Talking About Race With Children

I had white friends who told me that they were colorblind in regard to race. That idea has always irked me since to me the problem isn't acknowledging differences among people, which include skin color. Instead the problem is pretending that people have no color or that their racial identity is insignificant.

So what can we do about this? For many adults I think the situation is hopeless--sorry to be so pessimistic; for children I'm exceedingly hopeful. In fact there are many teachable moments for children regarding the topic race. Selecting an African-American to be president is just one moment.

Some of my thoughts about race for this blog post were driven by an article at Wired.com titled How to Raise Racist Children Kids by Jonathan Liu. The article highlights parental patterns that fosters racism in children. Also, the article presents information from the book NurtureShock as: A child’s attitudes toward race are much harder to alter after third grade, but a lot of parents wait until then (or later) before they feel it’s “safe” to talk frankly about race.

I must remember that I'm one of the fortunate people who has had the opportunity to travel and appreciate cultures in many locations around the world. I think this exposure has helped me develop a wider view of people in one respect from noticing their differences from me and my culture, and at the same time I've been able to see a commonality between people from different cultures. Kindness is one of the commonalities.

My most memorable examples of cross-cultural kindness were in Germany and Egypt. Those moments of people going out of their way to make me feel comfortable and understand me as a person often fuel my soul when I have periods of annoyance stemming from racial discrimination.