My daughter and her friends, none of them white, were getting ready for a carnival in the next town. All eighth-graders, they wanted to go by themselves, no parents tagging along. There would be rides and junk food and bright lights wheeling against a dark sky — a night right out of central casting in a teen movie.
I wanted to just say “have fun, kids” but first we had to have what parents raising kids of color call The Talk. My friends with white kids haven’t had it.
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The Talk is the conversation where you tell your child that someone may do them serious harm because they are not white. That person might be anyone: a police officer or shopkeeper or passing driver or random person on a sidewalk who doesn’t like sharing the sidewalk with them.
The Talk is when you walk a fine line of saying “act like this, but not like that” and “always do x, but never y” as an instruction manual for survival. It’s when, while swallowing your anger, you tell your child that their safety from assault means policing themselves, of containing their behavior in a way not expected of white peers; it’s when they learn that America demands they limit themselves because would-be assailants feel so free.
Maybe the worst part of The Talk is when you confess that doing just as they’re told may not matter at all. The Talk forces parents who have tried to raise moral kids — teaching them that actions have consequences and that living justly makes a better world — to add a caveat: whatever a kid does or doesn’t do, someone might kill them anyway and get away with it because of race. Doing “the right thing” is merely hope in motion, not a free pass.
As the Black Lives Matter protests have unfurled across the nation, a lot of good-hearted white people have been examining their privileges. And what I am hearing most from my parent friends is that realize they have never talked with their kids meaningfully, seriously, in painful detail about race. Many have discussed civil rights broadly, but not about the pervasive anti-blackness of the criminal justice system or about the seemingly unceasing murders of unarmed black people.
A common refrain is that people with small children don’t want to say too much too early for fear of scaring their tender ones. People with older kids now worry they waited too long, that initial protectiveness leading to forgetfulness, suddenly yielding teens who just don’t get it.
Black parents, and parents of all non-Black children, don’t get to wait. There are a million versions of The Talk and they don’t all start with “a cop may kneel on your deck for nine minutes.” Some hold off on the harshest details and implications for a good while, but rare is the family with a non-white child that gets to skip it altogether.
* * *
For my daughter, the earliest version of The Talk was me explaining why white people kept trying to touch her hair (and why I kept intervening). There was the version that came with her kindergarten’s clunky handling of diversity, a one-day discussion of Martin Luther King Jr, a story of his assassination that so scared the children that a white boy was afraid to play with his black best friend because that is what got King killed.
Then there are tributaries that flow to and from The Talk, like me trying to explain why, in my daughter’s class with several boys who were seen as unruly, only the black one was made to sit facing away from everyone else in a punishment chair. No, the boy was not killed by that experience; but that experience put him in a pipeline that might have delivered him to the same end had his family not moved to a different school district.
The talks kept coming in my house. The one about the on-the-court fight with a white referee who didn’t like my daughter’s cornrows…the one after she was asked to cut her braids for sports… the one after someone carved the n-word on desk at her middle school…and a steady stream of talks as teachers singled out the black kids, especially the boys, for “crimes” their white counterparts skated by with. (This pattern was recently confirmed by the town’s former data specialist, though denied by the town itself.)
But none of these talks were The Talk. With my daughter and her friends heading out on their own for a night in a wealthy town where less than 1% of the population is black, I finally had to talk bluntly about the danger of being surrounded by people who might not like their volume, their language, their clothes, their skin, their hair. I had to remind her not to engage with anyone she didn’t need to, but that if authorities gave them a hard time, to be as humble and respectful as possible (in hopes that it would matter). And I reminded her of her own privilege as one of the lighter-skinned kids. She needed to watch out for the darkest-skinned kids, especially the boys, whose bodies are the default targets of the American animus.
That’s a lot to say before “Have fun, kids!”
They did, in fact, having fun. They rode the creaky Ferris wheel and ate fried dough and took selfies. If they can do that 25,000 more times without being shot, they’ll live the average life span of a white person in this country.
* * *
Parents of non-black kids, especially the white ones, need to start having these conversations with their own children a lot sooner. The “we don’t see color” approach is just not unsustainable in a nation which so clearly does.
What might that talk look like?
Start by teaching your young children that you believe no race is inherently of more or less worth; no race should be afforded less or more than any other. But you can’t stop there. You have to acknowledge that many other people believe that some races are worthless and deserve less. Be concrete: that belief is racist. Explain that racist beliefs can be shown in words and actions, and that this harms people. When you see things in books or movies or games or real-life that reflect these harms, talk about them. Tell your child that your family is anti-racist, which means you oppose racist beliefs and actions.
As your child grows, be clear that there are racist people who cause intentional harm and they often rely on the racism of others to not face consequences. But also make clear that people who don’t mean to be racist (and believe they are not) often do things which are racist. Introduce your child to the ways in which racism is furthered, including erasure (absence in everything from role models at school to representation to the arts), casual acceptance of stereotype (in media, news, and education), and social separation. Talk about yourself, too — about ways you have fallen or still fall into any of these racist behaviors. Teach your child that anyone can be racist and anyone can choose to be anti-racist.
When your child is finally at the when they sometimes move through the world without you, they will carry the knowledge of these earlier talks. Ask white kids to think about their role in the safety of their non-white friends. If they witness their friends of color being endangered by racism, talk to them about how to safely ally themselves, using their white bodies and the inherent privilege of that whiteness. Teach them what our kids know: how to look for a badge number or to ask an officer’s name. (Maybe they won’t get it, but it’s a start.) Remind them how powerful cell phone videos are, often the only thing standing between accountability and escape for perpetrators of anti-black violence. Tell them the truth: If they stand with their black friends, they too become a target. You cannot guarantee their safety.
If it makes you nervous to think about your white child putting their body on the line like that — if you immediately feel that pinch of fear in your chest — then you are getting a glimpse of parenting a black child every single day.
The Talk shouldn’t have to exist. But it does. It saves lives, but not every life.
It might save even more if white kids heard it, too.
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Previously published on “Equality Includes You”, a Medium publication.
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