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Getting started: Raising Color-Brave kids

Raising kids with healthy attitudes about race can feel like a lot. If you've ever wondered whether you're doing or saying the right thing, you're in good company. At EmbraceRace, you'll find proven strategies, in plain language, to help you guide the kids in your life through what they're noticing every day. As you grow into this work, the kids you love grow with you. That's how a fairer world gets built.

Helping guide kids' learning about race is good for ALL kids

Kids notice race early. They pick up messages from family, friends, school, and the world around them every day. When we adults stay quiet, kids are left to make sense of what they see on their own. That silence can shape how they feel about themselves and others in lasting ways, and the impact often falls hardest on kids of color.

Happily, decades of research point to real, doable ways to support kids' healthy racial learning. When we lean into those practices, we help children grow up with a stronger sense of who they are and a steadier sense of fairness in the world.

Two parents - Andrew and Melissa - started EmbraceRace because they were not finding the tools and community they needed to feel competent raising kids around race. Wherever you are in your own learning, you'll find a place to begin here.

Tools for your color-brave caregiver journey

The Color-Brave Caregiver Framework and Practices — Your blueprint for raising children who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.
Ages and Stages Guide — Practical ideas for responding to children's questions about race, from infancy through early adolescence.
"Color-Blind" or Color-Brave? Two Views on Race & Kids — A side-by-side comparison to help you reflect on your own understanding and open up new conversations at home.

Find resources and community supports

Resources you need now

Easy-to-use guides, conversation starters, books and more to help you to be ready for and react to situations and interactions around race and kids with more confidence.

Explore practical resources

Resources for deeper learning and reflection

Grow your understanding of how race works, increase your capacity to navigate complex conversations and situations, and enable kids to do the same.

Discover deeper caregiver practices

Opportunities for connecting with others

You don’t need to navigate this alone. Connect with other caregivers in order to learn with and from each other and to broaden your collective impact.

Explore community opportunities

What does if mean to be "color-brave?"

How to be a Color-Brave Caregiver

“What would the world look like if a critical mass of kids of all racial identities grew up with the racial sensibilities, tools and analyses to remake education in this country, remake politics, rethink our health systems, reconsider who we care about and why? If we can do that, that’s amazing. That’s profound. That’s transformative.”

— Andrew Grant-Thomas, Co-founder of EmbraceRace

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FAQs

Review the FAQs to see if you share some of the questions others in our community have had and the resources available to explore their answers.

Children start noticing racial differences early. They begin to distinguish faces by race at three months old and have often formed racial biases by preschool and kindergarten. They absorb messages about racial identity, fairness, and difference from family, friends, media, and their communities - and they do this with or without our help. Read more.

It’s never too late to talk about race with kids but the earlier the better. Check out our ages and stages page for more on how to communicate about race with kids at different ages. Read more.

Consider moving! Racial segregation is a problem for many reasons, including for raising color-brave kids. We understand moving is often not possible. You can counter the negative effects of segregation on racial learning by seeking out diverse neighborhoods, events and activities with your family. Books, movies and pen pals that expose kids to racial and ethnic differences can also help. The one qualification is you have to be engaged in the conversation about race with kids, too. Exposure is helpful but if you don’t understand how kids are making sense of race, you can’t steer them in healthy directions. Learn more.

Glad you asked! Besides having a diverse library of books, it’s important to take your time and not just read the words - invite kids to read the pictures, too! Books are only tools for conversations if we stop to have them and ask kids to share what they’re seeing and experiencing in the story. Learn more.

Respectfully find the words to tell your relative, in front of your child, that you don’t agree with their comments and that they make you uncomfortable. What you do after that is very context dependent. Have you and this relative disagreed like this before? Are they open to learning? What is their relationship with you and the children in the room? Have you previously had conversations with this relative about not making such comments especially in front of your child? Also, make time when you are alone with your child to explain why you disagreed and how the comment didn’t align with your values. Learn more.

There are always age-appropriate ways to explain injustice - historic or present day - and to do so with care is actually best for their emotional and social well-being. Kids learn about race and racial injustice with or without us. And when they experience, witness or learn about racial injustices without care and when they have not been prepared, the hit to their mental health will be more pronounced. How do we talk about racial injustice with care? Critically, we must have ongoing conversations that engage race and difference with kids, throughout their lives, and those conversations should NOT be mostly about oppression; we must expose our kids to people of color living our lives and making cultural contributions we can learn from that are not directly about oppression. How are we the same? How are we different? And when we tell stories about racial injustice in age appropriate ways, we must also talk about how people resist racial oppression, how they are resilient and how we can all take steps to counter racial and other injustices today. Learn more.