Professor: The Cost of Raising Black Kids in White Spaces

For years Black parents believed that getting our children into better schools and neighborhoods was the surest path to opportunity. But now many of us are wondering: what does it cost to be the only Black child in the room?

Look, our kids being in predominantly white spaces can open doors. There’s no question about that. But we must understand that there is an underside to those opportunities. The question many parents should be asking isn’t just what our children gain from these spaces, but also what they might lose if we aren’t intentional about keeping them grounded in their own culture.

Let’s face facts. When we talk about raising Black kids in predominantly white spaces, we usually focus on academics and future opportunities. What we also need to discuss is what constantly being “the only one” does to a child’s sense of identity.

The Burden of Being the Only One

Research shows us that Black children as young as 10 are viewed as older and less innocent than white children. (10! They are only babies.) That means many of our kids learn early that they have to think about how they’re perceived in ways their classmates who need sunblock 3000 to go outside in the summer never do. They become experts at managing how the present themselves to others  before they are even old enough to understand why.

But there is another, greater danger. And it’s something much quieter that you might not know is happening before it’s too late.

The Loss Of Black Culture

I’m going to get philosophical for a second, but stay with me. I’m going somewhere.

Too many Black kids spend so much of their lives trying to fit into the predominantly white spaces their parents have forced them into that they never fully learn how to be comfortable in Black ones. I may have said that too philosophically. My bad. Let me make it plain.

Because of our obsession with putting our kids in the best possible schools, we have raised a generation of bougie Black kids who have become experts at navigating white culture but remain strangers to their own.

The consequences don’t always show up right away. We’ve all known a young Black woman who hit her twenties and realized she doesn’t have a single close Black girlfriend. (Nor does she know how to play spades!) Now she has to do at 23 what should have happened at 13: figure out how to feel at home around her own people.

This is an unintended consequence of the civil rights movement, but it is not an inevitable one. In previous generations, our kids learned our culture because they were surrounded by it. Today, the more money some Black parents make, the whiter the spaces their children grow up in become. This means is that parents  must be intentional about teaching their children Black culture and helping them feel at home in Black spaces.

Wondering how you do that? I got you. Here are three ways to make sure your Black kids don’t grow up putting sugar in their grits.

Make Blackness Normal, Not Occasional

Please, for the love of all things holy, don’t let your child’s exposure to Black culture begin and end with Black History Month. Make them read books written by Black authors. Show them Black movies. (Even the bad ones.) Get out of bed on Sunday morning and go to a Black church. (Not a multicultural church. A Blackety-Black church where they wear choir robes and take up a special offering for the pastor’s anniversary.) Blackness shouldn’t feel like something your kids visit. It should feel like home.

Build Relationships With Other Black Kids

Representation matters, but relationships matter even more. Make sure your child has genuine friendships with other Black children in and outside of school. It could be classmates or even their play cousins. Just make sure they have them. Those relationships give them a place where they don’t have to explain themselves, code-switch, or wonder if they belong. Our kids need to have a place where they can just be their beautiful Black selves.

Keep One Foot in the Community

Let’s just be honest, some of our kids spend most of their time in mostly white spaces. So, make sure they also spend meaningful time in Black ones. Visit family. Attend community events. Join Black organizations. They need to understand the beautiful complexity of our culture, and the only way to do that is to touch grass and actually experience it.

Black folks fought hard for our children to have access to white spaces. Let’s not accidentally raise a generation that gets the opportunity but loses itself in the process.