Parents, educators and experts talk to kids on race amid unrest
NEW YORK — As an African American parent, Cassandre Dunbar in Charlotte, N.C., always knew she and her husband would have “the talk” with their son, the one preparing him for interactions with law enforcement.
But she never dreamed it would be necessary at 5 years old.
“I thought the cops were supposed to help us? Are they only helpful to white people?” the boy asked after taking in TV coverage of protests and overhearing his parents discuss the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor.
Ms. Dunbar explained to her eldest child: “Some people have a hard time understanding that skin color doesn’t have anything to do with what kind of person you are. I said that, yes, cops are meant to help us all, but some cops aren’t good cops, and the bad ones really aren’t helpful to people who look like us.”
Many parents of all races are struggling with similar conversations after a week of outrage and sadness that spilled into streets worldwide after video of Floyd’s death emerged. It came after months of family togetherness in coronavirus lockdown, a time when kids have been cut off from schools and peers.
Floyd, a handcuffed black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck as he pleaded for air.
To help her kids going forward, Ms. Dunbar has been reaching out for guidance from child therapists, early childhood educators and seasoned parents.
How conversations with kids about race and racism play out can be intensely personal for parents. Many white parents in particular believe children are too young for such discussions at age 10 or 11, said Andrew Grant-Thomas, co-founder of
Embrace Race, a nonprofit that provides resources for parents and educators.
“They think that kids are too naive and fragile and will crumple the moment you even mention the word,” he said. “By not engaging kids explicitly, essentially you’re leaving them to flounder in this tidal wave of communication about race that they are receiving from a very early age, but without you there to deliberately mediate how they make sense of what they get.”
Howard Stevenson, a clinical psychologist in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, works with educators and families to understand the trauma and stress of racebased hate. Insights he offered online in 2016 have been shared by school districts around the country in the past week with parents.
“Both verbal and nonverbal approaches influence what children not only know about race but whether they should speak to it or how they should manage the stress of it,” Mr. Stevenson told The Associated Press. “Children watch what their parents don’t do during racial moments as much as what they actually purposely teach.”
He said research shows the more parents talk to children about race, the more those children “tend to be less overwhelmed by the politics.”
For African American mom Sonya Horton in Brooklyn, N.Y., that means putting it all on the line for her 11-yearold daughter, Samirah, a budding DJ and anti-bullying activist who attends a predominantly white private school.
The sixth grader belongs to a school club for black and brown students where they feel free to discuss slights from classmates over things like how they wear their hair, certain foods they like and family traditions.
Of her white classmates, Samirah said: “I feel like they know what racism is but not to the full extent of the meaning of it. I feel like they might think making an inappropriate joke could be racist, but racist could be imitating someone or saying a comment that’s not particularly nice.”
Ms. Horton, whose husband is a retired police officer, said they have never “sugarcoated things” for their child.
“I never feel that she’s too young to know or to understand,” Ms. Horton said. “We live in a world where it’s out there, and if you’re not open and you’re not talking about it then they may come away with misinformation and miseducation.”