It was hard to ignore the events of summer 2020 that re-ignited important conversations around racism. The murder of George Floyd, a Black man, in the USA by white police officer Derek Chauvin impacted on us in a multitude of ways depending on our own lived experiences and our proximity to the direct impact of racism in our own lives.
Working in the early years, our experiences with hearing stories like this can sometimes seem disconnected from our practice. The wider discussions about racism in the media and perhaps with our family and friends could have positioned conversations about race as contentious, difficult, or not nice. It may seem that these conversations always end up making white people look and feel bad by reducing them to a soundbite that all white people are bad and all Black people are always victims. This is a myth that needs to be dispelled because it is reductive and inaccurate. I believe there needs to be a reframing of discussions about race and racism which are much more nuanced and specific, especially in relation to the early years sector.
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