Wish We Knew What to Say: Talking with Children About Race

"Yes, the book is Pragya Agarwal’s Wish We Knew What to Say which is essentially about raising children to be anti-racist. Her own perspective is very interesting on this because she’s a woman of color, but two of her own children are white passing. She’s very sensitive to the different possibilities and the different ways in which parents will approach this depending on their perspective and privilege. She’s very much speaking to both parents of color and white parents. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I really liked this book. I found it very helpful, because it highlights the importance of being open with children about issues of race, and also the way in which a lot of liberal, well-intentioned parents might be mistaken in their approach. The mistake is to try to raise children to be colorblind, believing that if we just teach our children not to notice race, everything will be solved. Actually, that is itself often a reflection of privilege, for white parents, and ultimately not all that helpful, because children will notice race, whatever we do or say. That’s Agarwal’s point. Children will notice racial difference, because they will see it conferring subtle advantages or disadvantages from a very early age. She talks about the way in which at a very early age, children will start to reflect the pervading social norms about this. There are studies that show that very young children move from not caring what color skin their playmates are, or gravitating towards children who share their own race, towards all children showing a preference for playing with white children, at as young as three, because they’ve been socialized to think of them as better. I’d say it’s certainly relevant more broadly. Yes, the core focus here is race, and especially the way in which visible racial differences impact on the social treatment of young children – and how they perceive each other – even from a very young age. But it’s apparent from this and her other work that Agarwal understands the other patterns of discrimination which need to be challenged and discussed with our kids."