. The adoptees share their perspectives on identity, culture, and their sense of belonging.
- Race Education
RESilience: Books About Race and Ethnicity
This is a directory of books about race, organized by age. It features books for young children, elementary school-age children, teens, and adults, as well as additional resources and links about race and culture.
- Race Education
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC): “I Am a Parent or Caregiver”
The NMAAHC’s purpose is to help children understand what race is, how it operates in society, and why it’s important (particularly in the US). This article is specifically for parents and caregivers who want their child(ren) to form a healthy racial identity, learn how to support complex racial problems in children, and speak out against racial inequity.
- Race Education
“Daddy Why Am I Brown?”: A healthy conversation about skin color and family
This is a children’s book meant to start a conversation about how kids can learn to talk about skin color in a way that’s kind, thoughtful, and healthy. It’s also meant to help children understand the difference between race, ethnicity, and culture.
- Race Education
Resilience – “Reading and RES: Parent Tip Tool: Choosing and Using Books to Discuss Race and Ethnicity”
This brief article explains how reading books with your child is a key way to start and continue conversations about race and ethnicity. It also discusses why books are a good medium, the importance of conversations about race, and tips for how to choose appropriate books for your child.
- Race Education
Beynd the Golden Rule
This illustrated book serves as a parent’s guide to preventing and responding to prejudice. This book explores how to discuss racism and tolerance depending on the age of the child.
- Race Education
American Academy of Pediatrics: “Talking to Children About Racial Bias”
This article explains how children learn racial bias, strategies to help children deal with these biases, and how parents can confront their own racial biases. The article also features tips for talking about racism and racial differences by age (preschool, grade school, etc.) and additional resources about discrimination.
- Race Education
RESilience – Engaging My Child: “Parent Tip Tool: Uplifting Families Through Healthy Communication About Race”
This is a brief parent tip tool that explains what RES (racial and ethnic socialization)is, who participates in RES, and suggestions for engaging in RES.
- Race Education
ChildTrends: “Resources to Support Children’s Emotional Well-Being Amid Anti-Black Racism, Racial Violence, and Trauma”
This article discusses how to talk to children about racism, racial violence, and trauma. It also features books and other resource compilations for parents and caregivers about how to discuss race and racism with children.
- Race Education
American Psychological Association RESilience – “Resources for Parents: Uplifting Youth Through Healthy Communication About Race”
This website features tip tools, books, blogs, and other resources about creating healthy and safe conversations about race between children and parents. This initiative focuses on RES (racial and ethnic socialization), the process by which children learn about race.
- Race Education
Yale University Open Yale Courses – African American History: From Emancipation to the Present (2010)
This archive provides all of the course materials for one of Yale’s Open Courses which examines the African American experience in the US from the 1800s until 2010s. More specifically, the professor analyzes urbanization, modern civil rights movements, and the leadership of prominent Black political figures and leaders.
- Race Education
Online MSW Programs with edX: “How to Teach Kids About Race”
This article discusses how to teach children about the concepts of race, privilege, and racial and ethnic socialization (RES). Though this resource is primarily for social work students, it may be relevant to any adults that would like to start discussing race with children.
Gladney University – reFRAMED Bonus: “Continuing the Conversation with Ebony Mack, MSW”
This conversation is a continuation of the discussion “Bridging the Gap: Strengthening Competencies of Transracial Adoptive Parents” led by Ebony Mack. This training considers many different questions about transracial adoption and racial identity.
- Race Education
Gladney University – Bridging the Gap: “Competencies of Transracial Adoptive Parents”
A presentation led by Ebony Mack (MSW, adoptee, adoptive parent, and more) about white parents who have adopted transracially. Mack discusses how they (parents) often learn about the cultural differences between their own norms and that of their children’s as these differences collide.
- Birth Family Search
Off and Running (2009)
Avery, an African-American adoptee and track star with white Jewish lesbians for parents and two other adopted siblings begins to become more curious about her roots. Her curiosity about her African-American heritage grows and she decides to contact her birth mother. Avery’s life turns into a crisis and struggles over her “true” identity, her isolation from Black culture, and the circumstances of her adoption.
- Media
White Sugar Brown Sugar
A blog by a Christian mom about her adopted children. Although she doesn’t disclose names or faces out of respect, she describes her adoptions as domestic, transracial, and open
- Race Education
The Seattle Times: “Adoption across races: ‘I know my parents love me, but they don’t love my people’”
“Adoptee Angela Tucker discusses how she felt like a racial impostor growing up. She explains that she may have looked Black, but didn’t feel that way.”
- Media
NPR: “A Mother Reflects On Privilege, Adoption And Parenting ‘Without Perfection'”
“NPR 37 minute listen as a white mom reflects on her life raising two adopted Black children and two biological white children, and how she became aware of her own white privilege. She also has a blog called Rage Against the Minivan.”
