ABSTRACT
Young Black lives matter is a term the author has borrowed from the Black Lives Matter movement that was started in response to the 2012 non-guilty verdict in the shooting and death of Trayvon Martin. In this chapter, the author unpacks and examines the complex understandings and multiple layers of race and how race directly relates to school readiness discourse. Different discourses on race have emerged, including: color-blind discourse and other race ideologies, White discomfort/White fragility, race and meritocracy and race as it relates to socio-economic status. The findings reveal the complexity of the issue of race and how it directly relates to the classification/identification process of school readiness in young non-White children. The discourse, based on meritocracy, continues to perpetuate a color-blind discourse because the child's skin color has nothing to do with the child's success or lack of success in school.
