Annotating Informational Text and Literary Non-Fiction in ELA

Annotation in action – Excerpt from the Vox article

The idea of anti-racism has been getting a lot of attention in recent days as Americans around the country rise up against police violence. But the idea is far from new, with roots in decades of civil rights work by black Americans, (what are some examples that can be pulled from history to support this piece of information) said Malini Ranganathan, a faculty team lead at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center.

In recent years, thanks to the work of Kendi and others, the term itself has come to be used to describe what it means to actively fight against racism rather than passively claim to be non-racist. Anti-racism involves “taking stock of and eradicating policies that are racist, that have racist outcomes,” Ranganathan said, “and making sure that ultimately, we’re working towards a much more egalitarian, emancipatory society.”

Part of that work is acknowledging our own positions in a white supremacist system (what are ways that I can be more aware of my position?). So I should acknowledge that I am a white woman, and as such, I can’t talk about what it feels like to experience racism, or to fight against it as a person of color. (As a Brown woman, I can talk about how it feels like to experience racism, but I can’t generalize and expect that to be everyone else’s experience as well). But it’s also not the responsibility of people of color to fix racism, or explain to white people how not to be racist. As Dena Simmons, a scholar and practitioner of social-emotional learning and equity and author of the upcoming book White Rules for Black People, put it, “Don’t ask the wounded to do the work.”

So I spoke to experts on the topic to help people — including myself — better understand what anti-racism means and what it looks like in practice. “White folks always want to know how they can do better,” Simmons said. “I say, start by doing something.” (where can I look more into how to do something? What does that look like).