How do I Talk to My Kids About Race?
Race is everywhere. It might be a social construct, but it has a big impact on all of us - adults and children - so, it needs to be talked about. Our children are not blind - they see things.
Before I jump into this conversation, I want to encourage you to have these conversations at home. When you have these conversions, I want you to remember to be patient with yourself and give yourself grace. If you are here, and you’re living in a white body, and these are things that are new to you - the point of this isn’t for you to feel bad or guilty. It’s for you to take a look at life in general, as well as your own life, and think about how you may have been complicit in all of this. No one is pointing a finger at you, but it’s similar to when you go on a hike and there’s a little pebble at the bottom of your shoe. It’s a little uncomfortable, and after a while the discomfort grows, and you need to take the shoe off to knock the pebble out. People are now recognizing that there's a pebble in their shoe. You can only walk so far with that. Take your shoe off, take the pebble out, put the shoe back on, and teach your children to do this right.
Racism & Privilege
To talk about race, we need to understand racism and privilege. To offer a loose definition of racism, I’ll define it as “ascribing certain positive or negative traits to a certain group of people based on the colour of their skin.” Because of how our society is constructed, and the systemic racial issues, the issue around privilege is that it’s ascribed because of the colour of your skin. Certain skin colours afford you privilege while others take it away. If you live in a white body, it doesn’t mean your life was easy or that you don't struggle, privilege means that those struggles were not a direct result of the colour of your skin, particularly in western society. However, privilege is not just ascribed to people who live in white bodies, it’s also about how you might have an advantage over the next person. Privilege can also look like being able bodied, being able to see clearly, not struggling with a mental health difficulty, having an education, or being employed. There are many different ways a person can carry privilege based on the lives they live.
Talk to yourself before talking to your children
Before you start talking to your children, you need to reflect on your own stance of the particular situation before you call them over to sit down and have a conversation. You really need to take some time to think about where you sit on these issues because children are smart. We are no longer in the “do as I say and not as I do” model of the world, they will call your bluff so you can't be talking to them about equality, justice, and equity when your perspective and behaviour is different. Some general reflection questions you can as yourself are:
What do I think about this situation/concept/issue?
How does it make me feel? How does it make others feel?
What do I want my contribution to be in this?
Do I believe the stereotypes? Why or why not?
You need to talk about this with your children
It’s a fallacy that children don’t see colour. Children do see colour. They notice it very well. In the same way they can see that the grass is green, and the sky is blue, they notice the color of their skin tone, mine and yours. But, their being able to recognize and acknowledge skin color doesn’t mean that they are inherently racist in any way because racism is something that is taught.
Research has shown that children as young as 6 months notice a difference in skin tone. By the time children are 3 years old, they start to ascribe positive and negative characteristics to people’s skin tone. By the time they are 4 or 5 years old they will start to develop their own racial biases. This is why it’s important to talk to your children about race.
You don’t need to make it a huge conversation. In fact, the younger they are the simpler it should be. But, if we don’t talk about it, it will become an issue. For example, if you’re in a white body, in a majority white neighborhood, and you’re shopping at the local grocery store with your 5 or 6 year old who sees a black person and they ask you, “why does that person look different?” and your response is to snatch the child and say “shhhh!!!” it gives the child the impression that “we don’t talk about that.” In this situation the child was given the impression that this is not something to be talked about and what they learn from that is that discussing race or differences in skin tone is socially unacceptable. It doesn’t mean they no longer notice it - they still do, and will continue to notice and continue to make their own judgements and assumptions. But they won't come to talk to the adult(s) anymore because they shut them up.
To encourage conversation with your kids about race, I suggest to teach empathy, celebrate differences, diversify your space, and keep it age appropriate.
Teach empathy
I’ve seen many Black parents confused that their little 4 year old in junior kindergarten is experiencing racism. It’s difficult and hurtful to send your child to school and for them to come home and report that another child won’t talk to them because they look like [insert differing characteristic here]. It’s a problem and it can be happening for a few reasons:
The offending child is hearing these things from the adults around them.
They hear things, on tv, or online and repeat them to replicate the scenario they observed.
Kids can be mean if left to their own devices. We have to teach them to be nice. If children are not in loving environments at home, if they are experiencing physical, emotional, or verbal abuse, they can replicate the mean behaviors. You can send your kid to school and they might be the only one in blue sneakers. Some other kid might say to them, “I’m not playing with you because you have blue sneakers.” They've identified a difference in the child and they’ve decided to pull away from, or target the child because of that difference. For a child of Asian, Indigenous, African (or insert other ethnicity here) descent, that difference may be their skin tone, wave of their hair, or shape of their nose. The other children may not be inherently racist but they are picking out a difference and they are preying on that child because of that difference.
Children are less likely to discriminate against other children’s differences once they are taught empathy.
Teach your children to be kind and to be nice to others. One of the ways that I like to do this is by watching cartoons with my kids. When a character is hurt, crying, or upset I make it a teachable moment. I ask my kids, “What's going on here?,” ''How do you think they feel?,” “How do they think they can make it better?” Once the situation is resolved, I ask them, “What do you think about that?” It goes a long way in helping your child's empathy. Once they know empathy, they are unlikely to ostracize other children at school for any of their differences.
Celebrate differences
Celebrate differences in the world. Again, it doesn’t need to be a big conversation. I first realized the impact of my son being immersed in a white environment when he came home from school one day in grade 1 and asked me why he didn’t have “peach” skin like his teachers at school (to say I was stunned would be an understatement). I knew I needed to shake things up (and I did). I asked him what he meant by that because we didn’t really start using the term black and white to describe skin tones in our home (now that he’s much older, we do). My husband and I decided at the time to let the kids take the lead on describing people’s skin tone. My kids called our family brown because that’s the actual color of our skin - not black. They didn’t understand what black is - the stapler in the office is black, but our skin is brown. They called white people “peach”, so we went with it.
I had a sit-down with him and I said to him, “okay, let’s talk about your friends at school.” Luckily, I was familiar with his classroom so I was able to go down his friend list and point out everyone’s skin tones to demonstrate how everyone was in fact, not peach-skinned. We then started talking about our own personal extended circles. We went through his aunties, his uncles, his godparents, the aunties that we have co-opted into our family, we talked about all of them and it clicked with him. Then I told him, “Just like how there's different kinds of flowers, there's different kinds of people. The world would be boring if there was only one kind of flower. We don’t get bored with flowers because when we walk down the street we see all kinds of flowers in peoples yards. They're beautiful because they’re different.” He said “yup”. Then, he simply ran off to play.
When celebrating differences, remember that your level of comfort will signal to your child how comfortable they should be in the conversation. To celebrate differences with your child, you can start by:
Going through the people in your life who have different skin tones, different countries of birth, who are living in different places in the world, etc. and ask them about where they’re from and how you can celebrate their culture with them.
When the world opens up again and you're having meals out of the home from around the world (or even if you’re doing take-out), talk about where the Mexican, the Chinese, the Italian, or the Jamaican foods are from. Talk about the culture, not just the people’s skin tone. Culture includes their language, customs, and beliefs. Talk about what's special about the country. Talk about the positive attributes of these people and where they’re from as well as how their culture is rich. Talk about what you can learn from them and incorporate into your life.
Diversify your spaces
Diversity is key. It's important for kids to know that they can be seen in the toys that they play with, the books they read, the shows they watch, and the lessons they learn.
Diversity your bookshelf. Buy different books. What do the main characters and the heroes of the books look like? Many bookstores have diverse books with diverse authors and diverse heroes. Not just for Black people, I'm thankful to be able to say that they have all different kinds of characters in their books from different backgrounds. You can find stories of Indigenous peoples, stories of Asian peoples, stories of Mexican peoples, Black peoples, and others. If you are Black I encourage you to grab a handful of new books. If you are white, grab a handful too. I encourage you to mix it up.
Diversify the toy chest. Some of my black friends have said, “my kids only play with Black dolls”. It's important for empowerment to provide Black kids a space where they feel represented, but it's important to mix it up because our society isn't all black and it isn’t all white. It’s important for our children to experience at home what is reflected in the wider community.
Keep it age specific
When you are talking about race with children, you need to be specific. Answer only what is asked, you don't need to elaborate. That’s all they need.
If your child is 4 you don't need an hour conversation. You need to keep things general and related to their question. Why is he in a wheelchair? Because his legs don’t work very well. Why is their skin brown? Because their genes have created brown skin just like your genes created fair skin. We have things in our bodies called genes that decide what we look like and they’re all different from each other.
If your child is old enough to vote for the first time, then you do need to have an hour-long conversation. It’s okay to admit to your teenage child that you really don’t know what's going on in our world and it is okay to say that you’re just as dismayed as they are. It's alright to tell them that what's happening right now in the world is not okay and that you feel broken up about it. It’s okay to admit to them that you don’t know what the solution is. It’s also important to bring your teenage child into the conversation and ask them what they think about the situation, what they think should happen in the situation, or how it’s making them feel.
Include your teenage child in the conversation so they know that they can come to you to have these important conversations. Remind them that these are not one-time conversations and the door remains open to have these talks again whenever they need to. It helps them to mitigate the feeling of powerlessness and it helps them recognize that they can get strength from you - they don’t need to muddle through this alone. Imagine: if we are struggling as grown adults, they, as young adults, are struggling with these issues too.
We need to have these discussions with our children because they need to know that there is space for them and others in this world. They need to know that there isn’t a place where they cannot occupy space. Our children have to know that the status quo of our social systems need to be eradicated. As a friend of mine once said, “our ceiling needs to be their floor”. The world has to get so much better for them, so they are not fighting our issues in their adulthood. They have to know that we are not comfortable with things the way they are. It's important for our young people to understand that Black lives do matter. It's important, if you’re white, to show up for your Black friends. If you don't have Black friends, that's a problem. Get a few. It's challenging for your kids to understand that Black lives matter if you have no Black lives in your life. Mix it up. Diversify it. Show up for your community. We are all in this together - we’re all in the same storm, but we are not in the same boat. We can however, share resources.
Bonus: What if family members hold different views?
When you're trying to push the needle forward as an ally and your own parents are stuck in a different mindset and then they come over for thanksgiving dinner and want to talk about race in front of your 9 year old child… I say, challenge it in a loving way. You can't say things like:
In our home we’re teaching our kids to…
We don't talk about things like that here…
We have lots of friends of different nationalities and races and we treat all of them with the same dignity and love that we treat you…
It’s important for your children to see you challenging different/inappropriate views in the home (with care) because by doing that, you're modelling for them how to challenge it when they’re outside of the home. When they're on social media with their friends, when they're on zoom, snapchat, tiktok, you name it - they need to know how to handle these issues. They might not say anything at the dinner table or elsewhere, but they’re watching you, they’re listening to you, and they’re observing you very keenly. You have to model how to challenge this. If you - as an adult - let your borderline racist parent get away with saying something offensive, and then you're talking to your children about how Black lives matter, and how we can change the status quo, they are less likely to listen to you and may even think you're a hypocrite. Don’t be a hypocrite. I'm not calling you names, I’m just holding your feet to the fire. There's so much power in modelling this behaviour and this conversation.
