Session 148: Talking to Kids About Race

Published Mar 25, 2020, 7:00 AM

The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

As many of us have now found ourselves home educating the kids in our lives, I wanted to bring you a great book that you might want to add to your library called Daddy Why Am I Brown? by Dr. Bedford Palmer. Dr. Palmer and I chatted about how to talk with kids about race in a way that’s developmentally appropriate, the work we need to do as adults to have these conversations in a way that’s healthy, and he shares some of his favorite resources including 6 free lesson plans in case you need them.

 

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Kay Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr joy Hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Support for today's podcast comes from Bomba's Do you find yourself often thinking about socks? I feel like I used to be probably not often, but I recently discovered socks that change the way I'll think about socks forever. They're called Bomba's Bomber is a super comfy and super cute socks for the gym, work, or anywhere else you'd like to wear them. I love that the patterns and designs are different than any others I've seen, and there are no show. Socks are perfect for when you need to wear a sock but don't actually want to see it, and for every pair of Bomba's purchased, they donate a payer to someone in need. By your Bombas at Bomba's dot com slash t b G today and get off your first purchase. That's v O m b a s dot com slash TPG for twenty percent off. Again. That website is Bombas dot com slash TVG. Now let's get into the episode. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for session one forty eight of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. As many of you have now found yourselves home educating the kids in your life, I wanted to bring you a great book that you might want to add to your library called Daddy, Why Am I Brown? By Dr Bedford Palmer. Dr Palmer joins us on the podcast today to talk to us about talking to kids about race. Dr Palmer is a licensed psychologist, an associate professor, and the interim chair of the Counseling Department at St. Mary's College of California. He holds a PhD in Counseling psychology and researches issues related to social justice and cultural factors. Dr Palmer maintains a small private practice in Oakland, California, where he works with a diverse clientele and provides multicultural competence training to individuals and organizations. He's also a past president of the Alameda Psychological Association and producer slash, co host of the Naming It podcast, and the author of Daddy, Why Am I Brown? A healthy conversation about skin color and family. Dr Palmer and I chatted about how to talk with kids about race in a way that's developmentally appropriate, the work we need to do as adults to have these conversations in a way that's healthy, and he shared some of his favorite resources, including six free lesson plans in case you need them. If you hear something that resonates with you while listening, please be sure to share it with us on social media using the hashtag TPG in session. Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr Palmer. Yes, I'm excited to have you. So you are the author of a new book called Daddy, Why Am I Brown? And I know that this is a conversation. You know, I would say probably over the past year, we've seen lots of conversations about parents and talking to their kids about race, and so I think that your book will be a nice one. For people to kind of add to their home library to really be able to kind of have some of these conversations. But I want to start with hearing. Is there such a thing as like a child being too young to start talking about race? You know, I think that that's a tricky thing. You would hope that you could shelter kids from the oppressive nature of race and all that stuff, But the reality is is that if your child is going to be out in the world, if they're going to go to preschool, they're gonna walk with you to a store, they're gonna be able to understand what's around them. Then they're going to encounter race, and they're going to encounter their own race. You know, there's a lot of research out there that shows that these encounters happen as early as three or four years old. So I think that it's better to prepare kids and to help them get the get an idea of what's going on prior to that first encounter so that they can better navigate it. Because the way you navigate that encounter experience with racism and race and all of that can be profoundly important to the way that you're able to cope for the rest of your life. We know, like you're saying that, Like some of the research indicates that kids have some of these experiences as early as three. Are they typically negative experiences or is it more like kids realizing like, oh, all of our skin looks different? Well, you know, it very much depends. I don't know if there's a a more often case at this point, but I think that the way that the racial identity models work, Like Bill Cross has a racial identity model, that's kind of the beginning of that. But before that, even friends but known, this idea of kind of finding yourself as the other is what we talked about as an encounter experience. I don't think that finding yourself as the other ever really feels good when you think the same as everyone else. Um, I think that that that's something you have to contend with because that otherness, at the very core of that otherness is a lie. Right, So I'm not gonna feel good to be told that you're something different when really our skin color and the differences that are physical on us, they're skin deep, they're they're not really important to who we are, you know, intellectually, spiritually, our person are centerselves are our culture. It's not about necessarily those external phenological traits and exeting phenotypical When we are placed into a context where race is important, it is this kind of true thing that we will be treated differently. So I think that kids can kind of be ushered into this idea of specifically for black kids, you can be ushered into blackness in a really positive way, but you're still being ushered into a context of oppression, and there's no way to to change that without changing the oppression. Right, So you can't like pretend like it's not there and shelter your kids from that, because they're gonna be walking on the street and it's gonna happen. So I think that what we do as elders to children, we prepare them as much as possible and give them the tools so they can navigate any of these experiences. Fancy. That is always my struggle because I am a parent, and so you know, it does feel like a very fine balance between like helping them to just be proud of themselves as young black boys, and also like wanting to shelter them, but knowing that you really can't because they exist in the world. And so how do you kind of assess like what is appropriate to talk with them about about the realities of the world at a certain age. I think people like to talk about meaning people where they are, and I think that that is the way that you do it with children. Um, you're not gonna you're not gonna come to a kindergarten class and be like, let me explain you the duality of identity and and two personhood and you know, you're not gonna go into like, you know, critical thought in that way because they haven't learned the foundations to get to the court where they can understand it. But you can't talk about you know, what happens when people say mean things to you? What happens when people talk about and describe you? What? What do you do when you describe other people? You know, like when you're talking about someone in the pre k age group or the kindergarten age group, were talking about fundamental things? What do colors mean? What do printed letters mean? How do you print letters? How do you figure out the days of the week. So I think that you bring it to their space and talk about some of the basic, the most basic parts of it. You help them to understand, and you don't push them past that. You know, you don't have to you don't have to come up with their opinion of what race means. You don't have to have them fully indoctrinated into like the joy of blackness, but you should have them understand that, like, for instance, people will call you black, your skin is not black. Your skin is brown, and there's various shades of brown. So so that's confusing for them to use the wrong color when you're being taught these colors. Here's one of the reasons why you see what I'm saying there. M Yeah, So really like you're talking about like really development, really thinking about like what other kinds of things they're learning, and how you can kind of couch it in some of those same things. Right, it doesn't have to really be about well, you know, as adults we're talking about power, oppression and privilege and those things. Like kids don't have to get all of the scarier parts of it all early. Some of it is just like how do you just begin to talk about your hair and your color and where you're from? Um, And I think that that's another piece of it is always like linking You talk about the race stuff, but you link it to you know ethnicity and culture and help children understand that those are different things and they mean different things, that you should take different meaning from those things. And so your thought is take more of a proactive approach as opposed to like waiting for the first you know, maybe negative racial experience to happen. Yeah, you don't wait for children to encounter bad things generally, like you don't take your child out and let them play in the front yard without telling them how to deal with the sidewalk in the street and the boundary to the grass and people coming by. You tell them, you know, don't talk to strangers, don't don't go past the sidewalk there, don't run in this area there are rocks. You know. You've give them that early warning so that they have at least some sort of conception of being cautious and and thinking about their surroundings, so they can begin to understand that. Yeah. Again, I think that this is where I struggle with because you're right, Like, I really enjoyed that analogy because that does help me think about it differently. I think where I struggle is like introducing like almost this paranoia that of course I experienced right as a parent in like an adult in the world, but like, not necessarily introducing that kids too young, I guess. So the question you have to ask is, isn't really paranoia? So I grew up in a predominantly white and Asian area of San Diego, and I was one of two black kids, three black kids in the class most of the time, most most of my life as a kid through twelve kids, and I encountered racism very early. And some of it was not even direct, Like there wasn't necessarily someone dropping in bombs towards me. It might just be that the white kids wanted to pick on me, and I was the only one getting picked on, you know, like there was no difference except for the skin color. And I didn't understand what was going on, you know, I didn't always understand what was happening in those spaces. And having an idea that like, hey, you know, this might be going on, they might be making the wrong kinds of judgments and they might not understand things correctly might have helped to to kind of get through some of those spaces. Again, it's not necessarily teaching kids the scariest parts of this, but it's about the same way you tell kids Hey, you know, if your brother or your sister hits you, that doesn't mean that you get to hit them back. And here's the reasons why, and here's how you deal with like the concept of You don't talk about the full on concept of forgiveness, but you you do talk about you know, you you can't stay mad, you know you have to you have to do things to to repair your relationship with your kids and between peers and things like that. And you find those ways in the language that the child can understand so that they can begin to again start to develop healthy ways to deal with things that will affect them for us our lives. Mm hmm, very good points. Thank you for that. So it makes me feel like there is like some work that we have to do, probably as adults, to like even get ourselves ready to like maybe have some of these conversations. You have thoughts about that, Oh yeah, you know, honestly, one of the pieces of the book is that, you know, I spend a lot of my time as a professor and as a consultant and as a psychologists helping people understand how to have these conversations with themselves as adults and how to like navigate systems that are oppressive and where you know, you work in a corporate setting, and like having to deal with ramifications of systemic racism, you know, when you've maybe not had to deal with that so much before, or you're you're going to be a counselor or a psychologist, and you need to look inwardly and understand like how you might bring that into the room or how it might be affecting you. So the whole point behind or the story, if I can give like a quick story behind the book, is that I was at home and my wife came home, and she was at the time working in a school where they you know, had k through twelve kids and they had like kindergarten and uh, first grade and whatnot. And apparently there was like this little little kid who came up to her and recounted the story of being told that their skin looked like coop by want of their classmates after a lesson about color and skin color. And of course the child was in tears, and you know, my wife was like really disturbed by that happening. And then the lack of ability to do very much to help fix that once it's occurred, you know, and me being you know, someone who thinks about this stuff a lot and and focuses a lot of career on this is just like I had this whole dissonance moment of like, man, I want to help this kid, but obviously I can't do anything for this child because I don't know this kid. And I want to help my wife. She's got to process herself. This is about her work. So what do I do to not getting her way right now? And so being a psychologist I am, I was like, Okay, maybe I need to like sit down and maybe write something down, do something to self suit And that turned from kind of a maybe a post I was thinking at first, and then I was like, you know, I could help a teacher talk about this. I could help parents maybe talk about this. And I just wrote the beginnings of the children's book sitting at the kitchen table. I wrote it in like, you know, an hour, the first draft, because you know, it's not not a lot of words in the children's books. But you know, over the course of a few years I would find it and came back to it and figured out how to publish it. But the whole idea was what happens if we're able to address some of these issues that adults have in adult worlds before their adults, Like what happens if they don't have to relearn things, they can just learn it right in the first place. And so the book itself, it's not just meant for black and brown kids, it's actually meant for white kids and and all the kids in between, because everyone needs to understand how to properly talk about this and think about skin color, race and family. Because if the kid who called the little girl skin poop would have had someone teach them this prior to that, then the little girl wouldn't have had her encounter experience. Mm hmm. Yeah, And I mean, I think that that is really important, right, like to think about how everybody talks about race, because I think that is a part of what feels frustrating is that it often feels like as black people, we often have to have these conversations with our kids, whereas it feels like white counterparts don't. But truthfully, if they were having more conversations, we might not have to have the same conversations with our kids about raised. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that that's kind of the crux of the issue, is that if we could just teach kids to understand some of this stuff earlier than they would have better tools to start to unwind this problem, the issue of racism, oppression and all that stuff. I mean, you know, we're adults now, and it's it's weird to be in this space because you spend so much time being a young person with the potential to to want to change and do all the things. But I think we're you know, if if you're my age group, which you know, early forties and stuff, we're getting to that point where we have to start really thinking about what the next generation is going to do and how we're going to prepare them. And I think that that's kind of the energy that I wanted to put behind this, is to maybe do something where we can prevent some of these negative interactions and prevent the need to heal as opposed to just heal. Yeah, and so what made you decide on a kid's book as opposed to like a book for parents? Well, the funny part about children's books is that there are books for parents because parents by own parents consume them, and parents eventually they're the one who read them to the kids. And so my book Daddy Why and I Brown. So it has a story for the children, and it has like the learning process in there, but it also has a bunch of resources. So there's discussion questions and vocabulary and the ideas like if you can talk to your child about this, then maybe you're going to learn some of this too, And you can come to the book without necessarily having a degree and ethnic studies to read this book to your child. It's it's it's just meant to like give some basics and maybe that can open a conversation that continues in the house. Mm hmmm. So kind of going back to the earlier conversation around like the work that we need to do as adults to be able to have some of these conversations with our kids. Can you share, like any of the questions from the book are questions maybe that you're even asking your practice or as you're kind of thinking about your work for adults, that maybe can help them to kind of think about the spirit they need to come to a process like this with I think one of the first things is that you have to ask yourself what your relationship is your skin color and to your race, and to like the way that you see yourself identity wives with sailing, like, what are some of the areas that aren't maybe a little hot and you might feel sensitive about because you know, kids they're gonna ask you direct questions. They're really not gonnam mince words. They're just gonna be like, boom, what is this? And so as you're approaching this, you can't respond with your baggage to your child's question about stuff, otherwise it's going to transfer it over to them. So I think that one of the big pieces is just thinking about what would be the healthy way that you would have liked to talk about this, to have been introduced to this when you're a kid. What are some of the things that you anticipate your child to be exposed to. You might have this conversation differently depending on what kind of roots are around the kids, you know, like if you're you're sitting here your child to a predominantly white school, then that's gonna be different than if you're sending them to a predominant black school or to a more you know, multi culture role or diverse school. It depends on what kind of home you have. You know, the discussion is really different if the family all kind of share similar skin tones versus like, for instance, in the book, the family doesn't share the same skin tones, and they don't share like all the same ethnicity. So you know, the mom in the book is multi ethnic where she's Black and Chinese, and then the dad is African American or he's black. So you know, what do you do with those conversations. I think it gets even more complicated if you start talking about like adoption and whatnot. But I think that it also is inappropriate. I was hoping that people who, for instance, who might engage in a transracial adoption, could use this book to help them healthily have this conversation and use this context. I think in the book there's like I I provided some vocabulary that I pulled from the Learner's Dictionary. It's vocabulary with definitions that kids can understand. So like ancestors, a person who with someone's family in past times or herided, you know, traditions, achievements, and beliefs. Even like melanin, so the dark brown and black substances that is a natural part of people's skin, hair and eyes. Like off the top of your head, would you just be able to say what melanine is to a child? So I tried to kind of think about those things in terms of discussions, questions just things like what's your favorite color? What makes things beautiful? What does it mean for my skin to be different from your skin? These are some of the questions that kind of come up, and just being able to talk to those and make it feel mormal. I think it is one of the big pieces that parents and elders and uncles and nuntees and whatnot need to be thinking about. Yeah, and I think you raised a really interesting point, dr Former in that there is likely some work that lots of us need to do around our own race to be able to really engage in these conversations in a way that's healthy for kids. Right, Like, I don't know that we even always think about like how you know, our ideas about and color and hair and all of those things still impact us as adults. As a psychologist, you know, the stuff that people bring in to talk about. I don't know that any of this stuff has worked out for adults, things like colorism and colorism inside homes. You know, So which child is a light skin child? With child is the dark skinned child? Which which kid has a quote unquote good hair and all that stuff who looks most like somebody? I mean, those kind of things are generational. You know, if you're the if you didn't have the lighter skin in the family, and then you know roder sists who have the lighter skin get favored, then how is that going to come out when you have kids who also have variations in their skin? Comes what happens when you behave certain ways but between different people could see that, you know, so if you're always you know, making faces or rolling your eyes or cutting your eyes at folks who look a specific way, then the kid is going to realize that that's negative, like that there's something about that person is negative. And if they see enough, they're gonna recognize the pattern in order to And I think this is across board with parenting. It's not it's not just about race. But if you don't want to pass on the traumas and the trials and the baggage and all this stuff that comes from your life to your child, you do have to unpack that. And I think that you know, that's where a good therapist might come in. If you're thinking about your parenting, Um, that's something that we can help with. That's something you can come in and talk about and think about kind of how do you separate your childhood from your your your child's childhood. Very good points. I really appreciate it. So are there other resources? It sounds like you do have tons in the book, But are there other resources that you can kind of think about the top of your head that you think would be helpful for these kinds of a conversation as well well? I think for parents, there's some good books that you can read that can give you more context and bring you more into the convert station around race and ethnicity and blackness for black folks. One is The Psychology of Blacks, which is a book that's written by Dr Thomas Farham, Audi saw Jammu and es Mario Bossi and Joseph L. White um and that really talks about the idea of identity and race from a psychological perspective. But like it really just it hits on education, hits on like the counter experiences, hits on family and family structure. Another book is um I believe it's called Black Families, and that's uh Nancy Boy Franklin, Nancy Boy Franklin, Yes, just look up Nancy Boy Franklin. If you want to talk about Black families and black kids, like you really that that's a good space to go. Black Father's Invisible Presence in America. That's edited by Dr Michael Connor and Dr Josepha White. There's two editions. There's a chapter I'm in in the in the in the second edition, but that talks about fatherhood with children, and I think that that's, you know, part of where my head is in terms of, like I mean, the book is about a father and a daughter having a conversation, and I think that's kind of an important thing to kind of to put forward because of, you know, all the stereotypes and all that stuff. I think that the stereotypes aren't really real. Black men are very involved and very connected to their children in a lot of different ways, and I think that like pointing that out. I mean, one of the book that came, I was like looking at it and I was like, man, I got all their goals now when I saw a hair love like, oh yes, you know, I mean, such a beautiful way of of kind of approaching a situation. And I think that many black fathers have have experienced, not necessarily you know, in in the way that's in the book, but just this idea of you know, how do I make sure that I'm taking care of my my child in a way that my child would be happy with and that my partner would be happy with, you know, And um, yeah, it's just beautiful. So maybe one day we'll get we'll get a wonderful animation animated version of Daddy wy My Brown. But maybe one day long in the future after this interview, because now everybody, everybody listening to your shlfs and'll never know about it. I know it. So where can people connect with you online? Dr Palmer? What is your website? And I know people can go to your website to buy the book, So what's your website as well as any social media handles that you want to share? Okay, I gotta I got a few, so um, you can find me directly and and through this you can find a lot of other stuff that's connected to me. But um, I have my website is d R B F Palmer dot com. So dr bf Palmer dot com. And the website for the book is deeper than color, that's deeper than pH A N Color dot com. And you can go there and you can get to both websites. From each other a linked and you can go on Amazon to find the book. Uh, and you can find that by either searching it on Google, or you can go directly to the website. Now Internet handle wise, you can find me at dr b F. Palmer on Instagram and on Twitter and on Facebook, so at dr b F. Palmer and the book is at deeper than color, same as the website. Yeah, so those are the best places. So if you look for me on online. I talked a lot about psychology and about race and culture and and uh, you know, as as some of my folks say about the struggle. But I've been adding in some some resources for parents. One thing that people might like, especially right now in the context that we're in. I know there's a lot of folks who are doing homeschooling and needing some some materials. Well, I have six lessons plans that are for free on the website. So if you're a parent, or if you're just someone, if you're a teacher, whoever you are, who's going to like to gather some lesson plans for some kids, and you know, preschool, kindergarten or first grade. There's six free lesson plans and you can just go download those off of Deeper than Color dot com. Perfect. Thank you so much for those resources I can promm and of course all of that would be included in the show notes so that people can get say all of that very easily. But we really appreciate you spending some time with us today. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. I'm so grateful Dr Palmer was able to share his expertise with us today. To learn more about him, or to grab your copy of Daddy Why Am I Brown, visit the show notes at Therapy for Black Girls dot Com slash Session one, and don't forget to share your takeaways with us in either your I G Stories or on Twitter using the hashtag tb G in session. If you're looking for a therapist near area, check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Black Girls dot Com slash directory. Many of the therapists offer options to meet virtually if you're looking for that right now. And if you want to continue digging into this topic and meet some other systems in your area, come on over and join us in the Yellow Couch Collective, where we take a deeper dive into the topics from the podcast and just about everything else. You can join us at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash y c C and don't forget to show our sponsor some love by grabbing your Bomba stocks at bombas dot com slash t b G today and get off of your first order that's b O M B A S dot com slash tv GF. Thank y'all so much for joining me again this week. I look forward to continue in this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care

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