Rebekah Gienapp

When it comes to race and kids, a lot of the conventional wisdom sounds logical. That’s how conventional wisdom works, right? Most white parents believe that kids are racially innocent and only learn prejudice if their parents say overtly racist things to them. We assume our kids don’t notice race unless its pointed out to them. But neither of those things is true.

For white parents who don’t want their kids to be racist (which I hope is most of us), there are some commonplace myths we have to let go of. If we want our children to do more than just avoid using racial slurs, if we want them to grow up to be people who actively take a stand against racism, we have to abandon these myths about race and kids.

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Myth #1: If we don’t want kids to be racist, we should teach them to be colorblind

A key belief of colorblind parenting is that we shouldn’t talk to children about race, unless they first say something explicitly racist. When that does happens, a colorblind parent usually responds with something vague like “the color of our skin doesn’t matter.”

But racism is a huge problem in our society, one that influences everything from whether children see people who look like them on their favorite tv shows, to which children feel safe in the presence of police, to who is more likely to be admitted to elite schools.

If we tell kids that race doesn’t matter, they can’t learn how to spot racism when it’s at work. And if children don’t learn to spot and understand racism, they can’t stand up against it as adults.

Research by Brigitte Vittrup shows that the silence colorblind parents keep about race around their kids can backfire. She interviewed white children whose parents were liberal and didn’t want their kids to be racist. These parents also didn’t talk to their children about race.

She asked the 5 to 7 year olds in the study a very direct question: “Do your parents like Black people?” The parents assumed that of course their children would know that they liked Black people, because they did not discriminate.

But 38 percent of the children answered the question with “I don’t know.” Another 14% responded, “no, my parents don’t like Black people.” (For details on Vittrup’s work, read the book NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children.)

Just like children need our direct guidance to learn how to brush their teeth or to learn to read, they need us to talk directly with them about race and racism in order to learn to be antiracist.

Related Post: How kids think about race: what the research says

Myth #2: If our kids aren’t talking about race to us, they’re not thinking about race

In a workshop I led about how parents can talk to kids about race, a mom told me that the first conversation she had with her older child was prompted by a prejudiced comment the child made. Her younger child, at age 5, hadn’t made any direct comments to them about race yet. She’d been waiting for a cue from the younger child that they needed to talk about race. As we got deeper into the workshop, she wondered if she should change her approach.

I reminded her that not all race talk is about racism (though talk about racism is important.)

Simply noticing skin tone and using correct racial labels for ourselves and others in everyday conversation lets our kids know it’s ok to talk to us about race. For example, when we’re reading a book that has characters of many different races, I might remark to a preschooler, “I notice that there are people with many different shades of skin in this book. It reminds me of our city, because there are people of so many different races who live here.”

Instead of waiting for our kids to give us cues to talk about race, we’re giving them cues that we want them to talk to us about race.

This also gives us the chance to share healthy messages about inclusion and racial justice that counter the racist messages kids get from their social environment. We get to hear what misconceptions our kids are developing about race, and that gives us the opportunity to correct them.

Research shows that kids have racial conversations with each other all the time. Our silence alone can tell our kids that they shouldn’t talk to us about race. When that happens, they will turn to their peers instead.  As we know, children are usually ill equipped to correct false ideas about race.

Related Post: 18 powerful books about race and racism for children and teens

Myth #3: Talking about race could backfire and make kids prejudiced

White parents often assume that young children don’t have racial prejudices, so there’s no need to talk to kids about race. The truth is that many young children already express racial prejudices.

In their year-long study of a multiracial preschool, Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin spent many hours observing children.

They witnessed young children making subtle and overt references to race again and again. Some of these references were racist.

For example, two white 4 year olds and one Asian 3 year old were playing with a wagon. One of the white children was pulling the wagon while the other two kids rode. The wagon got stuck and the Asian child jumped out to help pull it. Her white classmate told her “No, no. You can’t pull this wagon. Only white Americans can pull this wagon.” (To learn more about this research, read Jennifer Harvey’s book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America.)

The good news is that research also shows that explicit talk about racial prejudice helps reduce children’s prejudice. Frances Aboud and Anna Beth Doyle gave white 3rd and 4th graders an assessment that measured their racial attitudes about white, Black, and Chinese children.

The kids with higher levels of prejudice were paired with children who had lower levels of prejudice. The children were asked to specifically talk about racial biases with each other, with some particular guidance for their conversation.

Aboud and Doyle found that these conversations fostered greater tolerance on the part of children who had expressed more racial prejudice, rather than making the children who were tolerant more prejudiced.

Brigitte Vittrup found that when white parents had explicit conversations with their young children about having cross racial friendships, it improved the children’s racial attitudes significantly.

Related Post: 7 inspiring kid activists against racism

Myth #4: Telling kids that “we’re all equal” teaches them not to be racist

Many well meaning parents and teachers tell children “we’re all equal,” trusting that this simple message will remind kids to reject racism and other forms of bias. We also hope it will teach children to treat everyone with kindness and respect, an important goal.

We think that we’re being clear, but these messages are too vague for children to grasp (especially young children, who are very concrete thinkers.)

For examples, the authors of NurtureShock talk about a friend who told her 5 year old “remember everybody’s equal” repeatedly. After 7 months of hearing this, her son looked at her and asked, “what does equal mean?”

Talking explicitly about race and racism is a far more effective strategy than telling children that “everyone is equal.”

Jennifer Harvey notes that many well-intentioned white adults say “we’re all equal” because we want  everyone to be treated equally. We hope telling our kids this will make them treat others equally.

While we can tell our children that this is our hope for our community, we also need to tell them that everyone is not yet treated equally. If we don’t, we’re training children to ignore racism and prejudice.

So what should we say instead? Download my free guide, “what’s wrong with saying we’re all equal?” It’s one of several free resources on kids and race available in my Resource Library.

Related Post: 5 surprising ways white children learn racist ideas

Myth #5: There’s no difference in how we need to talk about race with white children compared with children of color

Children of all races need explicit guidance from their parents and caregivers related to race and responding to racism. Some of what needs to be said in those conversations is similar across racial lines. However, there are significant differences in the mentoring and support that children of color need and that white children need.

That’s because racism is at its heart a white racial hierarchy, a system of white supremacy. Racism and its lies place white people at the top of that hierarchy. It places Black people at the bottom, and puts other people of color in the middle.

So racism affects children of color and white children differently.

Parents of kids of color have to find a delicate balance. They must prepare their children for racism they will face. At the same time, they must also bolster their kids’ self-esteem so they can thrive in the face of racism. Parents of color often do this by sharing messages of racial pride.

White parents have a different balance to find. We must help our kids understand how race and white privilege shape their experiences and the experiences of people of color. We must steer them away from a false sense of white superiority.

White parents also have less practice in talking with our children about race. Most of us were raised to be colorblind, so we don’t have models of healthy conversation about race and racism to draw on.

That’s why I wrote my book Raising Antiracist Kids: An age by age guide for parents of white children.

What’s included in Raising Antiracist Kids: An age by age guide for parents of white children?

My book gives you tools and strategies for talking with white kids about race and taking antiracist action together as a family for each stage of childhood, from toddlers through middle school age children.

I know how busy parents are, and that you don’t have time to read a 400 page book. That’s why the book is concise and filled with practical strategies that you can put into practice now, no matter what age your child is. I also share the mistakes I’ve made as I’ve navigated antiracist parenting, and lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Looking for resources for talking to kids of color about race and racism? There are lots of them in this post.