Overview: The following is a conversation between Lynn Burnett, Jeremiah Redwood, and Menno Schwartz, about their curriculum “Deliberate: White Anti-Racist Ancestors for White Youth.” They began designing “Deliberate” in 2024, and working with a team of amazing friends and colleagues, hosted their first gathering of White youth (preschool through high school) in 2025.

In that first gathering, White youth learned from the legacy of freedom rider Joan C. Browning, who was in attendance. In July of 2026, the second gathering focused on the great cultural organizer, Zilphia Horton, of the Highlander Folk School. This discussion took place shortly after that second gathering, with Lynn interviewing Menno and Jeremiah while they lay under a tree on Menno’s front lawn.

Deliberate curriculum website

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Lynn:  Menno, can you tell us about the genesis of this project, back in 2019?

Menno: In May of 2019, Raising White Kids happened. But I want to start 25 years before that, with Lynette Stallworth and Melanie Morrison. The cohort that was there with Raising White Kids would not have been there if Melanie Morrison hadn’t been organizing antiracist White people for 25 years. And Melanie had been doing that because a Black woman told her that White people need to do their own work… and of course Black people for generations have been telling White people to do their own work.

 Lynette agitated Melanie, and then Melanie and her mother Eleanor organized White people for 25 years in and beyond Michigan. And because of that, we had a cohort of caregivers who came to East Lansing in May of 2019 to be in community with Jen Harvey, around her book Raising White Kids.

 What we realized beyond a shadow of a doubt at the end of that gathering was that White people trying to work for racial justice needed models of White people who had gone before, and that there were moments from White antiracist history that we could draw on in the raising of our own children. That we could draw on for strength, for nourishment, for connectivity through time. All of us could name peoples of color, communities of color who had been in the racial justice struggle in this country. We could name those histories, but not our own. People in that room were like, “We need our own histories of resistance, to teach our kids.”

And it was everyone in the room. This project is in direct response to that clear ask from that community, from that moment in May of 2019… and because a Black woman was smart enough, 30-plus years ago, to agitate Melanie Morrison into creating the base that later asked for that resource.

After the gathering,  Jen Harvey and I struggled to figure out where we were going to create the resource. And then… Menno, Lynn, and Jeremiah had some ideas! We started out with 10 White antiracist figures to help kids explore, and decided to narrow it down to 5. And that’s what we’ve got right now, stories and curriculum around 5 figures, being created at the Stead Center.

The project is called Deliberate because Joan C. Browning, who’s one of the ancestors that we’ve profiled, said the socialization of White children into movements for racial justice doesn’t happen by accident… or, as she said, “it don’t come natural.” You’ve got to be deliberate. So we named the project Deliberate: White Anti-Racist Ancestors for White Youth.

Joan C. Browning, Anne Braden, Zilphia Horton, James Zwerg, and Stanley Levison: those are the five we’ve profiled, and have developed a scaffolded curriculum for pre-K to seniors in high school. For example, pre-K and K have coloring pages, music, and movement to go along with those figures. First and second grade have read-aloud books. Third and fourth grade have an activity that’s a geography lesson and a history timeline lesson paired up with a flash card meets tarot card kinda deal… it makes sense when you see it. Middle schoolers have first-person monologues, and high schoolers have video shorts, scripts about the lives of these people that can also be facilitated with discussion questions connected to those scripts.

Lynn: I want to stick with the genesis of this for a bit. Going back to the White antiracist parents who gathered, and universally said:  ”We need our White children to have White antiracist role models.” What made this so important to them?

Menno:  Because we don’t come into racial justice movement as people of color. Our engagement is specific to our lineages and inheritances of Whiteness. We bring it with us to the movement. We are people who have descended from Europe, who are on a continent that has a caste system according to skin color – because many of our ancestors created that system – that delineates the value of human life and has us at the top of that hierarchy.

And so there’s this structural advantage that we carry in our history and current reality, but also all of the lies and mythology around our superiority,  that we really have to work through in order to show up in racial justice movements well. We’ve been somatically conditioned to enact White supremacy, and because we’ve had that conditioning, we need role models of people who have been inside that conditioning themselves… and who have made choices for racial justice, so that we can start to see some of the patterning that liberates us from that conditioning.  

Lynn: So all of these White antiracist parents really wanted this project… and yet it was hard to get off the ground. What were the stumbling blocks to getting this started?

Menno: Well, we had started organizing the project, but then the organizations we were working with told us they didn’t have the capacity to hold it. When that happened, we lost a lot of momentum.

And to be real – and this is not to blame anyone – there were struggles around believing in the project, staying connected to the project, and being willing to really show up with time, resources, and energy to support the project… from the very people who originally asked for it. It’s not the only arena in my life where I hear White people say they want something when it comes to racial justice, and then when it’s right in front of their face, they don’t step up. And I think it’s because we don’t feel the same level of urgency around transitioning our lives away from White supremacy that other groups of people in this country do.

It’s also important to name that funding is always a struggle. There’s a lot of contested space around funding racial justice White people work of any kind, about not wanting to put resources toward a group of people that have the most resources already.

Lynn: Yeah. I’ve seen so many White people who are committed to organizing White people for racial justice struggle with discomfort when it comes to funding the very resources they need to fulfill that task. It’s a stumbling block that’s prevented us from building a stronger White antiracist movement. The great irony is that if we actually did fund the resources needed to organize other White people, by bringing them into the struggle, we’d be bringing their funding in as well… which could then flow into Black and Brown led racial justice efforts. 

Jeremiah, I want to jump over to you. What’s your own genesis moment with this project? What were your initial thoughts about it?

Jeremiah: I was invited into Menno’s home, to help tutor their children during the pandemic. This was before the vaccine, when all the kids were online. We started to create what would become “Pod School.” My memory is that we were in the basement, and that [looking over at Menno] you started telling me about Lynn’s work. In my memory, you said something like: “So I know this archivist. His name is Lynn Burnett. He’s got this amazing website. He’s been doing all this research. I’ve been wanting to fund him for years. I just want to give this man money to do the work that he’s doing, and I think the work that he’s doing could form some of the foundation of a curriculum for White kids so that they could learn about antiracist ancestors.”

 That’s how my brain is choosing to remember it right now. And then Menno was like, “And I think that you could be a really important piece to this, because of your work with kids.” And I was, and am, amazed and honored as I continue to be whenever Menno invites me into projects. Because it’s very powerful to be seen for what you offer. At that point, we were just like, “Let’s keep dreaming about this.” That was one of the beautiful things about the pod experience… we were all in that house together with the kids. With a new baby. We were microdosing village.

In this pod, we had White kids, and we had kids who were mixed. And it’s important to name that I’m mixed.  My mother is White, my dad is Black. I’m light skinned to the point of White passing, and the majority of people who interact with me assume that I’m White, but I was raised and nurtured by Black people and in the love of Black people. That feels like an important context to name. In this curriculum, I have a stake in this as somebody who is half White and, as we’ve grappled with the role of mixed kids in this curriculum, there have been some deep conversations.

Lynn: After Menno approached you with the project and you both began dreaming, how did your own thinking develop around the importance of White antiracist history for White kids?

Jeremiah: Well, being a mixed person, and having gone to many antiracist trainings and having developed an analysis with my Black communities, my White communities, my mixed communities… to be blunt, people of color are carrying almost the entirety of the weight in these antiracist struggles. And that means the progress towards racial justice not only gets slowed… it gets stuck.  There is White work that only White people can do, or even know how to do, and it’s not happening and we’re getting stuck.

For Black people, in that great diversity of the African diaspora, we had these outside forces of oppression pushing us together, and we became a people. We created beauty, and we created music, and we created an ability to be alive and breathe because we had to. Because we were being enslaved. We were being murdered. People were stealing our children. We became a people, because of all the pressure from the outside.

 White people have a very different struggle, which is that we don’t fucking have to. We don’t have to become a people, and so we have not. We actually actively gave up who we were and where we came from and how we were together, to become White.  And so this curriculum is important to me, because it feels like an opportunity to start to create some modeling for White kiddos and kids with Whiteness, to be able to get to know what it is to be a White person.

What I really want from this curriculum is for White people to get to start to unlearn and slow down enough to become people. Which is why learning about White antiracist ancestors has such value, because they’re also just people. They’re not heroes up on some pedestal, they’re people who did great things but also struggled and were imperfect. When we see their humanness, we can learn about our own.

Lynn: When I think of the importance of White antiracist history, part of what feels important is that it gives White antiracists some roots. Roots help you grow. They’re a source of nourishment.  I’m wondering if we could think more about why White kids need those roots, and how this history can nourish them.

Jeremiah: One thing that comes to mind is the allegation that teaching about antiracism makes White kids feel bad. That it makes them feel ashamed to be White.

 It’s far too easy and convenient for those of us on the left to say, “That’s bullshit.” But I think that’s a cop-out. I know White kids who feel ashamed, after learning about slavery, just like I’ve felt shame. I wish those kids could have adults in their lives to say, “I’ve felt that too. But it doesn’t have to stop there.”  

We don’t have to stay in the shame, and it’s not that we avoid the shame either. Our emotions are messages for me, to me, about me. When I think of having White antiracist ancestors as a form of rootedness, is what the roots do for a tree. Roots bring you the nutrients so that you can keep growing. I think we do ourselves a disservice in somehow believing that shame isn’t a part of that growing.

I think having access to these antiracist ancestors shows us that antiracism isn’t something you just do once, but is a practice, a way of being. It is a verb. Once you stop verbing, it’s not happening anymore.

Lynn: I would just add, that one of the things I’ve tried to portray in these histories is that antiracism is a beautiful way to live your life, as a White person. And that it’s an emotional journey, an embodied journey, and that people grow, and that some of those hard feelings can actually be excellent compost for growth and for health and happiness, if we treat them with care. I think it’s so powerful for kids to see the emotions at play in these figures… and to then use that as a way to reflect on their own emotional experience of engaging with racial justice as White people. 

Jeremiah:  I appreciate you saying that, because it makes me think of one of our high school sessions, where there were some youth expressing dismay at the bigness of racism. Like, “Is this all on me?” And one of the adults in the room, a White man, said, “You know, I felt that way for a long time.  And now I wake up in the morning energized… because I get to choose justice each day.” He told them that some of what he went through as a White antiracist was hard, but that it was worth it… because his life is richer now.

As I’ve worked on this curriculum, part of what I’ve tried to keep in there is that this is deeply personal. That we’re learning about a person’s life, not so we can do what they did, but so that we can learn about our own lives.

Lynn: To return to that allegation you mentioned, that antiracism makes White kids feel bad, and specifically how that’s used as a rightwing tool for dismantling racial justice efforts. Any thoughts about how White antiracist history combats that narrative?

Jeremiah: One of my hopes is that this curriculum can help decouple Whiteness from White supremacy. There are so many ways to be White, including being White and engaging in resistance. I think that when we show that, we help clarify that antiracism is not anti-White, but anti-White supremacy.

I also want to add that these stories, these roots, can help White folks feel like we belong to antiracism. And that’s important for so many reasons, but one is that the right is so good at claiming White people, and saying you belong here. Meanwhile, we on the left need to see that one of our greatest specialties is tearing people down: “No, don’t do this. Not like that.” Without ever having this embodied, White yes. Yes, this is how we do this. Yes, this is who we want to be. And not just a yes for people of color… a yesfor ourselves.

I see what we’re offering in the curriculum as a kind of medicine, in the belonging department. Too often  when White youth are in White antiracist spaces, they learn quickly that they are about to have to open their arms to hold all of the bad things other White people have ever done, and that’s just overwhelming. That’s where these allegations from the right have a kernel of truth. We can’t leave our White youth in that position.

That’s also partly why it’s so important in our curriculum that we’re also helping kids have experiences. Like, Zilphia is all about freedom singing, and hospitality. So we’re not only going to learn about her, but the whole experience we just had together, the whole vibe was of singing freedom songs, and dancing, and laughing and eating together. Showing kids that it’s not only discomfort.

Lynn: What’s coming up for me is that the right has done a good job at taking advantage of our shortcomings. And by being better at hospitality and belonging, we not only support our youth and build stronger communities, but in doing so we deprive them of that advantage.

And I want to emphasize that in these stories, in this curriculum, there’s a lot of modeling for kids. Including a lot of modeling about all these things – modelling what belonging looks like, modelling what it looks like to be in a racial justice movement as a White person, modelling how to do that while caring for one another.

Jeremiah: I want to say here that to get this to the kids, we also need to support the parents. So as the kids are taking their workshops, we’re offering spaces for the parents to take theirs. And the kids have their readings, but the parents have theirs too. And the facilitators aren’t just people who can hold space, but people who have been on this antiracist journey themselves.

Lynn: I want to shift to a big question. We all understand that we can’t take on White supremacy without organizing White people for racial justice, and shifting White American consciousness. The three of us here who launched this whole project also believe that we can’t seriously shift Whiteness in this country, if we’re not raising a White antiracist generation… and we believe that to do that, kids need to be raised with White antiracist role models.

The kids are important. Given that importance, how do we account for the lack of focus on how we raise a White antiracist generation of kids… a lack of focus from within the very communities committed to the principle of White people organizing other White people for racial justice? Why has this not been a priority? It strikes me as a massive strategic failure. And I feel like we need to understand what accounts for that failure in order to fix it.

Menno: The first thing that I would say is that White supremacy distorts people’s understanding of what children are. So part of the reason is racism. And number two, I think some of it is adultism.

Not to put SURJ on blast, because I love their work, and I’ve been part of SURJ for a long time. But just for example, on the last call I was on, they were pushing for base-building across the country. But when I followed up with the programming, there was nothing for young people. So, we’re not bringing the young people with us. And if there’s nothing for the young people, a lot of parents can’t attend. And parents… I mean, parents are invested in the future in a major way. So you’re not just leaving out adults, but you’re leaving out adults who have a very powerful stake in wanting to create a better world for their kids. Even when there is support for kids and parents in our White antiracist spaces, it’s often just plugged in as an afterthought.

Jeremiah: Why this tremendous blunder? I think part of it is that as White antiracists, we’re new here. We’re learning. We’re fucking up. We’re stuck in perfectionism. We want to get it done fast. Whereas you look at the Black freedom struggle, there’s a wealth of wisdom in more long-haul thinking and action.

Lynn: To jump in on that long-haul comment, of course that’s part of how I see the importance of raising White antiracist kids. But it also brings up the structures we need. Are we creating the institutions, the cultures, the communities, the things that allow freedom to persist, for our values to not disappear, and for the next generations to thrive?

Menno:  We have to consider White kids ours in the first place. This is a problem I see all the time. For example, my kid went to a predominantly Burmese preschool, and they had programming for Burmese kids all summer long. There were a couple White kids, and a couple Black kids in the program.  But that program is for Burmese kids, because Burmese people know who their children are. They’re like, “We are a people. We have a culture.  We do things together.  We want Burmese children to come here and be nurtured by the we.”

 I do not think White people as a block look at White children as ours.  I cannot tell you the number of people that have been like, “Wait, you’re doing a program just for White kids?”  As if those aren’t our kids, as if we are doing something that’s just about segregation, and not intentional intergenerational affinity work. You know who is not afraid to organize White kids, and White boys in specific? We all know where that leads: Dylan Roof, Kyle Rittenhouse, those dudes with the Tiki Torches in Charlottesville. 

Look, I get it. It’s hard to fathom those people are our kids. It’s part of a larger and profound ambivalence inside of White people about us belonging to each other in the first place – because of what we did to get here. As a result of that ambivalence, we don’t know who our kids are and how we want to raise them inside of us, as a people.  We don’t know how to hold each other.

Lynn: Anything else we should say about this curriculum before we wrap up?

Menno: Yeah. Part of what this curriculum offers is straight-up coaching. Like,  ”If your kid is 5, do this. If your kid is 12, do this.” And that means not just, “Here’s how you talk about it,” it’s also, like, at this age, kids are really starting to understand that there are cultural differences, and if you want to break through White supremacist conditioning, you need to introduce them to spaces that are predominantly people of color and people of color led. Or, at this phase of development, kids are starting to understand intersectional realities, and they need adults that they trust to be able to talk about how those things connect to each other. And so on.

We have models both of racial identity development, and of children’s development. Their cognitive development, and their social development. We’ve thought critically about the adults who are in the kids’ lives as parents and caregivers, but also the facilitators of this material.  Jeremiah did a great job of breaking things down around age facilitation practices.

Jeremiah: I would also add something about next steps. We’re going to be training people to become facilitators of this curriculum, so you can wrestle with this curriculum yourself. We’re aiming to create many access points.

Menno: And I would add that our materials can be adapted into so many different environments. So I could see these happening in faith communities, at summer camps, at SURJ gatherings, and community centers and homeschools. 

I also want to say that it’s critical that we’re in multiracial networks, and this curriculum is not something for White people to do in isolation and then think that’s it. This is very much affinity work, and affinity work by itself is not enough.

Finally: if you are a person who interacts with youth, and you want to structure something that’s explicitly antiracist for White kids and kids who are mixed, and that helps them reckon with their Whiteness… we’ve got you. And we’ve got you pre-K through 12.

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