How White Parents Can Raise Anti-Racist Children
Edited by Stephen Braren
“Don’t put your hands in your pockets. Don’t put your hoodie on. Don’t leave the store without a receipt or a bag, even if it’s just a pack of gum. If you ever get pulled over, [put] your hands on the dashboard and ask [to] take out your license and registration.”
These are just some of the words uttered by 18 year old Cameron Welch from Houston, Texas, in a now-viral video he posted on May 28, outlining the "unwritten rules" his mother taught him to follow as a young Black man. The short clip, which has amassed almost 12 million views, was uploaded just days after the brutal killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a Black man, who died handcuffed on the ground saying “I can’t breathe” as a White police officer pushed his knee to his neck.
Following Floyd’s death, people around the world representing a broad spectrum of society took to the streets to protest racial injustice and police brutality. While many White and non-Black individuals grapple with their own complicity in systemic racism, White parents are faced with an additional question: How do I raise an anti-racist child in this world?
As illustrated by Welch’s widely shared video, Black parents have to prepare their children for the harsh realities of structural racism from a young age, teaching them about the risks they will constantly face as they navigate the world in a Black body. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Judy Belk, president the California Wellness Foundation, which supports community-based violence prevention efforts, describes “the talk” Black parents have with their children:
“…We remind our young men and women that when they leave the safety of their homes, they have to keep their guard up, mouths shut, and hands on the wheel in even the most casual encounters with law enforcement … It’s an unfair but necessary burden we carry in the Black community, one we reluctantly pass down to our children if we want to keep them alive and safe.”
The ability to not talk to children about racism—or even to choose when or at what age to talk to them about the subject—is a privilege that non-White parents are not afforded. It’s time to shift the responsibility onto White parents to educate their children about racism, by raising their children to counter racist socialization, biases, and behaviors.
To do this, experts recommend acknowledging and naming race and racism with children as early and as often as possible. Research on the development of racial biases in children has shown that babies notice race-based differences as early as six months, and by two-and-a-half years most children reason about people’s behaviors [1] and even choose playmates [2] based on race. Around ages four and five, expressions of racial prejudice often peak [3]. In fact, by the time children start kindergarten, they often exhibit many of the same implicit racial attitudes held by adults and have learned to associate some racial groups with higher status than others [4]. For instance, in a 2008 study Black and Latinx children indicated no preference toward their own groups, as compared to White children of the same age, who were more likely to be strongly biased in favor of Whiteness [4].
While research shows that young children notice racial differences on their own, how these differences are contextualized is fundamental to the development of their attitudes and beliefs about race. Even the simple act of engaging in explicit conversations with five- to seven-year-olds about interracial friendships can “dramatically improve” children’s racial attitudes in just one week [5]. Thus, anti-racism educators recommend revisiting talks about racism again and again, in different ways.
Talking to children about race is just one of many things White parents can do to shape their children’s racial attitudes as they emerge.
In White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America, author Margaret A. Hagerman writes:
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“Rather than focusing solely on what they say to kids about race, White parents should think more critically and carefully about how what they do on an everyday basis may reproduce the forms of racial inequality that they say they seek to challenge.”
This message is echoed time and time again by anti-racism educators: White parents must first examine their own racial biases, educate themselves, and shift their own behavior accordingly, in order to shape the world their children see.
For instance, White parents can help their children make sense of racial demographic patterns, such as who lives in their neighborhood or goes to their school, by addressing how racial inequality and segregation may partially explain those patterns. White parents can also actively prioritize seeking out diversity in their immediate communities—both in their own social circles and amongst their kids’ peers, and expose young children to anti-racist role models in broader society. White parents can also choose books, movies, and toys for their children that include characters of different races and ethnicities, too. Research demonstrates that the less contact children have with people from other racial groups, the more likely they are to retain higher levels of prejudice [3,6-7].
Below, we’ve compiled a list of resources, to help guide White parents who are committed to taking the onus of the generational “race talk” off of Black parents by making anti-racist learning a part of their child’s and their own routine. We’ve included Black-led anti-racism content and coursework, acknowledging the importance of seeking out, listening to, learning from, and amplifying Black perspectives through every step of the learning process. However, as educator and author Jasmine Roberts stated in a recent op-ed, it’s imperative to recognize and appreciate the emotional and intellectual labor Black individuals expend when tasked with educating White people about the racism they face:
“Do not expect all Black people to do anti-racist work for you. If they volunteer to educate, make sure you properly reward and acknowledge them for their emotional and intellectual labor. Failure to do so adds to the assumption that Black people are your go-to racial expert and contributes to emotional fatigue.”
Anti-Racism Resources for White Parents and Children:
The Conscious Kid creates parenting and education resources through a critical race lens. A $10 monthly subscription allows access to exclusive content that focuses on topics such as “Building Racial Literacy,” “Developing Critical Consciousness,” and “How to Talk to Kids About Race & Disrupt Racism.” They also have a round-up of 41 books to support conversations about race, racism, and resistance.
The Mom Psychologist is posting regular anti-racism resources for parents on Instagram, and a series of videos on Youtube, with an emphasis on guiding parents through their own anti-racism work before taking on conversations about race with their children.
Anti-racism educator Monique Melton is offering a “Shine Talk for Kids Course,” which opens enrollment on June 30th, to teach White parents how to talk to their children about race. The course is advertised alongside Melton’s powerful call for White parents to own responsibility in raising their children to counter racism: “I’m not teaching your children—I’m doing this for you. This is your responsibility…but I’ll teach you how.”
The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., released a new online portal to facilitate conversations about race and racism in America titled Talking About Race. The free resource collects more than 100 videos, scholarly articles, and online exercises to help educators, parents, and children develop the language to have productive conversations about racism.
Common Sense Media, a non-profit that rates movies, TV shows, books, apps, and other media for parents and schools, has curated a list of free resources to teach children about social justice and racial inequality.
Pragmatic Mom, a children’s book review website, compiled a round-up of children’s books about White privilege in collaboration with the multicultural literature resource Biracial Bookworms.
The Brown Bookshelf (founded by authors and illustrators of color) offers books that have brown and black protagonists.
The Child Mind Institute released a guide on their Instagram entitled ““Racism and Violence: How to Help Kids Handle the News.”
The Infant Studies of Language & Neurocognitive Development (ISLAND) Lab published a guide for talking about racial injustice with young children.
This google document with anti-racism resources for White people, compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein, includes educational books, articles, podcasts, films, and more for adults.
In-text References:
[1] Hirschfeld, L. A. (2008). Children’s developing conceptions of race. Handbook of race, racism, and the developing child, 37-54.
[2] Katz, P. A., & Kofkin, J. A. (1997). Race, gender, and young children. Developmental psychopathology: Perspectives on adjustment, risk, and disorder, 21, 51-74.
[3] Aboud, F. E. (2008). A social-cognitive developmental theory of prejudice. Handbook of race, racism, and the developing child, 55-71.
[4] Dunham, Y., Baron, A. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2008). The development of implicit intergroup cognition. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(7), 248-253.
[5] Bronson, P., & Merryman, A. (2009). See baby discriminate. Kids as young as 6 months judge others based on skin color. What's a parent to do?
[6] Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.
[7] Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of personality and social psychology, 90(5), 751.
