The Talk

In the days immediately following the mass shooting at the Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, NY, NPR was interviewing an elderly African-American woman who lives in the neighborhood, discussing racism and the threat of White supremacists in America when the topic of The Talk came up—the one Black parents have to have with their children about the dangerous realities of growing up and living in our society—and you could hear the capitalization in the woman’s voice.  But as she was speaking about The Talk, she wondered aloud, with a tone of despair, why White parents don’t seem to feel the need to talk with their own children about the racism in our society, and it was crystal clear from her intonation that this time, she was using the lower-case version of “talk.”  

I found the difference striking, and it got me to thinking:  what might the White parent equivalent of The Talk involve? How might I speak to my own hypothetical children about the role the mere color of their skin is going to play in their daily lives? What would I tell them about their automatic part in this country’s systemic racism simply for having been born here as a White person?

Here’s my preliminary draft of what I think I would say:

My dearest child, I need to speak with you today about an uncomfortable topic: the unearned and frequently unrecognized privilege you have in this life simply because of the color of your skin.  You can stand on any street corner, walk any sidewalk in this town, and never find yourself hostilely confronted by people demanding to know what you are doing there.  No one will follow you with suspicion around in a department store or ask, “can I help you?” in a tone that implies you shouldn’t be there, and people will not cross the street to walk on the other side when they see you coming.

Furthermore, should you ever find yourself pulled over for some minor traffic offense, it will not occur to you to feel anxious about your actual survival; you’ll merely feel the normal anxiety that comes from getting caught doing something the law says you shouldn’t.  And when you do go out, we as your parents don’t have to hear each ring of the phone with dread until you are once more safely at home.

And that, my child, is just the beginning of the privilege affforded you by your white skin.  You will be seen faster by doctors in the emergency room, and you are likely to be healthier in the first place because you possess the political clout to NIMBY that trash incinerator from ever being built right next to your house. You will possess wealth you never earned simply from the unpaid and underpaid labor of centuries of first slavery and then systemic racism—remember that even the most ardent 19^th Century abolitionist benefited from cheaper clothing due to who farmed and harvested the cotton—and you will spend a lifetime with better access to credit, housing, and education than most of the people of color in your community.

In addition, you will regularly see yourself and others like you in the media, in the professions, and in positions of power, and that, my child, brings me to perhaps your greatest, most hidden privilege of all:  you do not have to see yourself.  When you look in the mirror, you do not have to see your Whiteness; you do not have to notice it.  You will often hear many liberal, well-intentioned White Americans profess they are “colorblind” when it comes to an individual’s racial identity—when in reality, what they are blind to is the color of their own skin…and all the privilege that comes with it.  Therefore, see your Whiteness, my child, because only then can you understand your own part in the racism of our society and start working to become the active anti-racist we know you are capable of being….

Like I said, just an initial draft for the White version of The Talk.  I’ve obviously left out how enormous the cost of this privilege is, how brutalizing it has historically been to our communities of color, and I’ve left out just how challenging confronting the realities of this privilege is for those of us who are White—the work is arduous and long—and of course, I’ve left out the truth that there are parts of The Talk that would be more appropriate at certain ages than at others.  Thus, in reality, we are talking about The Talks.

But that brings me to a different question:  how do we go from having to have The Talk to just talking? How do we humanize everyone in each other’s eyes? Here is where I think education comes into the picture.  It is why we need to teach the accurate history of this country in our schools.  It is why we need to read and hear different voices in our classrooms.  It is why I would argue that we should require our students to start studying a foreign language no later than Kindergarten, and it is why we need students to learn and understand that “race” is a 100% social contrivance; it has absolutely no biological root whatsoever. 

Because when we know each other’s stories, we can no longer see anyone as “Other,” only as “another,” and when everyone is simply another fellow human being, it becomes very hard to support, justify, and maintain the unjust systems that require The Talk in the first place.