July 2, 2020 • 50 mins
Katie talks to Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, teacher, race relations expert, and author of Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race. Dr. Tatum discusses what it means to be anti-racist, how the idea of color blindness can equal color silence, and how parents can prepare themselves for conversations about race with children at every stage of development.
Crib Notes:
- www.beverlydanieltatum.com
- www.socialjusticebooks.org
- Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race - By Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum
- Is My Skin Brown Because I Drank Chocolate Milk - TED X - Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum
- A People's History of the United States - by Howard Zinn
- 13th - a film by Ava Duvernay
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Our Heart Radio
and Shondaland Audio. Hi everybody, thank you so much for
listening to Katie's Crib. Today we are talking about race.
I sincerely want to learn how to be an anti
racist parent, and I sincerely want to learn how to
(00:23):
raise an anti racist kid. And I'm going to be
brutally honest with you, guys, I don't know how to
do that, and in all the ways that we have
seen in the past with Katie's Grib, you guys know,
I really like to use this podcast and this platform
to learn how to be a better parent, and so
I figured we're going to do the same thing on
(00:45):
the subject of race. We have collected an incredible group
of experts on the subject, and we get down and
honest and real about what we should be doing as parents,
what we can be doing better, and the action items
we need to take to make this world a better place.
(01:05):
Today we're featuring the brilliant Dr Beverly Daniel Tatum. Dr
Tatum and I cover so much ground, and something I
found especially helpful is the specific examples she shares for
how to have these necessary and often uncomfortable conversations around
race with our kids. Thanks so much for listening and
here we go, so without further ado. Dr Beverly Daniel
(01:27):
Tatum is an award winning educational leader, noted expert on
the psychology of racism, a best selling author of the
book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in
the Cafeteria? And other conversations about race, and she's a
mother of two. As a leading voice on race and racism,
Dr Tatum has devoted the past forty years to teaching
(01:47):
people how to break the silence and embrace cross racial
dialogue to lead to effective action for social change. We're
incredibly lucky to have her on Katie's crib. Dr Tatum,
I cannot thank you so much for your work and
for making time for us. Mama is today. I'm happy
to be here. I'm so I know you're very busy.
(02:08):
If you guys go to her website, you can see
the podcasts and the articles that you have been writing
in the past few weeks, let alone the books you've
been writing for a billion years, but also the incredible
you might know her from the Sesame Street special Um
town hall that was done. You were one of the
(02:29):
experts that were featured UM during section two of that
wonderfully informative show that you can You can see the
link on your on your website or on CNN dot com.
But first I want to get started. I love your book.
Thank you, Ah, I love your book. I'm embarrassingly admittingly
(02:50):
so I'm ashamed to say I came to it too late,
only in the past two weeks, and I've been devouring
it and into prep for this. In your view, I
have to go back and reread a million sections. But
in your book you say we all have our own
sphere of influence and we should consider how it might
be used to interrupt the cycle of racism. And since
(03:11):
this is, you know, a podcast for parents and those
who are interested in becoming parents, I want to focus
on our sphere of influence at home and UM and
how we know how how we can choose to raise
our kids well we know is going to have a
massive impact on the future. So we're going to get
to that. But before we get into raising the future,
(03:31):
no pressure, guys, we got a lot to do. I
want to look at the past. You've referred to yourself
as an integration baby. Can you share a little bit
about your own upbringing and what it was like for
you in a coming of age during the civil rights era,
and how did your childhood experiences inspire your work. Sure well,
so let's start with the very beginning, which is that
(03:53):
was the year that I was born, and it happens
to be the year of the Brown Versus Board of
Education Supreme Court decision, which is why I refer to
myself as an integration baby, right, because that was the
year that school segregation was declared unconstitutional. And but I
was born. Let's say that I was born in Florida,
(04:14):
UM and Florida, like a lot of southern states, did
not immediately moved to desegregate the schools, even though that
was the ruling in nine And the impact that had
on my life is that my parents, both of whom
were educators, were impacted by segregation in the South. My father,
in particular, was a professor teaching at Florida A. And
(04:37):
M University, which is a historically black college, and he
was educated at Howard University as an art major. He
was an artist, and then he got a master's degree
at the University of Iowa in the early fifties, wanted
to get a doctorate so he could advance in higher
education and would have liked to do that in Tallahassee, Florida,
(05:00):
where we were living, at Florida State University just across town.
But Florida State at that time was an all white institution,
so he was not able to attend. Even though it
was after Brown versus Board of Education, the state of
Florida had to accommodate providing access to black graduate students.
(05:21):
But the way they did that in my father's case
was to pay his transportation out of the state. So
my dad, it's crazy to hear that now and today
Florida State is a very diverse institution in terms of
its student population, but back in nineteen fifty four, he
(05:41):
couldn't go, and so they paid his transportation to Pennsylvania
and he attended penn State, got his doctorate there, finished
that degree in nineteen fifty seven. And so now I'm
three years old and my parents are thinking they don't
want to stay in Florida, and so they moved moved
to Massachusetts in part because they did not want their children.
(06:04):
I had an older brother at the time, he was
about to start school, and they didn't want him to
start school in a segregated school system. So we moved
to a small town outside of Boston. My father became
the first African American professor at Bridgewater State University. And
I grew up in that small town going to school,
(06:25):
one of just a very small number of black children
in the school district. And uh so, really from the
very beginning, issues of race and racism were shaping my life. Wow,
And one of the ideologies that emerged from the Civil
rights movement is this this idea of racial color blindness,
(06:46):
which we all know, and you very well known, since
you were raised around so much change. And it's not
it's it's just not real. It's not it's just not
it's not real. It's how I was raised. I think
my parents, I love them dearly. I think they really
thought they were doing a much better job than their
(07:07):
parents in terms of race, and that everyone was welcome
in our home, that they were claiming not to judge
anybody based on race, even though we know that is
also not possible. Well, let's start with the idea of
color blindness. So, um, a lot of parents will say,
you know, my child doesn't see color, you know she's
(07:28):
color blind, or they will say I want her to
be color blind, I want him to be color blind,
And what they really mean is I want my child
to treat everyone the same, or to not discriminate. Nothing
wrong with teaching your kids not to discriminate. But what
we know is that kids do notice difference. They from
(07:48):
a very young age notice skin color differences and differences
in hair texture, and they have questions about those differences,
and they will ask questions of their parents like why
is tommy skin so brown? Or why is you know,
Susie's hair so curly? Why doesn't it look like mine? Um,
these are questions that they're likely to ask, and a
(08:10):
parent who is concerned that their child not noticed is
likely to respond to those questions with, you know, don't
talk about it, don't notice it, Never comment on someone's
skin color or hair texture or eye shape. And those
are messages that tell a child that there's something wrong
(08:30):
with those things. We don't speak about them because maybe
there's something wrong with it and uh, and so that's
that's an inadvertent message I think that kids are getting.
And of course, if they've got questions like why do
people have different skin colors, that's a question you can
answer with factual information has to do with melanin in
the skin. The more you have, the browner it is.
(08:52):
Melanin helps protect them the sun. People who come from
really warm places tend to have darker skin. Um, all
of that is easily explained to a young child. But
if a parent is so anxious by the question, or
you know, made so anxious by the question, they mostly
try to shut it down. That leads not the color blindness,
but what I call in my book color silence. Color silence,
(09:15):
and I i am a I have that I have
not had as many conversations about race that I've ever
had in my entire life since um, the past three
weeks and all of these brutal police violence and murders
of black people, which we know has been going on forever.
And I am definitely one of those white people that
(09:37):
just color silence, color blind That's how I was raised.
We don't talk about it. And I could already see
with my two and a half year old son that
I could easily keep that systemic racism happening. I could
definitely say that in the past two weeks, I've bought
books and pointed out, you know, this person has black skin,
(09:59):
this person is round skin, this person has white skin,
this person you know, and and I sweat just even
saying the word, and I say, wow, I'm so uncomfortable
even saying it to my son because color blindness and
color silence has made it so that we don't have
the language skills, or I don't have the language skills.
(10:21):
So when you started teaching, UM this class psychology of Racism,
was this the first time that a lot of white
people were having conversations about this? Obviously, I'm sure most
of your black students had already had these conversations. Yes,
it was for a lot of students. So I first taught,
of course on the psychology of Racism, in which very
early in my career, I was about twenty six years old,
(10:44):
and I UM, but I have the opportunity to teach
this class, and even though I was an inexperienced educator
at that point, at the end of the semester, of
my students, most of whom were white, said, this class
has been the most eye opening course I've ever taken.
Why did I have to wait till I was a
junior or senior in college to have these conversations? For
(11:07):
many of them, it was the first time that they'd
really been able to talk openly about issues of race, racism,
racial identity, not just in school but anywhere, because there
had been so much silence in their families and their
communities around these issues. And the black students were they like,
(11:29):
we've been having these conversations. I mean, I know we've
seen a lot on Instagram, these conversations that I see
adults having with their black children of how to what
do you do if a police officer comes up to you,
which my white privilege has allowed me to never have
that conversation with my parents or my child as if yet,
were your black students already noticing this huge difference? Okay, yeah,
(11:52):
I mean typically, you know, in those classes, over the
course of the years that I taught it, the students
of color, particularly the African American students, UM had had
many more conversations at home with their parents, UM in
the ways that you were just describing, or with family
members or friends who were also people of color. Then
(12:15):
the you know, it was very common for white students
to say, we never talked about it at home. Black
kids would say, yes, we've had those conversations at home.
What was uncommon was for both of them to be
able to have conversations together. Right. So a lot of
black kids will have had conversations in their families, but
not necessarily with white people. So the cross racial conversation
(12:37):
sometimes it's a new experience for everyone. Wow. Wow. So
getting back to this podcast, in like that, kids say
the darnedest things. Okay, uh, And I'm assuming I love
watching your ted talk about I think it wasn't it
your son who said does he drink a lot of
chocolate milk or something? Though? Well, my three year old when,
(12:58):
of course my son has all grown up now, but
when he used three, he came home from school saying,
Tommy says, my skin is brown because I drank chocolate.
That's right? Is that true? You wanted you wanted the facts?
You know what? And is this one it occurred to
you that the melanin answer was something that was very
tangible for a three year old? You know. I also
(13:18):
think as a lot of these white parents are waking
up to having conversations with race with their kids, there
are developmentally appropriate ways in which to address a different age. Obviously,
we're going to talk about race differently with the three
and a half year old than we are with a
fifteen year old. So can you just say, I think
(13:39):
language skills right now were so important and to practice
is so important. So how did you address that question
when he asked it to So as you said, you know,
you have to be developmentally appropriate. And the good news
is I'm a child clinical psychologist. Lucky your kids have
a good So I had awareness of what would be
(14:01):
appropriate talking to a three year old. But what I
said to him is, no, your skin is not brown
because you drank toolate milk. Your skin is brown because
you have something in your skin called melanin. Everybody has some,
even Tommy remember when he went to visit his grandmother
and he came back from Florida with a tan. It
was the melanin in his skin that made it turn
(14:22):
brown in the sun. Everybody has some. It helps protect
your skin from the sun. But you are the kid
at your school with the most, which is why your
you know your skin is the brownest because you have
the most melanie. See, It's like we need to practice
saying things like that, because I just it's incredible how
(14:43):
ingrained it is for me to just say, well, first
of all, to not even prepare yourself. You know those
things are going to come. You know, at some point
your toddler is going to point out someone that looks
different than them, different hair, different eyes, different color, skin,
a different way, they walk, a different way, they talk
all of these things. And I feel like I'm not prepared,
(15:06):
and I just my husband and I have said, have
never had a conversation like, hey, when Albi says why
is he brown? Or why is he he have curly
hair or whatever, he's going to say, We've haven't prepared,
Like we've prepared. Let's say, well, we haven't yet, but
I would assume when they're older, like what are we
gonna do when our kid comes home and says, how
is a baby made? Or whatever? But but I'm so
(15:29):
unprepared for the race conversation that it's just ingrained to say, like,
you know, we don't we don't talk about that. Um.
So I love hearing your actual examples because I'm going
to use them. Well, you know, I want to just
be clear that, you know, as a parent myself, there
(15:50):
were times when I got caught off guard and I'm
thinking now of my same three year old. I have
two sons, but this particular one said to me. We
were in the restore and he said, Mom, why is
that woman so fat? Right, pointing out a really heavy
person in the store. And I, of course was embarrassed
for him and her and me, you know, and your
(16:12):
impulse is that you know the child, um, And that
was my initial impulse. But then I recovered and I said,
because people come in different sizes, you know. Um. It
doesn't have to be a long drawn out explanation. You know.
I could have said, if let's imagine my son was
pointing out somebody whose skin was different from his own,
(16:34):
maybe much darker or lighter, and he said, you know,
why is that person's skin that way, I could talk
about melanin. But I could also just say, because people
come in different shades, just like some people have blonde here,
some people have brown hair, some people have freckles some
people don't you know? People come in all different sizes, shapes,
skin tones. Do we initiate these conversations or are we
(16:58):
supposed to wait for them for a toddler to bring
that up to us. I think you can initiate them, um.
But there are easy ways to do that, And one
of the easiest is to read a book. You know,
there are lots of children's books that address difference difference
hair hair and hair texture, difference in physical shapes of
(17:22):
eyes or skin color, you know, books that are celebrating
the diversity of the human family. And so if you
have a preschoolers book and you're reading it together, you
can just talk about I mean, some of those books
will give language because that's what the book is about. Um.
But to be able to say, oh, isn't this you know,
look at this picture? How about that? You know, does
(17:44):
she looks like our friend at school? You can just
have a very natural conversation about the text in front
of you. Yeah, there is a website I think social
justice dot org is social Justice books dot org. That's right,
social Justice Books dot organ. We will link to it
on Katie's cript because I have found that through you
very helpful. And yes, the book thing, it has been
(18:09):
so helpful. This morning we read a Sesame Street book.
You know, We're different, and it just gave me a
framework for someone who's so I'm so uncomfortable having these
conversations and I'm so not practiced that to just open
a book that had Sesame Street drawings of different eyes
close up and different nose close up, and I'm like,
look at her nose, look at his look at his face,
(18:30):
Like isn't that beautiful? You know, like just at least
having some sort of framework, So I'm not just completely
at a loss. It was very very helpful. What about
when you as an educator? I find this so sensitive.
(18:51):
I'm just so I don't even know angry about my education.
I just am. I can't believe how many things I could.
I just can't believe how many things in the past
three weeks I have never known, historically speaking, And how
do we help that, how do we make demands and
(19:15):
and push forward that the real history of this country
is being taught to our children. Well, it does require
some self education, right, because you know, you don't know
what's missing if it's also missing for you, right, you
know you're missing guys guilt right here, missing right, you know. So,
(19:36):
So the good news is there's a lot of great
stuff out there to educate oneself. You know. They're wonderful books,
some classic text you know, I think about Howardson's Book
of People's History of the United States, you know, and
if you don't have time to read, there's probably an
audible version, right, you know. So, so there are lots
(19:56):
of ways for us to educate ourselves. But I do
think for a lot of people, and this was certainly
true of my college students. You know, we would talk
about historical events, even something as recent as the interment
of Japanese Americans during World War Two, and I would
have kids who would say, I have never heard of
that before. I'd be just shocked. And and today, um,
(20:18):
if you think about the fact that this is twenty
year there are young people who weren't alive during the
Civil Rights movement. You know, I was born in fifty four,
As I said, you know, I I remember quite clearly
the assassination of Dr King. I remember, you know, seeing
on the nightly news protests in Alabama and other places,
(20:41):
because that was I was, you know, coming of age,
a teenager during that time. But if you were so
this is so interesting, this is so for you. Wow. Yeah.
But if you were born in the year two thousand year,
twenty years old, now you know, you don't have any
memory of those things, and hopefully you've learned something about
them in high school or middle school or college, but
(21:04):
you might not have. So there are a lot of
For many people, there are these gaps in their understanding
of US history, and it's very difficult to really get
the depth of what's going on right now without that history.
So I just encourage people to, you know, read. But
also there are lots of documentaries. For example, you know,
(21:27):
one of a fabulous one that's available on Netflix right now,
which relates to police violence is Oh, it's unbelievable. You know,
it's a very powerful certainly not intended for young children
to view, but for adults who want to really educate
themselves about the ongoing struggle for freedom, it's certainly very powerful,
(21:50):
and you to bring it back around. You're right, I can't.
I can't help my child unless I know when should
parents begin educating their kids on the painful historical moments
in our in our history and African American history, Like
how can we talk about slavery in an age appropriate way?
I love I've heard you say a little bit about this,
(22:12):
and I've been telling my husband a lot about using
the word fair or unfair. I feel like it's something
that kids really get while they're figuring out how to
share and recurring out why does this person get something
that I don't have. At what age is something like
slavery appropriate to talk about? And how do we do so? Well?
You know, um, I know that you made reference to
(22:34):
my ted X talk entitled it's my skin brown because
I drank chocolate. No, you know, in that talk, I
also talk about a conversation I had with my four
year old son about slavery. Not voluntarily. I would just
say I wasn't planning to have a conversation with the
four year old about slavery, but he asked me a
(22:54):
question that I could not answer without talking about slavery.
So to just give this context, you know, he came
home and he said, you know, one of his friends
at school, So and so says I'm black and my
black And I said, yes, you are. And then he said,
but my skin is brown. Um, you know it's not black.
And I said, well, you're right, your skin is the
(23:16):
color brown. But black is a term that people used
to describe African Americans, just like people use the term
white to describe people who came from Europe. European Americans,
I said, and you know, white people aren't really white.
They're more like pink or beije or tan um. And
people from Africa aren't really black, but that's the language
(23:36):
people use that you know, people African, people from African
descent are different shades of brown. We talked a little
bit about that, and then I said, you know, I
what I wanted to emphasize was his sense of pride
in being African American. So I was talking about the
wonders of Africa and you know what it means to
(23:56):
be um from a long vision of culture that goes
back a long way. And I'm just, you know, saying,
sharing all the things that I had learned about Africa, UM,
big continent. But this is what I was sharing. And
then he said to me, if Africa is so great,
what are we doing here? This is a four year old, right,
(24:19):
I am sweating. So what could I say? You know,
I could not adequately answer why people of African descent
were sitting in the United States of America without talking
about slavery. And so I said, well, that's a great question.
(24:40):
That's you know, sort of filling in the gap of
a little time doing myself time to think that's a
great question. But here's a little bit of information. Remember
when you were in your day care center and they
were talking about the pilgrims, and you know, the pioneers
settling this country way back when, when before they were
stores and before there were roads and you know, farms
(25:04):
and stuff. People, the European settlers came and they had
a lot of work to do, and they needed a
lot of workers to get that work done. And so
they went to Africa and they got the strongest, smartest
workers they could find. Unfortunately, they didn't want to pay them,
and they brought them here against their will. That was
very unfair and and they and they made them work,
(25:27):
and that's what's called slavery, and it was very unfair.
And yet and the people who came struggled to escape,
and I really wanted to emphasize agency, not just victimization. Uh,
you know, they struggled to escape, and they rebelled against
the slavery. But eventually, and I also wanted to emphasize allies. Right,
(25:53):
you know, while you know a lot of the enslaving
people were white, they were also white people who were
helping them escape. And how being with the rebellions even
and so after sometime slavery came to an end. And uh,
the good news is I was never slave. You would
never slaved. Grandma and Granddaddy were never slaves. This was
(26:14):
really a long time ago. But that's how people from
Africa came to this place. So then he said, well,
when slavery was over, did why didn't they go back?
And I said, well, actually, some people did. You know,
there was a movement somewhere. Some people were able to
go back. But then I said, you know, some people
(26:35):
might have just wanted to be here because their families
were here. You know, they had people they cared about here.
And then he brought the conversation to a close, thankfully,
by saying, and this is a nice place too, And
I said, yes. Now, to just add a little color
to this situation, we were not at home. We were
(26:56):
in the grocery store now, sitting in the basket, you know,
I was doing my shopping and we're having a just
casual Saturday afternoon conversation. By the way, that's how it's
always going to happen. It's never gonna be like you
think it's is, you know, over the dinner table where
it's private and you can really have a heart to
heart or whatever it is. It's going to be in public.
(27:18):
It's going to be distracted and multitasking because we're moms
and that's how we do it, and you have to
take the opportunity when it comes exactly exactly. Now, if
you had said to me, are you planning to have
a conversation with your child about slavery when he's four?
I would have said no, probably not. But the truth is,
(27:38):
there are children's books that deal with the subject of
slavery that are appropriate for reading with a four year old.
There are One could imagine, for example, Juneteenth just took place,
right and many people were learning about Juneteenth for the
first time. But let's imagine you have a child who's
hearing about Juneteenth and you're saying, well, Juneteenth marked the
(27:59):
end of avery, Well, what was slavery? Tell me about that?
I mean, so you can see how easily, just listening
to the news together, you might find yourself in the
midst of a conversation with a young child. And what
about kids who are older watching the news today, how
do we talk to them about the police? Well, that's
(28:22):
very challenging, right, because it's even for adults to see.
The video, for example, of the killing of George Floyd
is very upsetting, and certainly it will be upsetting to
a younger person. If you can protect your children from
seeing those visual images, it's a good idea to do so.
But as we know, sometimes they have access to the
(28:44):
internet without our supervision. They see things on television just
passing through the room, or they hear about it, and
so you do want to be able to have those conversations.
And I think it's important to acknowledge the reality of
the thing that happened. This was a horrible thing that happened.
We know that there are police officers who are doing
(29:06):
good jobs and are trying to help people every day.
Most police officers don't use their guns and the course
of their career. That's a fact that said, we also
know that black people are more likely to suffer at
the hands of a police officer than white people are.
That's part of racism in our society, and that's why
(29:27):
people are out protesting right now because they want those
things to change. And for me emphasizing even you know,
when you're delivering bad news to a kid, you also
want to build in a sense of the possibility of change.
There's a long history of this kind of violence. We
know that there's a long history of unfairness there's a
(29:48):
long history of racism built into our society, UM, But
even as we're talking about it, we also want to
talk about the way each of us can work towards change.
And that's what's happening right now. I just love and
connect to your work so much in the way that you,
like you were talking to your son about slavery. How
it's so important to you to not only show stories
(30:10):
of you don't show stories of victimization. You show how
strong black people were in the face of slavery, or
you show that, yes, there were a lot of examples
of white people being very unfair to black people, but
you also say there were white p allies who stood
up for black people. And similarly, you're talking the same
(30:32):
about police officers. And I think that it's important to
UM acknowledge the problem. But even as we acknowledge the problem,
what's the solution? You know this is a problem, yep,
And you know through a black parent talking to a
black child, that child might worry that this thing could
(30:54):
happen to them. Or I was just going to ask
about that, how do you, as a black parent listening
right now the conversations that you're having about the police
what is that? How do you stress the realness of
it and the possibility of it? But also, I mean,
I just have to empathize with all parents. You don't
want your kid to be scared all the time. It's
(31:16):
just and so you don't want your kid to be
scared all the time. And you also don't want them
to be vulnerable because you haven't prepared them. So on
the one hand, you know, if you're talking to a
four year old, you're going to emphasize the fact that
you are here to protect I'm here to protect you.
You don't have to worry about that because I'm here
to protect you. Um. But if you're talking to a
(31:37):
fourteen year old, you're not there all the time to
protect that child. You know, they might be out riding
a bike or you know, end a car with a friend.
What might that? What happens if you're pulled over by
a police officer, If a police officer stops you and
wants to know where do you get that bike? You know, um,
all of that those are conversations that you have to have.
(32:00):
It's not fair that you have to have it. But
if you don't have those conversations, you might have a
child who doesn't know. Keep your hands visible at all times,
don't be rude, be as cooperative as possible, because you
don't want that police officer to get to feel fearful
or nervous or anxious around you. You know, it's it's
(32:24):
not fair that you have to have those conversations, but
it's better to have it and have the kid come home,
but to to later find out that, you know, somebody
got trigger happy. Yeah, it's not enough to not be racist.
Now we're using terminology that I've never used it. We
have to be anti racist. Can you describe to us
(32:45):
what the distinction A is. You illustrate this absolutely beautifully
in your book. Sure, well, I like to use a
visual and so let's imagine that we are at the
airport on a moving walkway. If we think about racism
as a system, not just with individual attitudes or actions,
but systems of policies and practices that systematically disadvantage people
(33:09):
of color. If we're talking about anti black racism systematically
targeting people of African descent, and so if we understand
that those policies and practices were in place long before
we entered the picture, you know that it's almost like
a conveyor belt moving us all along, sort of, we
don't even have to do anything. It's so built into
(33:31):
the system. So if you step onto that conveyor belt
of the cycle of racism carrying us all along, and
you embrace those racial attitudes, you embrace white supremacy, you
might be like the person walking fast on that walkway,
trying to get to the destination quickly. But you might say, no,
I don't think that way. I don't want to embrace that.
(33:52):
I'm just standing here. I'm not doing anything. I'm just
standing here. But even if you're standing still on a
moving walkway, you're being carried forward to the same destination.
You're just not fast exactly, You're headed in the same place.
If you decide, well, okay, I don't want to go there,
I'm gonna turn around and I'm going to look in
(34:13):
the other direction. Unless you're moving, you're just now traveling backward.
You're still going the same place. You just don't see it, right.
So the only way to interrupt this process is to
actively walk fast in the opposite direction. And that's what
anti racism is. It's about actively walking in a different
(34:34):
direction to interrupt that cycle of racism. You can't interrupt
it passively. So when someone says I'm not racist, usually
what they're saying is I'm just standing here. That's really
what they're describing. You know, I'm not using foul language,
I'm not using racial slurs. I'm not you know, actively discriminating.
But unless you're working to interrupt that system, you are
(34:57):
colluding with it. You're part of it as much as
a person who is actively walking in the sense that
you're all going in the same direction. You're all going
in the same direction. It's just continuing and continuing. So
(35:20):
to be an anti racist parent raising an anti racist kid,
what strategies can we take to empower them to transform
that knowledge into action? So it's like, not only can
we have the conversation and not be color silence, not
be color blind, talk about things when our kids bring
(35:41):
it up, read books, point things out, get comfortable with
the language skills. Now, how do I empower my kid
to be anti racist and to to run in the
other direction with me? How do we do it? So
I think that there are examples that can come up.
For example, um, we were talking about uh school settings,
(36:06):
you know, and the what's being taught what's missing. So
a parent could talk about the fact that, gosh, you know,
I was at the school today and I noticed that
there weren't any books in the school library of the
kind that I think kids should have access to. You know,
that's a that's that's a concern of mine. What do
(36:27):
you think about that? And you can talk to your
child about that. You know, it seems like they don't
have very many books written about children of color in
the library. And your child might say, well, you know,
but there aren't any kids of color in our neighborhood.
Maybe yes, and um, and the parent might say, well,
(36:48):
you know what, that's that might be true, but still
every kid should see kids of color in the books,
not just the kids of color. And so I think
we should do something about that. What do you think
we could do? And then you would have a conversation
about maybe we should write a letter to the school
or to the librarian. Maybe we should donate some books
to the library. Maybe we should have a you know,
(37:12):
which which books do you think let's look at Let's
go on that social Justice books dot org and figure
out which books would be the best ones to choose.
For example, you know, this is a small example, but
this is brilliant. This is how you start to affect
change together. Yes, exactly, And that I think is a
(37:32):
critical thing, that that you want your child to see
you as an agent of change, because you're going to
model that. You're going to model that. I want to
tell a short story. UM, I have a I have
a dear friend who is white. She and I have
done workshops on learning racism, workshops together for many years.
(37:54):
And she, because she's an anti racist activist, she has
raised an anti as his child. Um. And she told
me a story once about her son when he was seven,
and I think it's a really powerful example of the
kind of behavior we would like to see. So he
went to school on our school bus and when he
(38:16):
came home from school he was visibly upset. She asked
him what was upsetting him, and he said, there was
a kid on the bus. In this case, it wasn't
about race, but it was a different kind of difference.
There was a child with perhaps an intellectual disability on
the bus who was being picked on by older kids.
They were throwing spitballs at this child on the bus, bullying,
(38:40):
and this seven year old was very upset by what
he was seeing, and so he's telling his mom about
what happened. And she said, I can see why this
was upsetting to you. And he said, I didn't know
what to do. And of course the kids who were
behaving badly were older children, and so this little seven
year old didn't know what to do. So she said, well,
it must have been upset and he said, yeah, I
(39:00):
didn't know what to do. She said, well what did
you do? He said, well, I just went and sat
with him. And I thought that was like the perfect
thing over that seven year old to do. You know,
he got out of his seat and went and sat
next to that kid who was being picked on in
solidarity with him. You know, that was a great example
of what we would call upstandard behavior ally behavior UM.
(39:24):
And that seven year old had already learned that when
somebody's being mistreated, you stand up for that person. And
so um, that's the kind of behavior. I mean. It
could have been a black kid in this case. It
wasn't that. It wasn't about racism. It was about perhaps
able is m the understanding that I can intervene, I
can speak up, I can use my sphere of influence.
(39:47):
You know, I'm only seven but I can go sit
next to that kid. Wow, that's a beautiful story. Ah
what this is a huge question. But where do you
think the people of color who aren't black are falling
into this work? Well, it's massive, I sure, so I
think you know, when we talk about racism, what we
(40:08):
need to understand is racism impacts lots of groups of color,
not just Black people. And particularly during this time of
the pandemic, the COVID nineteen pandemic, we are reading about,
you know, the ways in which Asian Americans are being targeted,
you know, as somehow being at fault for this pandemic,
which clearly they are not. Um but and we have seen,
(40:32):
you know, post nine eleven attacks on Muslims, and you know,
other groups of people who are perceived as different because
of their religious affiliation and maybe because of their dress
and or skin color. So we know that racism is
not just something that black people experience. But I think
(40:53):
it is important to acknowledge that there is a kind
of anti black racism, which we saw on display with
the killing of George Floyd Um and when we talk
about the legacy of slavery, that there's a kind of
racism that is specific to the experience of African Americans,
(41:14):
and sometimes it is more violent, um than what might
be experienced by someone who has lighter skin, but is
also targeted in a different way. So, but I think
it's important to understand that, you know, racism is not
unique to black people, that there are other groups that
(41:34):
and there can be within communities of color attitudes. Even
within the African American community, there can be negative attitudes
towards people. We sometimes call this colorism, you know, where
we are valuing lighter skinned people over darker skinned people
or vice versas, so that the smog I call it smug,
(41:56):
you know, them of negative attitudes, you know, the prejudicial
attitudes that are part of our culture. We all breathe
that small, right, you know, unless we're wearing a gas mask,
we're all breathing that small And so even though we
can talk about the systemic nature of racism, those policies
and practices, we don't want to ignore the fact that
(42:20):
the cultural attitudes that create a racial hierarchy, some people
being better than other people based on their physical appearance
or other attributes, that we are all infected with that
because we've all been breathing this small and to the
extent that we recognize that that's part of our culture,
(42:42):
we all have a responsibility to try to clean up
that air. And that's what we're doing as parents when
we're trying to um and help our children understand the
value of all human beings and to recognize that these
racial hierarchies that are part of our culture are flawed
and false and need to be disrupted. MHM. In your book,
(43:07):
you write about critical consciousness. Can you just elaborate on
this important skill and how parents can help kids develop it. Sure,
So when I talk about critical consciousness, what I'm really
talking about is helping kids think critically about these social
justice issues like racism. But I use in my book
(43:27):
an example of talking to my oldest son about sexism.
So we were reading a book together in which I
observed and it was a book that I had read
when I was a kid, and I hadn't noticed it
when I was a kid, But now as a mom,
I'm sitting with my seven year old son. We're reading
this book together, and I'm noticing that the boys in
(43:49):
the story are being treated differently than the girls in
the story. Repeated. You know that there's two boys and
two girls in a family and the boys get the
fishing rod and the girls have to sit on the
banks and watch. You know, the boys are about to
solve the mystery and the girls are told to wait here, right,
you know, there's all this gendered behavior happening in the book.
(44:11):
And so I stopped reading and I said to my son,
something about this story is bothering me. He said, well,
what is it? I said, well, you know, there's Do
you know what sexism is? He said no, And I said,
sexism is when girls are being treated differently than boys
just because they're girls. And I'm noticing that these girls
(44:32):
are not getting the same privileges that the boys are getting,
They're not having the same kind of opportunities that the
boys are having. I don't think that's fair, and that's
what sexism is. And he said, well, can we keep
reading the book? You know, like I sais a deal breaker?
And I said, yeah, everything, keep reading it. But I
(44:53):
just wanted to point this out because it was bothering me.
So we kept reading together. But a few page is
in he stopped me and he said, Mom, there's that
stuff again. And now he because I had described it
and explained it, he was able to see it and
name it. And in the same way, we could have
been having a conversation about the racism in a book
(45:16):
or on the television or you know, have you noticed
that when they talk about criminals, they always show black people, um,
but when they're white criminals, they don't show their faces
as an example, you know, there are things that you
can observe and point out to help your child think
critically about those questions, and those conversations not just one
(45:40):
but over time helped them to ask the question, well,
who who is missing from this picture? You know, why
is this happening in this way? And then what could
we do about it? I need that as much as
my kids. So I'm glad that they model because we're
my son and I are doing this together starting three
(46:03):
weeks ago or four weeks ago, and I feel all
this pressure and the importance and the I feel it,
but I also am hopeful because I'm like, Okay, I
don't have to get this right, and I had a
lifetime to practice and to you know, I have a
lifetime to seize opportunities and and and try things. And
(46:28):
I really am so encouraged by everyone saying or a
lot of people saying it's okay if you mess up
or you're stumbling at first, and that is really something
that's important to remember. You can always come back and say,
you know, I was thinking about that conversation we had
yesterday and I said this, but you know, I've been
thinking more about it, and what I really meant was that,
(46:51):
So let me tell you more about that, right right?
That helps take the pressure off parents, doesn't It doesn't it?
Just as we're closing out, I just I want to say,
you know, with with Black Lives Matter leading the charge
and so many citizens are running the other way on
(47:12):
the conveyor belt, which is amazing. Your twenty three year
old book about race, you guys, I'm gonna say that again.
Twenty three years ago you wrote the book Why are
All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and
Other Conversations about Race, which which got an update again
in two thousands seventeen. It's been on the bestseller list
now for several weeks. So your assessment of the landscape today,
(47:35):
how do you view the future? Do you have hope? Like,
how are you feeling about that? Your book is it's
huge right now? Well, of course, that's you know, if
you write a book, you want people to read it.
So as an author, it's very exciting to see that
people are indeed buying it, and hopefully they're buying it
(47:56):
so that they can read it um. And so that
isn't rging to me because I think there are um
tools in my book that people will be able to
put to use if they read it. So that's encouraging.
But I also think that it's really important um and
not just my book. There are a bunch of books
dealing with the topic of race and racism on the
(48:17):
bestseller list right now, and that is a sign of
hope in the sense that people are taking seriously the
need to educate themselves. You know, if there's something you
didn't know, then maybe it's time to educate yourself about it. Um.
But once you have that information, you have to put
it into action. And it is of course the case
(48:38):
that when people are just starting out, they're going to
make mistakes. I told you I started teaching my course
on the psychology of racism when I was twenty six
years old. I made mistakes. But if we wait for perfection,
we will never get started. And so I think it's
really important to just you know, risk some discomfort to
(48:59):
have those conversations, risk some discomfort to engage in dialogue
with maybe folks you don't usually talk to. UM, and
then think about what actions can I take to interrupt
the cycle of racism that's critical. Wow, Wow, Dr Tatum,
you are I have I'm just so blown away And
(49:24):
this was such a gift. Um, your time was such
a gift to me and to all the Katie's Crib listeners.
If there any final thoughts or piece of advice and
where can listeners find you? Well, I have a website
Beverly Danielle Tatum dot com and certainly UM much of
the resources, many of the resources that we talked about
(49:45):
their links on my website that will help people certainly
find my books, but also some of the conversations that
have been recorded in hopefully that can be a useful resource.
It is thank you so much, Dr it Him for
coming on Katie's Crib. O Katie, thank you for having me.
I want to take a minute and just really say
(50:07):
thank you guys so much for listening, and thank you
to all the resilient moms out there and caregivers and
justice warriors who are committed to creating a better, fairer future.
I'm so humbled and I'm just so inspired by you,
and I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to use Katie's Crib
to learn and grow and take care of one another together.
(50:27):
So please keep sending in all of your questions and
your stories to Katie's Crib at Shonda land dot com.
Katie's Crib is a production of iHeart Radio and Shonda
Land Audio. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. I Want, You Want
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Our Heart Radio
and Shondaland Audio. Hi everybody, thank you so much for
listening to Katie's Crib. Today we are talking about race.
I sincerely want to learn how to be an anti
racist parent, and I sincerely want to learn how to
(00:23):
raise an anti racist kid. And I'm going to be
brutally honest with you, guys, I don't know how to
do that, and in all the ways that we have
seen in the past with Katie's Grib, you guys know,
I really like to use this podcast and this platform
to learn how to be a better parent, and so
I figured we're going to do the same thing on
(00:45):
the subject of race. We have collected an incredible group
of experts on the subject, and we get down and
honest and real about what we should be doing as parents,
what we can be doing better, and the action items
we need to take to make this world a better place.
(01:05):
Today we're featuring the brilliant Dr Beverly Daniel Tatum. Dr
Tatum and I cover so much ground, and something I
found especially helpful is the specific examples she shares for
how to have these necessary and often uncomfortable conversations around
race with our kids. Thanks so much for listening and
here we go, so without further ado. Dr Beverly Daniel
(01:27):
Tatum is an award winning educational leader, noted expert on
the psychology of racism, a best selling author of the
book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in
the Cafeteria? And other conversations about race, and she's a
mother of two. As a leading voice on race and racism,
Dr Tatum has devoted the past forty years to teaching
(01:47):
people how to break the silence and embrace cross racial
dialogue to lead to effective action for social change. We're
incredibly lucky to have her on Katie's crib. Dr Tatum,
I cannot thank you so much for your work and
for making time for us. Mama is today. I'm happy
to be here. I'm so I know you're very busy.
(02:08):
If you guys go to her website, you can see
the podcasts and the articles that you have been writing
in the past few weeks, let alone the books you've
been writing for a billion years, but also the incredible
you might know her from the Sesame Street special Um
town hall that was done. You were one of the
(02:29):
experts that were featured UM during section two of that
wonderfully informative show that you can You can see the
link on your on your website or on CNN dot com.
But first I want to get started. I love your book.
Thank you, Ah, I love your book. I'm embarrassingly admittingly
(02:50):
so I'm ashamed to say I came to it too late,
only in the past two weeks, and I've been devouring
it and into prep for this. In your view, I
have to go back and reread a million sections. But
in your book you say we all have our own
sphere of influence and we should consider how it might
be used to interrupt the cycle of racism. And since
(03:11):
this is, you know, a podcast for parents and those
who are interested in becoming parents, I want to focus
on our sphere of influence at home and UM and
how we know how how we can choose to raise
our kids well we know is going to have a
massive impact on the future. So we're going to get
to that. But before we get into raising the future,
(03:31):
no pressure, guys, we got a lot to do. I
want to look at the past. You've referred to yourself
as an integration baby. Can you share a little bit
about your own upbringing and what it was like for
you in a coming of age during the civil rights era,
and how did your childhood experiences inspire your work. Sure well,
so let's start with the very beginning, which is that
(03:53):
was the year that I was born, and it happens
to be the year of the Brown Versus Board of
Education Supreme Court decision, which is why I refer to
myself as an integration baby, right, because that was the
year that school segregation was declared unconstitutional. And but I
was born. Let's say that I was born in Florida,
(04:14):
UM and Florida, like a lot of southern states, did
not immediately moved to desegregate the schools, even though that
was the ruling in nine And the impact that had
on my life is that my parents, both of whom
were educators, were impacted by segregation in the South. My father,
in particular, was a professor teaching at Florida A. And
(04:37):
M University, which is a historically black college, and he
was educated at Howard University as an art major. He
was an artist, and then he got a master's degree
at the University of Iowa in the early fifties, wanted
to get a doctorate so he could advance in higher
education and would have liked to do that in Tallahassee, Florida,
(05:00):
where we were living, at Florida State University just across town.
But Florida State at that time was an all white institution,
so he was not able to attend. Even though it
was after Brown versus Board of Education, the state of
Florida had to accommodate providing access to black graduate students.
(05:21):
But the way they did that in my father's case
was to pay his transportation out of the state. So
my dad, it's crazy to hear that now and today
Florida State is a very diverse institution in terms of
its student population, but back in nineteen fifty four, he
(05:41):
couldn't go, and so they paid his transportation to Pennsylvania
and he attended penn State, got his doctorate there, finished
that degree in nineteen fifty seven. And so now I'm
three years old and my parents are thinking they don't
want to stay in Florida, and so they moved moved
to Massachusetts in part because they did not want their children.
(06:04):
I had an older brother at the time, he was
about to start school, and they didn't want him to
start school in a segregated school system. So we moved
to a small town outside of Boston. My father became
the first African American professor at Bridgewater State University. And
I grew up in that small town going to school,
(06:25):
one of just a very small number of black children
in the school district. And uh so, really from the
very beginning, issues of race and racism were shaping my life. Wow,
And one of the ideologies that emerged from the Civil
rights movement is this this idea of racial color blindness,
(06:46):
which we all know, and you very well known, since
you were raised around so much change. And it's not
it's it's just not real. It's not it's just not
it's not real. It's how I was raised. I think
my parents, I love them dearly. I think they really
thought they were doing a much better job than their
(07:07):
parents in terms of race, and that everyone was welcome
in our home, that they were claiming not to judge
anybody based on race, even though we know that is
also not possible. Well, let's start with the idea of
color blindness. So, um, a lot of parents will say,
you know, my child doesn't see color, you know she's
(07:28):
color blind, or they will say I want her to
be color blind, I want him to be color blind,
And what they really mean is I want my child
to treat everyone the same, or to not discriminate. Nothing
wrong with teaching your kids not to discriminate. But what
we know is that kids do notice difference. They from
(07:48):
a very young age notice skin color differences and differences
in hair texture, and they have questions about those differences,
and they will ask questions of their parents like why
is tommy skin so brown? Or why is you know,
Susie's hair so curly? Why doesn't it look like mine? Um,
these are questions that they're likely to ask, and a
(08:10):
parent who is concerned that their child not noticed is
likely to respond to those questions with, you know, don't
talk about it, don't notice it, Never comment on someone's
skin color or hair texture or eye shape. And those
are messages that tell a child that there's something wrong
(08:30):
with those things. We don't speak about them because maybe
there's something wrong with it and uh, and so that's
that's an inadvertent message I think that kids are getting.
And of course, if they've got questions like why do
people have different skin colors, that's a question you can
answer with factual information has to do with melanin in
the skin. The more you have, the browner it is.
(08:52):
Melanin helps protect them the sun. People who come from
really warm places tend to have darker skin. Um, all
of that is easily explained to a young child. But
if a parent is so anxious by the question, or
you know, made so anxious by the question, they mostly
try to shut it down. That leads not the color blindness,
but what I call in my book color silence. Color silence,
(09:15):
and I i am a I have that I have
not had as many conversations about race that I've ever
had in my entire life since um, the past three
weeks and all of these brutal police violence and murders
of black people, which we know has been going on forever.
And I am definitely one of those white people that
(09:37):
just color silence, color blind That's how I was raised.
We don't talk about it. And I could already see
with my two and a half year old son that
I could easily keep that systemic racism happening. I could
definitely say that in the past two weeks, I've bought
books and pointed out, you know, this person has black skin,
(09:59):
this person is round skin, this person has white skin,
this person you know, and and I sweat just even
saying the word, and I say, wow, I'm so uncomfortable
even saying it to my son because color blindness and
color silence has made it so that we don't have
the language skills, or I don't have the language skills.
(10:21):
So when you started teaching, UM this class psychology of Racism,
was this the first time that a lot of white
people were having conversations about this? Obviously, I'm sure most
of your black students had already had these conversations. Yes,
it was for a lot of students. So I first taught,
of course on the psychology of Racism, in which very
early in my career, I was about twenty six years old,
(10:44):
and I UM, but I have the opportunity to teach
this class, and even though I was an inexperienced educator
at that point, at the end of the semester, of
my students, most of whom were white, said, this class
has been the most eye opening course I've ever taken.
Why did I have to wait till I was a
junior or senior in college to have these conversations? For
(11:07):
many of them, it was the first time that they'd
really been able to talk openly about issues of race, racism,
racial identity, not just in school but anywhere, because there
had been so much silence in their families and their
communities around these issues. And the black students were they like,
(11:29):
we've been having these conversations. I mean, I know we've
seen a lot on Instagram, these conversations that I see
adults having with their black children of how to what
do you do if a police officer comes up to you,
which my white privilege has allowed me to never have
that conversation with my parents or my child as if yet,
were your black students already noticing this huge difference? Okay, yeah,
(11:52):
I mean typically, you know, in those classes, over the
course of the years that I taught it, the students
of color, particularly the African American students, UM had had
many more conversations at home with their parents, UM in
the ways that you were just describing, or with family
members or friends who were also people of color. Then
(12:15):
the you know, it was very common for white students
to say, we never talked about it at home. Black
kids would say, yes, we've had those conversations at home.
What was uncommon was for both of them to be
able to have conversations together. Right. So a lot of
black kids will have had conversations in their families, but
not necessarily with white people. So the cross racial conversation
(12:37):
sometimes it's a new experience for everyone. Wow. Wow. So
getting back to this podcast, in like that, kids say
the darnedest things. Okay, uh, And I'm assuming I love
watching your ted talk about I think it wasn't it
your son who said does he drink a lot of
chocolate milk or something? Though? Well, my three year old when,
(12:58):
of course my son has all grown up now, but
when he used three, he came home from school saying,
Tommy says, my skin is brown because I drank chocolate.
That's right? Is that true? You wanted you wanted the facts?
You know what? And is this one it occurred to
you that the melanin answer was something that was very
tangible for a three year old? You know. I also
(13:18):
think as a lot of these white parents are waking
up to having conversations with race with their kids, there
are developmentally appropriate ways in which to address a different age. Obviously,
we're going to talk about race differently with the three
and a half year old than we are with a
fifteen year old. So can you just say, I think
(13:39):
language skills right now were so important and to practice
is so important. So how did you address that question
when he asked it to So as you said, you know,
you have to be developmentally appropriate. And the good news
is I'm a child clinical psychologist. Lucky your kids have
a good So I had awareness of what would be
(14:01):
appropriate talking to a three year old. But what I
said to him is, no, your skin is not brown
because you drank toolate milk. Your skin is brown because
you have something in your skin called melanin. Everybody has some,
even Tommy remember when he went to visit his grandmother
and he came back from Florida with a tan. It
was the melanin in his skin that made it turn
(14:22):
brown in the sun. Everybody has some. It helps protect
your skin from the sun. But you are the kid
at your school with the most, which is why your
you know your skin is the brownest because you have
the most melanie. See, It's like we need to practice
saying things like that, because I just it's incredible how
(14:43):
ingrained it is for me to just say, well, first
of all, to not even prepare yourself. You know those
things are going to come. You know, at some point
your toddler is going to point out someone that looks
different than them, different hair, different eyes, different color, skin,
a different way, they walk, a different way, they talk
all of these things. And I feel like I'm not prepared,
(15:06):
and I just my husband and I have said, have
never had a conversation like, hey, when Albi says why
is he brown? Or why is he he have curly
hair or whatever, he's going to say, We've haven't prepared,
Like we've prepared. Let's say, well, we haven't yet, but
I would assume when they're older, like what are we
gonna do when our kid comes home and says, how
is a baby made? Or whatever? But but I'm so
(15:29):
unprepared for the race conversation that it's just ingrained to say, like,
you know, we don't we don't talk about that. Um.
So I love hearing your actual examples because I'm going
to use them. Well, you know, I want to just
be clear that, you know, as a parent myself, there
(15:50):
were times when I got caught off guard and I'm
thinking now of my same three year old. I have
two sons, but this particular one said to me. We
were in the restore and he said, Mom, why is
that woman so fat? Right, pointing out a really heavy
person in the store. And I, of course was embarrassed
for him and her and me, you know, and your
(16:12):
impulse is that you know the child, um, And that
was my initial impulse. But then I recovered and I said,
because people come in different sizes, you know. Um. It
doesn't have to be a long drawn out explanation. You know.
I could have said, if let's imagine my son was
pointing out somebody whose skin was different from his own,
(16:34):
maybe much darker or lighter, and he said, you know,
why is that person's skin that way, I could talk
about melanin. But I could also just say, because people
come in different shades, just like some people have blonde here,
some people have brown hair, some people have freckles some
people don't you know? People come in all different sizes, shapes,
skin tones. Do we initiate these conversations or are we
(16:58):
supposed to wait for them for a toddler to bring
that up to us. I think you can initiate them, um.
But there are easy ways to do that, And one
of the easiest is to read a book. You know,
there are lots of children's books that address difference difference
hair hair and hair texture, difference in physical shapes of
(17:22):
eyes or skin color, you know, books that are celebrating
the diversity of the human family. And so if you
have a preschoolers book and you're reading it together, you
can just talk about I mean, some of those books
will give language because that's what the book is about. Um.
But to be able to say, oh, isn't this you know,
look at this picture? How about that? You know, does
(17:44):
she looks like our friend at school? You can just
have a very natural conversation about the text in front
of you. Yeah, there is a website I think social
justice dot org is social Justice books dot org. That's right,
social Justice Books dot organ. We will link to it
on Katie's cript because I have found that through you
very helpful. And yes, the book thing, it has been
(18:09):
so helpful. This morning we read a Sesame Street book.
You know, We're different, and it just gave me a
framework for someone who's so I'm so uncomfortable having these
conversations and I'm so not practiced that to just open
a book that had Sesame Street drawings of different eyes
close up and different nose close up, and I'm like,
look at her nose, look at his look at his face,
(18:30):
Like isn't that beautiful? You know, like just at least
having some sort of framework, So I'm not just completely
at a loss. It was very very helpful. What about
when you as an educator? I find this so sensitive.
(18:51):
I'm just so I don't even know angry about my education.
I just am. I can't believe how many things I could.
I just can't believe how many things in the past
three weeks I have never known, historically speaking, And how
do we help that, how do we make demands and
(19:15):
and push forward that the real history of this country
is being taught to our children. Well, it does require
some self education, right, because you know, you don't know
what's missing if it's also missing for you, right, you
know you're missing guys guilt right here, missing right, you know. So,
(19:36):
So the good news is there's a lot of great
stuff out there to educate oneself. You know. They're wonderful books,
some classic text you know, I think about Howardson's Book
of People's History of the United States, you know, and
if you don't have time to read, there's probably an
audible version, right, you know. So, so there are lots
(19:56):
of ways for us to educate ourselves. But I do
think for a lot of people, and this was certainly
true of my college students. You know, we would talk
about historical events, even something as recent as the interment
of Japanese Americans during World War Two, and I would
have kids who would say, I have never heard of
that before. I'd be just shocked. And and today, um,
(20:18):
if you think about the fact that this is twenty
year there are young people who weren't alive during the
Civil Rights movement. You know, I was born in fifty four,
As I said, you know, I I remember quite clearly
the assassination of Dr King. I remember, you know, seeing
on the nightly news protests in Alabama and other places,
(20:41):
because that was I was, you know, coming of age,
a teenager during that time. But if you were so
this is so interesting, this is so for you. Wow. Yeah.
But if you were born in the year two thousand year,
twenty years old, now you know, you don't have any
memory of those things, and hopefully you've learned something about
them in high school or middle school or college, but
(21:04):
you might not have. So there are a lot of
For many people, there are these gaps in their understanding
of US history, and it's very difficult to really get
the depth of what's going on right now without that history.
So I just encourage people to, you know, read. But
also there are lots of documentaries. For example, you know,
(21:27):
one of a fabulous one that's available on Netflix right now,
which relates to police violence is Oh, it's unbelievable. You know,
it's a very powerful certainly not intended for young children
to view, but for adults who want to really educate
themselves about the ongoing struggle for freedom, it's certainly very powerful,
(21:50):
and you to bring it back around. You're right, I can't.
I can't help my child unless I know when should
parents begin educating their kids on the painful historical moments
in our in our history and African American history, Like
how can we talk about slavery in an age appropriate way?
I love I've heard you say a little bit about this,
(22:12):
and I've been telling my husband a lot about using
the word fair or unfair. I feel like it's something
that kids really get while they're figuring out how to
share and recurring out why does this person get something
that I don't have. At what age is something like
slavery appropriate to talk about? And how do we do so? Well?
You know, um, I know that you made reference to
(22:34):
my ted X talk entitled it's my skin brown because
I drank chocolate. No, you know, in that talk, I
also talk about a conversation I had with my four
year old son about slavery. Not voluntarily. I would just
say I wasn't planning to have a conversation with the
four year old about slavery, but he asked me a
(22:54):
question that I could not answer without talking about slavery.
So to just give this context, you know, he came
home and he said, you know, one of his friends
at school, So and so says I'm black and my
black And I said, yes, you are. And then he said,
but my skin is brown. Um, you know it's not black.
And I said, well, you're right, your skin is the
(23:16):
color brown. But black is a term that people used
to describe African Americans, just like people use the term
white to describe people who came from Europe. European Americans,
I said, and you know, white people aren't really white.
They're more like pink or beije or tan um. And
people from Africa aren't really black, but that's the language
(23:36):
people use that you know, people African, people from African
descent are different shades of brown. We talked a little
bit about that, and then I said, you know, I
what I wanted to emphasize was his sense of pride
in being African American. So I was talking about the
wonders of Africa and you know what it means to
(23:56):
be um from a long vision of culture that goes
back a long way. And I'm just, you know, saying,
sharing all the things that I had learned about Africa, UM,
big continent. But this is what I was sharing. And
then he said to me, if Africa is so great,
what are we doing here? This is a four year old, right,
(24:19):
I am sweating. So what could I say? You know,
I could not adequately answer why people of African descent
were sitting in the United States of America without talking
about slavery. And so I said, well, that's a great question.
(24:40):
That's you know, sort of filling in the gap of
a little time doing myself time to think that's a
great question. But here's a little bit of information. Remember
when you were in your day care center and they
were talking about the pilgrims, and you know, the pioneers
settling this country way back when, when before they were
stores and before there were roads and you know, farms
(25:04):
and stuff. People, the European settlers came and they had
a lot of work to do, and they needed a
lot of workers to get that work done. And so
they went to Africa and they got the strongest, smartest
workers they could find. Unfortunately, they didn't want to pay them,
and they brought them here against their will. That was
very unfair and and they and they made them work,
(25:27):
and that's what's called slavery, and it was very unfair.
And yet and the people who came struggled to escape,
and I really wanted to emphasize agency, not just victimization. Uh,
you know, they struggled to escape, and they rebelled against
the slavery. But eventually, and I also wanted to emphasize allies. Right,
(25:53):
you know, while you know a lot of the enslaving
people were white, they were also white people who were
helping them escape. And how being with the rebellions even
and so after sometime slavery came to an end. And uh,
the good news is I was never slave. You would
never slaved. Grandma and Granddaddy were never slaves. This was
(26:14):
really a long time ago. But that's how people from
Africa came to this place. So then he said, well,
when slavery was over, did why didn't they go back?
And I said, well, actually, some people did. You know,
there was a movement somewhere. Some people were able to
go back. But then I said, you know, some people
(26:35):
might have just wanted to be here because their families
were here. You know, they had people they cared about here.
And then he brought the conversation to a close, thankfully,
by saying, and this is a nice place too, And
I said, yes. Now, to just add a little color
to this situation, we were not at home. We were
(26:56):
in the grocery store now, sitting in the basket, you know,
I was doing my shopping and we're having a just
casual Saturday afternoon conversation. By the way, that's how it's
always going to happen. It's never gonna be like you
think it's is, you know, over the dinner table where
it's private and you can really have a heart to
heart or whatever it is. It's going to be in public.
(27:18):
It's going to be distracted and multitasking because we're moms
and that's how we do it, and you have to
take the opportunity when it comes exactly exactly. Now, if
you had said to me, are you planning to have
a conversation with your child about slavery when he's four?
I would have said no, probably not. But the truth is,
(27:38):
there are children's books that deal with the subject of
slavery that are appropriate for reading with a four year old.
There are One could imagine, for example, Juneteenth just took place,
right and many people were learning about Juneteenth for the
first time. But let's imagine you have a child who's
hearing about Juneteenth and you're saying, well, Juneteenth marked the
(27:59):
end of avery, Well, what was slavery? Tell me about that?
I mean, so you can see how easily, just listening
to the news together, you might find yourself in the
midst of a conversation with a young child. And what
about kids who are older watching the news today, how
do we talk to them about the police? Well, that's
(28:22):
very challenging, right, because it's even for adults to see.
The video, for example, of the killing of George Floyd
is very upsetting, and certainly it will be upsetting to
a younger person. If you can protect your children from
seeing those visual images, it's a good idea to do so.
But as we know, sometimes they have access to the
(28:44):
internet without our supervision. They see things on television just
passing through the room, or they hear about it, and
so you do want to be able to have those conversations.
And I think it's important to acknowledge the reality of
the thing that happened. This was a horrible thing that happened.
We know that there are police officers who are doing
(29:06):
good jobs and are trying to help people every day.
Most police officers don't use their guns and the course
of their career. That's a fact that said, we also
know that black people are more likely to suffer at
the hands of a police officer than white people are.
That's part of racism in our society, and that's why
(29:27):
people are out protesting right now because they want those
things to change. And for me emphasizing even you know,
when you're delivering bad news to a kid, you also
want to build in a sense of the possibility of change.
There's a long history of this kind of violence. We
know that there's a long history of unfairness there's a
(29:48):
long history of racism built into our society, UM, But
even as we're talking about it, we also want to
talk about the way each of us can work towards change.
And that's what's happening right now. I just love and
connect to your work so much in the way that you,
like you were talking to your son about slavery. How
it's so important to you to not only show stories
(30:10):
of you don't show stories of victimization. You show how
strong black people were in the face of slavery, or
you show that, yes, there were a lot of examples
of white people being very unfair to black people, but
you also say there were white p allies who stood
up for black people. And similarly, you're talking the same
(30:32):
about police officers. And I think that it's important to
UM acknowledge the problem. But even as we acknowledge the problem,
what's the solution? You know this is a problem, yep,
And you know through a black parent talking to a
black child, that child might worry that this thing could
(30:54):
happen to them. Or I was just going to ask
about that, how do you, as a black parent listening
right now the conversations that you're having about the police
what is that? How do you stress the realness of
it and the possibility of it? But also, I mean,
I just have to empathize with all parents. You don't
want your kid to be scared all the time. It's
(31:16):
just and so you don't want your kid to be
scared all the time. And you also don't want them
to be vulnerable because you haven't prepared them. So on
the one hand, you know, if you're talking to a
four year old, you're going to emphasize the fact that
you are here to protect I'm here to protect you.
You don't have to worry about that because I'm here
to protect you. Um. But if you're talking to a
(31:37):
fourteen year old, you're not there all the time to
protect that child. You know, they might be out riding
a bike or you know, end a car with a friend.
What might that? What happens if you're pulled over by
a police officer, If a police officer stops you and
wants to know where do you get that bike? You know, um,
all of that those are conversations that you have to have.
(32:00):
It's not fair that you have to have it. But
if you don't have those conversations, you might have a
child who doesn't know. Keep your hands visible at all times,
don't be rude, be as cooperative as possible, because you
don't want that police officer to get to feel fearful
or nervous or anxious around you. You know, it's it's
(32:24):
not fair that you have to have those conversations, but
it's better to have it and have the kid come home,
but to to later find out that, you know, somebody
got trigger happy. Yeah, it's not enough to not be racist.
Now we're using terminology that I've never used it. We
have to be anti racist. Can you describe to us
(32:45):
what the distinction A is. You illustrate this absolutely beautifully
in your book. Sure, well, I like to use a
visual and so let's imagine that we are at the
airport on a moving walkway. If we think about racism
as a system, not just with individual attitudes or actions,
but systems of policies and practices that systematically disadvantage people
(33:09):
of color. If we're talking about anti black racism systematically
targeting people of African descent, and so if we understand
that those policies and practices were in place long before
we entered the picture, you know that it's almost like
a conveyor belt moving us all along, sort of, we
don't even have to do anything. It's so built into
(33:31):
the system. So if you step onto that conveyor belt
of the cycle of racism carrying us all along, and
you embrace those racial attitudes, you embrace white supremacy, you
might be like the person walking fast on that walkway,
trying to get to the destination quickly. But you might say, no,
I don't think that way. I don't want to embrace that.
(33:52):
I'm just standing here. I'm not doing anything. I'm just
standing here. But even if you're standing still on a
moving walkway, you're being carried forward to the same destination.
You're just not fast exactly, You're headed in the same place.
If you decide, well, okay, I don't want to go there,
I'm gonna turn around and I'm going to look in
(34:13):
the other direction. Unless you're moving, you're just now traveling backward.
You're still going the same place. You just don't see it, right.
So the only way to interrupt this process is to
actively walk fast in the opposite direction. And that's what
anti racism is. It's about actively walking in a different
(34:34):
direction to interrupt that cycle of racism. You can't interrupt
it passively. So when someone says I'm not racist, usually
what they're saying is I'm just standing here. That's really
what they're describing. You know, I'm not using foul language,
I'm not using racial slurs. I'm not you know, actively discriminating.
But unless you're working to interrupt that system, you are
(34:57):
colluding with it. You're part of it as much as
a person who is actively walking in the sense that
you're all going in the same direction. You're all going
in the same direction. It's just continuing and continuing. So
(35:20):
to be an anti racist parent raising an anti racist kid,
what strategies can we take to empower them to transform
that knowledge into action? So it's like, not only can
we have the conversation and not be color silence, not
be color blind, talk about things when our kids bring
(35:41):
it up, read books, point things out, get comfortable with
the language skills. Now, how do I empower my kid
to be anti racist and to to run in the
other direction with me? How do we do it? So
I think that there are examples that can come up.
For example, um, we were talking about uh school settings,
(36:06):
you know, and the what's being taught what's missing. So
a parent could talk about the fact that, gosh, you know,
I was at the school today and I noticed that
there weren't any books in the school library of the
kind that I think kids should have access to. You know,
that's a that's that's a concern of mine. What do
(36:27):
you think about that? And you can talk to your
child about that. You know, it seems like they don't
have very many books written about children of color in
the library. And your child might say, well, you know,
but there aren't any kids of color in our neighborhood.
Maybe yes, and um, and the parent might say, well,
(36:48):
you know what, that's that might be true, but still
every kid should see kids of color in the books,
not just the kids of color. And so I think
we should do something about that. What do you think
we could do? And then you would have a conversation
about maybe we should write a letter to the school
or to the librarian. Maybe we should donate some books
to the library. Maybe we should have a you know,
(37:12):
which which books do you think let's look at Let's
go on that social Justice books dot org and figure
out which books would be the best ones to choose.
For example, you know, this is a small example, but
this is brilliant. This is how you start to affect
change together. Yes, exactly, And that I think is a
(37:32):
critical thing, that that you want your child to see
you as an agent of change, because you're going to
model that. You're going to model that. I want to
tell a short story. UM, I have a I have
a dear friend who is white. She and I have
done workshops on learning racism, workshops together for many years.
(37:54):
And she, because she's an anti racist activist, she has
raised an anti as his child. Um. And she told
me a story once about her son when he was seven,
and I think it's a really powerful example of the
kind of behavior we would like to see. So he
went to school on our school bus and when he
(38:16):
came home from school he was visibly upset. She asked
him what was upsetting him, and he said, there was
a kid on the bus. In this case, it wasn't
about race, but it was a different kind of difference.
There was a child with perhaps an intellectual disability on
the bus who was being picked on by older kids.
They were throwing spitballs at this child on the bus, bullying,
(38:40):
and this seven year old was very upset by what
he was seeing, and so he's telling his mom about
what happened. And she said, I can see why this
was upsetting to you. And he said, I didn't know
what to do. And of course the kids who were
behaving badly were older children, and so this little seven
year old didn't know what to do. So she said, well,
it must have been upset and he said, yeah, I
(39:00):
didn't know what to do. She said, well what did
you do? He said, well, I just went and sat
with him. And I thought that was like the perfect
thing over that seven year old to do. You know,
he got out of his seat and went and sat
next to that kid who was being picked on in
solidarity with him. You know, that was a great example
of what we would call upstandard behavior ally behavior UM.
(39:24):
And that seven year old had already learned that when
somebody's being mistreated, you stand up for that person. And
so um, that's the kind of behavior. I mean. It
could have been a black kid in this case. It
wasn't that. It wasn't about racism. It was about perhaps
able is m the understanding that I can intervene, I
can speak up, I can use my sphere of influence.
(39:47):
You know, I'm only seven but I can go sit
next to that kid. Wow, that's a beautiful story. Ah
what this is a huge question. But where do you
think the people of color who aren't black are falling
into this work? Well, it's massive, I sure, so I
think you know, when we talk about racism, what we
(40:08):
need to understand is racism impacts lots of groups of color,
not just Black people. And particularly during this time of
the pandemic, the COVID nineteen pandemic, we are reading about,
you know, the ways in which Asian Americans are being targeted,
you know, as somehow being at fault for this pandemic,
which clearly they are not. Um but and we have seen,
(40:32):
you know, post nine eleven attacks on Muslims, and you know,
other groups of people who are perceived as different because
of their religious affiliation and maybe because of their dress
and or skin color. So we know that racism is
not just something that black people experience. But I think
(40:53):
it is important to acknowledge that there is a kind
of anti black racism, which we saw on display with
the killing of George Floyd Um and when we talk
about the legacy of slavery, that there's a kind of
racism that is specific to the experience of African Americans,
(41:14):
and sometimes it is more violent, um than what might
be experienced by someone who has lighter skin, but is
also targeted in a different way. So, but I think
it's important to understand that, you know, racism is not
unique to black people, that there are other groups that
(41:34):
and there can be within communities of color attitudes. Even
within the African American community, there can be negative attitudes
towards people. We sometimes call this colorism, you know, where
we are valuing lighter skinned people over darker skinned people
or vice versas, so that the smog I call it smug,
(41:56):
you know, them of negative attitudes, you know, the prejudicial
attitudes that are part of our culture. We all breathe
that small, right, you know, unless we're wearing a gas mask,
we're all breathing that small And so even though we
can talk about the systemic nature of racism, those policies
and practices, we don't want to ignore the fact that
(42:20):
the cultural attitudes that create a racial hierarchy, some people
being better than other people based on their physical appearance
or other attributes, that we are all infected with that
because we've all been breathing this small and to the
extent that we recognize that that's part of our culture,
(42:42):
we all have a responsibility to try to clean up
that air. And that's what we're doing as parents when
we're trying to um and help our children understand the
value of all human beings and to recognize that these
racial hierarchies that are part of our culture are flawed
and false and need to be disrupted. MHM. In your book,
(43:07):
you write about critical consciousness. Can you just elaborate on
this important skill and how parents can help kids develop it. Sure,
So when I talk about critical consciousness, what I'm really
talking about is helping kids think critically about these social
justice issues like racism. But I use in my book
(43:27):
an example of talking to my oldest son about sexism.
So we were reading a book together in which I
observed and it was a book that I had read
when I was a kid, and I hadn't noticed it
when I was a kid, But now as a mom,
I'm sitting with my seven year old son. We're reading
this book together, and I'm noticing that the boys in
(43:49):
the story are being treated differently than the girls in
the story. Repeated. You know that there's two boys and
two girls in a family and the boys get the
fishing rod and the girls have to sit on the
banks and watch. You know, the boys are about to
solve the mystery and the girls are told to wait here, right,
you know, there's all this gendered behavior happening in the book.
(44:11):
And so I stopped reading and I said to my son,
something about this story is bothering me. He said, well,
what is it? I said, well, you know, there's Do
you know what sexism is? He said no, And I said,
sexism is when girls are being treated differently than boys
just because they're girls. And I'm noticing that these girls
(44:32):
are not getting the same privileges that the boys are getting,
They're not having the same kind of opportunities that the
boys are having. I don't think that's fair, and that's
what sexism is. And he said, well, can we keep
reading the book? You know, like I sais a deal breaker?
And I said, yeah, everything, keep reading it. But I
(44:53):
just wanted to point this out because it was bothering me.
So we kept reading together. But a few page is
in he stopped me and he said, Mom, there's that
stuff again. And now he because I had described it
and explained it, he was able to see it and
name it. And in the same way, we could have
been having a conversation about the racism in a book
(45:16):
or on the television or you know, have you noticed
that when they talk about criminals, they always show black people, um,
but when they're white criminals, they don't show their faces
as an example, you know, there are things that you
can observe and point out to help your child think
critically about those questions, and those conversations not just one
(45:40):
but over time helped them to ask the question, well,
who who is missing from this picture? You know, why
is this happening in this way? And then what could
we do about it? I need that as much as
my kids. So I'm glad that they model because we're
my son and I are doing this together starting three
(46:03):
weeks ago or four weeks ago, and I feel all
this pressure and the importance and the I feel it,
but I also am hopeful because I'm like, Okay, I
don't have to get this right, and I had a
lifetime to practice and to you know, I have a
lifetime to seize opportunities and and and try things. And
(46:28):
I really am so encouraged by everyone saying or a
lot of people saying it's okay if you mess up
or you're stumbling at first, and that is really something
that's important to remember. You can always come back and say,
you know, I was thinking about that conversation we had
yesterday and I said this, but you know, I've been
thinking more about it, and what I really meant was that,
(46:51):
So let me tell you more about that, right right?
That helps take the pressure off parents, doesn't It doesn't it?
Just as we're closing out, I just I want to say,
you know, with with Black Lives Matter leading the charge
and so many citizens are running the other way on
(47:12):
the conveyor belt, which is amazing. Your twenty three year
old book about race, you guys, I'm gonna say that again.
Twenty three years ago you wrote the book Why are
All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and
Other Conversations about Race, which which got an update again
in two thousands seventeen. It's been on the bestseller list
now for several weeks. So your assessment of the landscape today,
(47:35):
how do you view the future? Do you have hope? Like,
how are you feeling about that? Your book is it's
huge right now? Well, of course, that's you know, if
you write a book, you want people to read it.
So as an author, it's very exciting to see that
people are indeed buying it, and hopefully they're buying it
(47:56):
so that they can read it um. And so that
isn't rging to me because I think there are um
tools in my book that people will be able to
put to use if they read it. So that's encouraging.
But I also think that it's really important um and
not just my book. There are a bunch of books
dealing with the topic of race and racism on the
(48:17):
bestseller list right now, and that is a sign of
hope in the sense that people are taking seriously the
need to educate themselves. You know, if there's something you
didn't know, then maybe it's time to educate yourself about it. Um.
But once you have that information, you have to put
it into action. And it is of course the case
(48:38):
that when people are just starting out, they're going to
make mistakes. I told you I started teaching my course
on the psychology of racism when I was twenty six
years old. I made mistakes. But if we wait for perfection,
we will never get started. And so I think it's
really important to just you know, risk some discomfort to
(48:59):
have those conversations, risk some discomfort to engage in dialogue
with maybe folks you don't usually talk to. UM, and
then think about what actions can I take to interrupt
the cycle of racism that's critical. Wow, Wow, Dr Tatum,
you are I have I'm just so blown away And
(49:24):
this was such a gift. Um, your time was such
a gift to me and to all the Katie's Crib listeners.
If there any final thoughts or piece of advice and
where can listeners find you? Well, I have a website
Beverly Danielle Tatum dot com and certainly UM much of
the resources, many of the resources that we talked about
(49:45):
their links on my website that will help people certainly
find my books, but also some of the conversations that
have been recorded in hopefully that can be a useful resource.
It is thank you so much, Dr it Him for
coming on Katie's Crib. O Katie, thank you for having me.
I want to take a minute and just really say
(50:07):
thank you guys so much for listening, and thank you
to all the resilient moms out there and caregivers and
justice warriors who are committed to creating a better, fairer future.
I'm so humbled and I'm just so inspired by you,
and I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to use Katie's Crib
to learn and grow and take care of one another together.
(50:27):
So please keep sending in all of your questions and
your stories to Katie's Crib at Shonda land dot com.
Katie's Crib is a production of iHeart Radio and Shonda
Land Audio. For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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