Anti-racist families start with open conversations

This is the first in a two-part series about talking to your kids about race.

In just about all of my columns I write in the “we.” I invoke the universal “we” as parents because I believe that, for the most part, at their core all parents share commonalities of loving and hoping for the best for their children.

Yet I am one white, middle-class, middle-age, privileged woman writing this column, and I do not know enough about other families’ beliefs and values, nor do I want to make assumptions about what all parents want for their children. Just as there may be commonalities, there are also many aspects of raising children that all parents don’t share.

And so, acknowledging my privilege, my lens and the fact that when I speak of “we” I understand I am not speaking for all, I am compelled to dive into the topic of racism and antiracism as it applies to raising children so that we can confront and combat these ideas in our everyday lives. I am far from an expert on this topic, and in a short column I can only plant a seed for further conversation.

Brené Brown writes: “The most important anti-racism work I’ve done over the past 20 years and that I’m still doing (every single day) is taught and led by people with the lived experience of racial oppression — NOT white people. … Our job is to seek out the teaching, value it, submit to the pain of learning without asking our teachers to absolve us or add our emotions to their load, and know that being held accountable is hard and painful. And we have to act.”

I know there is irony here in that I am a white person writing this column. Yet as a voice in raising families, I feel I can’t be silent in this discussion. As Brown says, I have to act.

I have my own work to do. I need to become educated. I need to expose myself to bigger ideas and own my piece in being part of the system.

That work also starts with talking to my kids. That means I need to be aware. I need to talk to them about my conscious and unconscious biases. I need to pay more attention and bring to their attention injustices in the world, both close to home in my community and farther afield in our national and global community.

Here’s the thing: We may be kind, compassionate people who do and wish no harm on others. However, as Ibram X. Kendi, professor and author of “How To Be An Antiracist,” says, intention is not always part of racism. While most people don’t intend any harm, they still make judgments based on race, as society has conditioned them to do. We may have beliefs we aren’t aware of that unintentionally cause racist behavior.

Kids learn about race from their parents. Children and teens are watching how their parents address, or shy away from, racism and racist ideas in their own lives. We as parents set the model for how our kids view the world and relate to others. Whether intentional or not, we raise our kids to think about race in a certain way. If we don’t speak up for injustices, our kids won’t.

Psychologist Howard Stevenson talks to kids about “racially stressful encounters” in which a child is called a racial slur, makes a racist comment and regrets it, or fails to speak up when seeing a racist act. Stevenson says parents need to bring up these topics with their children. Not talking about it implies that we are scared and that race is a topic to be avoided. We need to overcome our own fears, be honest about our feelings and help our kids see that skin color difference is a “wonderful” thing to talk about.

Kendi says, “The foundation of racism is not ignorance and hate, but self-interest, particularly economic and political and cultural.” Self-interest drives racist policies that benefit self-interest.

We white parents need to train our children to not only know and see acts of racism and how it has been perpetuated in our society, but also to confront our own self-interests and how we benefit from the system.

We need to know and admit our privilege. If you were born into privilege by means of the color of your skin, gender, socioeconomic status, geographical location or another factor, acknowledge that. Talk to your children about it. Don’t be ashamed and don’t skirt the issue. Talk about how you have benefited because of your privilege and because of the slavery, forced labor, stealing of lands and genocide this nation was founded on. Talk about the responsibility of doing good for others that privilege carries.

Allow your kids to ask honest, hard questions, even the ones they might be afraid to ask for fear of sounding racist. This is a challenging topic, and being open to dialogue is the only way to learn.

Stay tuned next week for part two of this column, in which I dive into specific steps to begin the process of becoming an antiracist family.