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I have never been a baby person per se, but I have always loved three-year olds. My daughter turned three a few months ago and she is totally delivering. She can be a handful, for sure, but she’s joyful, affectionate, and funny.

She uses phrases like “that’s impressive” and the occasional cuss word both correctly, and incorrectly, to hilarious effect. She thinks a tummy ache is called a “tummy egg.” She gives hugs to friends and strangers freely. She makes up her own rap rhymes, mostly about her stuffed animals and how much they love her.

She basically bounds through her tiny life giving love and expecting love. Three-year olds have a joy and innocence that you want to protect. Most of us who have loved a three-year old get a little heartbroken thinking about that innocence getting pierced, and this feeling is even sharper when it comes to black children and children of color in this country.

I knew that three was the age that children become aware of racial bias, but still, I wasn’t ready for it when my black biracial daughter recently started asking questions about her hair. She senses that it’s “different.” She’s trying to work out how, or what it means, but she’s unsure about it. “I want it like mermaid hair,” she says. “I want it long, like yours,” she says, pointing to my mop of wavy-straight white lady hair. My heart sinks and it feels like someone is squeezing it with both hands.

Studies show that three-to-five year olds not only categorize people by race, but also already express racial bias. You might have heard that children are “colorblind” and blank slates? I have heard that too, and it’s a nice idea, but decades of research have proven that it’s a fantasy.

Children in preschool are already assigning meaning to race, even without adults telling them to. "Research has disproved the popular belief that children only have racial biases if they are directly taught to do so,” writes Dr. Erin Winkler of University of Wisconsin, in Children Are Not Colorblind: How Young Children Learn Race. “Numerous studies have shown that children’s racial beliefs are not significantly or reliably related to those of their parents” (Hirschfeld, 2008; Katz, 2003; Patterson & Bigler, 2006). This should not surprise us, Hirschfeld argues: “Children are motivated to learn and conform to the broader cultural and social norms that will help them function in society.”

What young kids absorb reflect broader social biases about the desirability of belonging to one social group over another, which helps explain my daughter’s uncertainty about her hair. “Children pick up on the ways in which whiteness is normalized and privileged,” writes Winkler. “Consciously or unconsciously, middle-class white culture is presented as the norm or standard in the U.S. in terms of appearance, beauty, language, cultural practices, food, and so on.”

This process often happens without parents even knowing, because white preference is “like a smog” for kids that comes in the form of everything from books to songs to television, according to researchers. Dr. Kristina Olson, a Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale, found that by 3 or 4 years of age, White children in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Europe show preferences for other White children. “Those very same White children whose parents insist their children do not see race, walk into research labs across the world and, when presented with a line-up of possible friends, their children are quick to select the White ones rather than the Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Indigenous ones,” she writes.

At our house, we have books about coily hair love. We have “Ada Twist, Scientist” and the (very few) other shows that center black girls, loaded to her iPad. We have dolls and books and songs to push back against the “smog.” My husband and I have intentionally enrolled her a preschool where teachers and students are racially diverse.

But imagine what could happen if white classmates were taught to have positive regard for black features and black hair, and fewer black kids were asked, “Why is your hair like that?” Or, “Why is your skin dirty?” Imagine if white classmates learned to talk about race comfortably and confidently and didn’t feel threatened or perplexed by it. When they got to Jr. High, they wouldn’t inappropriately ask black kids if they could “touch their hair” because it wouldn’t be fetishized or othered.

Imagine those same classmates, years later, when a boss tells a young black woman that her natural hair is “unprofessional” or unfit for clients, and they advocate alongside her.

I want this for my daughter, and I think most white parents want this for their kids, too. They want their kids to be those kids, those adults someday. But most white folks don’t really know how to do this, because we weren’t taught how to do this growing up.

If I’m being honest, one of the hard things for me about parenting a black child while white is knowing all the stereotypes I have internalized in my life, and the unintentional microaggressions I have made toward people of color myself, because I was conditioned that way. Sometimes I still do these things. It wasn’t okay, and it isn’t okay, and it’s a lifelong process of learning to do better.

Most white folks, myself included, were raised in households where we would never speak ill of black people or people of color. Paradoxically, the research shows that’s part of the problem, because those same families don’t talk about race much at all.

All those white kids in the experiments who rushed to choose other white kids when given the chance? Their parents were what researchers call “color mute,” meaning the parents didn’t discuss race, as a way to keep their kids “colorblind.” This just opened a space for the smog of racism to fill the void, with nothing to counter it. If my three-year old is noticing and talking about race, so are all her white peers. They just aren’t talking about it because it’s not impacting them in ways that they notice or articulate.

So how do we better with our kids? The research clearly shows that we can push back against the “smog of racism” by learning to talk to our kids about race in meaningful ways.

When I considered writing about this, I knew exactly who I wanted to talk to—podcaster and researcher Jasmine Bradshaw. Last spring, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jasmine, a former elementary teacher who has made a career and following out of teaching families how to learn and talk about race through her popular podcast, “First Name Basis.” She has also created excellent programs for kids called “Ally Elementary” and “Bite-sized Black History.” If you’re feeling inspired by MLK Day, or looking for material for Black History Month, her material is a perfect way to start.

Jasmine talked to me about why to talk to kids about race, and how this benefits all kids, not just children of color. Our conversation is excerpted below. You can read the full interview here.

You can find Jasmine’s “First Name Basis” podcast here, follow her on Instagram here, and subscribe to her Patreon community here. Her Bite-sized Black History program and Ally Elementary lessons for kids can be found here, and here.

Can you talk about how racism and segregation harms white people too, including systemic racism? Unfortunately, it sometimes feels like the attitude toward racism [from white people] is, “This is your family's problem, and if I engage in it, then that's nice of me to bother with your problem.”

I ask people to think concretely about what their values are for their family, and their kids. Most people value inclusion and compassion. And I think most people don’t like to be surrounded by inequality.

Most people want their kids to live a really fulfilling life that includes lots of different types of people and cultures. And one thing that people really want is for their kids to not be racist and know how to interact with a range of people. But for that to happen, you have to be around other kinds of people. It’s really hard to be anti-racist when you have no one to practice with. That’s part of why white people say inappropriate things to us, because they don't have practice talking to us.

When we think about what we want for our kids, and how we want them to be inclusive, they need to be around people who are not just like them. They also need to have opportunities to see people [of color] in positions that aren't just subservient, like people who are bagging your groceries, or people who are fixing your tire.

Tim Wise is an anti-racist educator who talks about how the real way that our children are going to develop these attitudes of inclusion and anti-racism is by seeing people of color in positions that mean something to them, like coaches, teachers, principals. People who are authority figures, who kids look up to and help them break down the societal norms that they've been taught. But that requires structural and systemic change, not just “being nice to everyone.” Because of the oppression of people of color, it’s hard for them to attain these positions, even though that would benefit white and black people in the community.

We all miss out on social and economic benefits when people of color in our communities are oppressed. Heather McGhee writes about this in her amazing new book, The Sum of Us. The consequence of zero-sum thinking, as though whites and Blacks are on different teams, is that white voters often vote against supports that could benefit them, too. They think that others don’t deserve better schools, better healthcare, better pay, even public pools. So no one gets those things, and quality of life goes down for everyone. Without racism, quality of life goes up for everyone.

It seems for a lot of white people, they think their role is to “be nice to everybody”, as you mentioned, and to teach their kids to be nice to everybody. And that’s how a lot of us were raised, too. Could you speak more on why being kind doesn’t counter racism?

I hear this all the time. Why can’t we be kind? Kindness is wonderful, but what we are up against isn’t personal racism, it’s systemic racism. It’s the system and fact that police can murder someone and go to trial and not be prosecuted for it. The thing I want people to understand is that voting for policies that are anti-racist and inclusive is kind. Understanding anti-racism and your role in it is kind. Working toward justice is kind. Voting for people and policies that oppress us and separate families, that’s the opposite of kindness. So, if kindness is your goal, you need to sit down and think about how my actions work on a systemic level, and then ask if that aligns with your values.

Many people can get on board when they stop and see that their actions are hurting people and want to better align their actions with their values. I talked about this on the episode on White Privilege. It’s really a matter of aligning your actions with your values, and when you do that, you realize that justice is the most kind thing that you can do.

I think there are a lot of people who think that they are “neutral” or “above the noise” of issues like racism by not acknowledging it or being silent about it. And I hate to say that think I have been that way myself in the past. Can you help explain why silence is problematic, and how to break the silence with our kids?

One of the biggest things I noticed is that people think that silence means that they don't support anything, that they're not choosing a side. But in reality, as Dr. Beverly Tatum always says, the only thing that racism needs to perpetuate is itself. We don't have to do anything, because it's baked into the systems, so we don't have to do anything to make it keep going. It just goes and goes and goes. She describes it like one of those moving walkways at an airport: it just carries you in a certain direction, and unless you turn around and start walking the other way, we're all going to go to the same place--which is a white supremacy and a racism-dominated society.

So white people who are silent think that by being quiet, they are kind of stopped on the walkway. But they're still being moved towards racism and white supremacy. That's one of the biggest things that I try to help people understand, is that by not choosing a side, you are choosing a side--the side of racism. And inaction is a form of action. That might sound confusing, but when you stop to think about it: if you just continue with what you're doing, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

A first step for kids is helping them secure their identity and understanding who they are. And then the second one is embracing diversity, embracing differences, understanding that differences are constant. Anti-racism educator Britt Hawthorne says you spend the most time on the first two goals, because you can’t fight for justice, or understanding inequity, until you understand who you are, and how you fit in the world.

If you want to raise kids who can stand in solidarity with others and embrace difference, and can fight for injustice, you need to make sure that their identity isn’t wrapped up in whiteness. If they can start to really embrace their own identity, then they won't feel threatened when we need to break down white supremacy--because they won’t see themselves in it.

That is so powerful, I just want to repeat it: “If we do the work to make sure that our kids’ identities aren’t wrapped up in whiteness, then they won’t feel threatened when we need to break down white supremacy. Because they won’t see themselves in it.” I love that. How do we start?

If you’re looking for suggestions for some of my podcast episodes to listen to with your kids and as a family, as a starting point I would suggest the episode about privilege: “What is Privilege, and What Do I Do With It?” and “How to Talk to Your Children about Racism,” as well as “Racism 101.” I would just remind people that they should listen on their own first so that they can be ready for the questions that their children might have.

But you want to begin as soon as possible—it’s never too late, and it’s never too early. If you are a first-time mom or pregnant, you want to be thinking about what is the environment in your home that you're bringing your child into. What does it look like? Who is represented in books, and toys, and art on the walls, and who's not? Is whiteness being normalized, or are there others at the table?

It's important to know Black History, Black History is American history. It’s important to know the full history to understand systemic racism. But it’s also important to include black excellence and black joy. If all children learn about is the struggle, and enslavement, and white children are not seeing people of color in spaces of excellence, then they're going to think that our capacity is just to fight and struggle. We have amazing talents and joys and accomplishments outside of fighting racism.

I did not enjoy Black History Month growing up because my teachers left out all the uplifting parts and it didn’t feel like celebrating. It was heavy for me and for my white classmates. At home, I learned about the creativity, ingenuity, and brilliance in the Black community. Sharing those stories with your kids is important—it gives a fuller picture of Black heritage. That’s the material that I used in Bite-sized Black History, all the good stuff on black dancers, inventors, doctors, activists that gets left out. It’s what I wish I had in school as a kid.

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Matriarchy Report

I'm the parent of a black child. Here's what…