How Adults Can Support the Mental Health of Black Children
Psychologist Riana Elyse Anderson explains how families can communicate about race and cope with racial stress and trauma.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
With his last breaths, George Floyd called out, “Momma!” before he was killed in Minneapolis. He was one of nearly 1,300 black people who have been killed by police in the last five years. They are two times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.
Facing destructive policies and attitudes in the United States, mothers and fathers try to safeguard their black children from racism. This often takes the form of preparing them for bias and communicating the real threats to their lives from a history of othering that continues today. But it also involves highlighting how to draw from a well of strengths that black culture and black families—immediate, extended, and historical—possess.
To better understand this process, we interviewed Dr. Riana Elyse Anderson, clinical and community psychologist and professor of public health at the University of Michigan. Anderson developed Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace), a program to help families communicate about race, cope with racial stress and trauma, and build strong relationships and well-being. Below, she explains how black parents can support their children’s mental health, and their own.
Maryam Abdullah: Your research focuses on how black families use racial socialization to protect their children in the face of pervasive racial stress and trauma. What is racial socialization?
Riana Elyse Anderson: Socialization, generally, is the statements that parents are making to their children about how to think or behave in the world. Some common examples of that might be “Look both ways before you cross the street,” or “Don’t touch that iron. It’s hot.” For gender socialization, we’re familiar with suggestions of which sports to play between girls and boys, as a crude example.
Racial socialization is the behaviors and the attitudes being passed down from parent to child with respect to race in particular. Some of those might be wearing certain kente cloth if you’re going to celebrate Kwanzaa or if you’re going to the National African American Museum in Washington, D.C., to celebrate your culture. Those are some of the more positive ones. Unfortunately, we also have to think about “Keep your hands on 10 and 2,” “You can’t wear your hoodie in the store,” or “You have to work twice as hard to get half as far” as some of those elements that are part of “the talk,” the racial socialization talk.
MA: How does racial socialization help black children cope with racial stress?
REA: We’re talking to our children about what it is that mommy or daddy experienced or what they see in the world. We’re able to have that conversation between parent and child, rather than the children not really having a space to ask what’s going on and why so many people are upset or frustrated—or seeing people like them on the news either being snuffed out or arrested for uprising, and then wondering or just keeping it to themselves. That opens up lines of communication, and it doesn’t stop there.
After that line of communication opens up, we get to practice and talk through what it is that we would want to do as a parent or as a child—a series of coping strategies. Do I want to sit here on the couch? (which is totally fine if I want to do that). Do I want to go out and protest? Do I want to write a letter to someone? Do I want to not support a certain business? Now I have options of the things that I want to do, and I feel more efficacious in my ability to execute any of them because I’ve talked with my family about that.
Talking to our family, thinking about strategies, and supporting our children in their ability to execute those strategies is how racial socialization works.
MA: In EMBRace, children and parents work together on a variety of practices. Can you share one?
REA: We use a family tree exercise. Before we even meet with the family about their family tree, we ask them to do some digging. Tell us a bit about who your family members are, who your support system is, then go ahead and put that on this family tree.
Then, demonstrate on this family tree how big and resourceful your community, your garden, your village is. Now you’re seeing, OK, my grandma is with me, my aunts are with me—especially as a child, I can rely on all these people.
And even though I don’t know Michelle Obama, she feels like an auntie to me, so I’m going to put her on my [family] tree. We have a space for greater community influences. OK, Rosa Parks passed away before I was here, but I know that there are streets named after her in Detroit and she’s given a lot of support to black people like me, so I’m going to put her [on].
You start to understand there are people who have come before you and who will come after you who will continue this really rich tradition of who we are and how wonderful our people are. You’re now demonstrating and seeing that I have a whole community who has my back in a time where George Floyd’s life was taken from us in the most violent and visible way. To know that there are millions of people, who now count him as our brother and that he now has as his family, continuing on his legacy, speaks to what it is that we’re trying to do here within EMBRace. We have a whole group of people who are going to support you should you need us. You don’t have to take this racist event by yourself. You can come to your family and that family is an extended family.
MA: What’s important for parents to know about when and how to speak to their young children about racism?
REA: I want you to think about this concept of racial literacy that psychologist Dr. Howard C. Stevenson talks about. Racial literacy pretty much means you’re not going to give a Shakespearean novel to a three year old. You’re going to give an age-appropriate reading book or coloring book to that child, and you all are going to work up gradually to the understanding of what literacy means for their age. We don’t ask you to go beyond your child’s level.
When we’re saying we’re afraid to talk to our children about race, it’s not for them; it’s because we are afraid, if we’re being honest. We don’t know how to talk about it and we’re concerned. What we encourage in EMBRace is to think about your competency, rather than your content—to focus first on building your own skills, confidence, and resilience to stress in these conversations before talking with children.
Skills: Becoming more skillful at these kinds of interactions might involve preparation for and practice using inquiries or questions to ask our kids: “What did you notice?” or “How did that make you feel?”
Confidence: Confidence comes from practicing it more. Maybe that means you practice with yourself in the mirror like you do when you go to your job interview. Maybe you practice it with your loved one. You’re unpacking for yourself first.
Stress: If you go into it without having spoken about it, without thinking about what it means for yourself, you’re going to be highly stressed the entire time you talk to your child. But you can focus on “What are the things that are within my control when I talk to my child? Maybe I can’t change the entire police system, but I can help my child to navigate that one specific thing that they have going on. What can I do today?” That will reduce stress in that moment, along with practice and with inquiry-based questions.
Your child is never too young to have any discussion about it, but you don’t want them to have the most stressful and the most strenuous conversations. You’re the expert, you’re the parent, you already know what [the right level of conversation] is. It’s time for you to take your fear away from your child being the best that they can be.
MA: What further advice do you have for parents right now as they help their children cope with the trauma of current events?
REA: We’re thinking about this idea of “the talk.” Sometimes people have it once and they say, “Done. Great. Did my job.” Then they walk away.
If you think about how frequently you have to tell your child to pick up toys, buckle their safety belt, and clean up after themselves, we understand that having the racial talk once is not sufficient. So, yes, these events are current and, yes, it feels so imminent and so important that we have this conversation right now. There’s a lot going on in the media. There’s a lot going on that your children are hearing or experiencing and they have access to it in ways that years ago children would not have.
At this moment, you should be having conversations with your child. And next week when the protests have died down, you should continue having conversations with your child. And the month after that, you should continue. And weeks after that. At this point, the amount of content in books or media that is around you makes it possible to create a consistent environment. If that practice becomes consistent enough where you are bringing it up and you are letting them know this is an expectation you have for conversation, they will feel comfortable enough bringing it to you: “Mom, I noticed this.”
Use things in the environment, use things in your media, use things in books to ask your child what is it that they’re seeing, how can you support them through this, how do they feel about it?
MA: How can parents take care of their own well-being so they’re in the best position to help their kids?
REA: Our own well-being is compromised right now. We know that anxiety and depression are up three times the amount that they were in January. We are not doing well as a nation right now. If you need time as a parent to step away from this media and these types of conversations, remember that you are a human being, first and foremost—you’re not daddy or mommy first. You really are a human being who needs rest, restoration, self-care, love. There are tasks that parents have that are beyond description. You’re being asked to provide in ways that just defy the amount of energy you might have most days, especially in a stay-at-home-order situation where you are the go-to principal, teacher, nurse, etc.
Unless your child is so young that you cannot step away at all and it would be a physical danger for your child to be alone, if you need a moment to walk around the block or close a door, or to do something for yourself to engage in self-care, by all means, take it. As we’re starting to open up the community a bit more, if you need to create a small cluster of families with whom your child spends some time so that you can find some space and time on your own, by all means safely create that space. It is a cardinal and critical component of your child being well that you are well.
We’ve all heard the mask analogy. We’ve all experienced times where our behaviors can impact those of our children. We know that. It’s not just a saying; we really need you to be well, first and foremost. The practice I would really recommend is just to find time for yourself to carve out your wellness so that you can be the best parent that you can be for your child.
Developmental psychologist, Parenting Program Director of the Greater Good Science Center
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
Five Ways to Reduce Racial Bias in Your Children
How do we combat racial prejudice? New research reveals how parents influence the formation of bias in children.
Children notice difference across racial lines. Even from a very young age, babies scan a face differently if it belongs to someone of a different race, suggesting that racial bias may be hardwired.
But noticing difference is not the same as having negative or positive beliefs around difference. Those types of judgments develop over time and are influenced by many things, including the social climate children grow up in and the experiences they have that confirm or disprove their biases.
This is where parenting comes in. Though it’s clear that parents are not solely responsible for biasing their kids one way or the other, science suggests that they do play a role—and an important one. In fact, their influence may extend well beyond a child’s early years and into adolescence.
Though how this works is not totally clear, recent research has shown that the process starts early and involves both explicit (deliberate) and implicit (unconscious) messages that parents send to their children. This is the good news: Parents can be a positive force in combating prejudice in their children. But the “bad news” is that kids can easily pick up prejudice from society at large unless parents do something about it.
Here are some of the ways that parents can help reduce negative bias in their children.
1. Expose kids to more positive images of other racial groups
Kids are immersed in negative stereotypes perpetuated by the media and culture, just as adults are. To counteract that, parents can expose kids through stories, books, and films to more positive, counter-stereotypical images of people from different racial and ethnic groups—including moral exemplars like Martin Luther King Jr. or Dolores Huerta. In studies with adults, this type of intervention has been shown over and over to be one of the most effective ways of decreasing bias.
Though less is known about how this might impact children specifically, at least one study suggests that they benefit, too. Researchers presented white and Asian children ages 5-12 with four positive vignettes involving admirable black people (such as firefighters or doctors), admirable white people, or flowers and then measured the kids’ implicit biases towards black people. Being exposed to the positive vignettes significantly reduced implicit bias in children nine years of age and older—though not in the younger children.
According to lead author Antonya Gonzalez, this study suggests that showing older kids positive images of black people may counteract negative stereotypes in society.
“Hearing these stories, the kids are internalizing an association between the group they’re hearing about and positivity, and that counteracts the stereotypical associations that they may already have,” she says.
However, just because younger children were not moved by the stories in her experiment doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expose younger kids to positive images, as well, Gonzalez believes.
“If there were more exposure and more exemplars, there’s a chance that might be enough to change associations” in younger kids, too, she says.
2. Help your kids develop cross-group friendships
Research suggests that cross-race friendships are an important factor in decreasing prejudice, probably because they help decrease stress and fears of rejection that may occur in cross-group situations. Having a friend from another group may also remove barriers to empathy and caring, which in turn decreases prejudice.
Research shows that having contact with different racial or social groups—especially when that contact is warm and positive—helps to decrease prejudice and to encourage more cross-group friendships. In a study with school kids of various ages, students who had higher levels of cross-race contact—including cross-race friendships—were more likely to see the way race plays a role in social exclusion and to view that behavior negatively.
In a longitudinal study with adolescents, those who had cross-group friendships were less likely to develop biases against immigrants in their community, even if their parents or peers were biased. These studies suggest that cross-group friendships might help mitigate biases that could otherwise form.
In one study, German teens who established a cross-group friendship during a three-year period demonstrated lower prejudice toward immigrants at the end of the study than those who hadn’t. In addition, the teens were more likely to develop cross-group friendships when there were more kids from different groups and more positive social norms concerning cross-group friendships in their community. This suggests that opportunity—meaning, living in diverse neighborhoods or going to integrated schools—is important.
Psychologist Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton encourages parents to take an active role in supporting cross-race friendships in their kids by organizing play-dates, inviting kids over to their houses, offering rides to sporting events, and creating other opportunities for their kids’ cross-group friendships to form.
“The default is to do these things with people with whom you already have an affinity,” he says. “You need to help scaffold these social experiences for your kids and be more intentional if you want to be sure that cross-group friendships happen.”
3. Cultivate cross-group friendships yourself
Parents can help normalize cross-group friendships by role-modeling them for their kids. This may seem superfluous, but research has shown that children’s racial attitudes are less tied to parents’ explicit messages around race than to the racial makeup of the parents’ social network.
Why does having cross-race friendships have such a strong impact on bias? Mendoza-Denton says that when you develop a cross-race friendship, you incorporate your friend’s struggles, motivations, and thoughts into your own self-concept—not in a way that’s confusing, but more expansive. For example, he says, you start to feel what they feel and empathize with them: maybe sweating when they give a talk or suffering when they experience heartbreak. And that experience of “inclusion of the other in the self” decreases bias against that person’s social group.
“It’s so much more organic to reduce bias by developing intergroup friendships, because it changes your attitudes through a very human mechanism, which is the interpersonal,” says Mendoza-Denton.
Though adding people to your social group based simply on race is probably unwise, it’s possible to search for common interests with people of different backgrounds, making it more likely that a friendship will happen naturally. Once friendship grows, empathy develops organically, says Mendoza-Denton.
4. Talk explicitly about race and the effects of racism
Many black parents give explicit instructions to their kids about the importance of race in society and what they can do to mitigate any bias they encounter. But well-meaning white parents are less likely to bring up race with their children, perhaps fearing that doing so would mean they don’t value egalitarianism or believe in a “post-race” society. The problem with that approach is that not talking about race can create a vacuum of information, which leads children to absorb biases around them—often in ways that are counter to parents’ own held values.
In one study, researchers had white parents read books depicting racial issues to their preschool-aged children (under the guise of studying the effects of literature on learning) while being videotaped. Racial attitudes were measured and compared afterwards in both parents and their children.
Later analyses of the videos showed that many parents avoided mention of race—even if their children asked about it—and used “colorblind” approaches to the issues raised in the book. For example, they might say, “It’s important to be nice to everyone” rather than something about race. Though the parents assumed their kids would absorb their colorblind ideals and hold favorable views of African-Americans, the children’s views weren’t in line with these expectations, suggesting that a colorblind approach does not decrease biased attitudes in kids.
In fact, research suggests that parents need to be much more explicit about racism and its effects. When white parents were asked to have race-related discussions with their kids—either with or without watching educational videos about race—their children showed more favorable attitudes toward racial outgroup members only if their parents discussed race directly. Interestingly, though, the researchers had trouble getting the parents to have these discussions—even when instructed to do so as part of the study. Apparently, there are psychological barriers to discussing race among many Caucasian parents.
How can parents overcome these? It’s not easy, says Mendoza-Denton, because if you aren’t comfortable, you will avoid the topic. He suggests that parents need to increase their own comfort first by developing connections to people from other racial groups. That will make it easier for parents to have these conversations without resorting to fear and avoidance.
If you can overcome your own discomfort, there are many children’s books that expose kids to the values and experiences of different groups and could be conversation starters. Or you may want to follow Allison Briscoe-Smith’s advice on how to use the movie Zootopia to talk to your children about racial prejudice.
5. Work to combat biases in yourself
Research clearly shows that the impact of parent bias on kids shouldn’t be underestimated. Although explicit biases have negative effects on kids, implicit bias can also impact children.
In one study, researchers found that very young children exhibited more explicit negative bias if their mothers held implicit biases—regardless of their explicit messaging. There can be a mismatch between what parents say and their unconscious reactions toward minority groups—and children seem to pick up on this.
Though implicit biases may seem an impossible thing to control—after all, they are supposed to be unconscious—they are quite changeable with conscious effort. Research suggests that automatic biases can be countered by deliberate attempts to counter them, exposure to moral exemplars, or positive cross-race interactions. In other words, much of what influences children may also influence you.
Becoming more aware of subtle prejudices may be the first step, and you can always take an implicit bias test if you want to learn about yourself. But Mendoza-Denton believes that this information is most useful in parents who are truly willing to attend to their biases; otherwise, learning about their implicit biases could possibly backfire, making them feel exposed and defensive and increasing their avoidance of the issue.
In addition to developing cross-race friendships, he advises parents to read books, watch films, and consume media not aimed at them. For example, to understand the viewpoints and experiences of blacks, a white parent might read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me, or see the movie I Am Not Your Negro. Doing so may counter bias by enriching understanding of another’s point of view, especially if they are motivated to foster that understanding.
Parents may think that there is very little they can do to influence their children’s biases or feel that prejudice-reduction is a daunting task. But if we are to impact bias in the long-term, we must come to grips with how bias is transmitted early in life and fed by a system of segregation and negative societal views. Parents, it turns out, can make an important contribution.
Jill Suttie, Psy.D
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
Challenging Racism on the Screen
Challenging Racism on the Screen
When one hears the term “white supremacist,” it might call to mind vivid film depictions like Edward Norton’s vicious neo-Nazi skinhead in American History X or the ineffectual Ku Klux Klansmen that Quentin Tarantino used for a laugh in Django Unchained. But modern white supremacists are just as apt to hide behind anonymous online hate manifestos before enacting solitary attacks as they are to rally in public with swastika flags and white hoods; and narrow representations of visual villains in film and television don’t adequately prepare us for the insidious realities of everyday extremism.
Moreover, when film and television reflect images of “bad racists” as those who wear symbols of prejudice with pride while verbally and physically assaulting people of color, this extreme imagery leads to the false comfort that as long as we’re not acting out with explicit bias, we are not engaged in racism. This good/bad binary limits our understanding of what racism is and how white people participate in it.
Studies done by the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity have shown that everyone possesses implicit racial biases, even if they “do not necessarily align with our declared beliefs or even reflect the stances we would explicitly endorse.” So what shapes these implicit biases from an early age? One of many factors is the narrative content we consume in film and television. You don’t have to look far to find racist stereotypes perpetuated on the screen; but some of the most problematic narratives actually emerge out of films that purport to be on the racially progressive “good” side of the spectrum.
For example, the recent Oscar-winning film Green Book was widely criticized for perpetuating the “magical negro” stereotype, offering a buddy comedy in which the one-dimensional wise black character merely serves to help the white man grow in his fully-fleshed-out journey.
Another stereotypical narrative is the “white savior,” as exemplified in The Blind Side: the story of a middle-class white woman who “rescues” a young black man from a world where every black person is rendered impoverished and/or criminal. And she does so by guiding him towards an arena where whites can accept a black man’s success: sports.
While some filmmakers might defend their work by claiming it’s “historically accurate” or “based on a true story,” these defenses shut down the larger conversation about the creative choices storytellers often make to either glorify or simplify human characters along racial lines.
These well-intentioned but ultimately misguided films demonstrate why it is crucial to change the way we dramatize racism in film and television to encompass both the nuanced offenses as well as some guiding light solutions.
In order to effectively challenge racism on screen, here are some actionable story insights for writers.
1. When portraying white supremacist characters, avoid caricatures that allow the audience to distance themselves without self-reflection. Instead, shine a light on the sinister reality of everyday racists and extremists who might not wear their prejudice on their sleeves.
2. When depicting characters engaged in racist behavior, show the subtler ways in which racism operates (e.g. using coded “us” vs.“them” terminology, as when talking about “safe” vs. “sketchy” neighborhoods as a veiled commentary on how many people of color live in these areas) – and have this racism identified and called out by another white character.
3. Write a story arc for a white character who is openly coming to terms with their own white fragility and privilege; and then growing to consciously engage with racism and challenge white supremacy.
4. Portray people of color as fully realized characters with rich inner and outer lives, rather than stunted stereotypes in service of a white character’s journey.
While these story-focused insights are a great jumping off point, I would encourage every writer to do the work not just within their creative writing, but also within themselves. In order to undo centuries of racial conditioning, we need to engage with and internalize more inclusive perspectives. Although the film and television industry is starting to have more active conversations about diversity and inclusion, the 2019 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report shows that only 12.6% of writers and 7.8% of directors are people of color.
For this reason, I offer a few more actionable insights that entail putting down the pen to do some larger work.
Accept that racism is an issue for white people to actively engage with and educate yourself with books like White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, and The New Jim Crow.
Proactively foster both creative and personal relationships across the racial divide.
Advocate for more diversity and representation for people of color behind the camera and on the screen.
If you witness racism on set or in a writers’ room, speak up and make yourself an ally.
Brian McAuley, MFA
WGA Screenwriter
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia University School of the Arts
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers.
Flip the Script: Reducing Unconscious Race Bias
“You can’t solve a problem unless you talk about.” Beverly Daniel Tatum
Unconscious biases develop our first year of life. These biases affect how we act in ways we may not always understand and recognize. Until we start acknowledging these biases and discussing them without blame, shame OR guilt, they will persist and shape our behavior and culture.
A surprising study found that black boys as young as 10 are seen as less innocent than white boys. Race identification, and the pride or shame associated with it, begins as young as 4-5 years of age. Representation affects our biases and also our own self-concepts in positive and negative ways. For example,
A study of nearly 400 children found that the more TV white boys watch, the higher their self esteem. The opposite was true for white and black girls and black boys.
In fact, just watching a racist scene on video increases blood pressure, long after the scene is over. Fortunately, storytellers can do something about this:
Show characters that identify discrimination and talk about it openly.
Portray positive role models from a variety of backgrounds.
Showing a narrative that is the opposite of what is expected (for example, black heroes and white villains) has been shown to decrease unconscious bias by 40%.
It’s time to flip the script.
Yalda T. Uhls, Ph.D.
Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Scholars & Storytellers