“We recommend our community rethink placing the onus on children, as this lead sentence conveys: ‘In Asheville, Black students have lagged behind their white counterparts in literacy for decades, according to test scores over time,’ and instead acknowledge the systems at work that push children to the margins.”
“Although it takes conscious effort and practice, these simple changes in our language make big shifts in our community of Asheville, which must also work to reconcile our own legacy of slavery.”
“We are writing this because we believe that we all should change the way we speak about slavery.”
“Upon reading an article from The New York Times and the 1619 Project, we realized that the use of the words slave, slave owner and plantations are dehumanizing to the descendants of enslaved people and continue the institutional racism that was propagated back then to justify slavery.”
