Meet Jyoti. DEIB content and engagement consultant
I analyze and make media for social good, especially to create equity and belonging in spaces for children and youth of color. As we know, discrimination occurs when parts of our cultural identity and physical appearances are viewed as ‘different’ or Other. Key among them is skin color, a facet that propagated social practices in nearly every community of color across the globe, each with its ‘origin story’ and nuances.
My intersectional and simple framework, The Continuum of Belonging™ centers skin color through the lens of ‘global colorism’ (1) and aims to center ‘dark children’ (2) and youth in U.S. schools.
My initiative, The Colo(u)rism Project invites you to raise our voices against systemic practices that ignore, enable, perpetuate, protect, glorify, and exploit age-old, practices that dehumanize others. I believe this will create a safe, healthy, respectful, joyous, and equitable environment in our homes, schools, and communities.
Join my DEIB community!
Make art for literacy!
Access a free anti-bias, skin color-related activity for your class, art room, library, or home? Link below.
Ready to Think?
What words, ideas, concepts can help us communicate with children? New ‘Think Class’ coming soon.
Are you an upstander!
Help grow the anti-colorism community. Amplify my work and introduce me to co-conspirators.
Email Jyoti →
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jyoti is a DEIB content and engagement consultant working with PK-5 teachers, caregivers, content makers, and their communities. Her independent book, Different Differenter: An Activity Book about Skin Color has been included as a specialized K-2, anti-racist resource on or in Social Justice Books, Rethinking Schools’ planner, and McGraw-Hill's Wonders, a cultural competency curriculum for educators. Mainstream inclusions include Drew Barrymore IGTV, Yahoo!Life, The Washington Post, and The New York Times Wirecutter.
Jyoti is the founder of The Colo(u)rism Project; a former TEDxWomen (2012) and Jaipur Literary Festival (2017) speaker; and an occasional article writer. She holds an MA in Media Studies from The New School University and an MA in Liberal Studies from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, both in Manhattan. She has a BFA in Applied Art (Visual Communication) from the Delhi College of Art, in India, where she worked in mainstream advertising before moving to the U.S. She currently lives in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, with her 9-year-old son whose most recent feedback is that she is "overdoing the [discipline] lessons."
Dixon, A. R., & Telles, E. E. (2017). Skin color and colorism: Global research, concepts, and measurement. Annual Review of Sociology, 43(1), 405–424. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053315
Love, B. L. (2019). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Beacon Press.