STEPPING UP AGAINST RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA (SPARX) Project

(2021 - present) with Dr. Deborah Rivas-Drake & SPARX Team

A lot of people have been having thoughtful conversations about racism and xenophobia with friends and family recently. Parents and teachers have told us that many recent events have brought these topics up in their households and in schools, events like the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement, the increase in anti-Asian hate with the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-immigrant laws, and more. Our team realized that there are many people who are ready to have these hard conversations about racism and immigration with the youth in their lives but don’t know where to start. And others others who are already doing it are looking for more opportunities to keep learning.

Our team has looked at (and contributed to) decades of research on the ways adults teach youth about ethnicity and race in age-relevant ways, otherwise known as ethnic-racial socialization. Hundreds of studies tells us how it crucial it is for young people to have adults who can support them to recognize and resist racism and xenophobia. We also know that parents and educators who want to talk to young people about racism find it challenging for lots of reasons. To create this website, we wanted to learn more about what makes these conversations so hard and what people need to make them easier. So we interviewed 62 parents of 3-17 year old children and 26 K-12 educators across the country. We spoke to people who are from or work with Asian/Asian American, Black, Latinx, Multiracial, Native American, and White communities.

Adults need opportunities to learn from their own experiences so they can in turn support the youth in their lives. Their lives are also busy and complicated! They told us they want a rich but easy-to-navigate menu of options for learning. They want different types of resources that they could read, watch, or listen to and at different entry points to a bigger conversation.

With insights from researchers, practitioners, caregivers, and community co-designers in mind, we designed the Stepping uP Against Racism and Xenophobia (SPARX) Project. This is a theory- and evidence-informed website that has free, publicly available resources as well as a curriculum with structured learning modules. We hope these carefully curated resources will help adults feel confident in having conversations with the youth in their lives and keep growing their ability to recognize, respond to, and disrupt racism and xenophobia wherever they encounter it.