Creating Multicultural Unity and Racial Equity Through Genetic Research
Help me give my students primers and reagents for performing Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) so they can investigate if race is real from their own DNA!
$308 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
Our students come from every corner of the world. My students are all English Language Learners (ELLs), and are a microcosm of Queens: they speak over a dozen languages and come from more than 20 countries. The racial reckoning of the past year has been especially meaningful for them, as they are often subject to the effects of systemic and sometimes overt racism.
Like all young people, they are aware that race is important in our society with very real negative impacts on livelihoods and health.
They want to know about race and how it works, and I want them to have the science to support their exploration.
My Project
With the reagents I am requesting, my students will test and compare their DNA, DNA of teachers and community members, and sequences available online.
By comparing real DNA from people of different "races" they can test their misconceptions about relatedness and otherness, and see that skin color or eye shape is no predictor of what is in our genes.
Our students' diversity is a true asset in this work because their classmates will be used to test their questions: are Chinese students more similar to one another more than say, Dominicans, or will their white teacher have DNA similar to other Europeans or to people from the Asian sub-continent?
Using the tools of the scientific method, students will be able to see that race is something people ascribe to one another to maintain unfair power structures and prove that race has no basis in our genes or DNA. This is a powerful revelation as we debunk genetic arguments that have been made about race superiority or inferiority. In reality, we all have more in common than divides us. We are all one human race.
Please donate and help my students say hashtag ISeeMe in the fight for more racial equity and in the biological careers they can access. Thank you!
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Min Hye and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
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