How to talk to our children about race and racism - OTB5

Outside The Boxes

In this episode, Dr Pragya Agarwal discusses the importance of talking to our children about race.

Pragya also describes what she’s been up to recently - completing her book, ‘Sway - The Science of Unconscious Bias’, writing an article for Prospect magazine on the potential problems around race and the rise of Face Recognition Technology, writing another article for The Independent on the shocking training document which was written recently for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau and appearing on BBC’s Woman’s Hour show to discuss the topic of this episode!

> You can find out more about ‘Sway’ and pre-prder your copy on Bloomsbury’s website here

> You can listen to the Woman’s Hour interview here

> You can read the Prospect Magazine article here

> You can read the Independent article here

Pragya believes that talking to our children about race, racism and racial inequality is hugely important - no matter what our own race. She disagrees with the idea of raising children to be ‘colour blind’ - it actually causes more problems than it solves. Saying that we are all the same is also unhelpful - we are not all the same but that doesn’t mean we can’t be equal - these are two different things.

“Our children need to understand that no-one should be treated differently because of their skin colour or their racial category.”

Every family needs to have an on-going dialogue about these issues and talk explicitly about them, regardless of the racial make-up of the family. Teachers, parents and educators want to protect our children from ‘ugliness’ - they feel that by talking about it they are highlighting it. Pragya describes the mistakes she thinks she made with her own daughter, how she could have handled these concepts and how she now tries to integrate these discussions every day. It’s very important to have a strong sense of racial heritage - again this should not be ignored and assumptions made around all of us being the same.

Stereotyping of people based on where they come from is easy and dangerous. Not every person from the same ethnic origin has the same views or beliefs and this is another area we need to explicitly explore with our children. Essentialism or transductive reasoning leads to, for example, a supposed link between colour of skin and ability - all people who look the same have similar ability. This generalisation is not true and we need to tackle it from an early age. If we make certain topics around race taboo and avoid talking about them with our children, we are not preparing our children to counter any negative labelling or stereotyping they find themselves in life.

Racism has also been linked to children’s mental and physical health and Pragya finishes her detailed and in-depth episode by explaining how we, as parents, can tackle the problems she has outlined.