Resources for Ongoing Learning

Developing a nuanced understanding of and approach to the topics of race, racism, and social inequality is a long-term, open-ended process. As an educational community, our aim is to nurture the development of every individual in our community – to foster growth and learning holistically, and to encourage everyone to engage in a process of learning that continually challenges our assumptions and biases, and perpetually improves our ability to understand issues from multiple perspectives. We are not looking to indoctrinate our community into a homogenous worldview or to establish a new status quo. We seek collective liberation through earnest inquiry and intentional action. Everyone’s path will be a little different, and there is no shortage of data, input, or truth to peruse; the key questions for everyone are: what should we attend to, how do we understand it, and what can we do to enact and embody our learning for the benefit of everyone?  

In addition to this inquiry, which is necessary and important for everyone, regardless of positionality, there are questions and learning that are particular to our community, based on our local context, history, and demographics:  

• What are the particular tensions, patterns, pathologies, and responsibilities that arise in a community that is predominantly white and economically privileged?  
• How can we ensure that the patterns of racialized privilege and inequality that permeate our social world do not have a negative impact within our community, and that we do not reinforce or reify biases and assumptions about individuals or groups based on racialized categories?  
• How can our community work toward justice and social change, while also fostering healing, peace, and inclusive fellowship and solidarity within the school?

Because the world is changing so rapidly, we must also stay attuned to the ways in which the struggle for cultural harmony and social solidarity is different now than it was in the past. Recent developments in technology and social media are emerging in concert with an increasingly complex, globalized, and unstable social world; politically, economically, culturally, and environmentally, our systems, norms, and expectations are breaking down. In the past 5-10 years, there has been a new wave of interest and activism in relation to anti-racism and changes in the social construction of race and gender. Therefore, a big part of our work as an educational community is to help our students, staff, and parents understand these contemporary cultural dynamics, so that we can be conscious changemakers and social stewards who are leading with intention, and not participating in the dysfunction, polarization, and toxicity that characterizes much of our current media ecology.  

Below are selected resources that address and inform different aspects of this learning journey, from understanding race and racism, past and present, to social theory that explores deeper layers and causes of inequality. These resources represent a careful selection of research, thought, and reflection offered from multiple points of view; no book, essay, or person can ever fully encapsulate the Whole Truth, or claim to offer the definitive answer to complex problems that arise at the intersection of culture, economics, psychology, biology, politics, and history. Acknowledgment of this complexity, and the need to read, think, and engage in dialogue across multiple spectrums of diversity, is our starting point. Taken as a whole, these resources can serve to support a life-long learning journey, which we invite everyone in our community to undertake with us.