Why Representation (and Talking About Race) Is Good for White Kids, Too
This back-to-school season, amid book bannings and legislation silencing conversations about race, it feels particularly important to revisit the question of why representation (and talking about race) is good for all children — including white kids.
Representation — demonstrating the broad and varied existence of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color — matters for a whole host of reasons that I will explore here. Having the capacity to talk about race matters, too.
Those who say they are against representation and conversations about race often ground their reasoning in the false perception that such action will make white kids feel bad. My experience says otherwise. I’m a white mom raising white kids and we talk about race all the time. Here’s how my children feel about it:
They tell me that these conversations make them feel good because the conversations help them be part of the solution to the horrible problem of racism.
They are glad to have grown-ups in their lives who are willing to share the true and honest history and present-day circumstances of our nation, and who come up with ways that we can do better.
They notice race everywhere, have questions, and are glad to have grown-ups in their lives who are comfortable talking about it.
They know that no problem has ever been solved without discussion, and that if we never talk about race, we will never end racism.
Earlier this year, I was invited to participate in a Teaching While White podcast with Debby Irving, author of Waking Up White, and hosted by Teaching While White cofounder Jenna Chandler-Ward. The topic was “Parenting While White.” It’s a topic I’ve been long engaged with in my work at Social Justice Kids, an organization I founded in 2018, and the work I’ve been doing for 14-plus years to help parents and educators partner with the kids they love for a more just and equitable world. Debby Irving’s work has long influenced how I engage in my own practice of racial justice, and I’ve been a fan of Teaching While White ever since I heard the inaugural podcast episode in 2017.
Our “Parenting While White” podcast episode is one that I wish had been in existence before college, career, and kids of my own. I hope you’ll take a listen. If you’re a white parent who cares about raising antiracist kids, you won’t want to miss it as part of your back-to-school parenting prep. And while I think that most of us can agree that banning books and silencing conversations around race is a bad idea, I’m not sure that we well-meaning white parents realize how much we still need to learn and grow… and do.
During our “Parenting While White” episode, I shared a story that carries a lot of shame for me. It was a story about racist beliefs I held as a white child, the impact I had, and how the grown-ups in my life at the time did and did not respond.
I was a “good” kid. My parents always taught me to love and include everyone. So how was it that, when the one Black girl in my elementary school class told me that she was going out for the lead in the musical “Annie” that I could have thought, and voiced, “You can’t be Annie, because you’re Black”?
I wish I could go back in time and retract the words and the harm they caused. I wish that all of us, my grown-ups included, could go back and do better for her and for me. Clearly, there was so much learning that someone could have helped me with. I also imagine that there was healing that could have been facilitated for both of us. I don’t know what happened with and for my classmate; all I know is that no one helped me properly apologize, process, learn and do better.
While my parents told me that we should love and include everyone, we did not lead racially inclusive lives. My life, home, books, media, curriculum, neighborhood, teachers, church, and my parents’ friend groups were predominantly or entirely white. The lack of representation of people of color in my life, coupled with the fact that none of my grown-ups were equipped to talk with me about it, left me with my own inadequate interpretation, which led to my harmful words.
I had never seen the character of Annie played by anyone other than a white girl with red curly hair. The first time I saw a Black actor play Annie was in 2014. I was an adult with my first child by then. So… how could any of us shocked by my story?
As my dear friend Fernell Miller (founder of The Root of Us) said to me, “There is nothing revolutionary or shocking about your story. What’s shocking is that white people are shocked by it. That story happens every damn day. What’s revolutionary is that you’re talking about it, openly, with other white parents and educators. And you’re doing things differently with your kids. Keep doing all of that.”
As white parents — and educators — what can we do to make sure that we are safeguarding our kids against absorbing and internalizing racist beliefs?
Representation matters for kids of color so that they can see the possibilities for themselves in the world. But representation matters for white kids, too, so they can see the possibilities for everyone, not just themselves. It starts with making sure that a diversity of social identities, including racial identities, is present everywhere kids are present — in schools and school curricula, in libraries, in media, in toys, in our communities, and in our friendship circles as the adults who love these kids.
Most kids in the United States today are growing up in de facto segregation. Schools and neighborhoods that are truly racially diverse are few and far between. When kids do not see a diversity of racial and social identities represented in their world on a daily basis, they will make sense of it for themselves, often in faulty and harmful ways — like I did.
A lack of representation leads all kids, white kids and kids of color, to hold limiting beliefs about the possibilities for Black and Brown children and adults. If we want our children to be better, they need to be exposed to better representation, and we grown-ups need to be able to talk to them about everything they are noticing, and missing, about race.
In my case, my teachers might have blamed my parents and my parents might have blamed my teachers, and both would be a little wrong and a little right. I was learning about race everywhere I went through representation, or the lack thereof, and the meaning I was making of what I saw or didn’t see.
Are you a white parent or educator who wants to do better? Here are some recommendations:
Explore, with the kids you love, who is present and who is missing in the books and media that you and your kids consume. Prepare for this conversation by practicing the words for racial and other social identities, like Black, Brown, African American, white, indigenous, native, Asian, gay, bi, lesbian, transgender, gender nonbinary, gender fluid and skin tones including: peachy, olive, brown, black, sienna, and rosy. It might sound silly to practice these words, but our discomfort with these words can stop us from having these conversations. How many of our books and media have a predominantly white cast of characters? Brainstorm ways to do better (hint: talk less and listen more — kids have the best solutions!).
Explore, with the kids you love, who is present and who is missing in the toys at home and at school/daycare. What are the racial and social identities represented in the toys in your lives? How can you do better?
Reflect on how and how often you talk about race and social identities with your kids. Have you ever shushed your child when they asked about race (this is so common for us white grown-ups)? How can you do better? How can you help children know there is no shame, just curiosity, in asking?
Beyond the presence of books, toys, and conversations, how are you demonstrating being in alignment with what you say and do? How diverse is your adult friend group? Who you hang out with tells your kids a lot about who you value and who you believe belongs in your lives. Who are the people you spend time with? Who is invited to your home and whose homes are you invited into? When you have outings, who are you with? Is there a gap between who you say you care about and who you actually spend time with?
Ultimately, just saying and “believing” that “everyone belongs” is not enough when our lives, neighborhoods, books, toys, media, and friendship circles are conveying a very different message. Kids believe what they see over what we say. If we are honest about the racial representation we are modeling for our kids, we well-meaning white grown-ups will likely find that we have a lot of work to do.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” still resonate today:
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
As we head into fall, let’s consider our role in creating positive peace and presence of justice in schools and at home. Let’s plan and prepare, particularly those of us who are white, for a year of inclusion and healthy conversations about race. Let’s work on being humble, and receiving new-to-us information about race and racism, particularly when it allows us to see ourselves more clearly and fully, and make a change with and for the kids we love.
Thank you Jenna Chandler-Ward for having Debby Irving and me on your podcast, which prompted so many of these reflections! To readers who haven’t had a chance to hear our episode about “Parenting While White,” we invite you to listen HERE.
Mollie M. Monahan, Ph.D., is the founder of Social Justice Kids. Her signature course, LOVE KIDS, is attracting more and more white parents and educators who want to co-create a more just and equitable world, with and for the KIDS they LOVE, but find themselves saying things like, “I don’t know where to start,” or “I know I have room to grow.” LOVE KIDS helps parents raise children who can recognize and name unfair racialized patterns in the world, and who are empowered by voice and action to do something about it. They are kids who see each other and stick up for each other, particularly in the context of intersecting social identities (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, gender identities and so much more). They give us hope for a more just and equitable world. More at https://socialjusticekids.com.