Raising White Kids
Like so many people in the past few months, I’ve been reading and reflecting and refocusing my antiracism efforts. This has been a big focus at church, and I’m so grateful for the many opportunities I’ve had to share the experiences of reading these powerful witnesses, testimonies, and arguments that are helping me to see racism more clearly, and to make intentional choices about how I speak and act, and invest my time and resources. There are ways to be engaged now, even though they look different than in a non-COVID world.
Lucy helped me make this sign in early June. As she supervised the painting of the sign, and I explained to her that it said “Black Lives Matter,” she hung her head and whispered in an uncharacteristically tiny voice, “oh, then I guess white lives don’t matter.”
Sometimes, parenting moments are sneaky. Sometimes, they’re thunderclaps.
I surprised myself by how ready I was to have this conversation. We let the paint cup sit precariously on the rug as I gathered her onto my lap and we talked about power and skin color and “Black lives matter” and “all lives matter” and God.
“We’re supposed to love everyone, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, how do we show love to our neighbors if there are people who act like their lives don’t matter?”
She stood up and assumed her most authoritative, beautifully bossy stance, stomped her foot, and squared her shoulders. “We say they DO matter! We tell them not to listen to the mean people. Everyone is important to God!”
We’ve talked about different skin color, hairstyles, religion, clothing, and language from the beginning of her life in part because we are lucky enough to live in a community full of economic, racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity. We grateful we have the choice to live where we do. We very much want to raise kids who understand and fight against the ugly sides of American history and who connect self-interest and power with policies of inequality. We know some of the language we should be using, but not all of it; and sometimes we rise to the occasion of thunderclap parenting moments, while other times, we falter.
There is much to be engaged in right now, and while it’s not a particularly dramatic type of engagement, I have found beautiful conversation and community in the three opportunities I’ve had to lead groups discussing Jennifer Harvey’s Raising White Kids. Two of those groups wouldn’t have convened in a pre-zoom world, and this book is one I’ve been happy to read and discuss multiple times. Dr. Harvey’s observations have helped me reflect on my own racial development and given me some new language to approach other white adults when discussing our shared racial identity, and, as promised by the title, provided specific and grounded advice about how to raise race conscious white children.
Though there’s a community reading guide provided by the publisher, I found it a bit overwhelming. Over the course of our discussions, I compiled a list of the questions and discussion starters that led to the most productive conversations across the different groups. I’m sharing them here as a resource for you. White folks, and those of any racial identity who are raising white kiddos: go forth and create a little more community around seeing color and raising justice-seekers.
