Never Too Early: How to Talk to Kids About Race
Ideas for Sparking Conversations With Kids about Race and Racism
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
To grow up Chinese in America was to grow up seeing drawings of characters with slits for eyes, chopsticks in hand and cone shaped hats atop their heads. To grow up Chinese was to see kids on the playground effortlessly default to the single, uncreative insult any time there was a game lost or an insult to be thrown - the simple tug on the corners of their eyes, sometimes with a bonus singing of ching chong thrown in for extra effect. This small but powerful gesture was a reminder that you didn’t belong, that you didn’t look like most of the other kids, so that you knew exactly where your place was here.
When I first saw these gestures and drawings in my books, it took me a moment to realize that they were trying to depict people that were supposed to be like me. I knew my eyes were not slanted enough to look closed to a straight line. I knew that there were no meanings for ching and chong in the Chinese language. And though I don’t remember all the specific people, books or dates of those incidents, what I do remember was the feeling. The feeling that I was different. The feeling that I didn’t belong. Michelle Obama, in her book Becoming, said that she once felt like a “poppy seed in a bowl of rice.” That is what race felt like to me. And as I stared into my own real rice bowl every day, I also knew that my American childhood, while overall pleasant and happy, still felt vastly different from the idyllic life I saw depicted on American TV.
As I got older, the mean girls in elementary school preyed on insecurity. That insecurity, for me, was rooted in being Chinese. Whether actually true or not, I often saw my reflection in the mirror and thought more than once, if only I was White, I would fit in better. If only my parents let me go to sleepovers, go to the mall, talk on the phone, have cable so I could watch MTV, if only my parents were not Chinese immigrants, were more Americanized, I would fit in better. If only…
In retrospect, not all of those things were unique to being children of immigrants, but in those stages of teenage angst, it was easy for me to equate being Chinese as the root cause of my issues. Ultimately, I ended up finding amazing, supportive, and diverse friends from a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicities. And after many years of friendship, we are still in touch daily on a group text that never stops buzzing. The older I got, the more I grew to appreciate and love what made me different - my Chinese heritage, our traditions, our language, alllll our food, and even the signature Tiger Mom parenting style. But most of all, I cultivated an intense appreciation for my parents, who were not trying to be unAmerican, but were doing their best to give me the best - and had to experience their own share of sacrifice and discrimination along the way, in order to provide us that. My adult self would never trade a single part of my culture - which is me. But, not everyone gets there.
While the U.S. has long been celebrated for being a melting pot, a salad bowl, a supposed everything bagel with all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds coming together in harmony, the events of the last few years, months, days, and even hours have quickly shattered that facade.
Most of us who have lived our lives in the U.S. as a minority, a person of color, or any of the OTHER labels used to indicate not white, have known that this harmony never existed in the first place. That, like the American dream, it has always been just that - a dream. That the reality is that if you are not white, you will at some point feel like you are on the outside looking in. And, regardless of how many years you have been here, or even if you were born here, that you will still never be seen as truly American. For the kids born in Black and Brown bodies, the dream has seemed more like a nightmare -- with the significantly increased likelihood of experiencing terrifying overt racism, racist undertones in so much of daily life, not to mention violence to their bodies by police. Talking about race inside their family homes was never an option, it was a necessity. These families do not have the luxury or privilege to keep race conversations saved for another day.
Countless studies and academic research has shown that representation matters. As a child, seeing a Barbie doll that looks like you matters. Seeing movies and shows with main characters that live life like yours, matters - for example, seeing heroines that are strong, powerful, not dependent on a prince to save them, with skin and hair that look like yours, eating food that looks like yours, matters. In the forward of the children’s book, IntersectionAllies, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, African American Policy Forum Co-Founder and originator of the term intersectionality, talks about the idea of planting seeds for social conscience within children and poses the question, “What might the future look like if all children were taught about justice, equity, and solidarity alongside the alphabet and arithmetic?” This is a compelling concept. And if this curriculum is not yet standardized in our children’s schools, then shouldn’t it be supplemented by parents, just like Kumon and summer workbooks?
Today, talking to kids about race is something that we, as parents, can no longer avoid, no matter your background or ethnicity, no matter what color the body you live in.
And, studies show that it is never too early to have these important conversations. Research confirms that children not only recognize race from a very young age, but also develop racist ideas as early as age three. (Aboud, 2008; Hirschfield, 2008; Katz, 2003; Katz & Kofkin, 1997; Patterson & Bigler, 2006; Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2001) The impact of having conversations with our children about race early and often is enormous. If you aren’t sharing your ideas about race, consider where they are getting their ideas from. Whether that’s kids on the proverbial playground or zoom class, programs on TV, or videos on social media, it becomes even more imperative to ensure your kids are getting the right messages about race, not just the accidental ones they happen across. Just like talking about the birds and the bees, planning and researching how you talk to your kids about race can be important to how they view and approach the topic throughout their lives.
In the podcast Talking Race With Young Children : Parenting: Difficult Conversations, a point that is made again and again, is that kids are not color blind, so don’t be color silent. Kids see color even if they can’t call it out by name. And, it’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. Teaching kids to see color, to see differences between people, and to appreciate those differences, not pretend that they don’t see them, can be a productive way to teach kids about race. In the book, IntersectionAllies, the authors suggest using language like making room over terms like respect or tolerance because it “asks for a positive action from us rather than a minimal response.”
Talking to kids about race and racism can seem daunting but having resources like books, podcasts and movies can help to spark conversation. We’ve built a new Resources page to provide practical resources for kids of all ages and ways for parents to start the conversation with their children about race. Antiracist learning is a lifelong process, and starting kids young helps to lay a solid foundation of learning that will stay with them forever.
Why you should start a conversation about race with kids now:
Help shape their mindset early to raise them to be antiracist
Help prepare them for scenarios they might encounter with peers
Establish yourself as a safe place for them to go with questions about anything
Understanding the need to address racism at a local level, I am proud to have co-founded Rise Up Against Racism with two incredible women. They are not only two of the smartest people I know, but also the strongest. Our aligned passion for defending what’s right and not being afraid to stand up for justice has brought us together in the best way possible. Our first project with Rise Up Against Racism was to create the Antiracist Book Initiative, which builds Little Free Antiracist Libraries throughout our predominantly white community and fills them with antiracist books for children and adults. Our sense of urgency was driven by the need to provide windows into the lived experiences of Black Americans and mirrors for those in our community who are severely underrepresented. We intentionally called these Little Free Antiracist Libraries because words have power. And we intentionally wanted to call out what’s behind the policies and systems that have oppressed huge swaths of American people - Racism. And this is what we are working towards dismantling, starting within our own community first. As Dr Ibram X. Kendi, proclaimed antiracism author wrote: “The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it.”
With the inauguration of a new Vice President of the United States, the first who is a strong, intelligent, accomplished woman, who is also Black and South Asian, my optimistic self watches my own two young girls with pride as I see their eyes light up with possibility. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll grow up not thinking that they are an anomaly to the typical American but that they are phenomenally, uniquely American.
To find resources for starting (or continuing) the conversation with your kids about race, check out our new Resources page for ideas, tools and reading to raise kids antiracist.
“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security or by despair...”
