{"id":3921,"date":"2020-05-01T08:27:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T12:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=3921"},"modified":"2020-04-21T15:20:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T19:20:23","slug":"shifting-perspectives-from-they-to-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2020\/05\/01\/shifting-perspectives-from-they-to-we\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Perspectives From \u2018They\u2019 to \u2018We\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Adelaide<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photo by Jennifer Korman<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Adelaide Lancaster \u201902 began seeking out fellow white parents who would share her interest in facilitating family discussions about race. A year later, she opened registration for her new St. Louis\u2013area nonprofit called We Stories, which uses multicultural children\u2019s books as a springboard for those conversations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lancaster wondered if she would have many, if any, participants. \u201cOur community was blanketed in silence,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t have any sense [that people were] longing for something different.\u201d But, within the first 48 hours, 80 families with 120 children signed up. \u201cIt was exhilarating,\u201d says Lancaster, who co-founded We Stories with Laura Horwitz. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt taught me a valuable lesson that it is impossible to interpret silence,\u201d Lancaster says. \u201cPeople often assume it means disinterest or opposition. Some people have been conditioned to be silent around the issue of race. But silence also can mean, \u2018I\u2019m stuck and I don\u2019t know what to do.\u2019 Until we actively invite people to participate and give them opportunities that make sense to them, we can\u2019t count them out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past four years, 930 families representing more than 100 ZIP codes have accepted the invitation to join We Stories\u2019 12-week Family Learning Program. It provides families with resources to drive their conversations, connections to like-minded families, and opportunities to add their voices to racial justice pursuits so that they will become a force of positive change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Stories\u2019 tagline is \u201cRaising Big-Hearted Kids.\u201d So far, more than 1,500 children, from birth to 8 years old, have participated in the Family Learning Program, and thousands more have participated through the organization\u2019s partnerships with regional schools and libraries.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lancaster wasn\u2019t much older than them when her third-grade teacher sparked her interest in racial equality. \u201cMrs. Hamilton was the only black teacher at my predominantly white private school, and she was ahead of her time in her diversity efforts,\u201d Lancaster says. \u201cI had the opportunity early on to be part of conversations that were explicitly about race, particularly in settings with a great amount of privilege.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Ferguson shooting happened, Lancaster \u2014 a fairly recent transplant to St. Louis \u2014 found herself revisiting those conversations. \u201cI always considered myself to be someone who cared about antiracism work,\u201d Lancaster says. \u201cBut, to be honest, there was no way to tell me apart from any of my neighbors on my all-white block. I had a 4-year-old daughter whom I had never talked about race with. I took that time to challenge myself to show up differently, as a member of our civic community but also as a parent.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When protests erupted in St. Louis in September 2017 over the acquittal of white police officer Jason Stockley in the fatal shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith, a black man, Lancaster and fellow We Stories families were prepared to show up. Some protested for the first time in their lives. Others wove the protests into the ever-richer conversations they were having at home with their children and beyond \u2014 conversations that continue to this day.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese shifts in how we think about race, and what that means in terms of our responsibility past and present, happen on a daily, bedtime-story-by-bedtime-story basis,\u201d Lancaster says. \u201cOnce we give our children this knowledge, they are the ones who hold us accountable.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Jennifer Korman Following the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Adelaide Lancaster \u201902 began seeking out fellow white parents who would share her interest in facilitating family discussions about race. A year later, she opened registration for her new St. Louis\u2013area nonprofit called We Stories, which uses multicultural children\u2019s books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1210,"featured_media":4172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[544,262,100],"coauthors":[424],"class_list":["post-3921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-updates","tag-advocacy","tag-justice","tag-race"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-11f","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/05\/640A9798-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3921"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4174,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions\/4174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3921"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}