PODCAST: How to Talk to Your Kids about Race & Justice (www.npr.org)

Excerpts from a recent episode of On Point on National Public Radio (NPR). Listen to the entire episode here.

Melissa Giraud, social justice educator, researcher and advocate. Co-founder of EmbraceRace, an organization that provides resources for parents to teach their children about race. (@RaceEmbrace)

Andrew Grant-Thomas, social justice researcher and advocate. Co-founder of EmbraceRace. Former director of programs at the Proteus Fund, a national foundation committed to advancing justice through democracy, human rights, and peace; and deputy director at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University. (@RaceEmbrace)

Gita Gulati-Partee, founder and president of OpenSource Leadership Strategies, which consults nonprofits about the racial equity capacity of social change organizations.

Interview Highlights

On the importance of addressing race with your children

Melissa Giraud: "Kids in early elementary school will tell you stream of consciousness what they're eating, what they're thinking, what they're feeling, all kinds of stuff. But often [we] have been taught, a lot of us, not to talk about race. And so even as a person of color, and even growing up in the family ... because I didn't have the language, I didn't have the tools. I really absorbed a lot of ... what kids absorb, which is like, 'Oh, it's me. It's about me. There's something wrong with me. I'm somehow less than, I'm embarrassed to tell my parents.' That's something that happens to kids, because as much as we want to not talk about race — or for some people race is like Voldemort, the thing that cannot be named — if we don't, our kids are learning about it without us. They're having the conversation in what they're imbibing without us: on TV, on the playground, passing through different neighborhoods that are quite segregated. So kids are going to use their kid logic and say, ‘Why are things this way?’ and not have the information they need."

To listen to the entire episode of On Point radio on National Public Radio (NPR), here.