Helping Children Face Racism
Every weekday morning, I zip around town in my minivan to drop my kids off at their respective destinations: The littlest three go to their grandparents’ house for a few hours, while the oldest two shuffle through the halls of our local elementary school. Five children whom I would do absolutely anything to help and protect. Five children who are my heart walking outside my body. Five children: four White, one Black.
My mother and father grew up in the Deep South during the civil rights era and were determined to educate their children about racism when they became parents. From early on, they talked quite openly about the evils of racism with my sister, brother, and me. I will always be thankful that they did not shy away from such a painful topic, but rather taught us in no uncertain terms that all people were created equal. That early exposure to rejecting toxic ideologies enabled me to receive much from the Black community throughout my life: friendships, teachers, music, and, eventually, my first child.
While preparing for the adoption of our son, my husband and I were instructed by professionals on the importance of diversity and inclusion. When social workers and veteran adoptive parents explained to us that our child needed to see himself represented in the predominately White world we were inserting him into, I bent over backward trying to undo the whitewashing that I suddenly realized marked our lives.
It was a massive reality check. Almost overnight, I could see how nearly everything around us was created for and marketed to White people. From the board books on store shelves, to the characters in television shows, to the people we spent the most time with, everything communicated to my dark-skinned child that he was the odd man out, the exception: not normal. We realized what Black families had long known: If we wanted our Black son to see himself positively and equally represented, we would have to be very intentional about every single lifestyle and media choice we’d make.
From that point on, my husband and I vowed to work conscientiously to help our son construct a positive racial identity—no small undertaking for a Black boy in this country. Then in 2012, when my son was 2, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered by a neighborhood watch volunteer for wearing a hoodie and looking “suspicious.” And my whole world changed.