About

Cards on Race is a dynamic tool designed to help people examine race in a thoughtful, structured, and engaging way. The deck allows users to develop racial literacy, empathy, and the healthy racial coping strategies needed to navigate our everyday world and our most challenging conversations about race. The deck inspires learning, healing, understanding, and collaboration through fun activities, deep reflection, lively discussion, and creative practice. They are the perfect complement to any diversity, equity, and inclusion program.

We believe that increasing racial literacy and developing healthy racial coping strategies are critical steps toward building equity, empathy, understanding, and inclusion. All of which are critical for healthy communities. 

How They Work

There are no right or wrong ways to use Cards on Race – be as structured or free-flowing as you like. Accessible to beginners and the advanced, the deck and the curriculum are designed to adapt to your evolving needs. By encouraging discussion and reflection on race, Cards on Race helps to fight the brain block that usually accompanies attempts to engage with race. Each Cards on Race deck contains over 300 cards. Card types include:

Activity Cards  to facilitate structured reflection, discussion, and collaboration.
Key Concept Cards with important racial literacy terms to promote learning and to inform the discussion, 
Topic Cards to help users articulate and specify the issues important to them.
Feeling to help users express the social and emotional impact of race. 
Strategy Cards to help users develop their approach to navigating race and community-building. 

Activity Cards

Each activity is designed to help users examine race through different lenses and ways of thinking. The cards inspire us to examine our notions through storytelling, case study analysis, discussion, and structured reflection, to name a few.

Key Concept Cards

When discussing race, it is essential for us to be precise in our language. We need clear definitions for the words we use. Key Concept cards promote understanding by providing the critical vocabulary needed to increase racial literacy. The cards also provide a common language to center the learning.

Topic Cards

Topic cards help users to articulate and specify the issues important to them. They can also be used to identify the themes or issues at play during activities, reflections, and discussions. These cards represent the things you want to discuss related to race. They also help unearth issues of race that are unseen or under appreciated.

Feeling Cards

Feeling & Reflection cards help users express the social and emotional impact of race. Issues of race are complicated, as are our feelings about them. Use these cards to identify and express the range of feelings that resonate with you or your team about race in America.

Strategy Cards

Strategy cards help users develop healthy approaches to navigating conversations on race, resolving racial conflict, and engage in meaningful community-building. Use the strategy cards to build stronger racial coping  self-efficacy, and to figure out which strategies work best in particular contexts.

BUT NOW

Cards On Race are available to purchase at the link above.

About The
Creator

A school and educational leader for over 15 years, Jackson Collins, ED.D., graduated from Amherst College and received his Master’s in Education Leadership from Columbia University. Jackson earned his doctorate in Education & Organizational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a proud alum of Prep for Prep. Jackson has presented his research at several national conferences and prominent universities. He has presented at the National Partnership for Educational Access Annual Conference, the National Association of Independent Schools People of Color Conference, the Ethnography Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, the Winter Roundtable at Columbia University, and at independent schools around the country.

The idea for Cards On Race came from some of the findings from his doctoral study on the experiences of students of color who attend predominantly white independent schools. One of the significant findings of the study was that the students wished they had the vocabulary and strategies to process racial encounters (and the feelings connected to these encounters) in the moment, after the fact, for themselves, and with others. They also wished their peers and faculty possessed the same racial literacy or capacity to process race deeply. Outside of his research, Jackson has also found a similar desire for practical approaches to understanding the complexities of race in other parts of our society. In particular, in a broad range of workplaces, university settings, and within families.