Early Childhood Racial Identity – The Potential Powerful Role for Museum Programing

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) approaches conversations on race with young children and their families and teachers. Based on our current understanding of the development of racial identity and race in children between birth and age eight, NMAAHC has developed an Early Childhood Education Initiative with young children and their families, and a series of Let’s Talk! Dialogue on Race workshops for teachers. NMAAHC’s education specialists leverage the museum’s collection and content as a concrete starting place to discuss abstract concepts such as race and identity. Staff development programs also include a focus on young children and approaches to supporting self-care to enable our long-term effectiveness in addressing the emotion charged and contentious issues of race and racism.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• race
• racial identity
• positive identity development
• selective exposure
• museum

About the authors

Anna Forgerson Hindley is the early childhood education coordinator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her work focuses on positive identity development, combatting racism and prejudice, and introducing African-American history to young children in age appropriate ways.

Julie Olsen Edwards is the co-author of Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (NAEYC 2010), has served on the Board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and has been chair of the Department of Early Childhood Education at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County, California. She has written, consulted and lectured widely on raising healthy, courageous and compassionate children in a highly diverse and inequitable society

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Julie Olsen Edwards http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6490-6424

Notes

1 This section, on children and their development of racial awareness draws primarily from the work of Derman-Sparks and Edwards, Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves; Derman-Sparks and Ramsey, What If All the Kids Are White?; Cross, Shades of Black; Van Ausdale and Feagin, The First R. The developmental frame regarding young children's cognitive development and the impacts of social thinking on that development is rooted in the work of Piaget, “The Growth of Logical Thinking”; Piaget and Cook, The Origins of Intelligence in Children; Bronfenbrenner, Making Human Beings Human; and the new research by Gopnik and Meltzoff, The Scientist in the Crib.

2 Shaffer, “Early Learning,” 11.

3 This section, on the museum's approach, draws primarily from the work of Derman-Sparks and Edwards, Anti-bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves; Derman-Sparks and Ramsey, What If All the Kids Are White?; Cross, Shades of Black; Van Ausdale and Feagin, The First R as the foundation for understanding child development. Additionally it pulls from the research and work of Killen and Rutland, Children and Social Exclusion, developmental psychologist and Professor of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland, and Dr Erin Winkler, “Children Are Not Colorblind,” University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Africology Department. It is grounded in best practices in museum education based on the work and research of Hein and Alexander, Museums Places of Learning; Falk, “An Identity-Centered Approach”; Falk and Dierking, Learning from Museums; Shaffer, The Museum Connection.

4 Winkler, “Children Are Not Colorblind.”

5 Bowers et al., “Museums Providing Opportunities for Promoting.”

6 Keats, The Snowy Day.

7 Ella Baker: African-American civil rights and human rights activist. Lyrics from “Ella’s Song” by Sweet Honey in the Rock based on Baker’s writing.

8 Reach Advisors study Wilkening and Chung, Life Stages of the Museum Visitor.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by PepsiCo.