“Accept your students with compassion while also holding to the evidence-based truth about race and racism.”

Controlling the tone of difficult conversations is never easy. And yet, it’s especially critical when helping  students gain new perspectives on race. Cyndi Kernahan cites research that shows that making students feel blamed or guilty only leads to backlash, not learning or attitude change (5). Rather than being confrontational, … Read More

“It’s one thing to know a lot and to have experienced a lot, but it’s quite another to know how you feel about what you’ve observed and lived.”

We can’t assume that all novelists who create likable characters are likable themselves, but I imagine that Richard Russo is. In this collection of essays, he is warm, funny, and self-deprecating – traits that characterize many of the people in his novels. For example, he tells us about the classmate … Read More

“You have been cast into a race in which the wind is always at your face and the hounds are always at your heels.”

When this book was published five years ago, Toni Morrison famously predicted that Coates will fill the intellectual void created when James Baldwin died.  Now, seeing this book back on bestseller lists made me wonder what Coates thinks of Baldwin’s legacy. In a May 2020 interview, he said that … Read More