Do you feel intimidated by the idea of teaching your children about racism and bias? Do you feel that this is an important social justice topic to teach your kids, but you are unsure how?
Today’s Martin Luther King Day in the United States, so I wanted to continue the conversation that we started on the podcast a few months ago with Episode 101: Why and How to Talk to Your Kids about Skin Tone and Race, and focus on teaching your kids about racism.
If our children aren’t comfortable having conversations about skin tone and learning about the difficult realities of racism in our society, then they will never be able to make conscious decisions about how they want to operate in the world.
Today’s episode is for any mother who feels the weight and importance of teaching our children about racism but feels unequipped to have these difficult and sensitive conversations.
Three Takeaways on Teaching Your Kids About Racism
1) Teach your children that race is a social construct that was used to justify slavery.
2) Teach your children about implicit bias–what it is and how to combat it.
3) Teach your children to respond with humility when they make mistakes or hurt someone.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Show
- Free e-courses from Podcast U
- First Name Basis Podcast
- Episode 101: Why and How to Talk to Your Kids about Skin Tone and Race.
- Human Genome Project
- Implicit Association Test
Quotes from this episode:
- “[Race] has value because we gave it value as a society.”
- “You can see right there, just ‘degeneration of the ideal’ is going to lead to some problematic beliefs about different human beings if they are ‘degenerate.'”
- “So that’s what we mean when we’re saying that race is a social construct that was used to justify slavery. Because you can’t have slavery in a place where all men are created equal. But if enslaved people are not necessarily men, then it doesn’t mean that you’re breaking with your values.”
- “Racism existed and then we created race to kind of explain it.”
- “Implicit biases are just the attitudes and stereotypes that affect your understanding and your decisions in a manner that’s unconscious.”
- “Racism as like a smog. Sometimes it’s really, really thick and we can see it, and we can reach out and touch it.”
- “Another thing that you can do is get on a first name basis with people who are different from you.”
- “Little children as young as two and three years old are starting to put people into categories based on what they’re seeing. So segregation is that tool that is used to perpetuate these things within us that we don’t even know about.”
- “It’s okay if I feel a little uneasy about these conversations and about this topic; what matters is that I want to learn and I want to be better and I’m willing to sit in the discomfort for the sake of becoming a better human and learning.”
Full Transcript
For a full transcript of the episode, click here.
Online Workshop!
I am teaching my full Declutter your Motherhood workshop live and ONLINE on Tuesday, January 28th, and I would love for you to join us. Go to 3in30podcast.com/workshops to reserve your seat.
Don’t miss the follow-up episode with Jasmine and Dr. Lucretia Berry!
What’s one thing this podcast taught you about teaching your kids about racism? Let me know in a comment below!
