White parents: what are you teaching your white preschool age children about racism?
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Anonymous
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We haven't had explicit conversations with our almost-4-year-old about race, but we try to expose both of our children to a wide variety of people and cultures that are different from ours. We send our kids to a diverse school, live in a diverse neighborhood, we have family friends of different races, and we take them to African American doctors (our pediatric dentist and one of the pediatriatricans at our practice). We have age-appropriate books in our house depicting main characters of different races.
When my older child was in K, we started talking about MLK, Rosa Parks, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. We read books together about those people and events, and that provided a good starting point for discussions about how African Americans are still treated differently just because of the color of their skin. We talk about how it's important to treat everyone the way we'd want to be treated, and to speak up if we see someone being treated unfairly. |
Anonymous
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Even if you're not comfortable, it's important to do it from a a young age: https://psyarxiv.com/3xdg8/
Exploring how Parent-Child Conversations about Race influence Children's Implicit Biases Despite the fact that having conversations about race has been recommended as a way to curb children’s racial biases, no prior work has directly tested the impact of parents having these (racial socialization) conversations with their children. Most White American parents avoid talking about race and racism with their children, which seems to be due, in part, to White parents’ fear that increasing their children’s awareness and acknowledgement of race could lead to increased racial biases. With the current work, we examined the impact of a parental racial socialization conversation on children’s implicit anti-Black attitudes. Additionally, given parents' fears about such conversations, we assessed behavioral evidence of parental tenseness and anxiety during these discussions, and explored whether such cues moderated children’s implicit attitudes. Results revealed that children’s (and parents’) implicit attitudes significantly decreased from pre-to-post conversation. Moreover, even at relatively high levels, neither parental tenseness nor anxiety increased implicit anti-Black attitudes among children. Overall, our findings suggest the discomfort that White adults often experience when openly discussing racial issues need not be a barrier to progress, and that it may actually be helpful for White children to see their parents model discomfort with racist acts. Perry, S., Skinner, A., Abaied, J., Osnaya, A., & Waters, S. (2020, May 18). Exploring how Parent-Child Conversations about Race influence Children's Implicit Biases. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/3xdg8 |
Anonymous
| Yes, we teach them that you should be "nice" to everyone and then they move through their early years, go to school, grow and get experiences of their own that teach them.... that some people are not "nice" to them no matter what. And it does not depend on their race either. And, somehow I cannot agree that we need to talk about "differences". Children do not see world through our eyes and I do not want to impose society "values" on the mind that still forming whether it's religion, race, or other "serious" stuff. The will see things for themselves in good time. Why do you need to draw attention to "differences" at all? I grew color blind and loved people of all races to begin with and some of it had turned out right (met great people of other races) or wrong (was bullied mercilessly by people of other race) but that's just life. |
Anonymous
| Preschool children don't see race |
Anonymous
Literally all data ever produced says the opposite of this |
Anonymous
I don't think this is true. My white kid was preschool aged when i heard him express discomfort around a Black person in our church or dislike of a Black toy compared to others. We would never ever want to teach him that, and I'm not sure what role we had, but after a couple instances I realized he was definitely seeing color and expressing bias. So we do talk about race and racism. For the current events I definitely didn't give him all the details, but told him that people are very mad and protesting in lots of cities because a police officer hurt a man for the color of his skin, and that was very wrong. We've also talked about slavery since we like visiting Civil War sites. |
Anonymous
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We are talking about 3 and 4 yr olds here.
I have a hard enough time teaching my 3 yr old to keep her clothes on all days. We live in a diverse city with people of all color that she sees regularly. We teach skin color comes in many shades and that’s about it for now. But she has never made a distinction. |
Anonymous
RIGHT?!? Agree. I did order a bunch more diverse books though. |
Anonymous
Yep! The only distinction I’ve heard my 3 year old articulate to me is “Mommy, we’re girls and Daddy is a boy. And doggy is a boy.” The fact that people have different skin tones should be obvious to her; we live in a diverse small city and she goes to a majority-minority preschool. I scrolled through the pictures her preschool sends home and see zero pattern, race-wise, in the kids she plays with. I actually can barely find a picture of her playing with kids where all the kids are of the same race. That’s just the reality of her school. |
Anonymous
| I've literally never talked to my kindergartener about race. Like never even mentioned that people have different skin colors. I live in a diverse area and he has plenty of black friends since he was in daycare. Some of his best friends are black and we have black, Hispanic and Asian friends. He doesn't see just white at school and at home so I think he sees diversity. I'm not sure how to talk to him about race other than to demonstrate treating people respectfully. If you have ideas, I'm open. |
Anonymous
I also should clarify that he has had plenty of black friends since he was in daycare (like since toddlers became friends), not because he attended daycare. He also attends an elementary school that is majority minority, so he sees more than just white. |
Anonymous
| I tried to talk to my kids about it and they don’t seem too interested. They watched the news and they don’t understand how looting and violence is related to what happened. I tried talking to my 3yo and she said her skin color was rainbow. I don’t think they see color when they see people. I kind of like this. I know they live in a bubble for now and I don’t mind. |
Anonymous
Then job done, I guess... |
Anonymous
Yes because that’s totally what PP said. 
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Anonymous
Black children are not afforded the same luxury. They are actually LIVING all of this. You aren't even willing to have age appropriate but honest conversations with your kids? Racism is not something that can be solved by black people alone. It will continue to persist so long as white people like you refuse to acknowledge that this is their problem too. |