Talking About Racism With Kids Most White Parents Don’t
Though race and racism are at the top of Americans’ public discussion, most white parents don’t talk about those issues with their kids.
Research on how white parents discuss race with their children is sparse. However, past research has shown that conversations about race, much less racism, are rare, even when these issues are highly visible – for example, during the Ferguson protests in 2014.
One study found that even though 81% of white mothers believed it was important to have such discussions, only 62% of them reported actually doing so. Of those who said they did, however, fewer than one-third of those people could actually recall a specific conversation.
Teaching generations
To understand the issue more deeply, we examined surveys of more than 2,000 adults ages 18 and older, colle...