Photo: Alex Leung
In 2016 Jasmine Cochrane, her husband and their two daughters, decided to move to China and start teaching there. In China, with a 91% Han Chinese population, she knew she would likely be the first black person her students would meet. So she thought carefully about how to teach black history, not only about slavery but also other historical issues and events, to her class. Nevertheless, she was challenged by some of her students, because of her racial origin and because they could not believe some of the actual stories of black people's remarkable accomplishments that Jasmine presented. However, after lockdown ended and students were back at school, she found that something had changed. Her students wanted to know if she had heard of Ahmaud Arbery and, later, if she had heard about George Floyd. This opened the possibility of real dialogue. One of her students even wrote: "The young generation is not going to stand for this. The revolution starts with us."
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