When is it appropriate to talk about racism with children? Is talking about racial injustice divisive? Shaunna and Lisa are tackling these questions and more this week, as they discuss this type of coded language in DEI work.

The history, and the way that it is taught in North America especially, has been shaped through the lens of whiteness. The full story of our history has not been told, because the ones that have been telling the stories, writing the text books, and teaching our children have predominantly been white folks creating a narrative that centres whiteness. Those that feel that the truth about our history of slavery, racism, and oppression is too divisive view these others narratives as implicating white people as the villians.

But what do folks really mean when they say “divisive”? Lisa and Shaunna explain that perhaps this is a coded way for those folks to indicate that, as white people, they do not want to be held accountable for things that happened in the past. They may be unwilling to face the discomfort that comes with facing this history, and use coded language as a distraction from actually doing the work to change how we shape our historical narrative. It is important that those of us who are engaged in this work start to swim against the current of coded language and behaviors that try to depict telling a fuller story of history as divisive.