When Kids Ask About Race: Jelani Memory’s Q&A at Nugget’s First Book Club
- Briesha Bell
- May 31
- 20 min read
Did you miss Nugget’s x A Kid’s Co. first book club with Jelani Memory? Don’t have time to watch the replay? No problemo. I downloaded the transcript, then collected the questions and concerns raised by the attendees and the answers that Jelani provided.
I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “wow, she must have a lot of time on her hands.” Well, not completely. It’s more like, I find these conversations so important, I’m committed to making sure the information is accessible to as many grownups as possible. I’m grateful even if just one person finds this useful!
If you have no clue what Talk Starters is, start with questions below. If you just want to jump to the Q&A section, click here.
What is Talk Starters?
What Book Was Picked for the First Book Club?
What Happened at the First Talk Starters Book Club?
✨ Brief Overview of the Q&As with Jelani Memory
1️⃣: How to Handle Being Worried You’ll Use the Wrong Words
2️⃣: Do Kids Need Time to Process After Reading the Book?
3️⃣: How Young Is Too Young to Have a Conversation About Racism?
4️⃣: How to Explain to Kids Why Some People are Racist
5️⃣: Tip for Dealing with Racist Family Members
6️⃣: How to Respond if a Kid Says, “I Wish I Was White”
7️⃣: Navigating Hard Feelings While Discussing Racism
8️⃣: How to Start a Conversation About Race Without a Book
9️⃣: When Do You Explain Slavery to Kiddos?
🔟: Talking About Skin Color Without Causing Harm
1️⃣1️⃣: Maintaining Hope Amidst Hate
1️⃣2️⃣: Continuing the Conversation
Disclaimer: The following transcript is being shared with permission from the Nugget marketing team! Minor edits have been made for grammar and editorial brackets have been added to clarify, correct, or add context within a quote without changing the original speaker’s words. Video Timestamps indicate where the question is raised within the video.
1️⃣: “I worry I'll use the wrong words."
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 13:25):
Guess what? You will. You for sure will, but just be aware of that. Here's what I ask of you is to start with where you're at and tell your kid where you're at.
Here's the easy way in. You can say, “Hey kid, (insert your kid's name) I wanna start this conversation about this tough topic, but I'm not sure how, because I never had this conversation with my parents or my aunties or my uncles or my grandparents when I was a kid. And our teachers never brought it up at school.
And it makes me as a parent feel uncomfortable, and I'm not entirely sure what to say. I'm even worried that I'll use the wrong words. But I do think it's important that you learn about it and that I learn about it too. Can we learn about it together?”
Show me a kid who's not gonna light up in that moment and go, "yay, we can learn together!" or "wow, you don't know everything! I might get to teach you something!"
This creates a bond and a recognition in which you can have a journey with your kid. You want to teach them about something because you believe it's important and they want to connect with you. Use those two things together and be humble.
And if you end up saying the wrong thing, but don't realize it till later, you come back later to your kid and you say, “I said this thing before, but I was wrong about it. I used the wrong word, I said the wrong name. Or I said it in the wrong way. Here's the right way. As I learn, I want you to learn alongside me.”
I think this approach is foolproof because the reality is, we all need to be able to start these conversations. We all have to. We all must. But it can't be fair or right that we all need some level of education or even some level of personal experience to start.
Now that being said, you can't stay where you're at. You have to move somewhere. You have to keep learning. You have to keep educating yourself. Look, I know this is a book club for my book A Kid's Book About Racism– I love my book, I think it's a fantastic book. It's sold in a hundred countries. It's awesome. And it's done a lot of impact and good. But you don't have to have my book. My book is a bridge to help start that conversation.
But there are a hundred other ways to start that conversation between you and that young person in your life. If you're looking for those words of where to start, great. My book's a great option. You can go on YouTube and watch the book. It's there for free. You can start with wherever you're at, but I don't want you to feel held back or that you need the UPS driver to show up with a book before you can lean in.
2️⃣: Is it important for me to give a child time and space to digest the content before we dive into talking about it [the book]? Or should we go right in, straight into discussion mode? Is there a recommendation?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 19:12):
I’m a big fan of letting kids lead. Kids know when they’re being lectured or talked down to—or when something is being forced on them. I try to open those doors, rather than force my kid to walk through them.
If you finish a book like mine, which is very direct, your kid will likely share something unprompted afterwards. For example:
“I’m glad we read this book.”
“I didn’t know about racism.”
“I already learned about that.”
Or they might start asking questions about their own skin color—or someone else’s.
Again, you’re opening the door and creating the context for it.
Don’t feel pressured to have it all in one conversation.
You can even revisit it later. Try saying:
“Hey, remember that book we read last night? What did you think of it? You never told me.”
Find soft ways to open and introduce it that shows it's not a conversation you're hoping to wrap up in a couple weeks, but you're looking to have on an ongoing basis as you learn and grow. And as they learn and grow across many years.
3️⃣: Is there a minimum age where this topic [racism] is appropriate? Is there an age that's too young to read this book with?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 20:40):
No, there is no too young when it comes to satisfying our kids' curiosity about the world. As parents, we teach kids not to hit or not to call names or not to trip somebody or not to cut in line. It's fine to teach racism right alongside those things
There's this phenomenon that I call "accidental racism." It's when somebody does something that deeply wounds and injures someone else, because it's racist, but they didn't know it because they never had anybody talk to them or share with them, or they never had anybody confront them or provide them with something.
My book is designed to create a context where kids are learning about this early, very practically, and recommended for ages 5 to 9.
But that's from a lexile level perspective. That's from a reading level perspective. Typically by five, kids are in school, they're having their own experiences outside of the home. By [age] seven, they're reading proficiently, probably on their own. And by [age] nine, they're probably pre-smartphone— although that's changing more and more. And they're also still reading typically with their grownups or their parents.
If you’re thinking, “Oh, I’ll wait until my kid’s in middle school—that’ll be the right time to have this conversation.”
By the time they reach age 12, your kid will give you a big blank wall and go, “Yeah, no. I have the internet. I know about the world. I have friends. I don’t need you to talk to me about this stuff.” Starting it early is critical.
And even if your kid goes, "I don't get it." That's okay too.
The book will be around for them to return to. There is no too early, but there is a too late.
4️⃣: Do you have any recommendations for when your kids are curious about maybe why people are the way that they are? My kids mostly ask why people are hateful. How should I respond?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 22:58):
In all my years of doing this, the question that stumped me came from my son, my stepson, Titus. He asked, "why does racism happen?"
And it was a question that I had never really truly contemplated, where does this come from? I think the truth of the matter is, we tend to hate what we don't understand or we tend to hate what we're afraid of, or we tend to despise things that we have a lot of distance from.
There's a word called xenophobia, right? Which is the fear of that thing that we don't know or understand. I've found that proximity tends to solve these things.
If you live in a city like mine, Portland, Oregon, it's not technically or literally segregated,
but there are parts of town where most of the white folks live and the parts of town where most of the brown and black folks live. Being able to get your kids around folks who don't look like them is important. And it starts break down those things [barriers] like of a child being afraid of someone who doesn't look like them or who doesn't live in the neighborhood they live in, or play the same sports that they play, or of course have the same skin color that they do.
5️⃣: What are some ways to navigate relationships with potentially extended family members who may perpetuate racist comments? As you're having these conversations with your children, what do you do if the children begin to pick up on the fact that maybe members of their own family might be racist?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 22:41):
This is tough stuff, tough. I think first, recognize that your kids are more perceptive than we give them credit for. They'll notice when you brush something off or you go, "oh, that's grandpa. He talks like that. It's not a big deal."
And they'll take in these things. Ask yourself, who do you want them to be when they grow up?
[As caregivers], we engineer their lives in such a way where you're trying to help them become their best fullest self. And a lot of that, you gotta make some of those decisions for them now. We do this from school choice to what books we have them read, to what time they go to bed, to what foods they eat. And it's tough with family relationships.
Yet I think [it’s] important if you want them to embody certain values [you might have to say], "I know grandpa does that and I'm not comfortable with it. I think it's wrong and I don't want you to do it. But having that conversation with grandpa' is too hard. I love grandpa and I don't wanna lose grandpa, and we're gonna still stay in relationship with grandpa, but I want you to know this piece of it okay?"
Now of course, we know kids hate keeping a secret, right?
And they'll go right to grandpa and go, "Mom says you're racist."
But I genuinely don't have any other better answers for you then. Truly, honesty is the best policy. Lying to your kids won't help their relationship with you. It won't help their relationship with their grandparents and it won't help their relationship with other folks that they encounter.
Where if they learn, if their family [members] being racist actually isn't a big deal— because it's family and that's how family works, right? [That might not yield the ideal outcome either.]
And I sympathize. I've had comments from my own in-laws made to me and about my son that have stopped me in my tracks. It's hard to deal with and hard to do something about, and yet very important to at least have that conversation with your kids so they have a good context.
This is not me saying go confront every racist person in your life at every moment. I don't think that's productive either.
6️⃣: My daughter is mixed and she stated that she wanted to be white like me. How would you respond in that situation?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 27:41):
Yeah, I mean… this was my son last night, he was frustrated with his hair and he goes, "I wish I had white hair because then I'd be, (and just listen to this word) 'normal'".
And this is a 15-year-old, who has a dad who's written a book about racism, who is constantly navigating and chatting with them about these challenging bits of culture and race, and history, etc.
I think it is always important to affirm your kids' identity and who they are. The reality is, if your kid isn't white, they're not gonna end up being white. No matter what they do, there's no magical potion that can turn them white. [It’s about] letting them feel comfortable in their own skin and validating them for who they are. I find these things tend to cross over with things [topics like] body image or self-image or self-esteem. But I wanna go a little bit further, and this is more of a conversation for grownup to grownup.
Typically in our society, and I'll draw a box around America, we have learned to despise, treat poorly and make less than Black faces, Black hair, Black culture, Black neighborhoods, Blackness itself.
This is called anti-Black racism. And while that typically will come from white folks towards black folks and all sorts of policies, rules, and sentiments, it also gets ingested by Black folks, leading them to go, “I don't like myself for who I am. I wish I were something different.”
I've gotten the question from each of my mixed kids, which is, "Am I Black? Am I white? Am I brown? What am I?"
What I've encouraged [for them] is the exploration of that identity as opposed to the force.
I want them to explore all the complicatedness of what it means for them to be who they are.
7️⃣: As a Black woman, it is challenging for me to hold conversations about racism and my personal experiences in a neutral way. It comes with a lot of anger, disappointment, and frustration. Do you have any tips on how to teach kiddos about racism without holding so much emotion behind it?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 30:29):
Let that emotion flow. Be where you're at, I think that's okay. I got criticism from a few author friends when I decided to go take my book and publish it. They were like, well, there aren't any real clear examples– “I wish you dove into this [a specific] moment that happened when you were a kid and somebody said this [a racist] word to you and explained how it felt.” And I just thought, actually, it's too painful.
It's too painful for me to even place them [the examples] inside of a children's book. I also think there's a way that it could trigger other children who've experienced racism in a way where they stop feeling seen, and they're revisiting that painful moment.
Now that being said, I do think it's important to be where you're at and to share with [with your kid] where you're at. That vulnerability, that transparency, that honesty, that will speak more than whatever words you say to your kids. They will remember that, that will implant in their brain in a remarkable and significant way.
And then you'll find those moments where you… that emotion comes down and you can have a different kind of conversation, even if it's built into that very first one. We want our kids to be brave, but we have to be brave first.
8️⃣: How do you start the conversation? My son is two, but it's already on my mind. I know you mentioned you don't even have to have the book per se, so how would you out of the blue start that conversation?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 32:24):
Yeah. Kids immediately observe skin color at the very earliest ages. Find me a 2-year-old who isn't pointing at somebody going, “they're a different color.” Start there. Get kids to notice their own skin color and get kids to notice other folks' skin color.
Now I know what I've done is broken a big rule. Aren't we not supposed to teach our kids to see all this color and stuff?
We get worried that they might start pointing at people in the grocery store or saying something out loud, like, God forbid. Isn't that racist itself? [Then you spiral into thinking that your kid is racist]
Timestamp 33:43 | I wanna very firmly say, it is not racist to notice skin color. It is not racist to notice skin color. It's not racist when your kids notice skin color.
Whether they're black, white, or brown, it doesn't matter. To notice that skin color is okay. To see the differences in that skin color is okay.
It’s when we take that [observation] further to demean or diminish or rank people based on what color of skin they are and say someone is better or worse because of their skin color.
Getting them to notice their own skin color is a great place to start. And when they're ready, you can take that extra leap and go, “did you know that sometimes people are treated badly because they don't have your skin color?” or “did you know that sometimes people are treated badly because they have skin color like yours?”
And then they might go, "oh, why, why would that happen?"
You could start to talk about some folks being afraid of folks who are different. You might even start to jump into a little bit of the history of our country.
I've found a lot of parents start with, let me teach you about racism. And they go right to slavery. Like why does it have to start with a talk about slavery? Don't do that. Slavery's bad and complicated and all the things, but is not the nearest proxy that you need to reference racism.
Just start with noticing skin color. I think that's the best place to start.
9️⃣: When do you recommend going into the terrible and violent history of racism? After my family watched the halftime show of the Super Bowl, my son asked about the 40 acres and a mule statement. Do you have a recommendation for when you do transition more to the history versus the present?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 35:02):
Yeah. To me, it's less about how old kids are and more about the kinds of questions they start asking.
Asking a question like,“what's this deal with 40 acres and a mule?”
It's a very mature question to ask, sort of pinpointing into something. The reality is, it's a can of worms, but it's the best can of worms that you can open. Don't try and open it all at once and go, we're gonna do the graduate lesson on the history of racism for all of time and all the ways that black and brown people were discriminated against, enslaved, etc.
Let that one door from that one question open and share with them what you do know.
Or go, “I think it's related to this. Let's Google it together” or “I don't know, let's learn about it together”.
Let those things [scenarios] be doors that can always open. You'll find the more comfortable you are sharing about stuff, the more frequent your kids will come back to you and ask questions.
What'll happen is as they grow older, they'll forget that they asked something, so they'll ask a new question that was an old question, but it's a more mature question and then you can have a conversation in a totally different way.
I remember watching, The Hate You Give, a wonderful film, with my 13 and 14-year-old at the time. And I remember my daughter Grace was flabbergasted.
She was like, is this what it's like?
And I was taken back too because I was [thinking] like, how does she not know? Right? Like, I'm her dad, we talk all the time. But it was something about seeing it through the visual medium of the film, And I was like, “yeah, it is.” And we got to have so many conversations after that.
Timestamp: 37:30 | What ended up happening was, and this is my favorite question still to this day, that my kids ask, is she'd come home from school and she'd go:
I heard this at school. Is this racist?
Then we'd have a conversation about it and investigate and interrogate, are those words used about somebody racist or not racist? Does that then make that person a racist? And we get to discuss it.
Now, all I'm describing is something that's very messy and happenstance and progressive, and it's all these things.
It is not [doesn't look like], us sitting down on the couch, setting a timer for 30 minutes and having the racism talk, slavery talk, or the 40 acres and a mule talk.
It doesn't work that way. It will pop up in those inconvenient moments, but I’ve found that this is how kids process stuff. This is how they work through those bits and pieces and navigate big issues like racism.
1️⃣0️⃣: Can you share which words are appropriate to use when talking about skin color? We hear Black, people of color, brown, African American, what's the correct word or words to use without offending anyone? My child is colorblind and sees the world differently already, so word choice is even more important for them.
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 38:35):
The most challenging and interesting conversations I've ever had are with my own kids when it comes to the words we use about skin color. My six-year old son, Solomon looks at his skin and goes, “well, my skin's brown.”
He even compares his against mine and says, “mine's lighter than yours, dad. It's still brown, but yours is a darker brown. You're a chocolate brown, I'm a mocha brown.”
Then, I remember he was flummoxed. He's like, “well, mom's not white, she doesn't look like this piece of paper. She's more peachy.” He pulled out a crayon and went, “she looks this color.”.
When it comes to the right words, look, you're gonna screw it up, it's inevitable. But I often defer to the ways folks refer to themselves. If you're gonna talk about somebody, try and use a word that they've used about themselves.
Timestamp: 40:00 | This is very akin to a topic like pronouns. It's like, use the pronouns somebody wants to have them use about themselves. Don't just foist upon them something.
I prefer to identify as Black. I'm comfortable referring to myself as mixed. I'm even comfortable being called a person of color. I'm not as comfortable with BIPOC, it starts to get into this squishy, weird, sort of large demographic, but it's not offensive. African American is fine. But again, that’s just me.
You might run into somebody and they go, "oh no, I prefer that you use these words about me and when referencing me.” Again, I can't say enough, you're gonna say something wrong. It's okay to screw up.
What's not okay is to think, I couldn't possibly ever say anything racist because I don't have a racist bone in my body. And I've never said anything bad about anybody ever.
This is not true. One of my favorite scholars, Ibram X. Kendi says, “we all have racist ideas. Being anti-racist is about dismantling those racist ideas about culture and society and other people.”
It's okay to go [admit], yeah, I've probably done some racist things, but I'm on the path to trying to not do racist things, use racist words, or treat people in a racist manner.
I know that's a bit of a new concept probably for some folks, but I think it's important.
1️⃣1️⃣: How do you maintain hope that we are making progress on these conversations right now? It feels like hate has become even more emboldened in the world today.
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 41:34):
I think I maintain hope by desiring a better future for my kids and doing the most and the best that I can to help create that, knowing I may or may not be successful, but giving up is not an option. And… I don’t know.
It's really tough, especially now. Because it feels like we've had this shift where being racist is in vogue, it's like cool now. I would like to point folks back to a period in our country's history, the civil rights movement, where being racist was the popular sentiment, and mentality and approach to society and to people of color. and we look back at those individuals who did the work, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, you name it, as heroes– as figures who did the right thing in a tough moment.
We are living in one of those moments right now, and I don't think this will be the last time one of those moments happen, nor is it the first time one of those moments has happened where not being racist, feels offensive itself.
Timestamp: 43:41 | I will say, there is a clarifying and heartening reality when folks are saying the thing they mean. When it's not… "oh, we've got a new DEI program and we care about people of color and we're looking at changing our workforce and we're putting inclusion at the forefront" — when the reality was and is, a lot of companies, a lot of folks didn't believe those things. It was just a popular thing to say.
Yeah, it was cool to put a black square on your Instagram, but you didn't change your language or your behavior or how you treated folks or even your beliefs.
When folks are saying what they believe, it's easier to deal with than when it's a bit cloak and dagger, when folks are saying one thing, but doing another.
1️⃣2️⃣: Where do we go from here? Do you recommend any additional resources either for the conversation with the children or for adults themselves to continue to educate themselves about this topic?
Jelani Memory’s Response | (Video Timestamp 44:27):
Probably my favorite book for adults to read is a book by Isabel Wilkerson called Caste. It's an extraordinary book that frames the existence of racism in the United States, not as a one-off unique thing, but helps put it in the context of the rest of the world and the intricacies and the subtleties of how we have developed our own caste system, based on skin color, that is indeed unique within the world. Yet, it plays out differently in other countries around the world, where caste is structured along different lines, whether those are economic, ethnic, etc.
Caste is a wonderful book and will blow your mind. In fact, there's a wonderful quote from it and I won't get it [quite] right, but Isabelle says [something along the lines of], “….the year 2022 marks the first year that the United States will have been an independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil. No current-day adult will be alive in the year in which African-Americans as a group will have been free for as long as they had been enslaved. That will not come until the year 2111 (Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents).”
That date when America will be in balance, and having had Black folks be free in this country as long as it's enslaved folks will be in 2111 or something like that, some crazy date off in the future— that's a great book.
I love anything that Kwame Alexander does, he's fantastic. He's got tons of children's books, can't go wrong with any of his books.
Ibram X. Kendi has a wonderful book called Anti-Racist Baby. Don't read it to your baby though. It's not great for babies, but it's great for everybody else.
And then I'm gonna give an intuitive answer here.
And somebody's gonna get mad at me, so I'm just going to take it for granted.
I'm looking at some of these questions in the Q&A, you can sincerely ask these questions on Chat GPT, and I'm not kidding here. It will give you a thoughtful response back, it will.
And this is not me saying Chat GPT is super woke and is on top of it.
I'm saying, if you're looking for or have a specific question that needs a specific answer,
and you're like, "I literally don't know what to do," then it's a place to start.
Don't take it as gospel, don't take it as the final answer, but it's a great place to start when you go, I literally don't know what to say. How do I navigate this?
Hope to see you at the next Talk Starters book club!
Stay Conscious + Curious,
Sincerely,
Briesh
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