Mom confession, when I started looking for a preschool for my oldest son I was out of town. We spend summers in the midwest and live in California. This means I found myself shopping around for a preschool thousands of miles from where they were located. My search consisted of looking up all the preschools in our city and cold calling them to see if they had openings. I had no criteria put together for the ideal school. I wasn’t worried about the curriculum. I hadn’t thought about play based education vs. traditional learning structures. The racial diversity of my children’s future school was far from a concern. After calling several schools, I finally spoke with a Montessori school that had an opening. And with that, I tentatively signed him up, scheduled to start when we returned to California several weeks later. 

We showed up a few days before he was scheduled to start to tour the school. We walked in and were greeted by the principal. She then walked us to what would be my oldest (3 at the time) son’s classroom. We met his teachers and his other classmates. And then we left. The school seemed completely adequate, safe with kind teachers and friendly students. Our son would start the following week. 

Now as I look back on this moment, this choice in our child’s education, I have to admit something. Racially we were the minority in this school. As we walked away the questions littered my mind. Is this a good school? Am I doing the right thing? Now as I am learning about my own racial lens I recognize the racism in these questions. The underlying concern to these questions was: there aren’t that many white kids, does that mean this isn’t a good school? The most evolved part of me also recognized the power in diversity and we sent our son to school the next week. 

Three years later and I can say without hesitation, I love the preschool our kids go to. We not only kept our oldest son attending but we started our middle son there as well. About a year ago I entered a conversation with two friends of mine about addressing racism with our children. At the time I stated I was hesitant to bring up race to my children. Diversity has continued to be a main feature of the school they attend and it has proven to be one of the things I am happiest about. Both my children have had close friends at the school that are not white. Never have they asked me about the child’s different appearance. It has seemed as normal to them as the color of my hair being different from my husband’s. I argued to my friends, that’s the goal, to have our children completely unaware of the weight that race can carry in this world. We want our children to see no hierarchy based upon what people look like, right? Well not really. 

I was so scared of introducing the concept of racism to my kids. Truthfully, I was most fearful that it would change their outlook. That they would suddenly see themselves as better than their non-white counterparts. That maybe, the world would become a little less optimistic once they knew the pain of racism. It took too many cries of pain from the black community to open my eyes to the disservice I was doing to both my children and the greater human community. 

I am raising white men. They are not men yet. They are 5, 3 and 1. They seem harmless, powerless, innocent right now. But one day they will be strong, white men. And before that they will be white teenagers. And before that they will be white boys, hopefully friends to people of all colors. By not educating my boys on the privilege that they carry now, and how that privilege will likely become more evident as they grow, I am taking away their power to do the right thing. They will be in the position one day, sooner than I realize, to stand up and be anti-racist. They will have the potential to be a loud voice for human equality, that someone might listen to more than their black or brown counterparts. My job in raising these white boys is to give them the education to know what racism is, not only so that they can see the privilege that surrounds them, but so that they can do everything they can to stop the injustices happening in our world. 

Earlier this year, they were doing a school project in my three year old’s class. I wasn’t given the details. The teacher simply kept asking me where my son was from. Each time she asked I would answer with our heritage. We are mostly Scottish, with some Irish, German and English mixed in. But for the sake of the project, each time I told her “we are from Scotland”. Every time I answered this question she would follow up with “what do you want him to be American or Scottish?”. Quite frankly, I didn’t care. And it seemed she preferred to have him be American for reasons unknown to me. I laughed about this exchange with another mom from school. She is also white and has a daughter who is my son’s good friend. 

When we showed up to the open house to see the results of our watered down heritage, we looked at a wall covered with the students in the class. Each student had a photo of their head cut out and placed upon a body dressed in the theme of the country of their heritage. Well as you can imagine, there were our children’s faces placed upon an American flag dress and a red white and blue cowboy themed outfit. My friend and I grimaced a bit, both of us aware of the delicate ground we were walking on. Neither of us had asked to have our kids be from America and I think the teacher meant well, she herself a minority. Now looking back I am saddened by this story. I am saddened that two blond haired, blue eyed three year olds were categorized as more American than their class counterparts. 

Raising anti-racists needs to start with me being an anti-racist. So I am doing the work, not just for myself, not just for my sons. I am doing the work for the people in this world who need our voices to be heard when theirs are being ignored.