Caregivers of white children, don’t teach them about privilege. Do these things instead.
George Floyd was killed by a now-former officer of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25, 2020. We all know how he died; I won’t retell that trauma here. As George Floyd’s life ended, I was at home 2.5 miles due East of Cup Foods. My home sits near the eastern end of 38th Street, an artery that runs through the heart of Minneapolis’ southside. A trip between Cup Foods and my house begins in a historically Black neighborhood full of generous century-old homes and fourplexes, through several modest white working and middle class neighborhoods. The trip crosses Minneapolis’ light rail transit line and comes to an end at the Mississippi River. There, 38th Street, the street on which George Floyd was killed, intersects a boulevard named for Edmund Walton, the real estate developer we can thank for bringing racial covenants to this city. 38th Street between Cup Foods and my home tells one story of why we are where we are today in the United States: in the midst of global pandemic and uprising, maybe even at the beginning of the end of white supremacy.
I write from the dubious position of a white person who is socially and culturally located at great distance, yet in close physical proximity to the daily indignities that Black people have long experienced in this community. Respecting this distance, I write within my range of experience as a white person, communicating specifically to other white and non-Black adults who raise, educate, and live in community with white children. My sphere of influence includes schools, as I am an education scholar and I serve as the Program Director of Elementary Teacher Education at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. My colleagues and I encourage our students, mostly white future teachers, to work toward anti-racist practice. More than ever, in recent days it seems that white friends, neighbors, and colleagues want to raise children who will refuse to participate, directly or indirectly, in anti-black violence. While many white would-be allies or accomplices are looking for specific guidance in what to say, what to read, and what to do, no one can do that work for you. You will get there on your own when you invest in ongoing work. Instead of a script, in this post I offer strategies to deepen your consciousness so that your actions can be rooted in deep knowledge, humility, and solidarity with Black communities.
Children are always looking for clues from us- it’s one of the ways they’re brilliant. We communicate what is and isn’t acceptable to say out loud by what we do and don’t acknowledge ourselves. For far too long, a culture of silence around the brutal histories and legacies of settler colonization and anti-blackness has permeated white families and the schools that educate them. Silence is a powerful lesson. Thus, if your first conversation about anti-blackness is about George Floyd’s murder, it will be difficult. Yet even if this is the beginning for you, know that even when the truth is painful, the world can make sense to kids when we talk about it honestly.
Minnesota’s Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan said that we need to name white supremacy for what it is: The system that shapes and allows for individual actions like a Minneapolis police officer killing George Floyd. In other words, racist actions are a product of the larger problem, which is white supremacy.
Children are capable of understanding that neither George Floyd’s murder nor the subsequent intensified demands for police abolition are a surprise. Instead, they are a tipping point. From interstate construction literally cutting through neighborhoods to pervasive and ongoing racialized police violence, Black leaders have long acknowledged that a new time of uprising and rebuilding will come. White children need to learn the historical architecture of this moment.
And there’s incredible beauty in the stories we need to be telling children about how people rise up and claim their own lives. Education scholar and activist Bettina Love said this about Black people: “We talk a lot about who died for us, and not enough about who lived for us.” If stories about Black joy, celebration, and resilience aren’t stories you know, learn them and share them.
White caregivers of white children need to unlearn the desire to protect children’s innocence. Some of the ideas that mainstream U.S. culture accepts as truths about how children grow and develop are simply not so. For example, knowing the rules of how to behave in one racial context compared to another can be a basic survival mechanism for a Black child and might feel totally out of reach developmentally to many white parents.
Children live in the midst of the same complexities adults do, whether or not we give them language for it. This requires us to dispense with notions of helping and kindness as the answer for white kids who instead can learn to act in solidarity. An uncritical approach to “helping” or “having a kind heart” transmits messages to white children that they have something superior to be shared, whereas solidarity locates the problem in the unjust structures themselves. Understanding this, young white people step into movements not as leaders, but as accomplices.
Finally: White caregivers of white children, don’t teach them about privilege. The concept of privilege is simple and can help white people see our unjust positioning within society. What it doesn’t offer is an explanation of where injustices have come from. Instead, teach children to understand how power operates. For example, children can see the patterns of residential segregation. A version of the trip down 38th Street in Minneapolis that I described above exists in every city I have ever visited. Help children acknowledge that the makeup of who lives where in our communities didn’t happen by accident. Adults made decisions that led to this. Know that as children come to recognize power, they are predisposed to challenge it. Be strong enough to hear them and, when challenged, to listen to those whose experiences you don’t share.
We can raise white children who hold the complexity that their communities are both vibrant places and places where Black people are brutalized by the police and other systems of power, like schools. The corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis is, at this moment, a sacred space reflecting the wholeness of the Black experience. Flowers and art, shared meals, singing and love envelop the senses along with the ever-present stench of Black death at the hands of state authority. When young people know how to hold those two truths at the same time, they demand a just future. It is happening now.