UIUC prof helps parents teach their children about racism, white supremacy

A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will train parents on how to teach their children about systemic racism and white supremacy. 

The university’s official news service reported that social work professor Kevin Tan will discuss “parenting in the current social and political climate” and examining “the impact of the 2020 U.S. presidential election on young people’s mental health” in a series of parenting seminars, promoted by the university. 

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One session discusses “parenting within white supremacy culture.” Another addresses the role of social and emotional learning “in healing racial wounds” and “the importance of parents’ nurturing their children’s social and emotional development when discussing issues of race and racism.”

The description for the seminar series, which is entitled “Bold Conversations: Racial Healing With Social and Emotional Learning,” explains that the group’s hope “is for parents to walk away with insights and ideas, to feel comfortable helping their children navigate the current cultural and political climate.” 

Accordingly, the conversations will cover “White Privilege and Power,” “Racial Constructs and Identity,” “Social and Emotional Learning,” and “Microaggressions and Implicit Bias.”

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Tan is collaborating with students, parents and teachers in two schools in the ASPIRA of Illinois system in Chicago. His project is funded by a $60,000 faculty collaboration grant from Illinois Extension — the “flagship outreach effort of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, offering educational programs to residents of all of Illinois’ 102 counties.”

ASPIRA of Illinois exists “to empower the Puerto Rican and Latino community through advocacy and the education and leadership development of its youth.”

Tan is also working with the Mahomet-Seymour Community Unit School District on “race relations and equity initiatives.” His project is funded by another $45,000 grant given to the school district.

National Association of Scholars Director of Research David Randall told Campus Reform that Tan’s efforts are “part of a broad trend of critical race theory proceeding from higher education, by way above all of the education schools, into K-12 education.”

“It will teach children with a natural taste for cruelty and enforcing conformity that they have job opportunities as teachers, human resources staff, and other enforcers of social justice ideology,” he explained. “It will teach the passive and the pliable that they must lie loudly and abusively to get along in life. It will teach children who love liberty and education that they can expect neither in their school.”

Campus Reform reached out to Tan for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft