By Kate Adler, Director of Library Services
On Wednesday, February 23rd, we continued our 3-part (and 3-month!) celebration of Black History, Culture, and Life. This was a student-led, roundtable discussion. No headliners (besides you!) and no agenda. We opened the floor to a conversation about race and parenting. Students shared personal stories of their children encountering racism in school and how they help navigate systems, teachers, and feelings.
Our conversation did not have an agenda, but it did have a starting point. Dani McClain’s book We Live for the We. McClain is an award-winning journalist focused on race and reproductive health. We shared a description of the book with everyone, and we used it as a jumping-off point to talk about what came up for everyone. The text we responded to conveys the power of McClain’s work:
In We Live for the We, first-time mother Dani McClain sets out to understand how to raise her daughter in what she, as a black woman, knows to be an unjust — even hostile — society. Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy or birth than women of any other race; black mothers must stand before television cameras telling the world that their slain children were human beings. What, then, is the best way to keep fear at bay and raise a child so she lives with dignity and joy?
What do you think? What does this quote bring up for you? Feel free to share your thoughts with us! Library@mcny.edu
