Raising Race Conscious Children

Welcome to Raising Race Conscious Children, a resource to support adults who are trying to talk about race with young children. The goals of these conversations are to dismantle the color-blind framework and prepare young people to work toward racial justice. If we commit to collectively trying to talk about race with young children, we can lean on one another for support as we, together, envision a world where we actively challenge racism each and every day. Many of the blog's posts are geared toward White people but a community of guest bloggers represent diverse backgrounds and the strategies discussed may be helpful for all.

It starts one conversation at a time.

Quick Links


“You should not oppress the stranger, because we were strangers…”: Race, Justice, and Freedom at Hebrew School

by guest blogger Ari Lev Fornari Standing in front of a room of about 140 K-seventh grade students and their parents on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Junior Day, I introduce the topic for the day: Race, Justice, and…

Taking off my racial color-blind lens

by guest blogger Kelly Cutler Let’s be honest, what does a White woman like myself know about raising race conscious children?! I was raised in predominantly White, middle-class suburb with a culture that emphasized meritocracy, the idea that individuals succeed…

by guest blogger Julie Roberts-Phung This post is part of a week-long series highlighting supporters of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), both in their parenting of race-conscious children and their activist work for racial justice. SURJ is a national…

How my White family will fight Islamaphobia

by guest blogger Zoë Williams This post is part of a week-long series highlighting supporters of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), both in their parenting of race-conscious children and their activist work for racial justice. SURJ is a national network of…

Choosing a school that will help my child dismantle systemic racism and White supremacy

by guest blogger Cathy Rion Starr This post is part of a week-long series highlighting supporters of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), both in their parenting of race-conscious children and their activist work for racial justice. SURJ is a…

by guest blogger Amy Dudley This post is part of a week-long series highlighting supporters of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), both in their parenting of race-conscious children and their activist work for racial justice. SURJ is a national…

"Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What (Colors) Do You See?"

by Sachi Feris I have been reading the book, “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see?” by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle for over a decade to my kindergarten Spanish students (“Oso pardo, oso pardo, que ves ahi?”)….

“Mom, why did God create matching?”

by guest blogger Lauren Jordan We took the 18 hour flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in December of 2009. EJ was just seven months old when we first saw him. We knew we owed it to him to be the…

It’s time to make race talk more common and less awkward

by guest blogger Brigitte Vittrup, Ph.D. Back in October I participated in one of the Raising Race Conscious Children webinars, and it was great to see the interest and willingness of parents (and a few teachers) to explore the issue…

We cannot walk alone: The White parent’s role in ending racism

by guest blogger Katie Nachman Recently, after seeing a very hurtful video making the rounds on social media, I impulsively posted a response video of my own White daughters with the Black American Girl dolls they received for Christmas. My…