+
More

5 ways to talk to your kids about race that can help make the future brighter.

'It takes lots of practice.'

PBS did a poll about the state of race relations in America. What they discovered wasn't too surprising.

We have some work to do when it comes to race relations. Photo from PBS NewsHour, used with permission.

It seems most people, regardless of skin color, think we can do better.  Taeku Lee thinks so too. He's a professor of political science and law at the University of California at Berkeley. Other than being a ridiculously brilliant dude, he spent years studying race relations and is one of the most respected thought leaders in that arena. 


Here are five things Lee suggests to raise racially conscious children.

1. Focus on teaching empathy. If you can imagine yourself in the shoes of a another person, your kids will too.

As parents, it's up to us to set the example of empathizing with others, and it's easier than we may think. When we teach our kids to share and to take turns and when we model that behavior ourselves, that teaches them empathy. They'll learn it by watching us.

We could probably start and end with that. If we all treated others the way we wanted to be treated, the world would improve instantly.

Classy kids. GIF via KBSEntertain/YouTube

Lee said in an interview with Upworthy, "By teaching children the simple acts of sharing and taking turns, they will learn to see the world through the eyes of someone else. When children develop into adults who value dignity and respect, they will better understand these as universal values if they first have moral foundations in the value of empathy."

When we have empathy for other human beings and recognize the value of their unique experiences, things tend to go better. 

Just ask a former white supremacist

2. Talk to your kids before everyone else does. Ask them lots of questions and encourage them to do the same. If you remain open-minded, your kid will too.

Stop me if you've heard this before, but parenting is hard.

Many of us are overworked and overtired and adding the "race relations talk" to our endless to-do list isn't exactly something we look forward to doing.

GIF from "Old School."

But, if we don't suck it up and have the racism talk with our kids, even if we reeeeealllly don't want to, Lee is quick to point out that someone else will: 

 "Children are endlessly curious and coming to their views about how to read and represent race. Left alone, there are enormous everyday forces — in the entertainment our children consume and in seemingly innocuous classroom and playroom interactions — where implicit biases begin to set their roots."

What happens if we wait too long to have the discussion with our kiddos about race and we start seeing them displaying those biases? 

Lee states, "One of the most powerful ways to counter implicit biases is to call them out, question the unconscious associations we make about what and who is 'good' or 'bad,' and by doing so, take a fresh new look at things. From this standpoint, parents should talk about race with an open mind to learning from their children as much as they convey learning to their children."

3. Words are great, but if you tell your kids one thing, you better make sure your actions reflect what you've told them. In other words, you gotta practice what you preach.

Kids are smart and extremely observant. Just as easily as we notice the not-so-pleasant aroma of a blowout diaper, our little ones notice when our words and our actions don't jibe. 

According to Lee, "Children are frighteningly good at picking up cues that you don’t even know you are giving. It's one thing to discuss all the reasons why you should not judge, hate, celebrate, respect, but those reasons go deeper when they are embodied in your actions. It's not just about explicit things, like using epithets to describe groups or publicly voicing negative stereotypes, but also subtler things, like reacting to microaggressions."

From the mouth of babes. GIF from "Modern Family."

Put simply, it's easy to refrain from saying really horrible things. It's more challenging to stop the seemingly innocuous comments (known as microaggressions) that our kids could pick up on. 

"Well, you definitely don't act black."

"C'mon, you're Asian, you must be good at math."

"Puerto Rican, Mexican — you know what I mean." 

Be warned. Our kids are always watching and listening. 

4. Venture out of your 'hood and expose your kids to different people and places.

According to the Pew Research Center, close to 40% of Americans have never moved away from their hometowns. 

It makes it pretty challenging for kids to learn about different cultures if they rarely leave the comfort zone of their neighborhoods. 

There's a beautiful world out there. Experience it. Image from the Daddy Doin' Work Instagram feed.

How do you expose your kids to other cultures and races and tradition if you don't have the budget, time, or patience to travel the globe with your kids? 

Take advantage of the things in and around your community that will help your kids experience things outside their comfort zone. 

"That could be anything from spending a weekend afternoon at a neighborhood flea market or going with your children to a Black Lives Matter protest or walking around an 'ethnic enclave.' Experiencing difference is much more powerful than just reading or talking about it. One of the enduring conditions under which genuine learning about the 'other' happens is through deep, meaningful interactions and experiences with other groups," says Lee.

You don't have to travel the globe to get beyond your community and introduce kids to things they don't normally see on an average day. 

5. Help your kids learn how to identify racism, and teach them how to deal with it when they see it.

This is huge.

Teaching our kids to be "colorblind" or to not "see" race can be detrimental because it makes it harder for them to identify discrimination when it does happen.

Instead of raising our kids — regardless of what race they are — to see colorblindness as a solution to racism and discrimination, we need to teach them how to identify it when it happens and how to appropriately address it when they see it.

Should they tell a teacher or should they wait and tell you about it when they get home from school? Should they try to stop a bully themselves or should they find the person being bullied and offer them a hug?

Riley Curry requesting wisdom from her amazing dad.

There are no simple answers. However, there are some resources to help you have those talks

In the meantime, we'd love to know, what are you doing to help guide your kids down a better path? Let us know on Twitter and Facebook.

Sponsored

ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

Keep ReadingShow less

Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

A mom who admitted she packs her 2-year-old a meal when they go out to dinner has started an interesting debate on TikTok about restaurant etiquette and how it applies to young children.

The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
Keep ReadingShow less
@Steve_Perrault/Twitter

Some moments never get old.

On November 19, 1999, a man named John Carpenter made game show history and quite possibly gave us all the greatest game show moment of all time.

Carpenter was a contestant on the very first season of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” shot in America. Hosted by the late Regis Philbin, the quiz show featured three "lifeline" options to help them with difficult questions, the most popular being able to “Phone-a-Friend.”

Carpenter had impressively not used a single lifeline for any of his questions. That is, until question 15. The million-dollar question, to be exact.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

On a beautiful May day, friends and family gathered in the O’Bannon Terrace Retirement Community, where Fideli is a resident, to witness the ceremony.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Carbon monoxide is called a silent killer for a reason. Many people don't realize they're experiencing carbon monoxide poisoning before it's too late. The gas is colorless and odorless and tends to have a sedating effect that causes people to sleep through the fatal poisoning. Having carbon monoxide detectors is one of the most effective ways to identify the gas before it's too late to get out of the house, but not every home has one.

A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

The girl called 911 after she noticed her mom pass out. On the call with the dispatcher, Jaziyah says she thinks her mother has died before explaining that there was something now wrong with her baby brother, who was just 5-months-old.

Keep ReadingShow less

Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

Drew Barrymore, 48, has been in the public consciousness since she starred as Gertie in 1982’s mega-blockbuster, “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” a performance that earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. So, it makes sense that many people of a certain age feel as if they’ve grown up with her.

Barrymore has consistently starred in hit films and movies that are rewatchable cable-TV staples, such as “Charlie's Angels” (2000), “Never Been Kissed” (1999), “Scream” (1996), “The Wedding Singer” (1998), “50 First Dates” (2004) and “Fever Pitch” (2005).

Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

Keep ReadingShow less