Talking To Kids About Race

Before we started our family, both my husband and I had experience with being different and not quite belonging. We are both immigrants to the US and have experienced being outsiders. Living in Vermont and having a black daughter has given our family whole new education and understanding about race. It has also made me think about these issues very differently and has forced me to address difficult, awkward subjects head on.

Talking about race is awkward and difficult. But we all know that important work can be hard but it must be done. As a society we need to learn how to comfortably talk about race and we need to start with our children. It is important for kids to learn the words and language to help them understand differences between people and talking to them about race will help them respect and appreciate people’s similarities and differences. It is also important for us to be the ones to teach our kids these lessons because we all know that if we don’t do it, they will learn it from someone or somewhere else.

While I am no expert, I wanted to share some examples of some things that we do in our household that pertain to race and give some ideas on how to start conversations in your household.

In our household:

• We make sure that our daughter is fully aware that she is black. This may sound strange since looking at her it would be pretty hard to assume otherwise, but many black kids who live in majority white areas, grow up thinking of themselves as white which often leads to identity issues as they get older. Our daughter embraces and owns her blackness. She often says that she loves her skin color and her naturally curly hair.
• We surround our daughter with many images that resemble her. Her bookshelf is full of books with black characters and our coffee table is full of magazines full of black people. We seek out television shows and movies with strong black characters.

• We make an intentional effort to have a diverse community of friends and acquaintances. Although this is not an easy task in Vermont, with some effort and networking, we have been able to build a small diverse community and our daughter gets the benefit of spending time with kids that look like her on a regular basis.
• We travel to cities and areas with much more diversity than our little lovely corner of Vermont. We are fortunate to have many diverse cities within driving distance and take advantage of this by traveling often to Montreal, Boston and New York.  Seeing people of color out and about, going to work or school, shopping and playing will help her see that the world is a lot more diverse than her surroundings in Vermont.
• We talk to her about the history of blacks in this country including difficult subjects such as slavery, racism and white privilege.

What you can do:

• Start talking to kids at a young age. Kids as young as 3 or 4 will start noticing skin color and will have questions. Create an environment in which your kids feel comfortable asking you questions and don’t miss opportunities to talk to your kids about race.
• Educate yourself and your children about negative stereotypes and give your kids the tools to fight them.
• Seek out diverse media. Most libraries have a great selection of books with diverse characters. We often go to our local library and look through picture books and pull out any books that have characters that are not white. I especially like books that feature heroine characters that are not white. Remember you can always talk to you librarian or school about beefing up their selection if they are lacking, although I was happily surprised at the selections at our local libraries.
•  Teach your kids to evaluate people they meet based on values and commonalities not the color of their skin or where they came from.
• Unfortunately, we are bombarded with stories that give us an impression of one story about groups of people, different races and countries. We often only see images of poverty in African nations or only see war in the Middle East. Teach your kids that these stories do not define a race or a country. Give them information about successes rather than failures of other races and countries.
• Have age appropriate discussions about privileges that are given to a class of people just because of their race, gender, religion or nationality. Unfortunately we live in a society where white privilege, male privilege and other privileges are given to large groups of people. Teach your children that they have the power and opportunity to be part of the solution.
• Don’t promote “color blindness”. Teaching our kids to be color blind teaches them to negate the cultural values and life experiences of people of color. Instead, teach your kids that race does matter and often under represented populations struggle with lack of opportunities, negative perceptions and lower incomes. By acknowledging and celebrating our differences we will raise our children to become multicultural rather than color blind. After all, isn’t it much better to see and celebrate something, rather than being blind to it?