I Like Myself: Fostering Positive Racial Identity in Young Black Children

I Like Myself

Fostering Positive

Racial Identity in

Young Black Children

Toni Sturdivant, PhD

Published by Redleaf Press

10 Yorkton Court

St. Paul, MN 55117

www.redleafpress.org

© 2023 by Toni Sturdivant

All rights reserved. Unless otherwise noted on a specific page, no portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or capturing on any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio, television, or the Internet.

First edition 2023

Cover design by Jesse Hughes

Cover photographs by adobe.stock.com

Typeset in Freight and Nunito Sans

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sturdivant, Toni, author.

Title: I like myself : fostering positive racial identity in young Black children / by Toni Sturdivant, PhD.

Description: First edition. | St. Paul, MN : Redleaf Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: This book provides lesson planning insights and academic activities that are designed to facilitate positive racial identity in Black children. Supplementing and complementing any curriculum, this critical resource provides information across social-emotional, academic, and fine arts domains that stay faithful to curricular goals while specifically targeting the racial identity needs of Black preschoolers— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022049443 (print) | LCCN 2022049444 (ebook) | ISBN 9781605547893 (paperback) | ISBN 9781605547909 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: African American children—Education (Preschool) | African Americans—Race identity. | African American children—Social conditions. | Race awareness in children—United States. | Education, Preschool—Curricula—United States. | Affective education—United States.

Classification: LCC LB1140.3 S78 2023 (print) | LCC LB1140.3 (ebook) | DDC 371.829/96073—dc23/eng/20221019

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049443

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049444

For Ayanna and Zuri

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1

The Need for This Work

CHAPTER 2

All about Afro Hair: Celebrating Tightly Textured Hair

CHAPTER 3

Comfortable in My Skin: Showcasing the Beauty of Dark Skin

CHAPTER 4

Talking Black: Supporting Multilingual Children

CHAPTER 5

Feeling Good, Feeling Great: Social-Emotional Considerations for Black Children

CHAPTER 6

Representation Matters: Centering Black Characters in Children’s Literature

CHAPTER 7

All Black Lives: Considering the Multiple Identities of Black Children

CHAPTER 8

The Power of Racially Affirming Practice: A Personal Story

Recommended Children’s Books

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge Mamie Clark, whose vision and work set the foundation for my own. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge all of the faculty members who assisted me on my journey, especially Dr. Iliana Alanis. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Aisha White, Dr. Shannon Wanless, and the whole team at the P.R.I.D.E program at the University of Pittsburgh for assisting me in my research.

1

The Need for This Work

Teachers consider an incredible number of factors to plan just-right lessons for the children in their classrooms. Being an exceptional teacher means that we ensure student learning in many ways, responding to a variety of learning styles, abilities, and dispositions. Not only do educators have to teach standards, but we often create learning experiences that pull from the wealth of knowledge that our students, even the youngest learners, bring from home. Excellent early childhood educators plan their days based on student interests and include exciting, hands-on, joyful learning experiences with frequency. Being an impactful early childhood educator is a tough job, but it is incredibly rewarding.

We get to see children’s faces light up with pride when they have finally learned a new skill. We celebrate when they make the connection between something they explored last week and a new experience this week. Children build a considerable amount of knowledge and skills during their early years, especially when we have taken the time to carefully plan for each of the children in our care.

I have seen this all firsthand, having spent my entire professional career in early childhood. I worked as a toddler teacher at a preschool during my undergraduate studies. While I was pursuing my master’s degree, I was an instructional assistant at a school district–run Head Start center. Upon graduating and becoming a certified teacher, I served as a teacher of record at the same school, teaching three- and four-year-olds. From there, I became a master teacher for the city of San Antonio, working as a PreK–4 teacher in a model classroom with visitors from all over the United States stopping by our observation windows to see high-quality learning in action. The next part of my career took me away from the classroom full time. I became a professional learning specialist and coach, creating and facilitating trainings for early childhood educators working in school districts and early learning centers. I thoroughly enjoyed working with teachers and helping them become more effective in their practices.

Along with planning for standards, interests, and engagement, the most effective early childhood educators I’ve worked with also plan for the lived experiences of children and their cultural backgrounds, which include race and ethnicity. All people, including young children, bring their cultural ways of knowing and being with them. Exceptional early childhood educators see individual culture as an asset and an important source of information from which to build their teaching. Intentionally celebrating differences and using the cultures of students as a bridge to the social, physical, artistic, and academic skills we set out to teach each year is essential. But this is not enough.

Celebrating diversity teaches children that what is special to them and their family and community is also important enough to include in the classroom. However, messages about diversity are not always positive, especially for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BI&POC). Messages of anti-Blackness can teach children with at least one Black biological parent (henceforth referred to as Black children) that the essence of who they are is a problem. Additionally, children who are not Black are also privy to these messages of anti-Blackness, which can lead them to believe all sorts of misinformation about Black people and Blackness as well as to believe their racial/ethnic group is superior. This can have devastating consequences.

Effective early childhood educators know that creating a warm environment that fosters a positive sense of self for everyone in the learning community is essential for supporting healthy development and ensuring learning success. Therefore, when we draw our attention to the Black children in our care, as we should for all of our children, we must celebrate aspects of Blackness and counter the messages of anti-Blackness that children inevitably receive that can harm their developing racial identities.

Typically, when educators and researchers discuss child development, the focus is on physical, cognitive, language, or social development. We hear far less about racial identity development. Even though it is left out of many conversations, racial identity development is profoundly important for Black children. Research shows that Black children who have positive racial identities, that is, children who see their inclusion in a particular racial group in a positive light, do better in school (Zirkel and Johnson 2016) and have better overall psychological well-being (Brittain et al. 2013). This is big! Put in another way, Black children who are confident in being Black tend to do better than their peers who do not feel the same way. This means that educators who care about the lives of children must also consider and plan for racial identity development, just as they do for other aspects of development.

The Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education Position Statement by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) lists recommendations related to equity and diversity for many groups of stakeholders (Alanís, Iruka, and Friedman 2021). For early childhood educators, there are several recommendations, but there are two in particular that strongly align with fostering positive racial identity: creating a caring community of learners and countering common stereotypes and misinformation. As the authors explain,

Create a Caring, Equitable Community of Engaged Learners. Uphold the unique value and dignity of each child and family. Ensure that all children see themselves and their daily experiences, as well as the daily lives of others within and beyond their community, positively reflected in the design and implementation of pedagogy, curriculum, learning environment, interactions, and materials. Celebrate diversity by acknowledging similarities and differences and provide perspectives that recognize beauty and value across differences. (xi)

In creating a caring community, educators work to make sure that all children feel they are supposed to be in the space. The children know that they can be their full selves and that they are not only accepted but celebrated for who they are. Fostering this feeling for all children is the ultimate goal of creating a learning community. However, for children from certain groups, their social identities, such as race or ethnicity, may make them not want to bring their full selves into the classroom. Some children might hesitate to celebrate aspects of themselves because the greater society outside of the classroom has influenced the way they feel about them. For this reason, simply celebrating diversity is not enough, and educators need to go a bit further. Iliana Alanís, Iheoma Iruka, and Susan Friedman (2021, xii) state that early childhood educators should also counter common stereotypes and misinformation. Remember that the learning environment and its materials reflect what you do and do not value by what is present and what is omitted. Though it may not seem that young children are internalizing ideas about racial stereotypes and misinformation, research tells us that children pick up on racial information quite early. The next section explains further.

Racial Identity Development and Early Childhood

Not only is racial identity development important over a life span, but forming a positive racial identity is uniquely paramount in the early years due to how quickly children develop their sense of self. According to Christy Byrd (2012), racial identity includes:

racial awareness

racial identification

racial attitudes

Therefore, to create a timeline of the development of racial identity, we should examine at which age each aspect generally begins.

Racial awareness is simply being able to notice differences in the ways people look when those differences would lead to being assigned to different racial categories (skin color, hair texture, and so on). Racial awareness is the first part of racial identity that develops, starting in infancy and getting more sophisticated over time. According to Paul Quinn and colleagues (2016), infants have racial awareness at three months of age. These researchers found that White and Black three-month-olds prefer to look at pictures of faces that match their own racial identity over others. For such a preference to exist, infants must be able to attend to racial differences. According to Erin Winkler (2009), six-month-olds can classify others based on race and gender, and toddlers are already using race as a way to make sense