Knowing when is the right time to talk to your kids about racism can be just as hard as knowing what to say to them about it. For some of us, the conversations begin earlier, often out of necessity. If you are a person of color or you hold someone dear who is, racism is less of a concept and more just reality. Therefore, teaching your kids about it is as foundational as teaching letters and numbers. Simply put: It affects everything. It colors everything. It can be a part of every success, every challenge, every failure. It can lie behind the very motivation to get up and try again, and its constant pressure can just as easily be the weight that holds us down, keeps us back, pulls us behind.

Now, I am not expecting everyone to feel that way, and I certainly don’t expect everyone to understand. My point is that, for some of us, we’ve known about what our differences are since we could see, and we’ve understood what our differences can mean since we could speak. That’s already a long time to live with something that some of us will likely continue to process our entire lives.

So, I completely understand why some people are freaking out. I’m hoping I can help.

Continue reading “You, Your Kids, and Racism”