What is "race literacy?" | Milagros Phillips | TEDxPeacePlaza

Summary

Milagros Phillips argues that Americans should be taught race literacy alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic. She defines race literacy as understanding:

• The history of race.
• How people are socialized into a racial caste system.
• The systems that maintain race as a human divide.
• How these histories and systems shape current events and individual lives.

Phillips connects this argument to her own experiences. As a child in the Dominican Republic and later in the United States, she learned about slavery through histories that emphasized oppression but left out much of the knowledge, status, and skill of enslaved Africans and their ancestors.

She also recalls how classmates could absorb the same history in different ways: she felt its oppression, while white classmates could absorb it through an unspoken sense of superiority. Her point is that historical omissions—and the ways history is taught—shape how people understand themselves and one another.

Phillips places this in a broader account of American history, describing the removal of Native Americans from their lands and discrimination against groups including Irish and Italian immigrants, Chinese workers, Japanese Americans, Jewish people, and Mexicans. She argues that racial illiteracy can make oppression visible in some cases but harder to recognize when it is obscured by privilege or by the loss of community, wealth, and power.

Why race literacy matters

Phillips says race literacy matters across many areas:

• Education: Separating the histories of African Americans and Native Americans from “American history” can imply that their contributions are unimportant.
• Healthcare: Racial understanding can affect how providers communicate with patients and whether they consider intergenerational or historical trauma. Phillips cites research documenting racial and ethnic disparities in care.
• Organizations: Race can shape hiring, firing, mentoring, workplace policies, and business outcomes. Phillips argues that diversity can support innovation and strengthen organizations.
• National policy and the economy: Race can affect who runs for office, who receives funding, and how laws are made. Phillips cites a report connecting systemic discrimination and the earnings gap to economic costs.

Phillips distinguishes race from biology—she says there is one human race and one human family—from racism, which is real and affects everyone. She argues that becoming race literate can help people understand the past and present and work toward a more equitable society.

How Phillips says to build race literacy

• Read more, including histories that are often left out or separated from the broader national story.
• Ask questions and remain curious.
• Engage in conversations about race rather than avoiding them.
• Take interpersonal risks and accept that mistakes may happen. Ask for pardon and keep engaging.
• Build new friendships and spend time in different places and communities.
• Stay open to new possibilities and perspectives.
• Take personal responsibility for challenging separation and helping create a more equitable society.

Phillips warns that silence is harmful and urges people to consider what they can do immediately to increase their race literacy.

Speakers and sources featured

Speaker: Milagros Phillips

Sources Phillips mentions:

• The Institute of Medicine: A study requested by members of Congress in 1999 on racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.
• The Washington Post: A February 2017 article about diversity in Silicon Valley companies and its potential effects on their bottom line.
• Altarum Institute: A report released in November 2013 and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, concerning systemic discrimination and the economic effects of the earnings gap.

No other speakers are identifiable in the subtitles.