Phew, what a week.
As we all entered a new year, we were reminded straight away of the reality that racism, injustice, and anti-Semitism are not things that a new year just washes away. Instead, these are parts of our society that are very much alive and well, and on Wednesday of this week marched into the capitol and violated and endangered our nation.
As a person of color, this week was particularly difficult. Seeing the confederate flag, the nazi symbols, and the assortment of other hate symbols among the raging mob was emotionally difficult and scary. The other even more difficult part of handling my own emotions was handling how to talk to my child about what had transpired.
We've heard this echoed back to us time and time again in the days that have followed from other parents via DM, texts, calls, and comments - "What do I say to my children?" Although we do not have many answers and our goal here at Ditto Kids is to empower kiddos and their families to be anti-racist through tools like our magazine. We felt that sharing a few things that have helped us could also help many of you who were looking for a place to start this very tough conversation.
As a parent, you always know your child best and know what levels of conversation and explaining they are emotionally and developmentally prepared for, so always center that within any suggestions we might give.
We'll be sharing a post next week from one of our favorite momma's touching on how to talk to kids about this last week's events, but today we thought we'd share a simple thing that gave us a good starting place for conversation within our home—books about protest.
We started with books about protest because we wanted to draw the distinction between what we observed at the capitol and the concept of protest as a whole. Our kids have been well aware of what protest means through the lens of Black Lives Matter and protests from the era of Jim Crow. Still, they had never seen anything like what happened at the capitol before under the name of protest and for that reason getting back to basics and allowing them to lead the conversation through these books felt like a really good start for us.
So to that end, we rounded up a few of our favorite books on righteous protest that would be great additions to any anti-racist home, and that helped lead us through this moment at home.
1. We March by Shane W. Evans
2. What can a Citizen Do? by Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris
3. Let The Children March by Monica Clark-Robinson
4. The Youngest Marcher by Cynthia Levinson
5. Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights by Rob Sanders
6. No Voice Too Small by Lindsay H. Metcalf
7. Sometimes People March by Tessa Allen
8. A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara
*an additional book on protest that is excellent but probably skews more for older children is the March trilogy by Congressman John Lewis
We hope you are all staying safe and feeling loved this weekend and we hope that these books help as you navigate this really hard path as parents.
- The Ditto Kids Team