Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America
By Dr. Jennifer Harvey

Many folks know about “the talk” that parents of Black children must have with their kids about how to behave if they ever encounter the police, or others in roles of power over them. Most people would agree that ours is a sad world, where such talks are necessary. This situation will not change as long as there is no standard “talk” that parents of white children have to equip their kids to deal with the racial tensions that dominate America today. Jennifer Harvey’s Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America is one answer to this problem.

Raising White Kids is a book for parents, teachers, pastors, grandparents, godparents, school volunteers, Sunday school teachers, and any other adult who works closely with white children in America. It is well-researched, and easy to understand. Each chapter concludes with a list of “takeaways,” which summarize the main points of the chapter and serve as a resource for readers who may wish to revisit the book without rereading it in its entirety. The book also includes a list of other resources that readers might find helpful in their own understanding of race, and how to address race with children.

There is a fine line between using one’s own experience as a teaching tool for others, and self-congratulatory bragging about one’s own success. Dr. Harvey dances along this line. Drawing mostly from her own experiences, both in childhood and as a parent, she writes about the best ways for parents to raise white children to be racially conscious. It is a delicate topic, so perhaps finding other examples from folks willing to have their stories in print was difficult. The reader will learn many things about the author, her children, and her parenting style. The good news is, she offers a good example for parents of white children, and there is much to learn from her experience.

Of course, there are risks in having a white person write a book to other white people about how to raise race-conscious white kids. This book should not be read in isolation from books and articles by people of color, and certainly cannot replace exposing white children to folks of many racial and ethnic backgrounds in positive ways throughout their formative years. Harvey recognizes this. Yet she believes the risk is worth it.

Sometimes, white people need to discuss among themselves how to create a more just society, always attentive to voices of color, but without making members of historically oppressed groups do all our work for us. This is perhaps the greatest strength of Raising White Kids. It begins a difficult conversation, acknowledging the difficulty of the subject matter, but unwilling to let people off the hook without examining their own bias and privilege. This kind of approach echoes the ancient Christian practice of confession: recognize our own sin, repent of it, and work to ensure it does not happen again, always cognizant of God’s grace toward us.

This book cannot be the only tool in an anti-racist toolbox. Yet, for adults working with white children, who hope to teach those kids how to create a more racially equitable society, Raising White Kids is a good starting point. I would recommend it, along with some of the other resources named therein, to parents and teachers and other adults who struggle to teach white kids about the racial injustice in our society.