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Before my husband and novel lucah awekI welcomed our nearly 5-year-old daughter into the world, we thought a lot about how we’d raise her. We talked about wanting to instill in her the values our parents taught us, like kindness, curiosity, creativity, and fairness. Like all new parents, we had dreams for who our child could become. Yet, in all of our conversations, we never discussed how we’d teach her about race and, moreover, how to reject racism. 

I thought those lessons would arise naturally over time, particularly in the classroom. We also assumed that simply holding progressive beliefs about equality meant our daughter would inherit the same world view. Though my husband is white and our daughter presents as white, I felt I brought unique understanding of racism to our family as the daughter of a Mexican-American father. I understand the pain inflicted by casual and institutional racism, even if I haven’t experienced it viscerally because of my light skin color. I believed such insight meant I’d know how to raise an antiracist child. I was wrong. 

The open embrace of white nationalism during the Trump presidency has forced me to see that. But I also sensed how unprepared I was a few years before his election, when my daughter was an infant and my work as a journalist began to include reporting on racial justice. Listening to black academics and activists talk about racism and white supremacy in our culture and politics, I realized I felt uncomfortable.

While I could easily label the KKK as an example of white supremacy, I resisted looking at how the animus of racial superiority seeps into the ordinary or mundane aspects of our lives, particularly the policies that define America's approach to issues like poverty, education, health care, voting rights, and criminal justice. 

When you believe that benefiting from or defending racism and white supremacy requires personal malice or prejudice, it’s impossible to see how racist ideas are everywhere. It then becomes difficult to admit how and when you've actually embraced or endorsed those ideas. The more I confronted my personal discomfort with this reality, the more I understood I didn’t yet have the language or skills to talk meaningfully about racism with my daughter. 

Finally, watching the unabashed display of white supremacy at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, in 2017, I realized I had a critical decision to make as a parent: I could either raise my white child with good intentions when it came to race, or I could slowly teach her how to identify and reject white supremacy. 

The journey that began with that realization continues to unfold, and I expect it to last the rest of my life. The challenges are many but chief among them for me was acknowledging that considering yourself a good or decent person who believes in equality doesn't prevent you from being racist or supporting racist ideas. Many Americans, however, believe the lie that it's only your attitude toward race that matters, not your political, social, or cultural convictions.

Over time, I understood that this was the exact falsehood I wanted to prevent my own daughter from accepting as truth. While I feel far more confident today than I did a few years ago, developing the awareness and skills required to teach any child this, let alone a preschooler, is hard work.

Starting with the basics

Andrew Grant-Thomas, co-founder of the online parenting and caregiver community EmbraceRace, first introduced me to practical techniques. During a 2016 interviewwith him, I learned to make conversations about race routine and ordinary, to understand that my child is capable of discussing race, and to expect mistakes along the way.

Indeed, raising what Grant-Thomas describes as a child who is informed, thoughtful, and brave about race has meant surrendering my ego. I remember feeling horrified after we took a dated alphabet book home from a free library, began to read it to our then toddler-age daughter, and discovered that it contained a male Sambo character, surrounded by white porcelain dolls, on one page. My husband and I tried speaking plainly about why the representation of the black character was wrong, and I was gutted when she somehow gathered that blackness itself was wrong. Now I try not to view such exchanges as a personal failure but rather a chance to answer questions, normalize talking about race, and guide her toward being an ally. 

Since Grant-Thomas and I first spoke, EmbraceRace has become a standout source for both white parents who want their children to be thoughtful allies as well as parents of color working to raise confident, resilient children. He says many white parents are eager to raise racially inclusive kids who value diversity. Some, however, are less invested — or even resistant to — EmbraceRace’s other goals: nurturing resilient children of color, children who develop a critical analysis of race and racism, and children with the tools and sensibilities to become racial justice advocates.

“It’s harder in the head, and harder in the heart, to do that work,” Grant-Thomas says. 

While EmbraceRace plans to eventually release a set of educational materials for parents and caregivers beyond the workshops and tip sheets it currently offers, there is no widely accepted curricula designed to help adults through that complex, lifelong process. Parents need such guidance to develop their own race consciousness so they can avoid color blindness, a philosophy that insists we can go through life without "seeing" the color of a person's skin.

People often invoke color blindness when defending their questionable or objectionable views on race and politics, as if not observing skin color, and focusing only on factors like personal character or merit, makes a person's race inconsequential. Instead, parents can be honest about how race is a critical part of how someone is seen by the world and treated by institutions small and large, then assess how the decisions they make for their children’s well-being may hurt kids of color and their families.

Such choices include to which schools parents send their children, which sports teams and clubs their children join, and which local institutions families favor. White parents may send subtle or explicit messages to their children about race when they segregate themselves from communities of color. These signals can suggest to children, however inadvertently, that white families are superior to black and brown families. 

Talking to your community

For me, reporting has been critical to understanding these dynamics, but following the Unite the Right rally, I decided I wanted to do more. Last year, I partnered with another local parent to co-organize an event about parenting and race in my community in Oakland, California. The sold-out anti-bias workshop, facilitated by the Grammy-nominated children’s hip-hop group Alphabet Rockers and attended by many white moms and dads, gave me hope that parents are searching for opportunities to hold themselves accountable.

During the workshop, Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Soulati Shepherd, a white woman and black man who founded the Alphabet Rockers, emphasized the importance of using clear, accurate, and relatable language. White parents can and should become comfortable discussing skin color and other physical differences without stigmatizing them. Children who notice varying traits shouldn’t be hushed but rather engaged, specifically with questions about why they think differences in appearance occur and what similarities they might see as well. (The book All the Colors We Are: The Story of How We Get Our Skin Coloris an excellent resource for those conversations.) In contrast, children who are taught not to see race, won’t know how to talk about race. They also won’t know how to stand up to racism.  

That skill is central to the Alphabet Rockers’ music and work. McGaw and Shepherd encourage children to practice intervening when they witness exclusion of any kind in school or out in public, including racism and prejudice. They focus on declarations like: “Stop. That’s disrespectful.” or “That sounds like racism to me.” Parents who want their children to be allies should help them role play being a bystander, then guide them to reflect on what that feels like.  

This is a significant step beyond buying diverse toys and developmentally appropriate books and music that explore race, equity, and inclusion. That makes for a good start, but it’s only the beginning.

One tip from the workshop that I’ve found invaluable is simply observing aloud to my daughter when a television show, book, or ad features white characters while people from other backgrounds have been left out, a concept that resonates with young children. She and I talked about this while watching Mary Poppinsand I was surprised at how quickly she grasped the idea. The more we practice that exercise, the more my daughter will look at the world around her and ask who’s missing or who’s been excluded, and why.  

McGaw and Shepherd told me late last year that they’d begun receiving more workshop requests from parents across the country. 

“A lot of people, they really want to do this work and they really don’t know how to,” says Shepherd. “There’s something that’s happening that’s making it safe for more people to inquire about this.”

While the workshop was just the first of what we hope will be many conversations, I was proud of what we’d achieved in 90 minutes — and the community we’d started to build around the values of antiracism. This year, we've convened a small discussion group of local parents to collectively explore how we can better understand our own limitations and raise antiracist children. Not all of us are white, nor are we all new to antiracist work. What I believe we share is the knowledge that unless we commit ourselves to consistent reflection, we won't succeed at what we've set out to accomplish.

Of course, not every conversation about parenting and race needs look like a workshop or discussion group. Parents should aim for what feels authentic and feasible. You can start with a large event, or with a circle of neighbors, friends in a religious congregation, members of a PTA, or parents in a Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts troop. Either way, listen to and read racial justice activists and experts. Their insights, which are based on personal and professional experiences living with the consequences of racism and white supremacy, should guide your planning. As parents, caregivers, and advocates, they will tell you exactly what their children and communities need to survive and thrive. 

Changing how you see the world

One of the most valuable voices I've listened to over the past few years has been that of Ibram X. Kendi. I discovered the author and scholar a few years ago, while reporting on so-called toxic masculinity. Kendi's new book, How to Be an Antiracist, which I recently wrote about, frames the act of being racist as "supporting a racist policy through [one's] actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea."

This definition, which also surfaces in his previous book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, helped me radically change the way I understood racism. I may consider myself "not racist," but that means nothing if I can't confront the racist ideas I might hold, if I won't fight racial disparities, or if I'm constantly redefining what racism means so that it only applies to others, not me.

Similarly, interviewing the black activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor, whose work I came to know through Mashable's Real Miss America project in 2015, yielded another critical revelation. When I spoke to Taylor last year about her new book, The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, I asked about her acknowledgement that we sometimes think terrible, prejudiced things about people, whether they're based on a person's weight, gender, sexuality, race, or other aspects of their identity. We may never utter those inner thoughts aloud, because we're good, decent people, and yet, we know they rattle around in our souls.

"We can't eradicate those thoughts," she said. "Your thoughts exist and they're informed by the world in which you're steeped. We need to make a distinction between thoughts and who we are ... but if we're not aware, our thoughts turn into action."

This is precisely the type of critical thinking that I want to teach my daughter as she grows older, and it's why I've stopped thinking of myself as "not racist." That static state of being, which requires no commitment or work, has never been enough to counter white supremacy. What we need now, urgently, are parents who raise their children to become antiracists, and who do so because they want to loosen racism's grip on America.

Teaching my daughter such skills goes beyond the important but easier recommendations like reading books with diverse characters and celebrating historical figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks. Instead, I need to learn as much as I can about myself, white supremacy, and race consciousness as possible, so I can spark that same self-awareness in her over time.

I also find that the more I do this work in communion with other parents who want to raise antiracist children, the more progress I make. Those conversations are opportunities to talk candidly about new challenges, brainstorm ways to tackle those questions, and ultimately hold myself accountable. 

I may not have all the answers, but I can tell you there’s nothing to be gained by waiting for more clarity or certainty. Now is the time to confront whatever resistance dwells deep inside you. Now is the time to talk to your children. This journey is neither easy or convenient, but for me it's the only path to freedom from inequality, discrimination, and hate for all of our children.