How to Start the Race Conversation (And Why It Gets Easier Once You Do)

Every Sunday morning I knew what was coming before we even pulled into the parking lot.

Trinity United Methodist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. White walls, white faces, and me. I was somewhere between eight and twelve years old during the years that stand out the most. The second I walked into that Sunday school room I felt every set of eyes land on me. Nobody said anything. They didn't have to. I already knew what I was in that room.

I wasn't thinking about the lesson or the scripture or whatever the teacher was writing on the board. I was thinking about the end. Between Sunday school and the main service they'd open up the fellowship hall and that's where I found the only comfort that room had for me. Cookies and punch. I'd grab as many as I could hold, not because I was hungry, but because it gave me something to do with my hands. Something to focus on besides the stares.

Nobody in my family ever talked about what happened in those rooms. We got in the car and went home and that was the end of it. Nobody brought it up at dinner that night or any night after. The stares just happened and then they were over and we moved on like they were nothing.

They weren't nothing to me. They were something I carried home every single week and added to everything else I was already carrying.

What the silence was actually teaching me

When race never gets named in your home, your Black child starts drawing their own conclusions about what that means. I drew mine early. If nobody around me was talking about what it felt like to walk into a room full of white people as the only Black face, then either they didn't notice or they didn't think it was worth mentioning. Either way the message landed the same way. This part of my experience didn't matter enough to acknowledge.

I don't think that was what my parents intended. But that is what the silence taught me. And your child is learning the same thing from your silence if you haven't found a way to open this conversation yet.

What starting the conversation actually looks like

It doesn't have to be a formal sit-down or a long rehearsed talk. It can start as simply as saying something like this on the drive home from church or school or anywhere your child has been the only Black person in the room. "I noticed you were the only one who looked like you in there today. I want to know what that feels like for you."

That question right there opens the door. It tells your child that you see what they are walking through and that you are not going to pretend it isn't happening.

Most kids won't pour everything out the first time you ask and that's fine. What matters is that the door is open and they know it. The first conversation plants something. The ones after that are where it grows.

Why it gets easier

The first time you say the word race out loud in a direct and honest way it will feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is real and it's okay. What matters is that you do it anyway.

What I needed as a kid sitting in that fellowship hall with cookies in my hand just to have something to focus on was for someone who loved me to acknowledge what was happening. Not to fix it or explain it away. Just to say I see it and I want to understand what it feels like for you.

That one thing would have changed something in me. It would have told me that my experience inside those white spaces was real, that it mattered, and that I didn't have to carry it alone.

Your child is sitting in rooms like that one right now. The conversation you keep waiting to be ready for is the one they have already needed for longer than you know.