George Floyd died at the hands of police officers just over two month ago. Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in March. Justice in each case moves slowly, if at all.

Significant racial progress, I say out loud during a recent newscast, is taking a long, long time.

My son, who is Black, sits next to me as I lament. He sighs and looks up from his phone, “Yeah, actually I had forgotten about the Black Lives Matter stuff until I saw the NBA and MLB players kneeling on Opening Day.”

His gaze retreats back to his phone.

I do not reply. I just sit, quietly frustrated.

His comment made me think of the dogged, lengthy efforts of past Civil Rights titans, like The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, making the mission of racial equality their life’s work. I then thought of the protest my son attended with my wife after Floyd’s death, and the way that day make him stop and think about the need for systematic change.

A few months later, though, he’d lost that feeling of urgency.

I suddenly find myself wondering, “Does this generation of children have the same grit to carry this movement onward?”

With protesters continuing to take to the streets in several American streets, there is no question the Black Live Matter movement has feverish support from adults. These rallies, though, have gotten fringier, less kid-friendly and downright nasty in places like Portland or Seattle where government-affiliated troops routinely use force and tear gas to disperse crowds.

I am selfishly thankful my son is not subject to that sort of chaos. But is familiarity with such unrest, though, necessary to garner the type of passion that success in this struggle will require? As parents, our mission is to protect our kids. My children’s relative lack of bumps in the road to this point could be construed as modest progress.

I tend to harp on to my son about him having no limits, that the only barriers to his success will be those constraints he places on himself. I have drilled that mantra into him from his earliest ages and, I think, he believes it. But I wonder if because he has been taught that nothing is out of reach regardless of his skin color is part of the reason why the urgency of Black Lives Matter has waned in him.

Complicating this issue with young people and persistence is that many children like mine do not have to wait for anything – not for food, not for a text back, not for Instagram likes, not for commercial breaks. Kids, if made to wait these days, tend to stop, quit, complain or just move on.

The grit required to rid the world of racism will be immense. While no one wants to hear phrases like, “it will take time” or “justice will come” or “progress is slow” about today’s racial climate, they have all been proven to be real. In the world of apps and instant gratification our children have been raised in, have we parents adequately allowed them to grind through a hard task for long periods of time for a coveted outcome that made the dogged effort worth it?

I dread that these realities are inciting passionate adults at the fringe and turning off children like my son who are maybe not equipped for the long tussle required for monumental change. Parents may be well-meaning in shielding their children from the racism’s ugly stain, but in protecting our children I can’t help but think we have not done a good job of explaining that other families are not so fortunate. My son’s indifference to the continued fight for Black Lives to Matter, I think, is proof.

So now, months removed from the awful imaginary of George Floyd’s death, the Black Lives Matter movement may open our eyes to other ignorances like our children’s lack of access to plight, to fortitude, to communities that look starkly different than our own, and to the concept of persevering for a cause that will take great perseverance to achieve.

My son may lack grit. I need to do a better job of displaying its importance to him because grit is required for Black lives, like my son’s, to matter.

Photo: © DisobeyArt / Adobe Stock.

I knew in advance of the interview that the question would be asked, but it still startled me when it was. Few Black fathers have a ready-made answer to: “When will you speak to your child about race? And what will you tell her?”

This question came about in February, three months before the police killing of George Floyd, as part of a project I participated in exploring Black fatherhood. In the months since, it has echoed in my mind as the Black Lives Matter movement has commanded global attention and my daughter hits a new milestone: her sixth birthday.

With each passing birthday, my daughter moves closer to the age I was when my mother sat me down to have The Talk, that unfortunately necessary conversation — the first of many — that Black parents often have with their children about race, racism and how to navigate a society that does not always see you as fully human. That this is a familiar rite of passage in Black families speaks volumes about the systemic and generational dehumanization that African Americans endure.

The Talk defined and in practice

The Talk covers all manner of indignities and scenarios: the first time you were called the n-word; what to do when you’re pulled over by police; how to respond to being followed by a store employee who suspects you’re a shoplifter because of your race. The list goes on.

In my case, nothing particularly dramatic had happened. My mother must have sensed it was time for me, at the age of 8, to be introduced to the concept of racial difference given the two worlds I inhabited in 1983 as a third-grader: the predominantly Black neighborhood of South-Central Los Angeles where I lived and the then predominantly white suburb of Northridge in the San Fernando Valley, where my elementary school was located.

During the week, I’d ride a school bus 40 minutes from South-Central to the Valley in pursuit of a better education. My mother decided to have me bused under a voluntary Los Angeles Unified School District program to integrate schools. The program, which effectively dismantled mandatory busing, allowed minority parents the option of busing their children to predominantly white schools. My mother seized the opportunity. At its peak in 1984, about 23,000 students were bused under the voluntary program. I was one of them.

My mother, born and partly raised in the Black neighborhood of Greenville in segregated 1960s Mississippi, later told me she believed the educational opportunities in the Valley superior. She also she wanted me to gain exposure to people of different cultures.

But she also apparently wanted to be sure I was grounded in my own.

I recall my mother sitting down with me in our apartment and explaining that the shades of skin tone among the people in our neighborhood — brown sugar, coconut, honey iced tea, golden yellow — reflected the diversity of those who identified as Black, our racial-ethnic group.

“You’re Black,” my mother said, as if preparing me to understand how other people might first see me.

“No, I’m yellow,” I countered, using the word my family often used to describe my fair skin tone. She laughed.

My mother, a librarian at the time, explained in her version of The Talk that Black people have a rich history and culture, but are often discriminated against because they are different. As a result, they have been engaged in a long struggle for equality embodied by the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. I knew who King was. As a second-grader, I was awarded the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Award for “contributing to the spirit and the dream of a better world for all people.” I can’t recall what I did to earn this award, but vaguely recall drawing a crayon portrait of King and writing a short statement about his life.

How mother’s words changed my life

And then, with a deep sense of reverence, she described the Civil Rights Movement — what Black people were fighting for (equal treatment and opportunity) and against (discrimination and violence) and how King had a dream we would one day live in a nation where people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I’d never heard my mother speak before with such passion. Her words made me feel both proud and angry.

Proud to be Black. Not less than. Not ashamed. Proud.

But angry at the unfairness of it all.

Both feelings are rooted in the knowledge of one’s own history, which may explain why years later in college one of my majors was history and I became a student activist.

You don’t realize the implications of how your parents raised you until you become a parent yourself. By introducing me to a racialized view of the world grounded in a history of striving and resistance, my mother inoculated me with a sense of pride against the virulent nature of racist beliefs and actions that I had yet to encounter. She helped keep my self-esteem intact.

So, the next time I’m asked about when will I speak my child about race and what will I tell her, I will follow my mother’s example.

I will speak to my daughter when I feel she’s ready to bear the burden of racial awareness.

I will tell her, “We’re all different in our own ways, but equal: equal in rights and equally deserving of respect and kindness.”

I will tell her about the history of her people and the stories of individuals within our family who overcame adversity to not just survive, but thrive.

But most of all, I will imbue her with a sense of hope that one day The Talk will no longer be necessary.

The Talk photo: © fizkes / Adobe Stock.

Protesters shouted from my TV. As I watched, my stomach moved its way up into my throat.

I watched more. Tears rolled down the cheeks of people I didn’t know.

I watched. Cars were overturned.

I watched. People walked together and chanted.

I watched. A young man shot. A man choked and dead. And I watched.

My 10-year-old son emerged from his bedroom as the news played across the television. He stopped behind my right shoulder, watching as Eric Garner held his arms above his head and a police officer choked him and pushed him to the ground. He watched as Eric Garner gasped 11 times, “I can’t breathe.”

“What’s this,” he asked.

“The news,” I responded.

“Is this happening here?”

“Yes.”

“In America?”

“Yes.”

Usually when my son comes out at night to ask a question, I answer and tell him to go back to bed. But I didn’t this time. As homeschooling parents, we try to present a full picture of history and current events to our children: Columbus’s arrival resulted in the slaughter of millions, the Declaration of Independence was written when all people were not treated as equals, slavery didn’t end with the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement didn’t stop with Martin Luther King Jr., Stonewall shouldn’t be overlooked, and torture is wrong. And so my son and I watched together.

We watched and we talked. We talked about how justice in this country often tilts away from African-Americans and people of color. And as we talked, I thought of Eric Garner and his children. His children will never have another conversation with their father. They will never get to hear his advice or his recounting of a story. I have always told my kids that if they are in trouble or lost, they should find a police officer. But would a black parent give their kids the same advice? Would I if I were black?

I am not anti-law enforcement. My wife and I teach our children to respect and honor police officers and there are many good officers (some who are close friends and neighbors) that take seriously their pledge to protect and serve. The problem is not with individual officers; the entire system is broken. And even individual officers who are otherwise blameless shoulder the guilt of a system that is unjust.

Now I know that often times liberal white men (like me) love to preach against racism from our white privileged couches. We act as though we are Jerry McGuire yelling, “I love black people.” We want everyone to see us and say, “There’s a good white guy.” And I don’t want to be another white guy writing about racism as though I know what it feels like to be a person of color in America. There is no way that someone like me can fully comprehend it.

But that doesn’t mean that my heart doesn’t ache for those who experience the pains of racism. That doesn’t mean that I have nothing to add to the conversation. When we ride the subway in NYC, you’ll hear over the speaker, “If you see something, say something.” My blog is my outlet. My blog is my voice. I have something to say. I have somewhere to say it.

I don’t want to watch while injustices are happening around me.

My family recently joined marchers in New York City. One of the things we shouted as we marched was “Black lives matter!” As a white dad raising white kids, it’s my job to teach this to my children. That all people are created by God in his image and are equal.

The pessimist in me believes racism will always be here. That nothing will change. But the optimist in me hopes – hopes that racism will end someday. For that to happen, we have to teach our kids to value all human lives. We have to teach our children that justice matters and that, as The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

A version of this first appeared on One Good Dad. Photo: © Sabrina / Adobe Stock.

July 26, 2020, will mark the 30^th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. Earlier this year, my teen daughters and I watched a powerful new documentary available on Netflix called Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. The film explains how the disability rights movement evolved across decades. Though Crip Camp was released before the recent Black Lives Matter protests, its themes have much to teach parents at this critical cultural moment.

The documentary focuses on Camp Jened, a 1971 summer camp for teens with disabilities. Many of the teens featured later become activists for disability rights. The film is narrated in part by Jim LeBrecht, who has spina bifida and attended the camp at age 15. The opening scenes show him as a child at home literally climbing up and down stairs with his hands and arms.

Extensive black-and-white camp footage from then documents how the multiracial campers enjoy each other’s company. While the “hippie” camp might not meet today’s safety standards, the campers frequently express how liberated they feel. At the camp, their bodies are not burdens, but simply part of who they are.

Lionel Je’Woodyard, an African-American counselor, notes similarities to the civil rights movement at the time: “Whatever obstacles that were in my way being a black man, the same thing was held true for individuals in wheelchairs.” Later that decade, the Black Panthers will help disability rights activists during their protests and sit-ins.

One of the camp counselors who later becomes a powerful activist is Judy Heumann. She narrates that as a child with polio, she did not feel different until a boy saw her wheelchair and asked if she was “sick.” In that moment, Heumann said she felt “sidelined,” and inclusion has been her passion ever since.

The later parts of Crip Camp show the development of the movement in the 1970s and ’80s. Scenes of a man in a wheelchair having to use dangerous city streets illustrate the need for the curb ramps and elevators that we now take for granted. Such images of architectural injustice culminate in “The Capitol Crawl,” a dramatic protest that occurred on March 12, 1990. On that day, dozens of people with disabilities abandoned their wheelchairs and used their hands and arms to drag their bodies up the many steps of the Capitol Building. The Americans with Disabilities Act finally became law a few months later. though the struggle for full disability rights continues.

Inspiration is not the same as action

While Crip Camp is no doubt inspiring, a recent memoir by Keah Brown, an African-American writer in her late 20s who has cerebral palsy, reminds readers that inspiration can be tricky. Regarding people with disabilities, she declares in The Pretty One (2019):  “We are human beings first, who shouldn’t have to be inspirations for our lives to matter. … I wasn’t given what I hoped and asked for because of my disability or in spite of it; I received all of it because of the person I am inside my body.”

From the start, Brown’s book purposefully emphasizes all that she is apart from her disability. She begins: “Hey, friends! My name is Keah and I’m cute as hell. I love popular culture, music, cheesecake, cheeseburgers, and pizza.” Such a playful attitude created Brown’s viral hashtag #DisabledAndCute in 2017.

While she is happy to broaden the representation of people with disabilities in popular culture, Brown warns against “able-ism” in the form of pity: “Disabled bodies are often used to make the able-bodied feel better about their own bodies; we are a reminder that ‘it could be worse.’” Instead, “as a disabled person, what I need in place of pity, which does absolutely nothing to advance the community, are my rights, respect, and opportunity.”

The themes of respect and exhaustion permeate Brown’s vantage at the intersection of race and disability: “What black people need is respect in every space. There is an exhausting process of entering public spaces never knowing how your blackness will be perceived by the people who are not black — and what the cost of that perception may be.” Much like the Capitol Crawl scenes illustrate in Crip Camp, Brown notes that “so much of disability is adaptation and discovering the sorts of tips, tricks, and work-arounds necessary to survive in public and private spaces.”

Foster inclusion, respect in your children

Significantly, both Judy Heumann and Keah Brown describe crucial moments from their childhoods when another child marked them as “different” and thus “less than.” Heumann was asked if she was sick, while Brown explains that in middle school a boy mimicked her limp, which led her to self-hatred, disordered eating and even suicidal thoughts. Granted, children often say or do things impulsively, but as Brown notes, “The things we do even in jest and naivete matter; they can change lives.”

To foster a child’s ability to respect others, parents should convey early and often that it’s OK to notice and talk about differences among people. Ideally, questions can be addressed in age-appropriate ways even before children encounter people who look different from them, whether due to disability, skin tone, cultural garb or any other reason.

While it can sometimes make parents nervous, noticing difference is actually quite natural for young children. If children are shushed or shamed when they ask questions, the message received is that differences are bad. (When my daughters were young, I benefited from reading Hate Hurts: How Children Learn and Unlearn Prejudice.)

As children get older, try to find ways they might increase their empathy. Try volunteering opportunities, social activities or analysis of popular culture. Some of these strategies might feel uncomfortable, but as Brown declares: “I believe that being uncomfortable is important in order for us to grow.”

(Author’s note: Crip Camp on Netflix is rated R for some language about sexuality but is very educational for teens when watched with a parent.)

Photo: ©  Minerva Studio / Adobe Stock.

My oldest started high school football practice recently, but we have talked more about his team’s pregame routine than touchdowns or tackles. Instead of X’s and O’s, Yosef and I are commiserating over whether he will kneel or stand during the national anthem. I wonder if other dads of third-string placekickers are spending time doing the same this summer.

Former NFL star Colin Kaepernick, who cost himself millions of dollars and a promising football career after kneeling during the anthem, has been back in the news in recent weeks. And with the ongoing protests and marches in reaction to high-profile instances of police violence against black people, the racial cavities that divide us are proving vast as well as immediate.

Taking a knee before a high school football game might seem relatively meaningless in the whole scheme of things, but I understand why it might seem noteworthy in the mind of an incoming freshman like Yosef, who my wife and I adopted from Ethiopia about 13 years ago.

I do have some strong feelings on the subject. I want to be careful, though, about projecting my views onto my son. In fact, during this time of boiling, racial turmoil, I wanted to take the opportunity to have a deeper discussion with a kid who’s usually tough to engage.

When he asked whether he should kneel during the national anthem, I asked him four questions. Yosef’s answers, I think, provided a blueprint for anyone wondering the same.

Question 1:  Why are you kneeling?

Kaepernick knelt to shine a light on a social issue that, in his opinion, had little advocacy. If Yosef chooses to kneel, what issue has compelled him to do so?

Choosing to kneel during the national anthem must start with an issue – not necessarily the  same one Kaepernick has – that you are passionate about. If Yosef doesn’t have such passion, or if he seems solely to be succumbing to the pressures of other black teammates or the significance of such a gesture to many others, I’d advise him to stay standing.

Kneeling is the outcome of a burning desire to make a difference, not vice versa.

Question 2: How are you sacrificing?

When Colin Kaepernick elected to kneel during The Star-Spangled Banner, he made several burdensome sacrifices. Kaepernick gave up, by some estimates, up to $100 million, yielding himself unemployable by NFL standards, and turned himself into a political lightning rod.

The ashes of Kaepernick’s career as the backdrop, I asked Yosef: What might you be sacrificing if you kneel?

Might Yosef alienate himself from some other classmates and parents? Yes.

Might his coach, in an act of retaliation, sit him on the bench? Very possibly.

Suddenly, Yosef might suddenly find himself to be “that pot stirrer” rather than “that skinny freshman.” No athlete who kneels will EVER pay as steep a cost as Kaepernick has – certainly not my son. There will be a price to pay, though, and it might be significant to a kid entering a new school in the fall.

Without a good understanding of what sacrifices could be demanded of him, there is no way for a kid to assess whether kneeling pregame is the best personal choice.

Question 3: Are you prepared if you face retaliation?

At one point, my son asked if I’d thought his coach might take notice if players kneeled during the anthem? My answer was a question: “Do you care?”

If players care that they might lose playing time if their coach disagrees with their stance, they should not kneel. A willingness to trade activism for a starting spot is a kneeling non-starter.

Question 4: What are you going to give?

Lost on many in the story of Colin Kaepernick is that he has made good on a pledge to donate millions to causes that share his passion for ending oppression. So as our discussion continued, I asked Yosef, “So, if you kneel, you’ll be planning to donate to charity, right?”

My son looked confused. He didn’t connect the dots between activism and support, financial or time-wise. If my son kneels, I want him to do so for a cause important enough to demand his resources.

Kneeling, particularly at a high school game, is meaningless at its face. The only lasting impact is in devoting time or money to local organizations that champion the reason for the kneeling.

As long as he’s ready to give, he can consider kneeling.

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I am glad I chose to create a dialogue with my son rather than dismissing him. Asking those four questions helped me learn more about his thoughts – and let me wade through mine, too.

I learned that Yosef cares deeply about the same issues that Kaepernick knelt for. Yosef explained to me his feelings about the Black Lives Matter protests, and his role in changing the underlying injustices have stained American history. My son, I believe, will be a starting point for a more inclusive American future.

Yosef, though, showed me that he lacked the maturity to connect activism and activity. He saw kneeling during the national anthem as little more than symbolic – an act that might convey a disgust in the status quo. To him, that symbolic gesture was it – he did not need to do anything else.

He didn’t plan to donate his allowance. He wouldn’t think of volunteering.

Yosef certainly was evaluating whether  he’d be benched while determining his pregame routine. And whether he was OK with that.

I did not forbid Yosef from kneeling. I did not tell him to respect the flag and those who’ve sacrificed. I refused to dismiss him as only trying to get attention.

And, because I asked him those few questions, he may now have a more adequate answer.

Photo: © mezzotint_fotolia / Adobe Stock.

As I started getting dressed for a Black Lives Matter protest march, my son asked if he could go with me. To be honest, I like keeping it as real as possible with my kids but for this one, I was torn.

Should I take him or leave his behind at home?

He’s a mature 13-year-old. He’s also the son of a dark skin Puerto Rican and black man. However, he is also my baby and all I could think about was his safety.

We all have seen the riots, the beatings, all the negative things in the media and that the government have been pushing.

But how about all the positive things protesting brings?

The positive things outweigh all the negative thoughts I had about marching with my son.

He wanted in, I wanted to educate him and that’s exactly what happened.

We focused on the positive side of Black Lives Matter march, the people that pushed the equality message “One Together, All Together!”

These marchers chanted for peace but also had the fortitude to stop actions against others who didn’t want us protesting. We saw that a few times but not as much as TV reports would have us think. We only had three instances where someone, got tough with us for no reason. They handled them with peace and love.

Marching for equality with my son and, eventually, my whole family will go down as one of the best choices I have ever made in life.

We were marching with over 1,000 Staten Islanders and our voices would be HEARD!

Equality was the premise of this Black Lives Matters march but — wow — did other lessons pour in. I didn’t even have to prompt my little man to discuss it. The energy of the crowd, the chants, the solidarity, all of that was taught through the crowds’ actions.

Should attend a protest march with your kids?

Calling for equality alongside people of all colors, ethnicities, social classes and more was enough to prove that I made the right decision.

If you want to take your kids to a protest or march, do it! The fears you have are real but, in my opinion, the chances of them occurring are slim to none. Don’t ever let fear stop you from doing what’s right in your heart.

You can never guarantee that everything goes right but that’s a risk we take every day leaving our homes. Instead, focus on making yourself comfortable:

• Find a protest march that’s happening during the daylight hours as I did.
• Don’t bring little children (under age 11 or so) or ones who tire easily. We only covered four miles in three hours and we were both exhausted.
• Come dressed to create change, not for a photo opp. Mask up!
• Most of all, come with an open mind. We did and we will never forget.

I was worried about bringing him with me due to his safety, that’s a big worry. However, not taking him would have been one of the biggest mistakes I ever did.

We came together, we marched together, we learned together.

Note: You can listen to more of James’ experience marching with his son on his podcast. Scroll to the end of that post to find it.

A version of this article previously appeared on Cool4Dads. Father / daughter at protest march photo: ©Halfpoint / Adobe Stock.

“Father’s Day Taken,” the latest pro-fatherhood fundraising initiative by our longtime partner Dove Men+Care, remembers the thousands of black dads who have lost their lives due to racism and violence, and the families left behind. DM+C established the the Fathers Day Taken Fund to invest $1 million to support these families in need.

The movement began with the public airings of a video showing Minneapolis police on May 25 kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he stopped breathing. Floyd was in the process of being arrested on a charge of passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

The Father’s Day Taken effort is raising money through a GoFundMe page at FathersDayTaken.com. It is asking people to join by donating at least $5 – the cost of a Father’s Day card. All donations will benefit the fund.

Additionally, to honor the memory of the black fathers taken, DM+C is asking people to send a Father’s Day card to a dad in your life through the website.

Dove Men+Care is asking people who want to support the effort by sharing its message to use hashtags #FathersDayTaken and #TooManyToName.

About our partnership with Dove Men+Care

Dove Men+Care has long been committed to shattering stereotypes about being a man and a father. Some past campaigns City Dads has worked with the grooming products company on include advocating nationally, including on Capital Hill, for universal paternity leave and recognizing father figures. City Dads Group and its many chapters have also partnered with Dove Men+Care for many fun events and promotions such as March Madness parties and tickets and promoting father-child bonding through free haircuts during the holiday season.

My 13-year-old son, Yosef, is Black. I’m white. Most times, we’re too busy to take notice of the difference.

Never, though, have I felt a pastier shade of white than when I talk to my son about the anecdotes of racism that dot the national headlines on what recently seems to be a daily basis.

When President Trump calls U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings out in the context of Baltimore crime statistics and subpar housing conditions, Yosef looks to me to make sense of people calling our commander in chief a racist, asking in confusion, “They’re saying the President is racist. What?”

After the news leads with a story of a New York City cop’s firing for his involvement in the chokehold death of a Black man, I am instantly filled with dread for the explanation I’ll owe my son later that evening. Without fail, I’ll clumsily attempt to simultaneously explain the polarized outrage of the local police union for the officer’s firing and the black community for the victim’s unwarranted death.

I attempt to deflect, telling Yosef, “There is a long history of distrust among the police and the black community in the U.S.”

Yes, there is no shortage of material to showcase racism in America. And, as I pick through the various layers of all these highly charged stories from the lens of a white dad with a young, Black child, I often start out more confidently than I finish.

Yosef’s first questions are easy and informational, like, “Dad, why is saying that Baltimore is rat-infested considered racist? What’s do rats have to do with race?” Or, “Why is there a group of cops around one, unarmed Black guy?”

My confidence brims initially, saying, “Well, Yosef, cops need back up in a rough area when things escalate.”

Yosef, seemingly unsatisfied, continues, “It always seems like it’s the Black men getting a bunch of cops called on them.”

These follow-ups require more and, regrettably, I often fumble my responses as my own racial biases percolate. “It’s complicated,” I say. “These areas are bad places and, often, mostly black.  Cops have to assume the worst to protect themselves.”

Most of the time Yosef will move on and leave me trying to discern whether he’s satisfied with my answer or disgusted with the thought of his father making excuses for a white police officer sending a Black man to his premature grave.

Racism ends when conversations start

I’m a 42-year-old man who was raised in a homogeneously white community and, at times like these, bringing up a strong, Black son through the simmering racism throughout our country seems an impossibility.

I’m not perfect. I clearly carry my own racial biases – on display as I talk about race to my family and friends. I don’t know how best to talk about race. I do, though, recognize the need to fight the urge to avoid the uncomfortable conversations that racial differences require.

I don’t think I’m alone and you don’t have to be raising a child of another race to struggle with such a heavy, divisive topic.

But people like me tend to take the easy way out when race matters arise. It is far too easy to point to one’s African-American friends and claim, by virtue of having dinner together twice a year, to feel connected. Just as hollow is the idea that my son could spend a few hours with a black man to make him feel at ease reasoning through his own brushes with race. Easiest of all, though, is calling others racist without acknowledging the biases each of us have learned and maintain – those we often gift to our kids.

The conversations about racism I’m having with my son tell me the divide in America is growing. The only way to scale the widening chasm is to do what Yosef and I are forced to do in my living room while watching the news: confront our own racial biases, uncertainties and fears head-on and absent fear of immediate judgement.

At the end of one of those conversations recently, a passing comment by Yosef gave me pause. He said, “Dad, if I’m around trouble, I guess police will assume the worst in me, huh?”

Although Yosef’s tone was more sober than sad, a piece of me breaks when I realize that his world outside the walls of our home is far different than mine. That must be a heavy weight to carry. It’s baggage I should be helping him unpack and not fold into his backpack more efficiently.

Even if I don’t hide the subtleties of my own racial biases, the ability to talk openly about such emotionally charged topics with Yosef is cathartic and necessary. These discussions help my son and I try to make sense of the divisions that exist in, not only America, but under our own roof as well.

Yosef has given me many gifts over the years. The most important one, I’m learning, is the tremendous opportunity of learning from the perspective of a young, black man – a present that I’ll never fully get as an older, white male.

Airing my own views of race, no matter how ignorant, skewed or short-sided, helps Yosef and I understand each other better. I hope Yosef feels curious enough to continue these vulnerable discussions that, rightfully, make us uneasy.

Those chats are his gift to me.

My gift to Yosef is, I gather, the gradually less clumsy, less white-centric responses that signal the shedding of my own learned, racial predispositions.

That’s how I plan to scale our racial divide. I’d invite other to join us as we traverse.

Black History Month still means something to me after all these years.

When I was a child, February was one of the few times I would see a multitude of black heroes on television or displayed prominently in the library.

I fondly remember receiving in school Black History Month textbook covers and comic books focusing on the likes of Benjamin Banneker and Rosa Parks.

I saw Roots for the first time during Black History Month, and its impact is still with me today. It made me cry and wonder why I was born black until my mother, in her special way, made it clear to me that black is beautiful. From that point forward, this month has been a source of pride.

So, to my family, celebrating black culture is important — period. So what are we doing this month?

1) Literature

I am adding some new books to my daughter’s library. Addressing civil rights through children’s literature has been quite effective with my daughter. She is curious and has posed thought provoking questions and made insightful observations. Speaking of her class, my wife and I will be visiting to read a book about Rosa Parks.

2) Keeping it real

Our family does not shy away from the truth. There is a long, unfortunate history in this country of blacks being enslaved, lynched, Jim Crow’ed, and generally mistreated. When I share pictures of Jacob Lawrence’s “Migration Series” with Camilla, I have to discuss why blacks were migrating north in such huge numbers during in the early parts of the 20th century.

3) New York City landmarks

African Americans have truly impacted the history of New York City, so it is easy to find opportunities to celebrate Black History Month here, especially in Harlem. My wife recently re-introduced the beautiful Harriet Tubman statue to our daughter. We rode the bus past the Duke Ellington statue and the Frederick Douglass memorial last week and discussed why they had monuments created in their honor.

4) Watch a few things

In addition to spending time discussing how lucky she has been to meet prominent blacks like Spike Lee, Swin Cash, Cari Champion and Yvette Campbell, we will also watch some clips/highlights of some of our favorite people such as Misty Copeland and Skylar Diggins.

5) Music

Whether it is the sheer brilliance of Stevie Wonder, the vocal stylings of Mahalia Jackson, or the majesty of Aretha Franklin, the impact of blacks in music is undeniable. There are genres, such as gospel, blues and hip hop that would not exist if it were not for the black experience. So, we will certainly be cranking the MJ, the MJB, and the JB.

There are many debates about whether Black History Month is needed or has been watered down or is too corporate. But, I fear if we stop celebrating it during February, we might lose the month. For example, years ago I was teaching American history to eighth graders. I was doing a unit on slavery that coincided with a PBS documentary on the same topic on TV. The parent of one of my white students asked me a question I promised I would never forget, “When are we going to go back to teaching real American history?”

So celebrating, honoring, and remembering black history will remain something of great importance to our family throughout the year, but especially during this month.

A version of this first ran on The Brown Gothamite.

When was the last time you celebrated one of your children’s moral milestones? If you’re like me, the answer is probably not nearly as often as you have marked their physical milestones.

In her recent book, Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in our All-About-Me World, Michele Borba laments this phenomenon. “Empathy is widely underestimated by moms and dads, as well as the general public … in trying to make our children feel good, we tend to focus on their cognitive, social, and physical feats,” she writes. “Overlooked are their moral accomplishments like compassion, generosity, thoughtfulness, and concern for others.”

She explains that one way a child’s empathy, or “moral imagination,” can grow is via reading. I can attest to this claim, for when I was 16 years old, my father strongly suggested I read John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me. Though my family is white, my father helped fight discriminatory housing during the civil rights movement, so we regularly talked about social issues like racism as I was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s.

John Howard Griffin was a white man who had his skin medically tinted so he could “pass” for black as part of an experiment in the late 1950s. Published in 1961, Black Like Me recounts Griffin’s six-week journey as a black man on a Greyhound bus traveling through the racially segregated South. The indignities he detailed had a striking impact on readers of all ethnicities, causing a surge of empathy and adding fuel to the civil rights movement.

Reading Black Like Me had a large impact on me just as it does most readers. I did not realize at the time that people could still be treated so unjustly and that literature could have such a moral component. From that point on I gravitated to African-American literature as an English major in college, culminating in a dissertation in graduate school that focused on traumatic novels about American slavery and its aftermath.

Like my father decades ago, I recently encouraged my own 16-year-old daughter to read Black Like Me. I wanted to raise her awareness of racial issues that continue today. As she explained to me, “It made some things come to life for me that I didn’t realize.” It has also informed her reading of Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved, which she is now studying in school and which I used to teach as a college professor. The combination of these powerful books has enabled our family to experience a generational cycle of awareness of black history, at least in part.

For my daughter, the most poignant line from Beloved is on the last page, when the narrator paradoxically states: “This is not a story to pass on.” We talked about how that statement has several meanings, one of which is that the horrible injustices of slavery should never happen again. But another meaning is that the story of slavery is not one to “pass” on, as in “I’ll pass on listening — or decline to listen — to that story.”

Black History Month reading for younger children

Black Like Me and Beloved are more appropriate for teen readers, especially during Black History Month. For younger children, other empathy-expanding recommendations might include Henry’s Freedom Box by Ellen Levine (ages 6 and up), Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans by Kadir Nelson (ages 8 and up), and Nightjohn by Gary Paulsen (ages 12 and up). Parents could also check their local libraries for additional age-appropriate suggestions.

Of course, while reading about racism helps build empathy, it is not the same as doing something more concrete to fight it. That’s why my wife and I were proud of our daughter when she recently became one of her high school’s Diversity Fellows, a group that explores ways to achieve a more just and respectful society. We made sure to celebrate her moral milestone, and quickly shared the news with her grandfather.