011: Raising Antiracists - The Parent's Work

It’s bewildering to witness crimes against Black lives and racial injustice in 2020. The events of the last several days are life-changing and have EVERYTHING to do with parenting. There is a lot we can and need to do. Whether you feel this way or not just yet, I want to  underscore that change IS coming. We have to make space for it.    To give you a sense of my context:   I have a formal training in multiculturalism. I work with people of color on a weekly if not daily basis. I have Black friends who are near and dear to me. I have White friends, who have married Black and who have  biracial children. And I have a few friends who have adopted and are raising Black children   And even within this context, I am constantly finding that I have a lot of assumptions. I have formed an impression that we as a country were doing better than we actually are. I had an assumption that there was enough power behind the antiracist movement…   That is NOT SO.    As parents, we are in the process of raising the next generation. If we want the world to change, we need to remember that we as parents are always PLANTING SEEDS. Intentionally or not, we transmit our beliefs and biases onto our children.    The environment in which we are raising our children turns those biases into “truths”, unless it is specifically designed to question and challenge them (more on that in Episode 012, next week). So if we want the world to change, this is something we have to do proactively. Not waiting for the “world” to change, but by beingTHE ONES that change it. And even taking it a step deeper — to be the ones that change it, we need to be the ones that change ourselves.   In this episode I share my thoughts on how to begin the work we need to do as parents, before we can have a meaningful impact on our children and their understanding of race. It is not enough to say “I am not racist.” To raise antiracists we need to examine our values and become antiracists ourselves.      Host: Julia Pappas | Psychologist & Parent Coach theparentingpresence.com