Raising Race Conscious Children Blog


Talking about bi-racial families with my daughter

Talking About Bi-Racial Families with My Daughter, Raising Race Conscious Children

My daughter has been playing with her vintage Fisher Price people on a daily basis since she was about a year old.

In one routine game, she puts the “children” (who are slightly shorter) in a circle and sings the “goodbye song.” Then, each“adult” (a slightly taller figure) picks a child up from school. When she first started playing this game, she would assign adults to children randomly, almost never putting them in the same pairs, and with no consideration to their physical appearances. The only thing she was emphatic about was that every child had to be paired with one adult.


How to explain racially-charged interactions (and gentrification) to my daughter

How to explain racially-charged interactions (and gentrification) to my daughter, Raising Race Conscious Children

As a born and bred New Yorker, I expect an occasional terrible experience with a stranger. My worst stranger story involves a White man who spit in my on 5th avenue. So it isn’t always about race…but sometimes it is.

Last winter, I was sitting on the steps in the lobby of an apartment building in my neighborhood, trying to get my one-and-a-half-year-old to put on her shoes. I had just gotten her to sit down and was forcing her feet into the shoes and fastening the Velcro when a Black man entered the building and commented “Stairs are not for sitting.”


My son’s Jewish and Guatemalan identity

Janet Alperstein, Raising Race Conscious Children

Celebrations are a big part of our family: the Jewish holidays, the anniversaries of the day we met and the day we became a family, Guatemalan Independence Day, and National Adoption Day. Each of these celebrations helps us reaffirm our multiple identities.


Just when I thought my daughter wasn’t listening…

Just When I Thought My Daughter Wasn’t Listening, Raising Race Conscious Children

Last month I had a stomach flu and succumbed to my daughter’s request for more minutes than usual of watching videos. First, we watched “Los pollitos dicen,”, a song about chicks and a mama hen.


A Passover story for my three-year-old

A Passover Story for my Three-Year-Old , Raising Race Conscious Children

There was once a little baby boy named Moses. Moses was Jewish and he lived in Egypt where the king, who was called the Pharaoh, did not like Jewish babies.