21-Day Racial Equity Challenge: Working toward better understanding
Scene from the video “How to Talk to Kids Abour Race,” presented in Day 15 of the 21-Day Racial Equity Challence
From left are Peters Township Year of Kindness Committee members Maggie Cameron, Amy Petro, April Ragland, Stacey Jones, Minna Allison, Jocelyn Lynch and Sue Deegan.
Editor’s note: This is the final article of a three-part series.
Among the seemingly endless challenges for people who are raising children is how to instill a sense of universal acceptance, and the earlier, the better.
The Atlantic magazine has produced an animated series about parenting that includes the episode “How to Talk to Kids About Race,” which opens with the acknowledgment:
“Race is one of those touchy subjects you don’t really want to get into, because you’re afraid you might mess up. But the fact is that as early as 3 years old, children are classifying people based on their appearances. And so the worst conversation adults can have with kids about race is no conversation at all.”
Providing a foundation for such conversations is the Peters Township 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge, a program launched in January with continuing online availability for those who are interested in learning about an often-avoided topic. The challenge offers a wealth of material for reading, reflection and viewing, including the “How to Talk to Kids” video posted for Day 15.
“This is not something that you see avenues for education all over the place,” said Barbara Wehn, one of the program’s first group of participants.
From all indications, she has been successful in educating her three daughters to look past people’s differences, in contrast to the attitudes she heard being expressed while she was growing up in Philadelphia.
“From my own perspective, I look at where my father was and the discussions I had with him, and the way my children are, and I feel like, oh, things are getting better,” she said. “And then you see something like what happened to George Floyd, and you see all the tension that’s gone on over the past year. And it makes you scratch your head and say, maybe we haven’t come as far as some of us hope to think that we have.”
Floyd’s Memorial Day death while in police custody sparked renewed attention on the continuing racial divide among many Americans.
“I lived in London for seven years, and this is not on anybody’s radar over there. I ran a business for my ex-company, and the candidate pool to pick from was so diverse,” Peters Township resident Jocelyn Lynch said. “The history of the U.S. and the things that have taken place here versus other countries, I think, has caused some challenges.”
She is a member of the Peters Township Year of Kindness Committee, the group that organized the Racial Equity Challenge as a virtual community involvement activity following plans for most of 2020 being scotched because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Peters Township is not the most diverse of communities out there. However, I think it’s always important to show folks that you may not be a diverse community,” Lynch said, “but your kids are going to colleges, and these are things they’re going to be faced with. And they should have a better understanding of different cultures and different backgrounds.”
Joining her on the Year of Kindness Committee are local residents Minna Allison, Maggie Cameron, Sue Deegan, Stacey Jones and Amy Petro, along with April Ragland, Peters Township School District assistant director of pupil services.
After participating in the challenge, Peters Township Middle School English teacher Renee Brown made an offer to Ragland.
“If we’re interested in trying to figure out ways to integrate this into our curriculum, I’d love to sit on a committee to help,” she said.
As an educator, Brown is committed to learning more about the subject and imparting it to her students and beyond.
“Those of us who are involved in this clearly are a little bit more passionate than other people,” she said about the challenge’s participants, “so where do we go from here, either on a personal level or as a committee at the community level?”
She does not view the program as simply having someone be able to say, “I checked this off my to-do list.”
“Some people are in a position where they either don’t have a voice or it’s dangerous for them to speak out,” Brown said. “So those of us who are in a safer space, even if we can do something quietly like this 21-day challenge, little things do make a big difference.”
Jim and Becky Berquist also are among the challenge participants who have had substantial interaction with people of different cultures and in different countries, including their sustained support of St. John’s Anglican School in the Central American country of Belize.
“They all get along,” Jim said about the general national attitude. “There’s intermarriage that has been going on for many years. Our kids were exposed to that early on.”
And they must have taken heart: Becky reported their adult children and other relatives as being in marriages and relationships involving partners of a variety of races, nationalities and religions.
“I think we’ve taught them not only to talk the talk, but walk the walk,” Jim asserted.
Not only that, the younger members of the Berquist family often provide education for their parents as far as relating to others.
“They call us out. We try so hard to be very careful, to not say anything or think anything, but because of the way they think now, they’ve opened our eyes even more,” Becky said. “We taught them a certain way and they’re teaching us back, how to even be better.”
As was the case with her husband, Becky’s upbringing fostered in her a mindset of acceptance.
“Both my mom and my dad believed that we should treat everybody equally,” she recalled. “He always told us that we weren’t better than anybody else. We were more fortunate, more privileged, maybe better educated, but we weren’t better than anybody else.”
Her children, she said, own up to the privileges they’ve experienced.
“They’ll say, ‘What kind of problems did we have? What kind of obstacles do we have in our lives?’ You could have means girls at school or you didn’t start on the football team, but they have not had those kinds of challenges, and fortunately, they’re very appreciative of that,” she said.
The Berquists are impressed with the scope of materials compiled by Year of Kindness Committee members for the Racial Equity Challenge.
“That takes a lot of time and effort on their part,” Jim said. “They deserve the accolades they’re getting, because it’s all sensitive topics, and to present them in the way they did takes a lot of work.”
Looking ahead, Minna Allison reported the committee remains active and plans continued community involvement, including open discussions via Zoom March 24 and April 14 regarding the Racial Equity Challenge content.
“We hope to have some speakers in the future and hopefully some in person meetings when permissible.”
For more information about the Peters Township 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge, visit ptyok.org/racial-equity-challenge.
Day 1: Race & Equity
Day 2: Understanding Bias
Day 3: Systemic Racism
Day 4: Racial Literacy
Day 5: Talking About Race
Day 6: Expanding Perspectives – Asian-Americans and Latinos
Day 7: Expanding Perspectives (continued) – White, Black, and Native Americans
Day 8: Privilege
Day 9: Exploring White Privilege
Day 10: Exploring Unconscious Bias
Day 11: Respecting Cultural Diversity
Day 12: I Have a Dream
Day 13: Words Matter
Day 14: Racial Microaggressions
Day 15: Take Notice
Day 16: Being an Ally
Day 17: Responding to Everyday Bigotry
Day 18: Continuing the Conversation
Day 19: Choose to be Purposeful
Day 20: Be an Upstander
Day 21: Building a Race Equity Culture