Can we Raise “Color-blind” Kids?

“The best way to stop racism is to just not talk about race. We need to raise color-blind kids!”

The topic of race has become important lately in our household, as the immigrant population as a whole has been targeted by Operation Metro Surge. Hispanic, Native American, Asian, and Black people have especially been targeted by these operations: The Somali community because of the allegations of fraud, and the other races as their legal status here in the community has been called into question.

This has got me thinking about how we talk about these issues with our kids. My 5-year-old came home one day from school and asked why her Somali classmate is feeling scared right now. Around MLK Jr. day, she had a TON of questions about Civil Rights and equality.

Apart from current events, how many of you have been in a store and heard a kid ask an uncomfortable question like “Why is that person’s skin so dark??” or, “Why does that person look so different?”. I’ve heard it, and I’ve been the embarrassed mom of that loud little kid.

Kids are brilliant little observers. Their brains are primed to notice differences and question them, so I don’t personally believe that raising “color-blind” kids is possible. Shushing a kid in that situation just makes them think “I need to be worried about these questions, so there must be something to worry about!”.

In this post, I will look at the science-backed methods to talking about race with kids that most effectively reduces racial bias. As always, I’ll start with a disclaimer. I did a 23&Me ancestry kit and am literally 99.02% Caucasian. The rumors about my mom’s family being Hawaiian or Native American due to their dark complexion and black-brown eyes were wrong.

I’m as pink as a brand-new baby piglet; basically, a female copy of my mostly-Irish dad.

This has of course colored the way I have experienced (or not at all experienced) racial bias and lent to some innate discomfort with talking about it. I can’t speak for everyone, but I do perceive this discomfort as common to many of us of Caucasian descent.

So here’s my attempt to do my best at looking at the topic. If I get things wrong, please let me know.

What the Studies Say

The first study I want to examine is “Guided Conversations Help Reduce Kids’ Racial Bias” from Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. In the intro, the paper states, “Experts encourage parents to have open conversations about race and racism with their kids, but many White parents fail to have them— sometimes because they fear that talking about race will make their children more biased. When they do have these discussions, parents often use colorblind language that downplays the importance of race, rather than taking a color-conscious approach that acknowledges the existence and history of racism.”

The methodology of the study was as follows:

Between July 2018 and March 2020, the researchers recruited 84 self-identified White parents and their 8- to 12-year-old children in Chicago, Illinois. After watching videos of a Black child and a White child interacting in different scenarios, including depictions of subtle and blatant prejudice, parents were given a set of guided questions to ask their child. Structured prompts were provided to facilitate discussions using color-conscious language. Parents and their children completed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure their anti Black/ pro-White biases before and after the study.

The paper states that “color-conscious” conversations means acknowledging race as the primary driver for racist interactions, rather than blaming external factors like the media, TV, or other sources. The important part is calling out that the driver behind racist interactions is race in itself. The benefits of having these color-conscious conversations is clear: the study was found to reduce racial bias in both the parents and the kids. To quote, “Children’s implicit bias score, which ranked their racial bias, decreased from 0.41 to 0.16 and parents’ implicit bias score dropped from 0.53 to 0.3”.

The topic of promoting color-blindness is discussed at length in an American Psychological Association article entitled “Raising anti-racist children“. Dr. Diane Hughes, a professor of applied psychology at NYU (Woo! Go NYU!), weighs in on the issue as such:

“Children are exposed to race and systemic racism from an early age, and avoiding or delaying the conversation leaves kids to fill in the blanks on their own. ‘Kids see structural inequality all around them—in the media, in their neighborhoods, in school,’ she said. Even when schools are integrated, kids see de facto segregation. They see kids of the same race sitting together at lunch or joining the same clubs and activities. ‘There are all of these things causing kids to attach meaning to race, and nobody is correcting their inferences,’ Hughes said. ‘If they’re told everyone has equal opportunities but see these differences, they draw their own conclusions and attach deeper meaning to external appearance’.”

Hughes also touts the value of talking about race in reducing racial bias, as well as the value of intergroup exposure to create positive interactions between parents and kids of different racial background. Like other researchers, Hughes believe the only really “wrong” answer is a “non-answer“. Quote, “The fear of talking about race makes parents avoid talking about it at all. But you can’t just react to situations as they arise or wait for your kids to ask questions. You need to be intentional about what you want your kids to know about race,” she said. “If you can’t find exactly the right words, don’t worry. Childhood happens over a long period, and you get to keep practicing this conversation.”

Additional Resources:

Here are some more resources to further drive home the point if you’d like to read some more:

Unlearning racial bias – The Harvard Gazette

Reducing Racial Bias in Children – UC San Diego Today

Five Ways to Reduce Racial Bias in Your Children – Greater Good Science Center of Berkeley

How I Addressed Race with My Kid

Those of you who know me personally know my 5-year-old. You know that kid once asked me 72 questions in a 20-minute drive to the grocery store. She’s smart and demands answers of us to her existential questions. She goes to a very racially diverse school and has racially diverse friends in her Kindergarten class. Here’s how our first conversation about race went, approximately (my memory isn’t quite as good as hers. She could probably tell you the conversation word for word with correct inflection):

Mom: “Hey M, do you know how some of the kids in your class have a different skin color from yours?”

M: “Yes, Y has really dark skin!”

Mom: “Do you know why Y’s skin is darker than yours?”

M: “No..”

Mom: “It’s actually really simple! Y’s ancestors come from an area of the world where they get a LOT more summer and a lot more sun. When our skin sees a lot of sun, a pigment called melanin develops to help protect us from sunburn. Melanin is a dark pigment. Y’s skin has a lot more melanin than yours, because our ancestors came from a place with less sun and more winter. Do you think that makes Y different than us?”

M: -5 minute tangent asking questions about our ancestors-, followed by “Y doesn’t seem any different from me except his skin is darker”

Mom: “That’s right! Y is absolutely not different from us just because his skin has more melanin. Y’s family might have different traditions than ours, like, they might celebrate different Holidays, but Y is exactly the same as you inside. Y’s and your other friends with darker skin’s have different cultures, which adds awesome things to our world! We like to eat tacos, right? Tacos come from South American cultures. Pizza comes from Italy, and sushi comes from Asia. If we didn’t have friends from those places, we wouldn’t get to enjoy those awesome things from their cultures. Now when you see your classmates asking about skin color differences, you can look really smart and tell them about melanin and how it doesn’t make us any different from each other, apart from the way our skin looks”.

Was that conversation perfect? No, not at all. What it was, was a first step in the direction of fostering understanding and acceptance of cultural differences. Follow-on conversations have focused on racism and why MLK Jr. needed to fight for equality, and how racism isn’t gone but we can help others learn that race doesn’t make us fundamentally “less” than anyone else.

Conclusion

It’s fair to say that the approach of teaching about race by ignoring it doesn’t work. Science says the best thing to do it talk to your kids early and often about the role of race historically and how they can be aware of and talk about it today. My hope is that my kids don’t get that weird, uncomfortable feeling when addressing race that I get as a kid who grew up in a relatively mono-cultural, rural small town.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, dear reader, and how you’ve talked to your kids about race!