To All My White Mom Friends

To all my white mom friends,

Moms around the world have been having difficult conversations with their kids lately. They’ve had to explain the protests, the riots, the tragedy and murderers of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. It has been extremely difficult to reveal these horrible truths to our kids.

However, there have also been countless moms around the world that have had these conversations before. They weren’t spurred on by recent tragedies and events, but they started when their kids were small and saw racism with their own eyes. It continued on when they were treated differently at school and by their friends. As parents had to remind their brown and black boys what to do if they were ever pulled over by a police officer and see the fear in their eyes. This isn’t new for them. These moms have had too many of these conversations without seeing change.

As a white women, I didn’t think I’d have to have these conversations with my future kids. However, here I am raising brown boys and the conversations have happened many times already.

Often times, I’ve heard my white mom friends say they haven’t had any talks with their kids about racism because it’s just too much for them.

It’s too much to reveal to a kid how scary the world can be. I am so happy that your children have never had to experience what other brown and black children have had to experience; however, it doesn’t mean these conversations should be passed over. There are age-appropriate ways to talk to your children about racism, prejudice, and tragic news going on in the world. They may not need to know all of the details, but they need to know that people in the world are treated differently because of the color of their skin.

When we teach our kids about racism and prejudice from a young age it prevents ignorance they could face as adults that often turns into racism.

Enough is enough.

Throughout history, we have seen how terribly America has treated brown and black men and women. It started with slavery and the sad thing is a lot of white people think racism ended the day slavery did. I have news for you, it didn’t. Racism has never gone away in our country. It has simply been divided into two camps. You have socially acceptable racism and socially unacceptable racism.

So often I’ve talked to white families and their ignorance shines through in the conversation. Their hearts may be in a great place, but they don’t realize the underlying tones of prejudice and racism in what they’re saying.

Let’s take my own story for a second. I grew up in a white town, surrounded by white people, and a white family. I have never experienced racism directed towards myself.  It wasn’t until I met my East Indian husband and got married at 20 that I even knew about my own white privilege. As my husband and I started to blend cultures and I started to learn about racism through his own experiences I realized how prevalent racism still was in our country. It made me sick with myself knowing I had ignored it and not realized for so long.

My pastor, Pastor Derwin recently said during our church service that proximity breeds intimacy.

It wasn’t until I had a true authentic relationship with my husband that I was able to see life from his perspective. We went on to have a family and I realized how important it was to talk to our biracial kids about culture, racism, and prejudice early on. The more our children learn about the world around them, the more comfortable they become with their own culture. I want my kids to be ravenous and do everything they can to learn about cultures around the world. I don’t want them just to learn about these other cultures, but I want them to embrace them.

I don’t want to raise colorblind children. I want to raise kids that realize what a blessing it is to have different cultures around the world.

As a white mom, it is your job to do the same thing. You may have white children who will never experience racism, but we can make a change in the world by teaching our kids to do better. We can raise kids who grow up fighting racism.

This is not a white and black issue friends.

At the end of the day, it had to be racism against everyone else.

We have to fight for a different world. Everyone has to stand up and fight against racism together.

Silence is no longer OK. It never was.

Ignorance is no longer acceptable. It never was.

The recent murders cannot simply be a hashtag that enraged the world for a short time. It has to cause change.

We have to change friends.