Tough Questions Series: Teaching our Kids about Racism

Design by artist Cooper Neil. Stickers and prints available here. All proceeds donated to NAACP legal defense and education fund.

In the last few months, I have journaled thoughts, reactions, and grief about all that has unfolded in our nation. I attempted several blog posts that would join the chorus of voices crying out against the institutional racism in our society, to reaffirm our obligations to one another as human beings, and to assert our responsibility as Christians to do better. I felt pulled even to confess my own personal complicit complacency. However, those passionate, sad, angry, guilty and confused thoughts remained in my journal, where they belonged. It was simply not my turn to speak.

"It's time for us to scoot over," we kept saying to our kids these last months. "It's time for us to pay attention."

How does a white, middle class family in the mostly white burbs pay attention? Our methods are certainly not the only or the best ones. But in a family of readers, we turned first to books, articles, blogs, then films and podcasts. We left the news on in the car, even though that news was ugly and frightening. We let our kids ask us hard questions. We confessed our inability to answer them well. We confessed our guilt. Here are the ways, we said, that we have participated in, upheld, and been blind to the social structures that perpetuate racism.

It would have been easy to tell them we didn't mean to be racist, and it would have been true. But kids see right through that one, don't they? "I threw that stone, but I didn't mean to hit my brother," will never free a kid from the consequences of a choice any more than not meaning to be racist will lessen the responsibility that those of us in power have to change the institutions that make it so easy and so invisible.

The inclusion, belonging, and dignity of all people is a priority in our family. We have grown accustomed to regularly advocating for our son, who has Down syndrome. We have partnered with organizations committed to sustainable solutions to systemic poverty. But because my husband and I are white, middle class, and college educated, we are privileged. We are learning to recognize that privilege, to better understand that racism is a white problem. As a family we continue to pray together, to listen to hard truths. Together, we are unlearning in order to learn.

The beautiful thing about walking this journey with our children is that they are tender and open to the truth. They are not ashamed or defensive or confused. They are instead curious and passionate about what they are learning. They choose, of their own accord, to find out.

A couple of weeks ago, Kaleb slipped a favorite CD of children's poetry by black poets and musicians into the DVD player. We had never made it to the end of the CD, because he always goes right to his favorite tracks--the poems set to rhythm and music. Somehow, this time, he listened to the whole CD. The final track is MLK Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. From the kitchen, I heard the crescendo of Martin Luther King's voice, heard my son clap at all the appropriate places and murmur affirmations. I peeked around the corner and found all three of my children draped over the living room sofas listening in. Is it really that simple? I wondered in that moment. Teaching them? Exposing them? Can it be so simple as inviting new voices into our home? Leaving books where they will find them? It is. At some level. That simple.

The speech is powerful and technically exquisite, and it always brings me to tears, no matter how many times I hear it. The first time I heard "I Have a Dream," I was in high school. By that time, I was old enough to find MLK Jr.'s way of speaking unusual. The way he almost sings in some parts, the fervor with which he speaks, the repetition. It was too much for some of my classmates. And because so much of our sense of how to be public and how to speak and how to just be was informed by whiteness, some of MLK's truth was lost on us. We couldn't hear it. Not really.

Our children already know this: that the unique lilt of a sermon delivered by a black or brown voice is intentional and lovely. That slaves who were not permitted to read or have books--not even the Bible--could more easily remember and carry the Word of God when it was sung. My kids know that hymns held not only doctrine, but messages of freedom and escape. Our children know it is out of this tradition that MLK Jr. nearly sings his truth to a segregated nation. So while his style of speaking may be different than what they're used to, it isn't weird. It's essential. Because they know this, they are not nearly so hard of hearing as their parents' generation.

The power of exposure to diverse voices should not be underestimated. Listening is a habit that teaches us to hear.

"Data is not the plural of anecdote," someone recently suggested, which I took to mean that we shouldn't treat stories as evidence. The speaker desired facts, numbers, statistics that would provide clear proof that the nation's police forces are impacted by institutional racism the way the Black Lives Matter movement claims. To that honest hunt for answers, I say this: Anecdotal evidence is, in fact, data. It's used all the time in the social sciences, in law, in education, even in medicine. History itself is a collection of anecdotal evidence, is it not?

The fact that we might still be confused about what history tells us and perplexed when standard narratives are contradicted, is, of course, a result of the mostly white voices we have listened to these last four hundred years. And the ones we've silenced. A mostly white interpretation of indigenous genocide and black slavery and their ugly legacies is not an honest one. There is a great unlearning that must take place. And it will not happen by looking to numbers alone. The fact that we require or desire data to go along with stories of black and brown experiences says this: White stories are more authoritative than black and brown ones. For black and brown stories to be authoritative, we must also have accompanying numbers.

Tell me. When a brother or sister is hurting through a divorce, do we use statistics to show them their situation is not terribly unusual? When a child falls and comes to you hurt, must we see her bleed to know the hurt is real? We don't need numbers. White people need to listen to the stories that our fellow black and brown brothers and sisters have been telling us for centuries. And we must allow that we are not and never have been the authorities on their pain.

I am not sure I have answered my own question at all. How does a family unlearn in order to learn, and eventually, to act? How do we answer hard questions when the old narratives fail and the truth is painful?

It might seem counterintuitive to remain silent in the face of centuries-old injustice--in this of all moments. But for now. Just for now. A silence that listens serves.

There is more than one kind of silence.

Click here if you want to check out what our family has recently been reading, watching, and listening to (with some of our previous favorites thrown in.) The list is not exhaustive or exclusive or correct. And it's only a beginning. If you have other resources or action steps to recommend, please share them in the comments. We are listening.