Black Lives Matter. Here’s What We’re Doing to Make our Classes and our Organization Actively Antiracist
/Wow. What times we are living in. Our hearts are with you, whatever you are grieving or fearing; whatever you are celebrating, if not the way you had hoped. We’re wishing you all a happy pride month; rest assured it doesn’t take a big glittery rainbow parade for us to be proud of all our beautiful LGBTQ siblings and all of their courage, resilience, and joy. We are especially proud of all those activists and organizers centering the movement for Black lives in this year’s pride celebrations: none of us are free until all of us are free.
The New Rainbow Pride flag redesigned by Daniel Quasar in which five arrow shaped stripes of white, pink, light blue, brown, and black at the image’s the left side are placed upon the traditional red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet striped rectangle.
Our hearts have also felt called to respond as health educators to the public health crisis that is racism in America. That’s why we were so honored to have a longtime client school contact us last month about creating a new anti-racism program for their students, in response to current events. We developed and delivered these new workshops during their last week of virtual classes, to really positive responses, and we are eager to share it with a wider audience!
Surprised that your favorite local sex-ed nonprofit was the org to call to drop some antiracism education on a group of teens? We weren’t--our program offerings until now have focused on human sexuality, but our diverse team of facilitators has extensive training and years of experience in anti-racism/anti-oppression work as well—and we have always included justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion content in sex-ed workshops.
The intersections of all our identities play out in all of our interactions and relationships; providing students with vocabulary and historical context to understand racism and oppression is as critical to healthy communities as teaching consent and condom use.
Click here for more information on bringing our antiracism programming to your school or group!
Beyond new curriculum content, More Than Sex-Ed is committed to an ongoing assessment of our company’s practices, both in and out of the classroom, to do our part to dismantle oppression, systemic racism, and white supremacy.
Black Lives Matter. Here’s what we’re doing.
Our sexual health education classes explicitly address the many ways racism and bias impact health. It comes up in plenty of places: media messaging, maternal health, body image, power in relationships.
Our team of educators has training in facilitating these kinds of conversations; we won’t shy away from them.
Having a diverse teaching team is a high priority for our company; so is compensating them all fairly. So is not asking our employees of color to take on extra work around educating our white employees on issues of race.
We caution students against calling the police. This might come up in a class talking about domestic violence or sexual assault; whatever the context, it is deeply important to us to educate teens—especially white teens—that the consequences of calling the cops can be fatal. Especially for people of color.
More Than Sex-Ed’s team has a rich history of activism in our personal lives, but this month it seemed important to share what we as an organization are doing, publicly and professionally, in the work for racial justice. We share the grief and outrage that so many of you have voiced, and we are deeply grateful for all of the hard work being done by so many activists, organizers, artists, and educators to build safer, healthier communities.
Schedule a Phone Call to Discuss School Program Options
RESOURCES FOR PARENTS, CAREGIVERS, AND EDUCATORS
We want families to have as many tools as possible for having positive, open conversations that educate and share values. With that in mind, we have freshly updated the resource recommendations on our website, organized by age, full of fabulous books, videos, and websites to explore! Check it out here.
There is also a treasure trove of links, advice, resources, and fun ideas on social media to keep inspiration coming all summer long. We are really enjoying the vibrant exchange on Instagram right now. Here are some of our favorite follows:
These are all organizations that recognize the intersections of race and sexuality, so for parents who are looking for support with both of those kinds of conversations, you’ll find lots of useful materials! If you’re looking for content targeted specifically at racial literacy, and/or that speaks directly to the Black experience, here’s a roundup of some additional social media accounts and experts that are definitely worth checking out.
