March 25, 2020 • 29 mins
The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
As many of us have now found ourselves home educating the kids in our lives, I wanted to bring you a great book that you might want to add to your library called Daddy Why Am I Brown? by Dr. Bedford Palmer. Dr. Palmer and I chatted about how to talk with kids about race in a way that’s developmentally appropriate, the work we need to do as adults to have these conversations in a way that’s healthy, and he shares some of his favorite resources including 6 free lesson plans in case you need them.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kay Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a
weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the
small decisions we can make to become the best possible
(00:22):
versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr joy Hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope
you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it
(00:43):
is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with
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twenty percent off. Again. That website is Bombas dot com
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slash TVG. Now let's get into the episode. Hey, y'all,
thanks so much for joining me for session one forty
eight of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. As many
of you have now found yourselves home educating the kids
in your life, I wanted to bring you a great
book that you might want to add to your library
called Daddy, Why Am I Brown? By Dr Bedford Palmer.
(02:14):
Dr Palmer joins us on the podcast today to talk
to us about talking to kids about race. Dr Palmer
is a licensed psychologist, an associate professor, and the interim
chair of the Counseling Department at St. Mary's College of California.
He holds a PhD in Counseling psychology and researches issues
related to social justice and cultural factors. Dr Palmer maintains
(02:38):
a small private practice in Oakland, California, where he works
with a diverse clientele and provides multicultural competence training to
individuals and organizations. He's also a past president of the
Alameda Psychological Association and producer slash, co host of the
Naming It podcast, and the author of Daddy, Why Am
(03:01):
I Brown? A healthy conversation about skin color and family.
Dr Palmer and I chatted about how to talk with
kids about race in a way that's developmentally appropriate, the
work we need to do as adults to have these
conversations in a way that's healthy, and he shared some
of his favorite resources, including six free lesson plans in
(03:22):
case you need them. If you hear something that resonates
with you while listening, please be sure to share it
with us on social media using the hashtag TPG in session.
Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today,
Dr Palmer. Yes, I'm excited to have you. So you
are the author of a new book called Daddy, Why
(03:43):
Am I Brown? And I know that this is a conversation.
You know, I would say probably over the past year,
we've seen lots of conversations about parents and talking to
their kids about race, and so I think that your
book will be a nice one. For people to kind
of add to their home library to really be able
to kind of have some of these conversations. But I
want to start with hearing. Is there such a thing
(04:07):
as like a child being too young to start talking
about race? You know, I think that that's a tricky thing.
You would hope that you could shelter kids from the
oppressive nature of race and all that stuff, But the
reality is is that if your child is going to
be out in the world, if they're going to go
to preschool, they're gonna walk with you to a store,
they're gonna be able to understand what's around them. Then
(04:28):
they're going to encounter race, and they're going to encounter
their own race. You know, there's a lot of research
out there that shows that these encounters happen as early
as three or four years old. So I think that
it's better to prepare kids and to help them get
the get an idea of what's going on prior to
that first encounter so that they can better navigate it.
(04:50):
Because the way you navigate that encounter experience with racism
and race and all of that can be profoundly important
to the way that you're able to cope for the
rest of your life. We know, like you're saying that,
Like some of the research indicates that kids have some
of these experiences as early as three. Are they typically
negative experiences or is it more like kids realizing like, oh,
(05:11):
all of our skin looks different? Well, you know, it
very much depends. I don't know if there's a a
more often case at this point, but I think that
the way that the racial identity models work, Like Bill
Cross has a racial identity model, that's kind of the
beginning of that. But before that, even friends but known,
(05:33):
this idea of kind of finding yourself as the other
is what we talked about as an encounter experience. I
don't think that finding yourself as the other ever really
feels good when you think the same as everyone else. Um,
I think that that that's something you have to contend
with because that otherness, at the very core of that
otherness is a lie. Right, So I'm not gonna feel
(05:56):
good to be told that you're something different when really
our skin color and the differences that are physical on us,
they're skin deep, they're they're not really important to who
we are, you know, intellectually, spiritually, our person are centerselves
are our culture. It's not about necessarily those external phenological
traits and exeting phenotypical When we are placed into a
(06:22):
context where race is important, it is this kind of
true thing that we will be treated differently. So I
think that kids can kind of be ushered into this
idea of specifically for black kids, you can be ushered
into blackness in a really positive way, but you're still
being ushered into a context of oppression, and there's no
way to to change that without changing the oppression. Right,
(06:46):
So you can't like pretend like it's not there and
shelter your kids from that, because they're gonna be walking
on the street and it's gonna happen. So I think
that what we do as elders to children, we prepare
them as much as possible and give them the tools
so they can navigate any of these experiences. Fancy. That
is always my struggle because I am a parent, and
so you know, it does feel like a very fine
(07:07):
balance between like helping them to just be proud of
themselves as young black boys, and also like wanting to
shelter them, but knowing that you really can't because they
exist in the world. And so how do you kind
of assess like what is appropriate to talk with them
about about the realities of the world at a certain age.
(07:30):
I think people like to talk about meaning people where
they are, and I think that that is the way
that you do it with children. Um, you're not gonna
you're not gonna come to a kindergarten class and be like,
let me explain you the duality of identity and and
two personhood and you know, you're not gonna go into like,
you know, critical thought in that way because they haven't
(07:51):
learned the foundations to get to the court where they
can understand it. But you can't talk about you know,
what happens when people say mean things to you? What
happens when people talk about and describe you? What? What
do you do when you describe other people? You know,
like when you're talking about someone in the pre k
age group or the kindergarten age group, were talking about
(08:12):
fundamental things? What do colors mean? What do printed letters mean?
How do you print letters? How do you figure out
the days of the week. So I think that you
bring it to their space and talk about some of
the basic, the most basic parts of it. You help
them to understand, and you don't push them past that.
You know, you don't have to you don't have to
come up with their opinion of what race means. You
(08:32):
don't have to have them fully indoctrinated into like the
joy of blackness, but you should have them understand that, like,
for instance, people will call you black, your skin is
not black. Your skin is brown, and there's various shades
of brown. So so that's confusing for them to use
the wrong color when you're being taught these colors. Here's
(08:54):
one of the reasons why you see what I'm saying there.
M Yeah, So really like you're talking about like really development,
really thinking about like what other kinds of things they're learning,
and how you can kind of couch it in some
of those same things. Right, it doesn't have to really
be about well, you know, as adults we're talking about power,
oppression and privilege and those things. Like kids don't have
(09:16):
to get all of the scarier parts of it all early.
Some of it is just like how do you just
begin to talk about your hair and your color and
where you're from? Um, And I think that that's another
piece of it is always like linking You talk about
the race stuff, but you link it to you know
ethnicity and culture and help children understand that those are
(09:37):
different things and they mean different things, that you should
take different meaning from those things. And so your thought
is take more of a proactive approach as opposed to
like waiting for the first you know, maybe negative racial
experience to happen. Yeah, you don't wait for children to
encounter bad things generally, like you don't take your child
(09:59):
out and let them play in the front yard without
telling them how to deal with the sidewalk in the
street and the boundary to the grass and people coming by.
You tell them, you know, don't talk to strangers, don't
don't go past the sidewalk there, don't run in this
area there are rocks. You know. You've give them that
early warning so that they have at least some sort
of conception of being cautious and and thinking about their surroundings,
(10:23):
so they can begin to understand that. Yeah. Again, I
think that this is where I struggle with because you're right, Like,
I really enjoyed that analogy because that does help me
think about it differently. I think where I struggle is
like introducing like almost this paranoia that of course I
experienced right as a parent in like an adult in
the world, but like, not necessarily introducing that kids too young,
(10:45):
I guess. So the question you have to ask is,
isn't really paranoia? So I grew up in a predominantly
white and Asian area of San Diego, and I was
one of two black kids, three black kids in the
class most of the time, most most of my life
as a kid through twelve kids, and I encountered racism
very early. And some of it was not even direct,
(11:07):
Like there wasn't necessarily someone dropping in bombs towards me.
It might just be that the white kids wanted to
pick on me, and I was the only one getting
picked on, you know, like there was no difference except
for the skin color. And I didn't understand what was
going on, you know, I didn't always understand what was
happening in those spaces. And having an idea that like, hey,
you know, this might be going on, they might be
(11:30):
making the wrong kinds of judgments and they might not
understand things correctly might have helped to to kind of
get through some of those spaces. Again, it's not necessarily
teaching kids the scariest parts of this, but it's about
the same way you tell kids Hey, you know, if
your brother or your sister hits you, that doesn't mean
that you get to hit them back. And here's the
(11:51):
reasons why, and here's how you deal with like the
concept of You don't talk about the full on concept
of forgiveness, but you you do talk about you know,
you you can't stay mad, you know you have to
you have to do things to to repair your relationship
with your kids and between peers and things like that.
And you find those ways in the language that the
child can understand so that they can begin to again
(12:13):
start to develop healthy ways to deal with things that
will affect them for us our lives. Mm hmm, very
good points. Thank you for that. So it makes me
feel like there is like some work that we have
to do, probably as adults, to like even get ourselves
ready to like maybe have some of these conversations. You
have thoughts about that, Oh yeah, you know, honestly, one
(12:36):
of the pieces of the book is that, you know,
I spend a lot of my time as a professor
and as a consultant and as a psychologists helping people
understand how to have these conversations with themselves as adults
and how to like navigate systems that are oppressive and
where you know, you work in a corporate setting, and
like having to deal with ramifications of systemic racism, you know,
(13:00):
when you've maybe not had to deal with that so
much before, or you're you're going to be a counselor
or a psychologist, and you need to look inwardly and
understand like how you might bring that into the room
or how it might be affecting you. So the whole
point behind or the story, if I can give like
a quick story behind the book, is that I was
(13:22):
at home and my wife came home, and she was
at the time working in a school where they you know,
had k through twelve kids and they had like kindergarten
and uh, first grade and whatnot. And apparently there was
like this little little kid who came up to her
and recounted the story of being told that their skin
looked like coop by want of their classmates after a
(13:44):
lesson about color and skin color. And of course the
child was in tears, and you know, my wife was
like really disturbed by that happening. And then the lack
of ability to do very much to help fix that
once it's occurred, you know, and me being you know,
someone who thinks about this stuff a lot and and
(14:04):
focuses a lot of career on this is just like
I had this whole dissonance moment of like, man, I
want to help this kid, but obviously I can't do
anything for this child because I don't know this kid.
And I want to help my wife. She's got to
process herself. This is about her work. So what do
I do to not getting her way right now? And
so being a psychologist I am, I was like, Okay,
maybe I need to like sit down and maybe write
(14:26):
something down, do something to self suit And that turned
from kind of a maybe a post I was thinking
at first, and then I was like, you know, I
could help a teacher talk about this. I could help
parents maybe talk about this. And I just wrote the
beginnings of the children's book sitting at the kitchen table.
I wrote it in like, you know, an hour, the
(14:47):
first draft, because you know, it's not not a lot
of words in the children's books. But you know, over
the course of a few years I would find it
and came back to it and figured out how to
publish it. But the whole idea was what happens if
we're able to address some of these issues that adults
have in adult worlds before their adults, Like what happens
(15:08):
if they don't have to relearn things, they can just
learn it right in the first place. And so the
book itself, it's not just meant for black and brown kids,
it's actually meant for white kids and and all the
kids in between, because everyone needs to understand how to
properly talk about this and think about skin color, race
and family. Because if the kid who called the little
(15:29):
girl skin poop would have had someone teach them this
prior to that, then the little girl wouldn't have had
her encounter experience. Mm hmm. Yeah, And I mean, I
think that that is really important, right, like to think
about how everybody talks about race, because I think that
is a part of what feels frustrating is that it
often feels like as black people, we often have to
(15:51):
have these conversations with our kids, whereas it feels like
white counterparts don't. But truthfully, if they were having more conversations,
we might not have to have the same conversations with
our kids about raised. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that
that's kind of the crux of the issue, is that
if we could just teach kids to understand some of
this stuff earlier than they would have better tools to
(16:15):
start to unwind this problem, the issue of racism, oppression
and all that stuff. I mean, you know, we're adults now,
and it's it's weird to be in this space because
you spend so much time being a young person with
the potential to to want to change and do all
the things. But I think we're you know, if if
you're my age group, which you know, early forties and stuff,
(16:35):
we're getting to that point where we have to start
really thinking about what the next generation is going to
do and how we're going to prepare them. And I
think that that's kind of the energy that I wanted
to put behind this, is to maybe do something where
we can prevent some of these negative interactions and prevent
the need to heal as opposed to just heal. Yeah,
(16:55):
and so what made you decide on a kid's book
as opposed to like a book for parents? Well, the
funny part about children's books is that there are books
for parents because parents by own parents consume them, and
parents eventually they're the one who read them to the kids.
And so my book Daddy Why and I Brown. So
it has a story for the children, and it has
like the learning process in there, but it also has
(17:16):
a bunch of resources. So there's discussion questions and vocabulary
and the ideas like if you can talk to your
child about this, then maybe you're going to learn some
of this too, And you can come to the book
without necessarily having a degree and ethnic studies to read
this book to your child. It's it's it's just meant
to like give some basics and maybe that can open
(17:36):
a conversation that continues in the house. Mm hmmm. So
kind of going back to the earlier conversation around like
the work that we need to do as adults to
be able to have some of these conversations with our kids.
Can you share, like any of the questions from the
book are questions maybe that you're even asking your practice
or as you're kind of thinking about your work for adults,
that maybe can help them to kind of think about
(17:57):
the spirit they need to come to a process like
this with I think one of the first things is
that you have to ask yourself what your relationship is
your skin color and to your race, and to like
the way that you see yourself identity wives with sailing, like,
what are some of the areas that aren't maybe a
little hot and you might feel sensitive about because you know,
kids they're gonna ask you direct questions. They're really not
(18:19):
gonnam mince words. They're just gonna be like, boom, what
is this? And so as you're approaching this, you can't
respond with your baggage to your child's question about stuff,
otherwise it's going to transfer it over to them. So
I think that one of the big pieces is just
thinking about what would be the healthy way that you
would have liked to talk about this, to have been
introduced to this when you're a kid. What are some
(18:42):
of the things that you anticipate your child to be
exposed to. You might have this conversation differently depending on
what kind of roots are around the kids, you know,
like if you're you're sitting here your child to a
predominantly white school, then that's gonna be different than if
you're sending them to a predominant black school or to
a more you know, multi culture role or diverse school.
It depends on what kind of home you have. You know,
(19:03):
the discussion is really different if the family all kind
of share similar skin tones versus like, for instance, in
the book, the family doesn't share the same skin tones,
and they don't share like all the same ethnicity. So
you know, the mom in the book is multi ethnic
where she's Black and Chinese, and then the dad is
African American or he's black. So you know, what do
(19:24):
you do with those conversations. I think it gets even
more complicated if you start talking about like adoption and whatnot.
But I think that it also is inappropriate. I was
hoping that people who, for instance, who might engage in
a transracial adoption, could use this book to help them
healthily have this conversation and use this context. I think
in the book there's like I I provided some vocabulary
(19:47):
that I pulled from the Learner's Dictionary. It's vocabulary with
definitions that kids can understand. So like ancestors, a person
who with someone's family in past times or herided, you know, traditions, achievements,
and beliefs. Even like melanin, so the dark brown and
black substances that is a natural part of people's skin,
(20:09):
hair and eyes. Like off the top of your head,
would you just be able to say what melanine is
to a child? So I tried to kind of think
about those things in terms of discussions, questions just things
like what's your favorite color? What makes things beautiful? What
does it mean for my skin to be different from
your skin? These are some of the questions that kind
of come up, and just being able to talk to
(20:31):
those and make it feel mormal. I think it is
one of the big pieces that parents and elders and
uncles and nuntees and whatnot need to be thinking about. Yeah,
and I think you raised a really interesting point, dr
Former in that there is likely some work that lots
of us need to do around our own race to
be able to really engage in these conversations in a
(20:53):
way that's healthy for kids. Right, Like, I don't know
that we even always think about like how you know,
our ideas about and color and hair and all of
those things still impact us as adults. As a psychologist,
you know, the stuff that people bring in to talk about.
I don't know that any of this stuff has worked
out for adults, things like colorism and colorism inside homes.
(21:17):
You know, So which child is a light skin child?
With child is the dark skinned child? Which which kid
has a quote unquote good hair and all that stuff
who looks most like somebody? I mean, those kind of
things are generational. You know, if you're the if you
didn't have the lighter skin in the family, and then
you know roder sists who have the lighter skin get favored,
(21:38):
then how is that going to come out when you
have kids who also have variations in their skin? Comes
what happens when you behave certain ways but between different
people could see that, you know, so if you're always
you know, making faces or rolling your eyes or cutting
your eyes at folks who look a specific way, then
the kid is going to realize that that's negative, like
(22:00):
that there's something about that person is negative. And if
they see enough, they're gonna recognize the pattern in order
to And I think this is across board with parenting.
It's not it's not just about race. But if you
don't want to pass on the traumas and the trials
and the baggage and all this stuff that comes from
your life to your child, you do have to unpack that.
(22:21):
And I think that you know, that's where a good
therapist might come in. If you're thinking about your parenting, Um,
that's something that we can help with. That's something you
can come in and talk about and think about kind
of how do you separate your childhood from your your
your child's childhood. Very good points. I really appreciate it.
So are there other resources? It sounds like you do
(22:42):
have tons in the book, But are there other resources
that you can kind of think about the top of
your head that you think would be helpful for these
kinds of a conversation as well well? I think for parents,
there's some good books that you can read that can
give you more context and bring you more into the
convert station around race and ethnicity and blackness for black folks.
(23:04):
One is The Psychology of Blacks, which is a book
that's written by Dr Thomas Farham, Audi saw Jammu and
es Mario Bossi and Joseph L. White um and that
really talks about the idea of identity and race from
a psychological perspective. But like it really just it hits
(23:24):
on education, hits on like the counter experiences, hits on
family and family structure. Another book is um I believe
it's called Black Families, and that's uh Nancy Boy Franklin,
Nancy Boy Franklin, Yes, just look up Nancy Boy Franklin.
If you want to talk about Black families and black kids,
like you really that that's a good space to go.
(23:47):
Black Father's Invisible Presence in America. That's edited by Dr
Michael Connor and Dr Josepha White. There's two editions. There's
a chapter I'm in in the in the in the
second edition, but that talks about fatherhood with children, and
I think that that's, you know, part of where my
head is in terms of, like I mean, the book
is about a father and a daughter having a conversation,
(24:09):
and I think that's kind of an important thing to
kind of to put forward because of, you know, all
the stereotypes and all that stuff. I think that the
stereotypes aren't really real. Black men are very involved and
very connected to their children in a lot of different ways,
and I think that like pointing that out. I mean,
one of the book that came, I was like looking
(24:29):
at it and I was like, man, I got all
their goals now when I saw a hair love like,
oh yes, you know, I mean, such a beautiful way
of of kind of approaching a situation. And I think
that many black fathers have have experienced, not necessarily you know,
in in the way that's in the book, but just
this idea of you know, how do I make sure
that I'm taking care of my my child in a
(24:51):
way that my child would be happy with and that
my partner would be happy with, you know, And um, yeah,
it's just beautiful. So maybe one day we'll get we'll
get a wonderful animation animated version of Daddy wy My Brown.
But maybe one day long in the future after this interview,
because now everybody, everybody listening to your shlfs and'll never
(25:11):
know about it. I know it. So where can people
connect with you online? Dr Palmer? What is your website?
And I know people can go to your website to
buy the book, So what's your website as well as
any social media handles that you want to share? Okay,
I gotta I got a few, so um, you can
find me directly and and through this you can find
(25:32):
a lot of other stuff that's connected to me. But um,
I have my website is d R B F Palmer
dot com. So dr bf Palmer dot com. And the
website for the book is deeper than color, that's deeper
than pH A N Color dot com. And you can
(25:56):
go there and you can get to both websites. From
each other a linked and you can go on Amazon
to find the book. Uh, and you can find that
by either searching it on Google, or you can go
directly to the website. Now Internet handle wise, you can
find me at dr b F. Palmer on Instagram and
on Twitter and on Facebook, so at dr b F.
(26:20):
Palmer and the book is at deeper than color, same
as the website. Yeah, so those are the best places.
So if you look for me on online. I talked
a lot about psychology and about race and culture and
and uh, you know, as as some of my folks
say about the struggle. But I've been adding in some
some resources for parents. One thing that people might like,
(26:43):
especially right now in the context that we're in. I
know there's a lot of folks who are doing homeschooling
and needing some some materials. Well, I have six lessons
plans that are for free on the website. So if
you're a parent, or if you're just someone, if you're
a teacher, whoever you are, who's going to like to
gather some lesson plans for some kids, and you know, preschool,
(27:04):
kindergarten or first grade. There's six free lesson plans and
you can just go download those off of Deeper than
Color dot com. Perfect. Thank you so much for those
resources I can promm and of course all of that
would be included in the show notes so that people
can get say all of that very easily. But we
really appreciate you spending some time with us today. Thank you.
I appreciate you having me on. I'm so grateful Dr
(27:28):
Palmer was able to share his expertise with us today.
To learn more about him, or to grab your copy
of Daddy Why Am I Brown, visit the show notes
at Therapy for Black Girls dot Com slash Session one,
and don't forget to share your takeaways with us in
either your I G Stories or on Twitter using the
hashtag tb G in session. If you're looking for a
(27:50):
therapist near area, check out our therapist directory at Therapy
for Black Girls dot Com slash directory. Many of the
therapists offer options to meet virtually if you're looking for
that right now. And if you want to continue digging
into this topic and meet some other systems in your area,
come on over and join us in the Yellow Couch Collective,
where we take a deeper dive into the topics from
(28:12):
the podcast and just about everything else. You can join
us at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash y
c C and don't forget to show our sponsor some
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(28:37):
me again this week. I look forward to continue in
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Kay Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a
weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the
small decisions we can make to become the best possible
(00:22):
versions of ourselves. I'm your host, Dr joy Hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Black Girls dot com. While I hope
you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it
(00:43):
is not meant to be a substitute for relationship with
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twenty percent off. Again. That website is Bombas dot com
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slash TVG. Now let's get into the episode. Hey, y'all,
thanks so much for joining me for session one forty
eight of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. As many
of you have now found yourselves home educating the kids
in your life, I wanted to bring you a great
book that you might want to add to your library
called Daddy, Why Am I Brown? By Dr Bedford Palmer.
(02:14):
Dr Palmer joins us on the podcast today to talk
to us about talking to kids about race. Dr Palmer
is a licensed psychologist, an associate professor, and the interim
chair of the Counseling Department at St. Mary's College of California.
He holds a PhD in Counseling psychology and researches issues
related to social justice and cultural factors. Dr Palmer maintains
(02:38):
a small private practice in Oakland, California, where he works
with a diverse clientele and provides multicultural competence training to
individuals and organizations. He's also a past president of the
Alameda Psychological Association and producer slash, co host of the
Naming It podcast, and the author of Daddy, Why Am
(03:01):
I Brown? A healthy conversation about skin color and family.
Dr Palmer and I chatted about how to talk with
kids about race in a way that's developmentally appropriate, the
work we need to do as adults to have these
conversations in a way that's healthy, and he shared some
of his favorite resources, including six free lesson plans in
(03:22):
case you need them. If you hear something that resonates
with you while listening, please be sure to share it
with us on social media using the hashtag TPG in session.
Here's our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today,
Dr Palmer. Yes, I'm excited to have you. So you
are the author of a new book called Daddy, Why
(03:43):
Am I Brown? And I know that this is a conversation.
You know, I would say probably over the past year,
we've seen lots of conversations about parents and talking to
their kids about race, and so I think that your
book will be a nice one. For people to kind
of add to their home library to really be able
to kind of have some of these conversations. But I
want to start with hearing. Is there such a thing
(04:07):
as like a child being too young to start talking
about race? You know, I think that that's a tricky thing.
You would hope that you could shelter kids from the
oppressive nature of race and all that stuff, But the
reality is is that if your child is going to
be out in the world, if they're going to go
to preschool, they're gonna walk with you to a store,
they're gonna be able to understand what's around them. Then
(04:28):
they're going to encounter race, and they're going to encounter
their own race. You know, there's a lot of research
out there that shows that these encounters happen as early
as three or four years old. So I think that
it's better to prepare kids and to help them get
the get an idea of what's going on prior to
that first encounter so that they can better navigate it.
(04:50):
Because the way you navigate that encounter experience with racism
and race and all of that can be profoundly important
to the way that you're able to cope for the
rest of your life. We know, like you're saying that,
Like some of the research indicates that kids have some
of these experiences as early as three. Are they typically
negative experiences or is it more like kids realizing like, oh,
(05:11):
all of our skin looks different? Well, you know, it
very much depends. I don't know if there's a a
more often case at this point, but I think that
the way that the racial identity models work, Like Bill
Cross has a racial identity model, that's kind of the
beginning of that. But before that, even friends but known,
(05:33):
this idea of kind of finding yourself as the other
is what we talked about as an encounter experience. I
don't think that finding yourself as the other ever really
feels good when you think the same as everyone else. Um,
I think that that that's something you have to contend
with because that otherness, at the very core of that
otherness is a lie. Right, So I'm not gonna feel
(05:56):
good to be told that you're something different when really
our skin color and the differences that are physical on us,
they're skin deep, they're they're not really important to who
we are, you know, intellectually, spiritually, our person are centerselves
are our culture. It's not about necessarily those external phenological
traits and exeting phenotypical When we are placed into a
(06:22):
context where race is important, it is this kind of
true thing that we will be treated differently. So I
think that kids can kind of be ushered into this
idea of specifically for black kids, you can be ushered
into blackness in a really positive way, but you're still
being ushered into a context of oppression, and there's no
way to to change that without changing the oppression. Right,
(06:46):
So you can't like pretend like it's not there and
shelter your kids from that, because they're gonna be walking
on the street and it's gonna happen. So I think
that what we do as elders to children, we prepare
them as much as possible and give them the tools
so they can navigate any of these experiences. Fancy. That
is always my struggle because I am a parent, and
so you know, it does feel like a very fine
(07:07):
balance between like helping them to just be proud of
themselves as young black boys, and also like wanting to
shelter them, but knowing that you really can't because they
exist in the world. And so how do you kind
of assess like what is appropriate to talk with them
about about the realities of the world at a certain age.
(07:30):
I think people like to talk about meaning people where
they are, and I think that that is the way
that you do it with children. Um, you're not gonna
you're not gonna come to a kindergarten class and be like,
let me explain you the duality of identity and and
two personhood and you know, you're not gonna go into like,
you know, critical thought in that way because they haven't
(07:51):
learned the foundations to get to the court where they
can understand it. But you can't talk about you know,
what happens when people say mean things to you? What
happens when people talk about and describe you? What? What
do you do when you describe other people? You know,
like when you're talking about someone in the pre k
age group or the kindergarten age group, were talking about
(08:12):
fundamental things? What do colors mean? What do printed letters mean?
How do you print letters? How do you figure out
the days of the week. So I think that you
bring it to their space and talk about some of
the basic, the most basic parts of it. You help
them to understand, and you don't push them past that.
You know, you don't have to you don't have to
come up with their opinion of what race means. You
(08:32):
don't have to have them fully indoctrinated into like the
joy of blackness, but you should have them understand that, like,
for instance, people will call you black, your skin is
not black. Your skin is brown, and there's various shades
of brown. So so that's confusing for them to use
the wrong color when you're being taught these colors. Here's
(08:54):
one of the reasons why you see what I'm saying there.
M Yeah, So really like you're talking about like really development,
really thinking about like what other kinds of things they're learning,
and how you can kind of couch it in some
of those same things. Right, it doesn't have to really
be about well, you know, as adults we're talking about power,
oppression and privilege and those things. Like kids don't have
(09:16):
to get all of the scarier parts of it all early.
Some of it is just like how do you just
begin to talk about your hair and your color and
where you're from? Um, And I think that that's another
piece of it is always like linking You talk about
the race stuff, but you link it to you know
ethnicity and culture and help children understand that those are
(09:37):
different things and they mean different things, that you should
take different meaning from those things. And so your thought
is take more of a proactive approach as opposed to
like waiting for the first you know, maybe negative racial
experience to happen. Yeah, you don't wait for children to
encounter bad things generally, like you don't take your child
(09:59):
out and let them play in the front yard without
telling them how to deal with the sidewalk in the
street and the boundary to the grass and people coming by.
You tell them, you know, don't talk to strangers, don't
don't go past the sidewalk there, don't run in this
area there are rocks. You know. You've give them that
early warning so that they have at least some sort
of conception of being cautious and and thinking about their surroundings,
(10:23):
so they can begin to understand that. Yeah. Again, I
think that this is where I struggle with because you're right, Like,
I really enjoyed that analogy because that does help me
think about it differently. I think where I struggle is
like introducing like almost this paranoia that of course I
experienced right as a parent in like an adult in
the world, but like, not necessarily introducing that kids too young,
(10:45):
I guess. So the question you have to ask is,
isn't really paranoia? So I grew up in a predominantly
white and Asian area of San Diego, and I was
one of two black kids, three black kids in the
class most of the time, most most of my life
as a kid through twelve kids, and I encountered racism
very early. And some of it was not even direct,
(11:07):
Like there wasn't necessarily someone dropping in bombs towards me.
It might just be that the white kids wanted to
pick on me, and I was the only one getting
picked on, you know, like there was no difference except
for the skin color. And I didn't understand what was
going on, you know, I didn't always understand what was
happening in those spaces. And having an idea that like, hey,
you know, this might be going on, they might be
(11:30):
making the wrong kinds of judgments and they might not
understand things correctly might have helped to to kind of
get through some of those spaces. Again, it's not necessarily
teaching kids the scariest parts of this, but it's about
the same way you tell kids Hey, you know, if
your brother or your sister hits you, that doesn't mean
that you get to hit them back. And here's the
(11:51):
reasons why, and here's how you deal with like the
concept of You don't talk about the full on concept
of forgiveness, but you you do talk about you know,
you you can't stay mad, you know you have to
you have to do things to to repair your relationship
with your kids and between peers and things like that.
And you find those ways in the language that the
child can understand so that they can begin to again
(12:13):
start to develop healthy ways to deal with things that
will affect them for us our lives. Mm hmm, very
good points. Thank you for that. So it makes me
feel like there is like some work that we have
to do, probably as adults, to like even get ourselves
ready to like maybe have some of these conversations. You
have thoughts about that, Oh yeah, you know, honestly, one
(12:36):
of the pieces of the book is that, you know,
I spend a lot of my time as a professor
and as a consultant and as a psychologists helping people
understand how to have these conversations with themselves as adults
and how to like navigate systems that are oppressive and
where you know, you work in a corporate setting, and
like having to deal with ramifications of systemic racism, you know,
(13:00):
when you've maybe not had to deal with that so
much before, or you're you're going to be a counselor
or a psychologist, and you need to look inwardly and
understand like how you might bring that into the room
or how it might be affecting you. So the whole
point behind or the story, if I can give like
a quick story behind the book, is that I was
(13:22):
at home and my wife came home, and she was
at the time working in a school where they you know,
had k through twelve kids and they had like kindergarten
and uh, first grade and whatnot. And apparently there was
like this little little kid who came up to her
and recounted the story of being told that their skin
looked like coop by want of their classmates after a
(13:44):
lesson about color and skin color. And of course the
child was in tears, and you know, my wife was
like really disturbed by that happening. And then the lack
of ability to do very much to help fix that
once it's occurred, you know, and me being you know,
someone who thinks about this stuff a lot and and
(14:04):
focuses a lot of career on this is just like
I had this whole dissonance moment of like, man, I
want to help this kid, but obviously I can't do
anything for this child because I don't know this kid.
And I want to help my wife. She's got to
process herself. This is about her work. So what do
I do to not getting her way right now? And
so being a psychologist I am, I was like, Okay,
maybe I need to like sit down and maybe write
(14:26):
something down, do something to self suit And that turned
from kind of a maybe a post I was thinking
at first, and then I was like, you know, I
could help a teacher talk about this. I could help
parents maybe talk about this. And I just wrote the
beginnings of the children's book sitting at the kitchen table.
I wrote it in like, you know, an hour, the
(14:47):
first draft, because you know, it's not not a lot
of words in the children's books. But you know, over
the course of a few years I would find it
and came back to it and figured out how to
publish it. But the whole idea was what happens if
we're able to address some of these issues that adults
have in adult worlds before their adults, Like what happens
(15:08):
if they don't have to relearn things, they can just
learn it right in the first place. And so the
book itself, it's not just meant for black and brown kids,
it's actually meant for white kids and and all the
kids in between, because everyone needs to understand how to
properly talk about this and think about skin color, race
and family. Because if the kid who called the little
(15:29):
girl skin poop would have had someone teach them this
prior to that, then the little girl wouldn't have had
her encounter experience. Mm hmm. Yeah, And I mean, I
think that that is really important, right, like to think
about how everybody talks about race, because I think that
is a part of what feels frustrating is that it
often feels like as black people, we often have to
(15:51):
have these conversations with our kids, whereas it feels like
white counterparts don't. But truthfully, if they were having more conversations,
we might not have to have the same conversations with
our kids about raised. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think that
that's kind of the crux of the issue, is that
if we could just teach kids to understand some of
this stuff earlier than they would have better tools to
(16:15):
start to unwind this problem, the issue of racism, oppression
and all that stuff. I mean, you know, we're adults now,
and it's it's weird to be in this space because
you spend so much time being a young person with
the potential to to want to change and do all
the things. But I think we're you know, if if
you're my age group, which you know, early forties and stuff,
(16:35):
we're getting to that point where we have to start
really thinking about what the next generation is going to
do and how we're going to prepare them. And I
think that that's kind of the energy that I wanted
to put behind this, is to maybe do something where
we can prevent some of these negative interactions and prevent
the need to heal as opposed to just heal. Yeah,
(16:55):
and so what made you decide on a kid's book
as opposed to like a book for parents? Well, the
funny part about children's books is that there are books
for parents because parents by own parents consume them, and
parents eventually they're the one who read them to the kids.
And so my book Daddy Why and I Brown. So
it has a story for the children, and it has
like the learning process in there, but it also has
(17:16):
a bunch of resources. So there's discussion questions and vocabulary
and the ideas like if you can talk to your
child about this, then maybe you're going to learn some
of this too, And you can come to the book
without necessarily having a degree and ethnic studies to read
this book to your child. It's it's it's just meant
to like give some basics and maybe that can open
(17:36):
a conversation that continues in the house. Mm hmmm. So
kind of going back to the earlier conversation around like
the work that we need to do as adults to
be able to have some of these conversations with our kids.
Can you share, like any of the questions from the
book are questions maybe that you're even asking your practice
or as you're kind of thinking about your work for adults,
that maybe can help them to kind of think about
(17:57):
the spirit they need to come to a process like
this with I think one of the first things is
that you have to ask yourself what your relationship is
your skin color and to your race, and to like
the way that you see yourself identity wives with sailing, like,
what are some of the areas that aren't maybe a
little hot and you might feel sensitive about because you know,
kids they're gonna ask you direct questions. They're really not
(18:19):
gonnam mince words. They're just gonna be like, boom, what
is this? And so as you're approaching this, you can't
respond with your baggage to your child's question about stuff,
otherwise it's going to transfer it over to them. So
I think that one of the big pieces is just
thinking about what would be the healthy way that you
would have liked to talk about this, to have been
introduced to this when you're a kid. What are some
(18:42):
of the things that you anticipate your child to be
exposed to. You might have this conversation differently depending on
what kind of roots are around the kids, you know,
like if you're you're sitting here your child to a
predominantly white school, then that's gonna be different than if
you're sending them to a predominant black school or to
a more you know, multi culture role or diverse school.
It depends on what kind of home you have. You know,
(19:03):
the discussion is really different if the family all kind
of share similar skin tones versus like, for instance, in
the book, the family doesn't share the same skin tones,
and they don't share like all the same ethnicity. So
you know, the mom in the book is multi ethnic
where she's Black and Chinese, and then the dad is
African American or he's black. So you know, what do
(19:24):
you do with those conversations. I think it gets even
more complicated if you start talking about like adoption and whatnot.
But I think that it also is inappropriate. I was
hoping that people who, for instance, who might engage in
a transracial adoption, could use this book to help them
healthily have this conversation and use this context. I think
in the book there's like I I provided some vocabulary
(19:47):
that I pulled from the Learner's Dictionary. It's vocabulary with
definitions that kids can understand. So like ancestors, a person
who with someone's family in past times or herided, you know, traditions, achievements,
and beliefs. Even like melanin, so the dark brown and
black substances that is a natural part of people's skin,
(20:09):
hair and eyes. Like off the top of your head,
would you just be able to say what melanine is
to a child? So I tried to kind of think
about those things in terms of discussions, questions just things
like what's your favorite color? What makes things beautiful? What
does it mean for my skin to be different from
your skin? These are some of the questions that kind
of come up, and just being able to talk to
(20:31):
those and make it feel mormal. I think it is
one of the big pieces that parents and elders and
uncles and nuntees and whatnot need to be thinking about. Yeah,
and I think you raised a really interesting point, dr
Former in that there is likely some work that lots
of us need to do around our own race to
be able to really engage in these conversations in a
(20:53):
way that's healthy for kids. Right, Like, I don't know
that we even always think about like how you know,
our ideas about and color and hair and all of
those things still impact us as adults. As a psychologist,
you know, the stuff that people bring in to talk about.
I don't know that any of this stuff has worked
out for adults, things like colorism and colorism inside homes.
(21:17):
You know, So which child is a light skin child?
With child is the dark skinned child? Which which kid
has a quote unquote good hair and all that stuff
who looks most like somebody? I mean, those kind of
things are generational. You know, if you're the if you
didn't have the lighter skin in the family, and then
you know roder sists who have the lighter skin get favored,
(21:38):
then how is that going to come out when you
have kids who also have variations in their skin? Comes
what happens when you behave certain ways but between different
people could see that, you know, so if you're always
you know, making faces or rolling your eyes or cutting
your eyes at folks who look a specific way, then
the kid is going to realize that that's negative, like
(22:00):
that there's something about that person is negative. And if
they see enough, they're gonna recognize the pattern in order
to And I think this is across board with parenting.
It's not it's not just about race. But if you
don't want to pass on the traumas and the trials
and the baggage and all this stuff that comes from
your life to your child, you do have to unpack that.
(22:21):
And I think that you know, that's where a good
therapist might come in. If you're thinking about your parenting, Um,
that's something that we can help with. That's something you
can come in and talk about and think about kind
of how do you separate your childhood from your your
your child's childhood. Very good points. I really appreciate it.
So are there other resources? It sounds like you do
(22:42):
have tons in the book, But are there other resources
that you can kind of think about the top of
your head that you think would be helpful for these
kinds of a conversation as well well? I think for parents,
there's some good books that you can read that can
give you more context and bring you more into the
convert station around race and ethnicity and blackness for black folks.
(23:04):
One is The Psychology of Blacks, which is a book
that's written by Dr Thomas Farham, Audi saw Jammu and
es Mario Bossi and Joseph L. White um and that
really talks about the idea of identity and race from
a psychological perspective. But like it really just it hits
(23:24):
on education, hits on like the counter experiences, hits on
family and family structure. Another book is um I believe
it's called Black Families, and that's uh Nancy Boy Franklin,
Nancy Boy Franklin, Yes, just look up Nancy Boy Franklin.
If you want to talk about Black families and black kids,
like you really that that's a good space to go.
(23:47):
Black Father's Invisible Presence in America. That's edited by Dr
Michael Connor and Dr Josepha White. There's two editions. There's
a chapter I'm in in the in the in the
second edition, but that talks about fatherhood with children, and
I think that that's, you know, part of where my
head is in terms of, like I mean, the book
is about a father and a daughter having a conversation,
(24:09):
and I think that's kind of an important thing to
kind of to put forward because of, you know, all
the stereotypes and all that stuff. I think that the
stereotypes aren't really real. Black men are very involved and
very connected to their children in a lot of different ways,
and I think that like pointing that out. I mean,
one of the book that came, I was like looking
(24:29):
at it and I was like, man, I got all
their goals now when I saw a hair love like,
oh yes, you know, I mean, such a beautiful way
of of kind of approaching a situation. And I think
that many black fathers have have experienced, not necessarily you know,
in in the way that's in the book, but just
this idea of you know, how do I make sure
that I'm taking care of my my child in a
(24:51):
way that my child would be happy with and that
my partner would be happy with, you know, And um, yeah,
it's just beautiful. So maybe one day we'll get we'll
get a wonderful animation animated version of Daddy wy My Brown.
But maybe one day long in the future after this interview,
because now everybody, everybody listening to your shlfs and'll never
(25:11):
know about it. I know it. So where can people
connect with you online? Dr Palmer? What is your website?
And I know people can go to your website to
buy the book, So what's your website as well as
any social media handles that you want to share? Okay,
I gotta I got a few, so um, you can
find me directly and and through this you can find
(25:32):
a lot of other stuff that's connected to me. But um,
I have my website is d R B F Palmer
dot com. So dr bf Palmer dot com. And the
website for the book is deeper than color, that's deeper
than pH A N Color dot com. And you can
(25:56):
go there and you can get to both websites. From
each other a linked and you can go on Amazon
to find the book. Uh, and you can find that
by either searching it on Google, or you can go
directly to the website. Now Internet handle wise, you can
find me at dr b F. Palmer on Instagram and
on Twitter and on Facebook, so at dr b F.
(26:20):
Palmer and the book is at deeper than color, same
as the website. Yeah, so those are the best places.
So if you look for me on online. I talked
a lot about psychology and about race and culture and
and uh, you know, as as some of my folks
say about the struggle. But I've been adding in some
some resources for parents. One thing that people might like,
(26:43):
especially right now in the context that we're in. I
know there's a lot of folks who are doing homeschooling
and needing some some materials. Well, I have six lessons
plans that are for free on the website. So if
you're a parent, or if you're just someone, if you're
a teacher, whoever you are, who's going to like to
gather some lesson plans for some kids, and you know, preschool,
(27:04):
kindergarten or first grade. There's six free lesson plans and
you can just go download those off of Deeper than
Color dot com. Perfect. Thank you so much for those
resources I can promm and of course all of that
would be included in the show notes so that people
can get say all of that very easily. But we
really appreciate you spending some time with us today. Thank you.
I appreciate you having me on. I'm so grateful Dr
(27:28):
Palmer was able to share his expertise with us today.
To learn more about him, or to grab your copy
of Daddy Why Am I Brown, visit the show notes
at Therapy for Black Girls dot Com slash Session one,
and don't forget to share your takeaways with us in
either your I G Stories or on Twitter using the
hashtag tb G in session. If you're looking for a
(27:50):
therapist near area, check out our therapist directory at Therapy
for Black Girls dot Com slash directory. Many of the
therapists offer options to meet virtually if you're looking for
that right now. And if you want to continue digging
into this topic and meet some other systems in your area,
come on over and join us in the Yellow Couch Collective,
where we take a deeper dive into the topics from
(28:12):
the podcast and just about everything else. You can join
us at Therapy for Black Girls dot com slash y
c C and don't forget to show our sponsor some
love by grabbing your Bomba stocks at bombas dot com
slash t b G today and get off of your
first order that's b O M B A S dot
com slash tv GF. Thank y'all so much for joining
(28:37):
me again this week. I look forward to continue in
this conversation with you all real soon. Take it care
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The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.