The EmbraceRace podcast brings you the best and latest advice on how to guide kids around race through informative conversations with researchers and practitioners. This season, we counter long-standing myths about race and kids and talk about How Kids ACTUALLY Learn About Race. The podcast is hosted by co-parents and EmbraceRace co-directors, Melissa Giraud and Andrew Grant-Thomas. Listen to this preview of the season now! The first episode drops February 12th, wherever you listen.
The podcast is an extension of the work of EmbraceRace, a community of support for caregivers, parents, educators, and other adults in the lives of kids who strive to be informed, thoughtful and brave about race so that their kids can be too.
Transcripts
Melissa Giraud: Ok, I’m going to start again.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yeah, a little more…
Melissa Giraud: Energy…
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Volume, maybe?
Melissa Giraud: Volume!
Melissa Giraud: [laughing]
Andrew Grant-Thomas: [laughing]
[THEME MUSIC BEGINS]
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Really, we wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t become parents.
[DOORBELL SFX]
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Hey, Bean.
Lena: Hello…
Melissa Giraud: Hi, Lena…
Lena: Well, I think the way I see things is very, very influenced by the way you talk about things…
Melissa Giraud: Mmmhmmm….
Melissa Giraud: I remember when our oldest kid was in pre-school and we went to our first diversity committee meeting. It was in the evening. In the school library there were like a dozen of us. Parents. Teachers.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yep.
Melissa Giraud: We were a pretty racially mixed group in a mostly white school.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: We spent a ton of time working on that diversity statement.
Melissa Giraud: Yeah, yeah…
Andrew Grant-Thomas: …that when on the website eventually.
Melissa Giraud: All of the side conversations. You know that we had before, after, in between the meetings were about not programming, not policy…vut about people’s personal experiences around race and their kids.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Mmmhmmm….
Melissa Giraud: So, Andrew, it really took a couple years of this, right? Like, our first kid had left preschool, our second kid was now there.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Yep.
Melissa Giraud: And we're still going to diversity committee meetings. And we really did start to wonder…why are we only having these conversations on the side? Why aren't we making time to talk about our everyday experiences of race?
Andrew Grant-Thomas: So we start looking around for resources for adults who are raising kids.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: So we Googled.
Melissa Giraud: We read widely.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: We found some school resources for older kids.
Melissa Giraud: We found a lot of academic articles.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: And a lot of popular pieces about how to talk to kids about race after police shootings.
Melissa Giraud: Almost everything we found was geared at white families.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: It was surprising and really disappointing.
Melissa Giraud: This was:
Andrew Grant-Thomas: So I remember that we literally turned to each other at one point and said…
Melissa Giraud: Andrew, with your background as a political scientist doing research and advocacy around racial justice…
Andrew Grant-Thomas: And your background in education and media….
Melissa Giraud: Also, you were born in Jamaica, came to America when you were seven, although I often forget.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: And I forgive you.
Melissa Giraud: [laughing]
Melissa Giraud: And I'm multiracial, the daughter of immigrants, the father from Dominica, my mother is French Canadian from Quebec.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: We were raising two Black multiracial kids. We could start an organization to help people like us.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: And so…
Andrew Grant-Thomas & Melissa Giraud: We did!
[FULL THEME SONG PLAYS]
Melissa Giraud: This is the Embrace Race Podcast.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: A show about how to raise kids who are thoughtful, informed, and brave about race.
Melissa Giraud: I’m Melissa Giraud, here with my husband…
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Andrew Grant-Thomas. This season, we’ll be talking to experts…
Candis Watts Smith: It's unclear why we put racism in a different category than, say, tying your shoes, or sharing, or emotional intelligence. These are all things that we actively teach children, they pick up on cues, they connect their own dots.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: Researchers.
Brigitte Vittrup: If we don't talk to them about race, about race related issues, then this silence is essentially telling the children this is something dangerous we shouldn't talk about.
Melissa Giraud: Professors whose work intersects with childhood development and race.
Tara Mandalaywala: Babies can notice things like skin color.
Marjorie Rhodes: So I think we need to realize as parents, uh, is that kids are going to come up with problematic ideas about racial inequality just by living in the world we live in.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: We'll be diving into some modern myths…
Melissa Giraud: …that multiracial kids will lead the way to racial harmony.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: …that the passing of older generations of Americans will end racism.
Melissa Giraud: …that talking about race makes you racist.
Andrew Grant-Thomas: We're gonna be poking some holes in those myths.
Melissa Giraud: Tell your friends, family, neighbors, listen, subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
every week starting early in:
Melissa Giraud: Um, how was it being behind the mic?
