Interrogating the “gold standard”: Play-based early childhood education and perpetuating white supremacy

Abstract

This article examines the role of play-based early childhood programs in perpetuating or interrupting messages of white supremacy which murder the spirits of Black children while reinforcing a sense of entitlement in white children. We ask educators to consider what children’s play might look like if pro-Black teaching and anti-racist teaching that develops children’s critical consciousness around race were explicit, foundational, and daily in ECE classrooms - in contrast to the norm that is Eurocentric and uncritical. We do this recognizing that early childhood settings can be spaces where learned anti-Blackness can be either interrupted or, in our silence, allowed to grow, influencing children’s play as well as the dispositions they take into adulthood. In contrast to free-play as a universalized “gold-standard”? in ECE, we propose playwork as a means for educators to engage with children during play--and within the context of an activist and critical curriculum--to support children’s growing abilities to understand and respond to justice and injustice in a racialized world.