“If you’re a parent who is tired of having your child learn about race and identity through the mixing of Neapolitan ice cream, playing dress-up with national costumes, and absorbing the same handful of sanitized historical facts every single Black/Latino/Native American/Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, Anti-Racist Parent is for you,” says author Carmen Van Kerckhove, head honcho and co-founder of New Demographic.
I’ve been trying to recruit Carmen onto our Shaping Youth advisory board of media dynamos; she’s funny, irreverent, and unabashedly candid, with a fabulous handle on media and marketing’s impact on children as it relates to people of color.
Carmen’s a workshop trainer, media expert on race (and a variety of ‘isms’!) and also an editor at BlogHer. (which is how I first found her, via my favorite blogspot, “Have Fun, Do Good”) so this über-busy media guru is hard to snag except perhaps on high speed film.
Her newest entry into the blogosphere, Anti-Racist Parent, follows on the heels of “Racialicious!—When Race and Pop Culture Collide” which I’ve now been following for quite some time. So as we say in the biz, this is a ‘teaser’ of what’s to come from a lengthy Shaping Youth interview with Carmen.
We tackle the impact of reality shows (here’s a video clip of Carmen discussing the Survivor Race Edition madness and acknowledging the uh-ohs when 6 million people tune in to stuff like the Flavor of Love, (spin-off just ended) tokenism, interracial relationship stereotypes, diversity-speak, media slurs, political correctness and more.
Meanwhile, here’s her FREE eBook download (11-pg PDF file, scroll down to end of page) called, “How to Be an Anti-Racist Parent: Real-Life Parents Share Real-Life Tips” which features stories and advice from readers and contributors to her blog.
Check out her site’s beliefs, fascinating podcasts (recent one here on “celebrity adoptions”) and array of articles, bouncing between her many endeavors. Then stay tuned for a challenging look at racial imagery, Shaping Youth.
I really liked your article. My compliments!! Thank you!