White lies we tell our children
by guest blogger Colin Stokes
I was driving my family through a part of Boston we don’t usually traffic, and I heard my ten-year-old daughter from the back seat:
“Why do so many Black people live in this neighborhood?”
I was getting used to tough questions coming out of nowhere, as my daughter’s intellectual capacities were blossoming, and she was finding me among the go-to sources of knowledge. This is usually really fun for a pedantic dad like me, though it has its challenges. I am called upon to explain electricity a lot, and I am basically making things up.
But the questions occasionally break my heart. This year she destroyed her own faith in Santa Claus, for instance. It was really tough for her: she loved believing in magic. Living in a world where gifts came from totally unexplainable places is, frankly, awesome. Knowing that the stuff you asked for arrived because your parents paid for it is bit of a let-down.
This question from the backseat hit me especially hard, since it reminded me of my own disillusionment. I was raised by White, liberal parents, so I understood that there was racism and it was bad. But I don’t think I internalized the structural, systemic, invisible oppressions all around me until well into adulthood. Even then, it remains somewhat abstract—as an able-bodied, cisgendered, straight, White male with wealth, I benefit from all of them.
Still, in the last year or so, the difference between my privileged family and millions of others in my own country has been harder for me to miss. As I looked out the car window at the Dorchester men and women running their errands, I thought of the accounts I’ve read by parents of Black children of the talks they have to give to their ten-year-old sons, about how to behave outside at night, what to wear, what to do if you see a police car or a person in uniform, to avoid serious, life-impacting trouble.
I do not have to tell my daughter a thing about how to dress or behave or interact with police. She and her White, blue-eyed brother can honestly do pretty much whatever they want—play with toy guns, wear hoods, play loud music from the car, forget to signal a turn, and they will be ignored or waved at.
And yet we have witnessed all of these behaviors lead to death when a person with dark skin does them.
And that’s just the most visible injustice. The facts are that, in my country, the distribution of wealth, income, educational attainment, health, imprisonment, representation in entertainment and business leadership, and on and on overwhelmingly favor White people, including me. Including my son and, to a growing extent, my daughter.
What I’ve learned has been hard for me to wrap my brain around. In a way, my daughter and I have both belatedly learned that magic isn’t real, after being lied to about it for years. Part of the tradition of privileged people is to make the presents look like they just appeared when in fact they were bought and paid for. Even today, my kids are being taught the same story I grew up learning about Columbus and the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving—a story that sounds more like a fairy tale the more I learn. Later, they’ll be taught that the story of America’s progress to equality has been a gentle arc bending towards Obama and the post-racial present.
This is a history and culture written to make people like us feel good. But I think I have a responsibility to raise two White children on the truth about privilege. That there is no Santa Claus, and we didn’t get our privilege because were good this year. We got it because we inherited it, along with our skin color.
In the car, I had only a moment to think.
“Well honey,” I said, “I don’t know enough about why. But I have been reading some things, and I am learning that White people didn’t want Black people to live near them, or have much money, so they didn’t let them buy houses except in certain parts of the city.”
That was the end of the conversation.
I felt the enormity of the conversations that remained. How am I supposed to do my parenting job of building my kids’ self-esteem and cultivating their optimism and confidence, while at the same time cluing them in to the invisible advantages that they can’t help but receive? I don’t even know what my own responsibility as a privileged man is—how am I supposed to explain it to a fifth grader?
But that’s what I have to do, I think. I have to make sure that a culture beyond the White narrative is a part of my children’s lives. I have to respond to movies and books (and simplified history lessons) in a way that reminds them that we aren’t the whole universe, or even its center. After all, American history is also full of brave heroes who have tried to show the world the truth. These are the radicals and prophets, the movement builders and the protestors.
Maybe they point the way to a small revolutionary victory that White parents can strive for. Don’t draw a curtain around your children to protect their privilege. Pull it back, and show them how the world is depending on them to change it.
A version of this story was previously delivered at TEDxBeaconStreet.
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Colin is a Brookline father and husband with a career in non-profit communications and marketing. For the last 10 years he has worked with leadership of education organizations on storytelling, branding, messaging, employee engagement, and inclusion. Before children, Colin was a professional actor in Boston and New York, appearing in Shakespeare and musicals as well as momentarily on a couple of Law and Order franchises. His previous TEDxBeaconStreet talks explore the role stories play in identity and have been viewed more than 6 million times. He blogs at colinstokes.blogspot.com and tweets @stokescolin.
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That response seems less than ideal. I don’t think we should teach our children that White people control everything and that people of color are helpless to do anything about it. That is patronizing and subconsciously sends the message that White people are better. A lot of Black families vacation on Martha’s Vineyard – is that because White people won’t let them summer anywhere else or is it because they like it?
Black people, like people of other races, tend to live with people of the same race. That may have been a better answer and let to a discussion about whether the child thought that was a good thing and if not, how can we change that.
Neil, I disagree. His answer was truth, simplified for his child’s level of understanding. He wasn’t sending the message that white people are “better” but he *was* sending her the message that white people are and have been the ones to create the rules and write the history; that’s what systemic racism is all about.
Honestly, if you think that black people concentrate in neighborhoods together simply because they like it, you have some blinders on.
I believe the author was discussing the historical perspective, referring to the time when public policy was in place prohibiting non-white, and especially Black people from living in certain neighborhoods. Such laws were common, across the nation. Following decades of de jure segregation, beginning in the Jim Crow era in the 1880s and continuing through the New Deal and on until the Civil Rights Act of 1968, de facto segregation was the obvious corollary – primarily because of the benefits that white people have accumulated during several generations of wealth building home-ownership. It is also possible that, to a significantly lesser degree, personal preference plays a small part in why residential segregation is so prevalent.
Racial segregation of residential areas, much like the matter of race itself, is a construct of the wealthy and powerful elites, whose primary motivation has been their own economic benefit. Their racial identities have been white since the very beginning.
I think even that response is less than ideal because it connotes a choice without recognizing or acknowledging the privilege. I also see your point about his response as well. Is there a perfect response? I probably would have said,”It’s complicated far more than what we can discuss here, but it’s a combination of reasons that start with laws that restricted where people could live and has resulted in economic disparities as well as choices to live in areas together.” Still not a perfect response and likely over the head of a 5th grader, BUT the truth.
Any chance you would like to guest blog? I like the language you suggested in quotes!
Excellent piece. Colin Stokes laid out what I fave felt but been able to articulate. We whites are just now waking up to our bullshit! Why are we so dense and slow?
Neil, she’s 10, and that was a good answer. She sounds like a child who will use the critical thinking skills she is developing to make sense of this and come up with more questions.
Surely Dad is already preparing to respond HONESTLY to the follow up questions, so that she will be able to think her way past the notion that because SOME Black people are able to summer at Martha’s Vineyard does not mean that ALL can and it’s not because they don’t want to. Her critical thinking skills will be very helpful on that one…
Great job, Dad!
I agree with Niel. This is quite an assumption to state that white people can get away with:
“She and her White, blue-eyed brother can honestly do pretty much whatever they want—play with toy guns, wear hoods, play loud music from the car, forget to signal a turn, and they will be ignored or waved at.” By the way, why did you capitalize “White”?
Even as a white middle class family, this day and age I would never let my kids walk around a neighborhood carrying an assult style replica toy gun. Should I tell my dad and mom that they didn’t have to work in a paper mill, or travel with only their clothes on their back in order to find work and make a better living? Should I pass that on to my kids. “Hey kids, don’t worry about it, do what you want, act how you like…you’re white, you’ll be fine.”
Sure there are poor neighborhoods out there, some are predominantly black, but guess what, there are many where they consist of predominantly white! Maybe you need to get out and find those areas and explain to your kids that it’s about hard work, dedication, and the desire to provide a better life.
John, re: your question about the capitalization of the word “White”–that is a style choice on Raising Race Conscious Children. Re: your point about poor White neighborhoods, you are inspiring me to write a post about my dad (who grew up in the projects in the Bronx) so stay tuned in 2016…but for me a key part of recognizing White privilege is that Whiteness benefits ALL people with “White” skin, including White people living in poverty, as my dad was growing up in the Bronx.
I think children are too sheltered from reality, and many parents are in denial. Niel could discuss the fact that scientists are trying to figure out how to answer questions about race. They could discuss experiments with infants that clearly show a bias towards of self-similar racial appearance….you can see these biases in 6 month olds, proving that this is an innate, instinctual behavior. Then, you could ask, if that’s true, then how is it even possible for people of different colors to become friends? To work side by side in their jobs? To marry each other? This then leads into a discussion of conscious effort to treat each person as if their skin color matched yours, or better yet, to treat each person as if color didn’t matter.
This leads to an explanation: Not enough people have learned these interpersonal skills. You’ll see as you get older, people treat you as you treat them, and you’ll be able to learn how to overcome whatever feelings about skin color are getting in the way.
I don’t thnk the discussion should be about white privilege or white guilt. Those are mostly about what has happened in the past. What young people deserve are interpersonal skills coaching that are well-matched to a postracial society. And, it starts with self-awareness, and that has to begin with the innate impulses egery kid is feeling from a young age that say to prefer people of self-similar appearance. Acknowledging these feelings HAS TO BE the starting point, or else the root cause of racism, which is inborn, instinctual tribalism, will never be addressed. Only by being honest and non-accusatory about racial instincts do we have any real chance of creating a postracial society. And, every child, no matter what their racial identity, must go through a learning process to become post-racial. If such learning is only expected of whites, and black and brown people are allowed to indulge their racial instincts, it’s not going to work. Real change will come when we accept that racism is inborn and instinctual in the human DNA in all children, and come up with better parenting strategies to socialize all children for a postracial society.
I’m white and 52 years old and I take exception that black parents have to have a talk about how to act and how to dress with their children. I remember many times my mom would tell me how to act, when I can talk and I better be polite when I’m allowed to talk. Children were meant to be seen, not heard. It taught me to respect adults and that they may have something more important to say then myself. I was also taught how to dress. I had “Sunday shoes,” and I knew how to dress for church, school or playtime with my friends. I was given rules and expected to obey them or their would be consequences. I was lower-middle class and grew up in urban home. The neighbor wasn’t always safe so mom told me, “If you go looking for trouble, you’ll find it.”
I know that seems simple but even though I didn’t have much, I wasn’t raised believing that I was a victim or that it was someone else’s responsibility to help me out.
Or how about, people live where they can afford to live?