Connecting to Racism, Antiracism, and You

Activity Overview

Having students choose a favorite quote or scene from the book allows them to express which parts of the story resonated with them on a personal level. In this way, students are making a text-to-self connection that demonstrates their understanding of the characters and their development or the themes of the novel. Students can share their storyboards afterwards and have a short discussion about what the quotes mean to them.

Some students may end up choosing the same quote, but have different perspectives. This is always interesting for students to see and can open up a discussion as to how not everyone can read the same lines in the same way based on their own perspectives and personal experiences.

Examples of Quotes from Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

“A racist idea is any idea that suggests something is wrong or right, superior or inferior, better or worse about a racial group. An antiracist idea is any idea that suggests that racial groups are equals."

"In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a thirty-three year old delegate to the Second Continental Congress, sat down to pen the Declaration of Independence. At the beginning of the declaration, he paraphrased the Virginia Constitution and wrote 'All men are equal.'

Bears repeating. All men are created equal.

Say it with me. All men are created equal.

But were slaves seen as 'men?'''

"But you know how death is. Your body goes, but your ideas don't. Your impact lingers on, even when it's poisonous."

"All of you [young people] deserve to know that you are in fact the antidote to anti-Blackness, xenophobia, homophobia, classism, sexism, and the other cancers that you have not caused but surely have the potential to cure."

"Scrolling will never be enough. Reposting will never be enough. Hashtagging will never be enough.... All of us have to fight against performance and lean into participation."

"The antiracists try to transform racism. The assimilationists try to transform Black people. The segregationists try to get away from Black people."

"Let’s learn all there is to know about the tree of racism. The root. The fruit. The sap and trunk. The nests built over time, the changing leaves. That way, your generation can finally, actively chop it down."

"[Cotton and Mather] built churches in Massachusetts but, more important, they built systems. The church wasn't just a place of worship. The church was a place of power and influence."

"Still, no one would publish her. I mean, those eighteen men knew she was brilliant, but none of them were publishers, and even if they were, why would they risk their business by publishing a Black girl in the midst of a racist world where poetry was for and by rich White people?"

"When it came to Black people, Jefferson's whole life was one big contradiction, as if he were struggling with what he knew was true and what was supposed to be true."

"When we think of Abraham Lincoln, we think Honest Abe, black suit, white shirt, top hat, beard. The Great Emancipator (hmmm), one of the best, or at least most, -known and -loved presidents in America's history."

"But the root of his exceptionalism, his excellence, came from his being biracial. It must have. According to one of Du Bois's intellectual mentors, mulattoes were practically the same as any White man."

"It would be up to Black artists to show themselves. To write and paint and dance and sculpt their humanity, whether White people liked it or not. Whether White people saw them as human or not. And they didn't see them as human."

"Malcolm X's death rocked the Black antiracist followers, especially the ones populating urban environments. He'd instilled a sense of pride, a sense of intellectual prowess, a sense of self into many. "

"All sorts of different minds engaged with Black Power. Separatists, pan-Africanists, and everything in between. Black Power even appealed to the face of the civil rights movement."

"Segregationists are haters. Like real haters. People who hate you for not being like them. Assimilationists are people who like you, but only with quotation marks. Like…’like’ you. Meaning, they ‘like’ you because you’re like them. And then there are antiracists. They love you because you’re like you.”