I started teaching my sons about racism at 3 years old

A wealth of scientific research shows that racial awareness and racial bias begin early (Picture: Professor Keon West)

My son came home crying.

This was not unusual. For parents, it is all too common for our children to be distressed by something, however incomprehensible, that happened during the day at nursery or school.

However, on this particular day, the reason he was upset was more disturbing than most. It was because the other children had told him that his hair was ugly.

They, apparently, had ‘nice straight hair’, but he had ‘curly whirly hair’ and curly whirly hair was ‘ugly’.

My son was three years old.  

I put down all my distractions, I looked him in the eyes and explained that his hair was beautiful and that the other children were just saying racist things.

I explained that racism was a system of lies, of unfair standards, designed to make White people seem better than they really were, and make us seem worse than we really were.

I warned him that someday, someone else would probably tell him that his nose was too broad, or his skin too dark, or that he couldn’t be good at mathematics, or at swimming.

But this was only a sign that something was wrong with that other person. That person was racist. Nothing was wrong with him.

As young as he was, my son seemed to understand. I mostly felt a bit sad and tired. I knew this would be one of many such conversations. 

I’m a professor of social psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a lot of my research looks at racial bias and how we can deal with it. So, while this conversation with my three-year-old son was upsetting, it wasn’t surprising.

A wealth of scientific research shows that racial awareness and racial bias begin early.

Studies by Professor Adam Rutland in the UK and by Dr Danielle Perszyk in the US found that children as young as three or four show ‘strong and consistent pro-White bias’ (according to the latter) and a significant relative antipathy toward Black children.

It is a myth that very young children don’t see race or can’t learn racist ideas (Picture: Charles Sturge)

Nor is this bias simply limited to other children. A very clever study by Professor Walter S Gilliam used eye-tracking devices on preschool teachers and found that the teachers expected Black children – especially Black boys – to exhibit potentially challenging behaviour, even when they behaved no differently from White children.

By the time a child is three or four, they can already be both a perpetrator and a victim of racism.  

Indeed, it can start much earlier than that.

I have two sons. Their mother is White and blue-eyed. Since the day my sons were born, within hours of their birth, they were praised for their White features.

Some people would say how lucky it was that they were ‘fair skinned’, or that ‘they’re just perfect, look at their light skin and blue eyes’. People would tell me, while my children were in earshot, that I must be so pleased that their skin looked so much like my wife’s and so little like mine.

Sometimes my wife and I would respond that we liked dark skin and brown eyes. Sometimes, we would patiently explain to our friends why this was a racist thing to say. Sometimes we’d just explain it to the children after the person had left. Sometimes, we were too tired. There were many such conversations. 

When one of my sons was two or three years old, he came home from nursery, and informed me that ‘You can’t be a doctor daddy’. When I asked him why, he let me know that ‘Doctors have white legs. You have brown legs. People with brown legs can’t be doctors’. 

This was absurd. Our family doctor was Black. My sister – his aunt – was also a doctor and also Black. And yet, some person or book or video had convinced him that this was too much for a Black person to achieve. It wasn’t hard to show him how silly and racist that view was, but it was one more tiring conversation.  

This isn’t even mentioning the television shows or online streaming services that tell them, in no uncertain terms, that Black people are ugly. One example is a cartoon – Dina and the Prince – that was viewed more than 400,000 times on a YouTube channel aimed at children, before it was removed.

In this cartoon, Dina is cursed and ‘loses her beauty’. And what does this mean? It means that Dina is transformed from a White woman into a Black one. That’s all it takes for her to no longer be beautiful.

It is a myth that very young children don’t see race or can’t learn racist ideas.  

Given racism’s early onset, it’s a real shame that so many families wait until teenage years or later to begin talking about it.

According to a 2018 study by Dr Brigitte Vittrup, 62% of White American mothers of children between four and seven reported they had had conversations with their children about racism, but over two thirds of those could not identify a single specific conversation.

Many families in the study avoided the conversation because they felt the children were ‘too young’, or because it just ‘had not come up’.

But this is misguided. There is no ‘too young’, no because it ‘had not come up’.

Long before my children could say their first words, they were already being taught that light skin was beautiful and desirable, that pale eyes were attractive, and that straight hair was a sign of superiority.

Long before they developed language, the idea that Blackness was ugly and inferior was already there, waiting for them. And if I did not speak to them about racism, I would be leaving them defenceless against it, possibly for many years. That’s not preserving their innocence – that’s just leaving them to absorb racist ideas without any protection or any challenge.  

If, after reading all this, you want to talk to your children about racism, where can you start? 

There are many opportunities, if we’re willing to pay attention. When our family watched Disney’s Peter Pan, we paused it during the infamous ‘what makes the red man red?’ song. We explained to the children that it was racist, both in the mocking presentation of the Native Americans and in the very need to explain their skin colour, but not that of the White people.

Similarly, when we passed Black Lives Matter protestors on the street, our children asked about them. We explained that some police officers, both historically and today, treat Black people worse than White people, and that the protesters want that to stop.

We also make sure to fill the house with books about Black children living normal, happy lives, like Jabari Jumps, and the Marty Monster. This lets the children see themselves as the centre of a story, not just background characters or victims of racism. 

Beyond this, there are also many books for children that do cover topics like racism. For example, my boys love the Little People, BIG DREAMS series, particularly the ones about Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, and Muhammad Ali. 

Finally, it also helps to arm yourself with specific knowledge about racism, how it works, and how it’s spread in the media – even children’s media. We can’t afford to treat racism like a merely subjective, personal issue; we must learn the scientific facts about racism, and what to do about it.

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I’ve written a book about that myself that you might find helpful – Skewed: Decoding Media Bias.

Nobody expects you to know everything, or to be perfect. But, the more you know about the bias your children are likely to absorb, the better equipped you are to take steps to stop it.

Racism is out there.

One day that difficult conversation will come, whether we like it or not. It’s wise to be prepared.

SKEWED: Decoding Media Bias by Professor Keon West and Caryn Franklin MBE is an audiobook original published by WF Howes, available on Audible.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]. 

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A wealth of scientific research shows that racial awareness and racial bias begin early.