The conversation around race in the United States (and I’m guessing globally) has changed dramatically over the past several years. Now more than ever, online social justice activists are bringing the concepts of institutional racism and white privilege to the mainstream, and I think it’s a real opportunity for parents of young children and teens to make an impact on the next generation by starting conversations about race and privilege. As a white parent to a white child, I know that it’s important that I don’t avoid these topics and assume that Little Cotton Candy will put together these complex ideas all on his own.

If we avoid these subjects with our children, we actually run the risk of strengthening prejudices we want them to reject. Children are barraged by images and ideas we don’t control—on the playground, on television, and in school. However free from prejudice we may be, our children, even very young children, can absorb the biases they encounter outside of our homes. (via civilrights.org)

Little Cotton Candy is about to turn four, and according to a lot of the reading I have done, now is the right time to start opening up the dialogue with him around issues of race and privilege. So far I have made a couple of attempts to open up conversations on these topics with him, and I have to admit that each time I have become extremely nervous. What if I say the wrong thing? What if I say something that is completely over his head and he misinterprets it? But I know I have to push through these feelings and keep trying.

We started when Little Cotton Candy was two with the Sesame Street book We’re Different, We’re the Same. This book is cute and fun, and gives a super simple illustration of how people look different on the outside but ultimately are made up of the same basic characteristics. We all have noses for smelling, we all get sad. We’ve been reading this book to Little Cotton Candy for a couple of years, but now that he is getting older, we wanted to move the conversation up to a slightly more complex level of discourse (while still keeping it age appropriate, of course).

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The opportunity presented itself when Little Cotton Candy and my mom checked out some books at the library. One of them was called The Patchwork Path: A Quilt Map to Freedom, and it’s the story of a girl who escapes slavery with her father to Canada via the Underground Railroad. I realized the concept of slavery was something completely foreign to Little Cotton Candy, but I figured that now was as good a time as any to explain it to him (on a super basic level) since the book was written for children and took a hopeful, positive stance, focusing on the girl becoming free and reuniting with family.

After we read the book the first time, I told Little Cotton Candy a brief rundown of what slavery was. I told him that a long time ago, people with white skin took people with darker skin from their homes and made them work and didn’t pay them. I told him that it was wrong and that the girl and her father in the book were doing a very brave thing to escape. I realize this is a super simplistic, non-nuanced explanation, but I wasn’t sure if the concept would make sense to him anyway. The next time we read the book, I gave him the explanation again.

The other day, when I was driving Little Cotton Candy home from school, I decided the time was as good as any to re-open the issue of race. I asked him if he had ever noticed that other people have skin colors that are different from ours. I don’t remember his exact response, but he basically acted uninterested in the conversation and changed the subject. After reading through the many articles and books I had bookmarked, I realized that I had missed a crucial step: I need to go all the way to the beginning and explain the racial labels that our society uses so that he won’t be confused by the concept. This article, which I have also linked to below, gives a simple and age appropriate way to explain to a four-year-old the concept of race.

This is an ongoing process, and I am currently soaking in as much info as I can and trying to keep an open dialogue in our family on the topics of race and privilege. We haven’t even gotten to the privilege part yet, but I am building my confidence on these topics and plan on broaching the subject with Little CC soon. Other than just talking, there are a few other things we can do as parents to guide our kids and make sure they grow up with healthy attitudes about race. Below, I’ve listed the most common advice from the reading I have done on the subject.

Some Ideas for Raising Kids without Prejudice:

1. Don’t be afraid to have conversations about difficult topics, like the concepts of institutional racism and white privilege, with your spouse or partner, or other family or friends, around your children. I just try to avoid topics that are too scary for Little Cotton Candy, and I also try to avoid inflammatory language and keep the discussions calm so as not to alarm him. For example, I tend to avoid talking about gun control/gun violence, drugs, and sex, but most other political topics are fair game. The hope is that doing so will allow Little CC to know that he can talk to us about “taboo” topics if he ever has questions or is confused about something.

2. Consume media with all different types of people. It’s important to me that we choose books, TV shows, and movies that have protagonists of different skin colors, religions, ethnicities, genders, and abilities.

3. Provide opportunities for your child to interact with a diverse range of people. Whether it’s taking your kid to a local park, playing with neighbors, or enrolling them in a school with a diverse makeup, it’s good for children to interact with all kinds of people, though depending on where you live, this isn’t always easy.

4. Let them ask questions. If your kid asks an “embarrassing” question about another person’s skin color or other perceived difference, don’t shut them down. Let them know that they can ask anything and that you will do your best to give them a useful answer. If you don’t have an answer at the moment, tell them that it’s a very good question and that you would like to do some thinking about it first.

A Collection of Resources for Talking About Race & Privilege:

When I first started thinking about how to convey these ideas to my son in a way that would be helpful for him, I wished for a starting point—somewhere I could go to read other parents’ thoughts on talking to their kids about racism, privilege, and social justice. I’ve put together this list (thanks to some very generous friends and parents from Little CC’s school) and thought this would be a good place to share it.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Tatum. I read this book upon the recommendation of an academic friend, and it was a great frame of reference and a good place to start with your reading. The early chapters have some practical advice about how to talk to children about race, but mainly it provides a theoretical framework for understanding how children of various races develop a racial identity.

Teaching Tolerance: How white parents should talk to their young kids about race. via Slate. This short article makes the case for talking to young children about race and gives a few strategies for white parents, especially those who do not live in a diverse area.

Talking to Children about Racism, Prejudice and Diversity This is an online reproduction of a talk that came out of a conference in 1995, and it addresses some specific topics that come up with children and how to address them; the example questions are from the perspective of nonwhite and white children, so this could be helpful for many parents.

How to talk to your child about race (ages 5 to 8) via Baby-Center This article is short and full of practical advice about talking to five- to eight-year-olds about race.

Explaining #BlackLivesMatter to Kids: How One Dad Made It Easier for All of Us via Huffington Post. The author of the children’s book, Daddy, There’s a Noise Outside talks about the importance of teaching children about what’s going on in the world.

Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences That Make a Difference by Howard Carlton Stevenson Jr. This book is mentioned in the above referenced Slate article. I haven’t read it yet, but the reviews point to Stevenson’s strategies for dealing with stressful situations that come up around the topic of race and how to confront them rather than ignore them.

How Silence Can Breed Prejudice: A child development professor explains how and why to talk to kids about race via The Washington Post.

Raising Race-Conscious Children via A Cup of Jo. This article has a great break-down of how to start discussing race with children.

Why I Want to Read Books with Protagonists of Color to My White Son via raceconscious.org This short article includes a link to a list of children’s books with protagonists of color.

Helping Children Exposed to Shocking Events via Hand in Hand

Love First: Parenting to Reduce Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, and Other Forms of Hate via Hand in Hand

Innoculating Our Children Against Racism via Hand in Hand