How to Talk to Your Kids About Race

How to talk to your kids about race is all about how to talk about the uncomfortable subject of race with your children. With recent events unfolding following the death of George Floyd this is the opportune time to talk to your children about race. We all wish we lived in an ideal world where we didn’t have to talk about differences in skin color, intellectual ability, sexual orientation, or anything else.

The sad reality is that if we don’t talk about these things without our children they are going to pick up on the biases and feelings of their peers and other adult influences in their lives. This may not be the appropriate messages you want your children to hear and you might be surprised by the biases they already have. Studies show that children start to categorize people by the age of 3 according to physical attributes. This means that you need to start talking about racial equality young.

I am white, and I know that I have white privilege that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I am still proud of who I am and the culture that I come from, I also honor the cultures of everyone else and wish to celebrate them together. Although I hold these progressive ideals if I don’t talk to my kids about race they are not going to be apart of the solution in this country. I want to have children that are a part of the solution and build a better future.

So how do I talk to them about this? It’s so uncomfortable and I don’t want them to be afraid of police officers and I don’t want them to feel superior or inferior to others. With all those things in mind I came up with a couple of ways to talk to them about race in a kid-friendly manner that they will understand what I am saying and they are not afraid to come to me when having questions about race or bias or anything really.

Media

If you are going to talk about race, it is not going to be a one-off conversation. Most like anything else you are discussing with your children such as substances, sex, or anything else of importance it is a continual dialogue. A way to start a conversation about race and other topics is when watching media with your children. If you are watching a princess movie talk about the characters and their race. Ask them why they think the way they do. Admit that it’s okay to have a bias because we all have them. Talk about how bias affects people and how it makes them feel.

Watch sports and talk about how most of the athletes are black but the team coaches and owners are predominantly white. Talk about why this disparity might be. Have an open and honest conversation about race. If your child is of toddler age keep it simple. Point out the difference (which they already see) and talk about how wonderful it is to have differences in people.

How to talk about violence?

The next question is how to talk about current events with your children. They are inevitably going to be affected by recent events. Either through seeing protests, or adults talking about it around them. If you are uncomfortable about talking to them about the violent situations in recent events that’s okay but you must do it anyway. Just like I said before, you don’t want your children to be getting the wrong messages and you are the only person who’s influence is greater than any other.

If your children are older school-age it is appropriate, to be honest, and talk about the things that actually happened. You can watch the news together and talk about race, talk about how this makes them feel. Talk about how it makes you feel and what we can do together to make things better.

If your children are pre-k and young school-aged it is better to talk about police brutality and violent racism by using terms like they were mean to them. They hurt them badly, etc. Their concept of death isn’t permanent which is age-appropriate so them knowing that they hurt their feelings can be just as egregious to them. As they know how it is to have hurt feelings and how painful they are. To talk frankly might make them fearful, which is not productive right now.

When talking to my girls about this I said that George Floyd got hurt badly by police simply because of the color of his skin. We talked about how it hurt a lot of people’s feelings and everyone is angry because it was unfair. I asked my oldest if she had questions, she said she had one.

Curious to see what my little girl would say, I took a deep breath and was ready for anything. She said, “my only question is, don’t they know that we’re all human?” I laughed because it’s so evident that children are not born to hate. It was comical that the simplicity of the solution in her mind was to just let them know that we are all human. It brought a tear to my eye.

Additional suggestions for anti-racist reading for children.

How to talk about bias?

Bias is inherent in all of us and it’s okay to have. As humans, we learned bias evolutionarily long ago to learn what was a threat to us. We saw a bear and we saw what it could do, we then became afraid of all bears (which look the same). Now we don’t have bears attacking us, but we have the same brains. So we take messages from around us that affect our bias. I grew up and still live in a rural area of central PA. It is predominantly white here and I had not seen or really interacted with anybody of any diversity until I was older.

This lead to a bias of me being scared of different races simply because I had not known them. I didn’t understand why their hair was different or why they talked differently. It was easy for me to be afraid because I was uncomfortable with their different cultures. The wonderful or maybe weird thing about me is that I am insatiably curious.

So, when going on a mission trip to Philadelphia with my church we had a guide who was black and from inner-city Philidelphia. She was so nice to me and sweet. I asked her so many questions about race, that I use to look back and feel embarrassed. Her responses were honest and she talked about her culture. She was the best thing to happen to me at such a formative age. I am glad that she was patient with 12-year-old me and answering my questions. The fear of unknowing I had, became the knowledge of my friend in Philadelphia.

I am not perfect, I have coworkers that laugh at my inability to understand their hairpieces. Which is fine, and pretty funny. But I am able to admit that I am not of that culture but I am curious about it and want to support it.

Another resource for bias https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race

History

Another great way on how to talk to your kids about race is to talk about the history of race in this country. Most schools have whole units of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My daughter brought home a scholastic catalog home this year. I asked her what she learned and she told me that he was a nice man. Which in her defense is true. I also talked to her about race and what he did for race relations.

This was a great opportunity but there are so many other times that you can talk about our history other than on MLK day or black history month. Talk about it when there are debates around racist or confederate statues. The truth is that there is a long and terrible history in this country. Another good time to talk about history is surrounding Christopher Columbus’s day. Below are additional resources for talking about black history.

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/martin-luther-king-jr/

Zinn Project