Recently, preparing to purchase holiday gifts for her teacher, I asked my daughter if she had any interest in buying children's literature for her teacher's classroom library. "I noticed," I told her, "that your teacher doesn't have many books with black protagonists or bilingual characters. I have ideas for new books we could give her." My daughter frowned and gently pleaded with me, "You're right, but please Mom. Not now. If you want to do that at the end of the year, that's fine. But not now." When I asked her why she would feel more comfortable giving books later, she indicated she did not know her teacher's stance on race. "We haven't really talked about it," she said, "and you just don't know about some people and how they will react." Although her teacher had never done anything overtly racist, the absence of doing or saying something inclusive had, in fact, demonstrated to my daughter that the teacher could be racist. According to Tatum's (1997) definition of racism, described later in this article, my daughter probably would be correct. I then wondered about my child's reluctance to challenge the status quo. Was even she unwilling to bring up race? In her eyes, school is not an "okay" place to bring up such issues. Perhaps, as a white child, such issues do not easily occur to her, either. The hard questions this situation evoked prompted this exploration of why white teachers and parents tend to be reluctant to talk to children about race and racism, why white parents and teachers should overcome their resistance to doing so, and what potential models might help open such conversations. I am a white woman, mother, and teacher, and I send this appeal to fellow teachers and parents of young children to join the work long conducted by teachers and parents of color. Many black families report holding explicit discussions with their children about race, privilege, discrimination, and relationships between members of different ethnic groups (Hughes & Chen, 1997; Phinney & Chavira, 1995). Little research evidence of a parallel ethnic socialization process for white children exists.
