Hellobee

Some time ago, I broached the subject of speaking to children about race.  This is an especially important topic in our family as we raise daughters of two different races to become strong women rooted in their history who are thoughtful about the world.  Recent events have spurred a lot of discussion on the boards about race and talking to children about race.  Clearly the subject has been weighing on the minds of the hive.

I thought I would dig a little deeper into my resources and revisit the developmental approach I touched on in my first post on the subject.

Many people have the notion that little children are born without any recognition of skin color, and that they are, in effect, colorblind.  However, all the early childhood research shows that indeed children recognize physical differences from a very young age. A study by Katz and Koftin (1997) showed that infants at the age of 6 months can categorize people by race and gender. Further, Aboud and team in 2008 (as well as several other research groups)  discovered that children by the age of 3-5 demonstrate racial biases that may not even reflect the racial attitudes of the adults in their lives. Children at that age are actually able to discern wider community and societal norms without ever being conscious of them or taught.  They are gathering this information from a wider circle than just their family. A great example is how children do not speak with the accent that is shared in their home, but rather the accent that is used in the community around them.  So, despite a color-blind environment in the home, your kids are learning about race in ways you never intended.  If you are not balancing out what they are learning in the community and talking about their perceptions, you might be very surprised by what they think.

Further, if you live in a racially homogenous neighborhood, your child may discern that those of a different color who don’t live in the neighborhood may be “different” in a bad way and that others from outside should be avoided. Children also learn rules.  So if the child is only seeing folks with darker skin on the bus or doing work for them, they may infer that these patterns are due to inherent and meaningful differences rather than societal circumstances.

White middle class culture is seen as the standard to young children in our country.  It is ubiquitous and as a society we unknowingly perpetuate that perception.  Children get the subtle message that white is best… and you can see this when you conduct a version of the “doll experiment” first conducted in the 1930s and 1940s where children were presented with identical dolls of white and black color.  The white doll was preferred by all children, showing internalized racial bias from an early age.  White was associated with “pretty” and “good” while black was associated with “ugly” and “bad.” This study was repeated in 2006 and the outcome was the same despite our mistaken notions that we are progressing towards a post-racial culture.  Results were made into a film called “A Girl Like Me” which I highly recommend.

So once again, we’re back to the question, “How do I adequately address these issues with my child?”  We know we need to prepare:

1) Before the conversation: Babies are picking up on racial cues as early as 6 months of age.  This reminds us that it is important to enrich our homes with positive examples of people of different races.  Cultural tourism isn’t enough though.  It is helpful to be able to explain why something or someone is important.  But by highlighting positive examples of races different from your own, you are helping to normalize and provide context in your own home where you have control over the situation.

I’m including a list of books that we either own or have been recommended to us.

– Mama Do You Love Me? by Barbara M. Joose  (highlights Inuit culture)

– Ten Little Babies by Gyo Fujikawa (again simple book with children of different races. My girls love this book)

– The Baby Loves books and The Colors of Us by Karen Katz (simple books featuring books with children of different races)

– Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama (a great way to highlight the achievements of diverse folks from the US)

– Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman (about an imaginative young lady)

There are many other great examples of terrific books and I encourage everyone to share their favorites in the comments!

2) Start the conversation early. In fact, the earlier the better.  This means getting over our fear and discomfort and beginning the dialog. Our kids don’t know that this is something that they should bring up and if they see that nobody else is talking about it, they won’t either. When they do bring the subject up, the impulse is often to shut the conversation down. For example, a child can see a child that is darker than him/herself and say, “Mama, why is she dirty?”  The mom probably wants to crawl under the table at that point, but just saying, “Shh” sends a message of taboo. Instead it is best to address the issue head on and say, “Honey, that’s not dirt. Different people have different skin colors and hers is darker than yours.”  This way, you are opening the dialog further and showing that you are confident in talking about issues of race.

Of course your little one may stump you and I will re-iterate what I said in my last post… the most honest response to questions you are not sure how to answer is, “I’ll find out” or, “I don’t know, let’s find out together!”  You aren’t going to be putting negative ideas in children’s heads by talking frankly about race, especially since they are already forming their own ideas or even assimilating ideas from their surrounding cultural milieu.

3) Go deep (but age appropriate).  Superficial treatment or sugar coating the subject can often lead to a situation where the child can later lose trust in what he or she has learned.  It’s so much easier for us to say that discrimination is a thing of the past or to say that people who do racist things are “bad” people.  But, we all know the situation is so much more complicated than all of that.  It’s better to say that sometimes things are unfair and that we must continue to work to eliminate discrimination based on race/ethnicity. If you are from a group that is discriminated against, you already know that this is a conversation that you’ll be having with your toddlers.  It’s probably a good idea for everyone to start around this same age.

4) Don’t neglect talking about the good qualities of the child’s own racial/ethnic background.  I’ll share the recent example from our own life.  We’ve been having versions of race conversations since Little Jacks was 18 months old.  The other day while I was reading Hellobee board threads on the topic, I brought it up again with LJ.  She said that her skin was dark and mine was light even though she’s actually got a porcelain complexion while I’m more olive colored.  She said she wanted to be dark like Jack Jack and that in fact she was now going to be African American.  Oh man!  All of a sudden I realized that in my effort to provide shining examples of African American culture and the beauty of darker pigmentation, I neglected to reinforce that her skin was beautiful and that she is beautiful.  At that instant we began talking about the positive contributions of the groups that she belongs to. She hasn’t made a similar comment since, but we’re still checking in with her often about it.

5) Let the children problem solve.  Toddlers are capable of some fairly complex thought processes (you only need to watch them figure out how to get the bath crayons down from a high shelf, close the door to the bathroom, and listen for parents while they draw everywhere to know that they are operating on a fairly sophisticated level!).  So if a situation comes up at school or in the grocery store, ask them to help think through the issues and try and problem solve.  The utility is two-fold: first you get to see what your child thinks about the issues and second you are equipping them with some important tools for the next time they encounter a similar situation. One example that comes up frequently in preschools is when a child “talks funny” because English is their second language.  Help walk your child through the reasons why this is and how they could potential help and learn from the other child.

6) Make the conversation ongoing.  I know that sometimes after a particularly sticky conversation (like the one where my daughter revealed that she wanted to be African American) I would just like to be done with the topic.  If I’m not careful, I find that I don’t want to broach it again.  But, it is important to continue checking in, assess for further questions that may be coming up, and to build on the conversations that went before.  In our house, we are currently tackling the different ways that Africans came to the United States in the past and present.  It’s not an easy conversation and it’s had a few detours.  I’m letting Little Jacks lead as much as possible, which means a lot of conversation about the animals of the African continent and some conversation about when I lived in Uganda. I think of the first conversation as providing a scaffolding and follow up conversations as building the structure and filling it out.

7) Go easy on yourself.  We all have our own implicit biases.  I highly recommend the IAT test for exploration of what those might be.  Acknowledge your limitations, work to better your information base and to address your own biases… and don’t worry about doing all of this perfectly.  Look at me, I totally screwed up by painting a very one dimensional picture with my daughter, and once I identified the issue, she (and I) are right back on track. It gets easier every time you try!

What have been your challenges and successes in tackling the topic of race with your child?

Other resources:

Katz American Psychologist 2003 (For the anthropologists and psychologists among us.  This is the theory part of things.)

PACT transracial adoption resources (goes through age appropriate discussion for children who are transracially adopted)

 Multiracial Sky (a great resource for multiracial families)

Love Isn’t Enough (Blog on the issues of race and family. There haven’t been new posts in a while, but the archives go back 6 years)

NY Times article on transracial adoption

Southern Poverty Law Center’s tolerance site

Children are not colorblind (pdf)

Engaging young children about race and class

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (white privilege)