Talking to Others:

Responding to Racial Joking & Teasing

Download slide deck to share with students

Lesson Objectives

Students will be able to:
  1. Describe the negative effects of racial joking and teasing on themselves and their peers
  2. Identify an approach they can take to respond to others’ racial joking and teasing

Learning Standards

  • LfJ 11. Students will recognize stereotypes and relate to people as individuals rather than as representatives of groups.
  • LfJ 13. Students will analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world, historically and today.
  • LfJ 17. Students will recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice, or injustice.
  • LfJ 19. Students will make principled decisions about when and how to take a stand against bias and injustice in their everyday lives and will do so despite negative peer or group pressure.

Learning Activities: If you have 15 minutes

Greeting:

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Reading:

Explain to your students that a research study on racial joking and teasing among adolescents found these types of interactions to cause spikes in teenagers’ anxiety, even when they knew their friends were only joking. 

Read the full study

Ask Students:

  • What does this research study get you thinking about?

Initiative:

Ask your students one or more of these questions (developed by Harvard professor Adriana Umana-Taylor and her colleagues):
  • How would you feel if someone said something hurtful to you about your ethnic-racial group but said it was a joke?
  • Can you see how some people may not think that’s funny?
  • What is underlying these jokes?
  • What kind of environment would we like to create in the classroom?
  • How can the joke affect people who hear it?

Learning Activities: If you have 45 minutes

Initiative:

Define active and passive racism for your students.
Can they think of their own examples of active and passive racism?

Ask Students:

  • How might you respond if a friend or classmate was making a joke involving racial stereotypes?

Have students put their possible responses on the board or flipchart paper. 

Ask your students what types of responses they came up with? (i.e. upfront communication, private communication, getting help from others, etc.).

Learning Activities: If you have 2 hours

Initiative:

Consider these Racism Interrupters (offered by a non-profit called From Privilege to Progress)

Ask Students:

  • Which of these responses is most similar to your own? 
  • Is there another approach here (that you didn’t originally think of) that you might consider using?

Initiative:

Share with your students the suggestions for responding to racial microaggressions offered by Dr. Derald Wing Sue at Columbia University, one of the leading experts on  racial microaggressions.

Ask Students:

  • How do these suggestions fit (or not fit) into your own thinking about how to respond to racial joking and teasing?

If possible, identify an upcoming real-life opportunity within your school or local community where students can take on one or more of these citizenship roles (see Slide 24 for an example)

Debrief (Slide 15):

  • What did you like about today’s lesson?
  • Did you learn anything new about yourself or anyone else?
  • What could make it better?
Back To Top