Ferrai Pickett understands that building an inclusive community isn’t accidental: It’s intentional, and it starts with children.
Pickett brought her Stand Up to Hate play date to the Riverside Public Library on Saturday, June 6, to promote inclusion through education.
The event was created and hosted by Pickett, who has 15 years of experience working in childcare as a private nanny, and offers a format kids enjoy that also shows parents how to continue the conversation at home.
“My mission is to teach children’s families how to be socially, emotionally and mentally equipped to handle the world,” she said. “I’ve worked for majority white families, and for the past five years, I’ve brought my African American children with me, so I’ve been able to see where the disconnect is happening in society.”
Pickett said the play date, which she hosts multiple times per year around the Chicagoland area, focuses on books, toys, music and food that teach children about the kinds of differences people can have — from skin tone, sexual orientation or gender identity to hair texture or the configuration of their family.
“[I focus on] teaching our children intentionally why another kid’s skin color is different from theirs. Intentionally teaching them why some people speak different languages. Intentionally teaching them about how colorful the world is, so when they do step outside of their social bubble, they are more equipped,” Pickett told the Landmark.
“Ferrai is one of our patrons. She comes in the library with her children and the children from Riverside that she watches, so I’ve known her for a while,” said Nora Durbin, the manager of the library’s children and youth services. “She came to me a while back and told me about these Stand Up to Hate play dates that she has done before in the city and expressed an interest in bringing it to our community. I told her that we would be happy to help in whatever way.”
Pickett said she works to ensure that all facets of humanity are represented in her events so that kids can learn about different groups before they have a chance to cause harm by accident through ignorance.
“I’m a field expert in being Black. I’m not, per se, a field expert in being Jewish,” she said. “I work personally one-on-one with a lot of LGBT+ organizations trying to amplify the voices of the marginalized. We’re living in times where we’re all being silenced, and unity is what brings us together.”
Pickett said the event series first took shape earlier in her childcare career, when a white family she was nannying for received a hateful and racist letter concerning her employment.
“[The writer] wanted me to know that I was enslaved, [the family] were my owners, and I was an infestation in their community,” she said. “The beautiful people that I was working for at the time were like, ‘We don’t want this to just be about the letter. We need to respond.’ I called to action a community play date [with] balls, bubbles, snacks. We wanted all the kids to play together to say the neighborhood doesn’t agree.”
Pickett said she has been intentional about educating her own children on the diversity of the world, which she uses as a model for the way she structures her play date events.
“[My daughter’s] library at home has an LGBT section. She has a Black section, an immigrant section. I want her library to be as diverse as the world,” Pickett said. “If I can do this in my home, why can’t other people do this in their home? I know other people aren’t doing this in their home because I’ve been in these homes.”
She said her efforts have also been inspired by seeing the effects of racism on her daughter in a classroom setting where she was the only Black child.
“We were watching ‘Wicked’ one day, and when Elphaba walks on campus, and everybody moves away, and Glinda says, ‘You’re green,’ [my daughter] was like, ‘Mama, I feel like that,’” she said. “A lot of people don’t know that it’s a problem because their kids don’t interact with kids outside of them until they get to school age — maybe elementary school, maybe high school, but most definitely college. By then, there’s probably been some damage done.”
Despite the importance of her work, Pickett said she most enjoys interacting with families and seeing her influence on them. One example came on Saturday, when a white child won a raffle for a doll based on the Disney movie “Wish,” whose protagonist is biracial and wears box braids, she said.
“I got a text from her mom that was like, ‘I really enjoyed the event while I was there, but now I can see why you do what you’ … Her daughter immediately went to brush the doll’s hair, and she had to explain to her daughter, ‘You can’t brush braids,’” Pickett said. “Oftentimes when it’s a birthday or Christmas, you’re not always picking up a doll that doesn’t represent your family … When you open that door, and you buy a toy that does not look like your child, it opens a safe place for conversation.”
