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Dear Steadfast All Saints Families,
I know that many of you are having conversations about race, racism, systemic/institutional racism, and white privilege. While there are currently many resources being shared in the media and on social media to help you talk with your children and grandchildren, I want to highlight some of them as well as share my own experiences, positive and negative, about discussing racial issues with my children.
Before diving into a conversation with your child or grandchild, take some time to consider how your own race has influenced your life. If you are white, learn more about white privilege and fragility. A good place to start is the article, What Is White Privilage, Really? Consider the social constructs that supported and benefited you, your parents, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents compared to members of other races. In your life, what does white privilege look like in Santa Barbara?
Often when white people begin to explore racial issues for the first time, we have a wide range of emotions. This is what Robin DiAngelo calls the fragility of white privilege. I recommend learning about it so that when you speak openly and honestly about racism with your children or grandchildren, you will be less defensive, less reactive, more compassionate, and more committed to systemic change. I recommend reading these short articles:
• How ‘white fragility’ supports racism and how whites can stop it
• ‘Interrupt The Systems’: Robin DiAngelo On ‘White Fragility’ And Anti-Racism.
If you are Black or brown or your children or grandchildren are, odds are that you have been having conversations about race for years in your home. Your family doesn’t have the luxury of ignorance or thinking “that wouldn’t happen to me or to my kid,” so you can’t unsee, dismiss, or forget prejudicial slights, racial biases, or systemic racism. I cannot imagine how stressful this must be for you, your children, and your grandchildren day to day. Please know at All Saints, we, the staff, we see you, we hear you, we love you, and we stand with you as we work to dismantle systemic racism.
Here are some resources for you that might be helpful for your conversations with your children or grandchildren about racism:
• CNN & Sesame Street Town Hall on Racism
• Talking with Our Children about Race
• A Short Family Guide to Support Racial Justice Now
• Social Justice Books – Get age appropriate book lists for you and your children on a variety of social justice issues and links to purchase them from small bookstores.
When starting a conversation about race and racism with your children and grandchildren, you might first ask if they have any questions for you. You may be surprised about how much they are aware of. Children pick up more than we know. Often, they infer and make incorrect assumptions, which as their parents and grandparents, we need to correct.
For example, Deron and I have been talking about racial injustice in our home since our boys were tiny. We read them books about Sylvia Mendez and Ruby Bridges. We told them stories about our families’ hometowns, stories of MLK, Medgar Evers, James Meredith, and the “I Am A Man” Memphis garbage workers strike. When we talked with the boys about Black Lives Matter, they were confused. They thought that racism had ended long ago (major white privilege here!). That was when I realized that 1) our children’s books tend to put happy spins on the end of books: Sylvia won her court case; Mexican children now go to school with white children. Ruby integrated a white school; now all schools are integrated. And 2) we hadn’t been talking about race in present tense, talking about racism as it is today. So we did.
I decided to talk to each child separately first and then have a family conversation. My boys are seven and eight, and they process the world differently. By giving them each one on one time with me, they had space to ask questions, change the subject, have emotions, and return to the issue without their brother present. Each conversation followed a similar vein. First, I told about the beliefs of white supremacists and how that has not changed since the Civil Rights Movement, Ruby Bridges, and Martin Luther King. One child, who is a huge Harry Potter fan, asked if white people treated Black people like some wizards treat wizards with non-magical parents, “Like calling them mudbloods?” In the Wizarding World of J.K. Rowling, mudbloods is a very derogatory word. I said, yes. And we went from there exploring the difference between racism and prejudice and what systemic and institutional racism is in Harry Potter before I introduced the 400 years of institutional racism in the United States.
I also gave the boys the book Civil Rights Then and Now: A Timeline for the Fight for Equality in America to help them understand that the struggle for Civil Rights for Black Americans has not ended.
Armed with my experience from conversation with Child 1, I began with my conversation with Child 2 in the Harry Potter world. This worked out very well because he and I chatted for a long time about the similarities. Child 2 has a shorter attention span, so I was in and out.
My next conversations with my children were about what they can do, which is quite a lot for a seven and eight-year-old. But when I considered the conversations that my friends who parent Black and brown seven-year-olds are having with them, I didn’t hesitate. For too long, white parents have used our white privilege to shield our white children from the realities facing their Black and brown classmates by saying: “they’re too young,” “I don’t want them to know about the horrors in the world just yet,” or worse “it doesn’t affect my child.”
I decided to present three scenarios to my boys and let them consider how they would respond. First, I started our conversation by asking them what could do if they saw a kid at school being bullied. Each said he could tell the bully to stop, go ask the kid if they were okay, say that we don’t treat people that way, and tell a teacher. I gave them high fives.
I asked them to imagine that he saw someone calling someone names or leaving someone out of a game on the playground because of the color of their skin. What would he do? They said they would tell the bully to stop it and ask the kid if he wants to play with them.
Finally, what if they thought their coach was being tougher on the only brown kid on their baseball team? At this question, they looked at me and asked, “Why would he do that?” I told them to just imagine, please. They said they would ask their friend how he was feeling and give him a hug.
Next I taught him about being an ally. Being an ally is about supporting a Black or brown person, not speaking for them and taking their power away. It is about working with your Black and brown friends to use your whiteness to draw attention to an injustice. When you do that, you become a collaborator, and as a collaborator, you are really working to create a better world through social change. My boys minimally understand about collaboratorship and allyship, but they do know about bullies. They do not like bullies. Bullies are dragons they want to slay. By equating racism with bullying, I hope my little boys will be on the lookout for opportunities to become allies.
As a family we watched CNN and Sesame Street’s Town Hall on Race. The boys squirmed often through it and didn’t want to watch it. They are too old for Sesame Street and too young for much of the conversations. Towards the end, their ears perked up when the conversation turned to discrimination towards the Asian community. Their cousin is Asian American. Suddenly being an ally to the Black and brown community had a new meaning. Someone might be racist to their cousin. And just like that, they had skin in the game.
To understand white privilege, we read the book Race Cars: A Children’s Book on White Privilege. The book also helped us begin conversations around systemic racism and discuss issues of power, control, and institutional racism. My kids found none of this fair, especially when we talked about how all of these “rules” are different for their cousin because she is brown. One note about Race Cars, the book presents systemic racism as if the Black Car (and also the White Car) have no power to change the power structures, which create unfair rules for the Black Car to follow. When discussing this with your children or grandchildren, I urge you to bring attention to how this is different from real life where Black, white, and brown people can, have, are, and will work together to eliminate institutional racism.
Discussing racism with our children and grandchildren is an ongoing discussion. It is not a one and done. I urge you to continue examining your white privilege, to expand your friendship circle because most white people have no Black or brown friends, and to keep learning about institutional racism in the United States.
If you have preschoolers, here are several wonderful books to add to their anti-racist library collection:
If you have upper elementary and middle schoolers, I highly recommend This Book is Anti-Racist.
If you have teens in your home, I recommend that together you read and watch both Just Mercy and The Hate U Give. Just Mercy is available free this month for viewing on many platforms.
Rev. Aimee is hosting a Zoom movie discussion on Just Mercy on Monday, July 29th at 7 p.m.
I will host a youth movie night on Zoom in July. We will watch and discuss The Hate U Give. Keep an eye out for dates and times.
I also highly recommend the books: Stamped from the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racists Ideas in America for parents and Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award Winning Stamped From the Beginning for youth.
If you are looking for more books on race, white privilege, racism, and anti-racism, check out the NY Times and Amazons bestsellers lists.
Peace,
Allison
