At the beginning of the summer, Jen Cort, host of Third Space, a podcast on issues of equity, diversity, and justice, interviewed me about strategies for talking to small children about race. It aired in August, and if you missed it, you can listen to it here. (It’s also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, and all podcast apps.)
In preparing for the interview, my main challenge was figuring out who I wanted my intended audience to be. In an ideal world, there would have been different versions for at least three distinct groups of (primarily white) parenting adults and educators:
• one for those who are completely new to or have a little experience thinking/talking about race but are interested in doing so;
• another for those who have some understanding of systemic/historical racism and white privilege;
• and yet another for those whose understanding goes beyond white privilege to white supremacy (outside of white supremacist groups) and white culture.
I decided to shoot for somewhere between the first and second groups, with a heavy leaning on the first. To be transparent, I made this decision based on my personal experiences rather than on broad, structured research. In my experience, for a large number of white people in this country, learning and talking about racism is not on their radar, deemed unimportant, or actively denied. For those who, at a minimum, are interested in or curious about it, most fall in the first and second groups above.
I feared if I spoke to those in the third group, I would alienate a much larger population. So I felt it would be useful for me to share some of my critical reflections on the content of my interview: what I hope listeners take away; some important clarifications; and things I was remiss in not saying.
WHAT I HOPE LISTENERS TAKE AWAY
1. One of the many costs that European immigrant groups had to pay in order to be considered white was the erasing of cultural distinctiveness and the loss of people’s knowledge about their own ancestral culture(s).
2. Mistakes are inevitable. The most important thing is what you choose to do with, how you take responsibility for, and what you learn from those mistakes. Being transparent with children about your own mistakes and how you deal with them will teach them: a) everyone makes mistakes and b) mistakes are sometimes our most important and necessary teachers.
3. If admitting you made a mistake is generally difficult for you, think about what you learned in childhood about mistake-making, what it meant about you when you made mistakes, what consequences you faced for your mistakes, and the self-protective strategies you developed in response to those consequences. Explore how these behaviors show up (usually unconsciously) in your adulthood.
4. If you missed an opportunity to have an important discussion with a child or you wish you had handled something differently, you can revisit the issue.
5. A “one and done” approach to talking with and teaching children about racism doesn’t work. Discussions need to be ongoing. I find it helpful to think about it as a process of planting and tending to seeds.
6. There is a large body of research showing that children notice race as early as six-months-old and, by age five, often begin associating negative attributes with darker skin and positive attributes with lighter skin. This undermines the notion of colorblindness, the fear that talking about race will make children racist, and the belief that “everyone is equal” and “treat everyone with kindness” are enough to avoid learning racism.
7. Regardless of their experience and comfort level with exploring whiteness and racism, adults must continually be in a process of self-reflection, learning, and personal growth. There is no final point of enlightenment. The work is never done.
8. Racism isn’t good for anyone, including white people. Like smog, racism is everywhere. It is especially damaging and apparent to certain groups, but it’s harms everyone, albeit in disproportionate ways.
9. Racial affinity groups are important for everyone, not just people of color. Racial affinity groups in schools are important for adults, not just students. (more on affinity groups “Important Clarifications” below)
10. It is critical for children to learn about historical and contemporary racism. But also of utmost importance is a deep understanding of the beauty, strength, brilliance, and joy to be found within communities of color. I don’t want my white kids to pity kids of color any more than I want boys to pity me for being a woman. Being a woman is awesome, just as being a person with indigenous, Black, Asian, Pacific Island, Latinx, and/or Middle Eastern heritage is awesome.
IMPORTANT CLARIFICATIONS
1. I’ve gotten several questions about my comment that affinity groups are ultimately about self-care. I want to clarify what I meant and what I did NOT mean. For multiracial folks and folks of color, perhaps the concept of self-care in affinity groups is more apparent: being able to connect with and get support from people with overlapping experiences of marginalization, discrimination, and systemic oppression. Such spaces can allow people to “fill their wells,” so to speak, without contending with white people’s defensiveness, accusations, racist comments, hurt feelings, and/or domination of airtime. This is not to say, for instance, that an East Asian heritage person has the same experience with racism as a Latinx person or even that people of East Asian heritage have identical experiences. What unites them, however, is that they exist in a country where monoracial white people, whether consciously or unconsciously, use their unearned power and privileges to define dominant social norms, rules, and access to resources. In this, overlapping experiences, mutual understandings, personal growth, opportunities for collaboration, and intellectual/emotional support can exist more freely.
But what do white affinity groups have to do with self-care? When I first began participating in and then facilitating white affinity groups, my sense of urgency and outrage made me want to hold white people’s feet to the fire, to wake them up, to force them to be uncomfortable, and to spur them into action. I definitely felt like a better white person. I routinely distanced myself from other white people who, in my determination, “didn’t get it.” The “me” at that time probably would have scoffed at the notion of white affinity spaces being about self-care. I may have misinterpreted such a characterization to mean coddling white people, giving them a pass, and allowing them to reinforce each other’s anger/resentment towards people of color, guilt, shame, denial, or any other feelings that get white folks stuck in inaction.
Yet this is entirely the opposite of what I mean when I talk about white affinity groups and self-care. In short, I mean using white affinity spaces for healing, building human connections, and doing the uncomfortable and often painful personal work/learning necessary in order to show up authentically and productively to dismantle white supremacy. Racism is incredibly harmful to white people, albeit in very different ways than it is for multiracial people and people of color. It is imperative that white people understand that racial justice is in everyone’s best interest. While it is not people of color’s job to teach white people and take care of their feelings, racism lives and breathes on divisions.
Therefore, on a human level, it is reasonable to expect human beings to: 1) hold each other emotionally and physically, 2) act as sounding boards for one another; 3) hold each other accountable and push one another in loving ways; 4) show each other compassion; 5) share learning with one another (especially the learning that comes from mistakes) and 6) help each other build the resilience necessary to persist in their commitment to racial justice. White people must do this for one another because this work is too big to do alone. This is what I mean when I say white affinity groups are ultimately about self-care. (I touch on a lot of this in two of my previous blog posts: “How Racism Hurts White People” and “The Inevitable Oops: What Can We (White Folks) Do When We Mess Up?”)
2. When I said, “kids don’t need to know the entire history of racial construction,” I was referring to very young children. Obviously, young people should learn the history of racial construction specific to the United States. But they don’t need to learn it when they are three-years-old. But they can be told that people with European ancestors are usually called “white” and people with African ancestors are usually called “Black.” They can learn about melanin and its connection to skin color/sun protection. They can be told that, a long time ago, people Europeans created the idea of “white” and “Black.” They can understand that indigenous people lived all over the country but people from Europe or whose families were from Europe pushed them off the land. And as soon as they start to understand the concept of fairness, which certainly happens in early childhood, they can be told that white people were and still are treated more fairly than anyone else. By kindergarten, however, they can start to learn more details and, eventually, the (literal and figurative) gory details.
THINGS I DIDN’T SAY BUT WISH I HAD
1. While perhaps parents of children of color might find some of the things I discussed to be useful, I would never presume to know what it is like to parent a child of color, to be a parent of color, or to tell them how to manage conversations about race. This is why I brought the conversation back constantly to (white parents/teachers of) white kids. However, I should have stated this explicitly at the beginning of the interview.
2. I was also remiss in not naming that it is not folks of colors' job to take care of white folks' big feelings, but I have come to believe that in order to keep our skin in the game, it is reasonable for us white folks to show up for one another so we can process our feelings, build resilience, and move forward. I talk about this in more depth in my most recent blog post: (https://www.courageouschange.org/.../the-inevitable-oops...)
3. Regarding the story I shared at the end of the interview about my eldest, then age five, saying “Mommy, I’m glad I’m white,” I have been thinking anew about other ways I have since changed course. As I explained, I was uncomfortable with the underlying implication that perhaps he had started to pity people of color, so I paid more attention to how much our conversations and books we read centered on historical and systemic racism vs. on people of color being their wonderful, brilliant, human selves.
But it wasn’t until two years ago that I realized an important piece was missing. In the workshops I offer for predominantly white parents and white educators, I talk freely of the ways in which racism harms white people. It robs us of pieces of our humanity by denying us opportunities for meaningful relationships. It erases cultural distinctiveness, including language. It replaces rich, distinct European cultures with a culture of white supremacy. (For more about white supremacy culture, click here.)
Yet somehow, I had neglected to have these important conversations with my kids. I will discuss this part of the parenting-white-kids journey in more depth in a future blog post. But in short, I have drawn on Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s metaphor of “racism as smog” and connected it to our family’s lived experiences with varying levels of unhealthy air conditions due to California wildfires. Distinct from smog, smoky air eventually clears with rain and shifting winds. However, discussing how smoke burns everyone’s lungs but how it is especially dangerous for people with respiratory problems (such as my children’s friends who have asthma) has been an effective additional entry point into racism’s omnipresence. More on that (and how I’ve introduced the concept of implicit bias) soon.
Again, if you missed the interview, you can listen to it here. And as always, I welcome your constructive feedback!