How to Talk about Race in America with Children, Teenagers, and Adults

It is never too early to talk to children about race. Some adults falsely believe that children do not notice race but at 3-months-old babies look at faces of their own racial group more than they gaze at faces of less familiar races (Blindspot: The Hidden Biases of Good People, p. 128).

Image credit: The Children’s Community School, 2018

By preschool children can observe and articulate differences in peoples’ physical appearances, such as skin and hair color, and facial attributes. Some parents fear that by talking about race with children they will somehow encourage bias, but the opposite is true; without conversation children can make inaccurate conclusions about race and develop bias. For example, imagine a white parent with their white child in a store. The child exclaims, “Look! That man’s skin is black!” causing several people, including the man, to turn and look. How would you respond? Many white parents would feel embarrassed and tense, and shush the child. The child may draw the conclusion that “black” equals “bad” or “shameful” since the parent’s shushing — as well as the tension from onlookers — implies “black” is taboo. Contrast this with if the child said, “Look! That man is handsome!” or, “Look! That man is strong!” These latter statements would likely elicit smiles and maybe a laugh from the parent and nearby adults, which may cause the child to equate “handsome” and “strong” with “good” and “positive.” (White Fragility, pgs. 37-38)Having conversations with children at home about race will help them have a better understanding about racial differences between people, and books are a great vehicle for opening up conversation. Below are a list of books, fiction and nonfiction, for children and teens that address the topic of race. These books are great starting places for discussing race with your children and teens.

There is also a list of books for adults because the first step is to make sure we as adults are comfortable and knowledgeable when talking about race. Many people, especially white people, in the US were raised like the child in the example above where we learned from a young age that talking about race is taboo, which makes it difficult to have conversations about racism. Recalling the discomfort she felt during one of the times she needed to confront her white mother about racism, Ijeoma Oluo, an author of mixed black and white ancestry, wrote of the experience, “Aaannnd we’ve now officially entered the worst conversation in the world. I’m talking with my white mother about race. Why can’t we be talking about, I don’t know — her sex life, or my sex life, or my period, or why I’m an atheist — anything but this” (So You Want to Talk About Race, pg. 41).

Oluo is not the only writer/speaker to mix humor into the discussion of race. In Jay Smooth’s 2011 TEDx Talk “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race,” Smooth reminds listeners that rising against racism is an ongoing process, not an end goal, and humorously compares this ongoing maintenance to hygiene. During Ta-Nehisi Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power book tour, he humorously explains words that do not belong to everyone.

I hope the above examples show that talking and learning about race does not have to be a daunting task; there can be humor in our experiences with race and the ability to share these experiences, as well as understand the experiences of others, can bring us closer as a community with our neighbors, our coworkers, and if your family is like mine, closer with your family. I hope you enjoy this book list, which is by no means exhaustive, and like Jay Smooth learn to stop worrying and love discussing race.

Adult

America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by Erika Lee

Blindspot: The Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji & Anthony G. Greenwald

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

March (graphic novel trilogy) by John Lewis & Andrew Aydin

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo