A statement about learning, racism, oppression and how we define our role
The following is a statement obviously related to the events taking place in the United States at the moment. Many of the things we discuss are part of how we decided we wanted to run Deliberate Travel a long time ago. However now seems an appropriate time to show up for others, acknowledge that all lives don’t matter until black lives matter and to make a commitment to being better moving forward.
We set up Deliberate Travel to teach kids more about the world – all of it, not just countries they’ve heard of.
We want to emphasize the joy, beauty and power of every country and culture around the world, to make sure children don’t grow up having never heard of Uzbekistan or thinking of Africa as a continent rather than a multitude of countries and cultures. We don’t want to avoid difficult histories or wash over discrimination and oppression. We believe that children are perfectly capable of understanding complexity, so long as it is talked about in age-appropriate language.
We are aware that as two white Europeans we have a lot to learn about our own privilege and the oppression and discrimination of others, in our own countries and in other places. Creating resources that teach about oppressions while still making enjoyable, interesting workbooks that children will come back to, involves walking a fine line. Sometimes we’ll get it wrong. We hope our community and the community that we hope to build will help us with this, providing criticism and guidance where necessary.
Actions we’re committing to immediately:
We’re taking the next week to read about intersecting oppressions and the complex role of educating others while still learning ourselves. We will also be taking advice from advocacy organizations about how best to proceed with this, and make cultural sensitivity an integral part of our process (we’re also aware that many cultural advocacy groups are currently overwhelmed, so this process will take time).
We are taking down a page from our Australia workbook which involves an activity related to Aboriginal dreamtime. Stories of the Aboriginal community should not be shared without asking and we didn’t ask. We will replace the activity with something more appropriate until we have had the opportunity to discuss addressing Australian Aboriginal issues with expert communities.
We are brainstorming our processes for how to make sure we take the perspectives of local people and subject matter experts into account when creating our workbooks going forward. This is a complex process. We do not want to take up unpaid time of minority groups (although we’re not currently in a place where we can pay anyone, including ourselves), but also want to ensure they are included if they want to be. We’re considering how to achieve this best.
We are well aware that the idea of a culture as monolithic and unchanging is not realistic. However we want to use Deliberate Travel Kids workbooks to open perspectives. We do not claim that DT workbooks represent one single truth and we will endeavour to make that clear to the children we teach.
We are still committed to making fun, exciting, educational workbooks for curious children and to help them learn about the world. Although the work of encouraging cultural diversity and removing white supremacy is serious, we believe there is room for activities for children which emphasize joy in diversity, which is one component of a complex change that needs to be made.
This is a permanent change, not a temporary one. We need to do a better job of creating materials which are respectful, culturally sensitive and do not exclude the perspectives and work of the true experts – people from these cultures.