PAGE Comments (at the end) on the recent assembly by Reggie Jackson, presented to the Middle and High School students:
“PAGE is pleased that the Middle and High School students finally got to hear Reggie Jackson’s presentation on “Participating in a Multicultural Democracy,” which had been delayed almost a year due to Covid-related concerns. We heard from students and parents that the content of the presentation was challenging and did not soft-pedal our community’s and our country’s history of racism. While the follow-up has obviously varied somewhat due to educators’ comfort level and familiarity with this topic, feedback on students’ experiences in the discussion circles has also been broadly positive.
This was the first iteration of Greendale schools’ commitment to “yearly assemblies in every school dedicated to anti-racism.” Obviously, the delay could not be helped, but the fact that this important component of the Greendale Welcomes Diversity Action Plan is now almost a year behind schedule adds further urgency to this goal. Additionally, Mr Jackson’s presentation was also not accessible to students in the elementary schools, and any substitute content for them should nonetheless still meet the key criterion of educating students to be actively anti-racist. If students of color are old enough to experience racism – and we know they do, even in our schools – their peers are old enough to be educated on how to prevent it in themselves and others. Let’s inculcate a sense of anti-racist community in our students from the very beginning, and equip them to live in the Multicultural Democracy that Mr. Jackson encouraged their older peers to work towards.
We hope to see this intentional conversation around anti-racism continue and increase at all levels. While obviously this initial presentation necessarily focused primarily on the historical foundations of racism in our community, we hope that future work is more directly focused on how students can become anti-racist members of their school and local communities. Now that students know how racism is based in and created by the historical choices and policies of their predecessors, they need strategies to help them address and combat the racism they encounter in their communities today.”