Recently, a friend asked me a diversity question regarding her children.

My friend, who is white and has teenage children, was suddenly panicking that in teaching her children not to be racist, she had neglected to teach her child about racism.

In the times we live in, I applauded her for recognizing the difference.

We all wish to have our children - our own and the children we are responsible for in an educational community - be fair-minded humans who treat everyone well.

Parents teach their children manners. They teach them to be polite. They teach them to not stare when someone is injured or disabled. They teach them to focus on how people are similar.

But as my friend noted, that's just not enough.

And it's not enough to rely on teachers to teach about racism in class as part of history. Doing so, makes it merely historical.

As difficult as it is, as tough as those conversations are, it's more important than ever for all parents to have conversations about racism with their children. 

Parents are the first people that children emulate, and children continue to pick up their parents' conscious and unconscious biases, opinions and signals every day. I particularly see this in my creative writing class where, even in making up stories, the students draw from all of the examples and word choices and viewpoints they've been exposed to.

Most parents of color, for example, know the importance of talking about race and racism with their children before their children are able to leave their homes for so much as a play date. The lessons evolve and get more sophisticated with each year as their children grow. Lessons that may be uncomfortable and loaded with emotion become necessary to protect the child from as many bad situations as possible. Parents of color have to not just explain societal history, they have to explain family history, personal history and current events and reality. Double standards have to be explained. Triple standards have to be explained. Racism has to be explained. Ugliness doesn't get a pass because the children are "to young to know." Parents know it's not enough to teach that we treat others as if everyone is the same on the inside, because we live in a world where people see our outsides first.


Although race and vociferous allegations of racism continue to be a daily part of mainstream news, this lesson doesn't just apply to skin color.

We need to teach our children about sexism early - how boys and girls are treated differently, how men and women still have to battle for equality in the world. Just like with race, we have to teach our children that people are not always fair and that people continue to fight and struggle for things to be more fair.

Racism, sexism, discrimination against people because of their age, or the money they have in the bank, or religion, or whom they love, isn't just "a thing," but rather it is an ongoing education. And the first teachers of that are the parents.


Not having the conversations doesn't mean that the children won't be exposed to these difficult topics. It just means they won't be as prepared when they are exposed.