Well I am not Black (I am Mexican), but work with Black youth, and work to have Latinos and Blacks come to a common understanding, some tips:
-STOP the divide and conquer mentality! I work with kids from Chicago who have ancestry in Chicago and the South, but alot also have ancestry in Jamaica, Haiti, Nigeria, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cuba, Ethiopia, etc. Parents should STOP teaching their kids that just because people are different they are 'stupid', 'backwards', or 'crazy' (Yes, I've heard their parents say this); this also goes to the embracing of others outside the Black Diaspora.
-Learn multiple languages! People (especially Americans) don't seem to know or appreciate how much learning another language helps you in understanding others! Some of my kids have made an effort to learn Spanish and can communicate with the Latinos in the classes, some of the kids who speak French Creole or French have been teaching me, I must say I've gotten better
-Parents, BE IN THEIR LIVES!!!!! Some of my kids say they don't want to go home because all they end up doing is sitting in their room without mom and dad around them to entertain or read with them!
-Learn your history! Learn it well! Black History month is at most 29 days long, but extend the Black history learning beyond that, know there are FAAAR more historic Black figures than Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., and Jackie Robinson; though I was impressed with one of my kids (whose Grandma obviously taught him at home), when he started spitting out info about Gwendolyn Brooks, Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes
. Parents PLEASE teach history, an UNBIAS version too...some of the kids starting telling me about Muhammad Ali's conversion to Islam, he went on to say "my mom said Black Muslims are bad people they just wanna kill everybody"
Needless to say his teacher had to talk to his parents.
-KNOW WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE WATCHING AND WHAT THEY IDOLIZE! Sorry, had to capitalize cause this is a big issue with my kids...Flavor of Love/Charm School girls, I love NY guys, are nowhere NEAR being Model Citizens for anybody!
So many of my girls have been imitating the fights on the show talking about "I like Bootz cuz she tell it like it is"
Parents, you know dang well that these shows aren't for 8 year olds so PLEASE keep them away from the tv.
-Read outside of school!
-Have kids in some kind of college prep ethnic program! I think this is vital! Many of my fellow 1st generation minority classmates, have gotten spooked from going to a PWI, especiallt if they come from an All-Black or All-Latino upbringing, they feel scared that they cannot make it because they don't see anyone like them and don't know anyone back home who has completed college. My parents put me in a college prep program (a program for dominantly low-income families, most of the students were Black/Latino); it was SO helpful! I got to see students, graduates, professors of Color who helped me on inside tips of surviving college, plus seeing that people of Color on both sides of the desk (administration and students) that actually looked like me and came from the same side of the tracks as me
-Embrace Class diversity! Again with the divide and conquer, I had the same issue freshman year of college, when most of the other latinos were from middle and upper middle class backgrounds and I came from the hood, know I was green with envy! However, as I got to know em better they were real cool kids, I probably wouldn't want to know them had we not been members of the same student orgs on campus. Being hood or being from the burbs does not equal how Black or White you are!
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