Spicy Black Bean Soup

It's time to reconsider how we use social media. We have the choice to use social media positively, or we can let it manipulate us. We can create and share meaningful and beautiful content, or we can allow it to stir up our emotions, fueling anger, fear, and misinformation. It's time to stop being tools of these platforms and reclaim control over the tools we use.

Most parents dedicate the majority of their time and energy to actively raising and educating their children, equipping them with the skills, knowledge, and values necessary to navigate life independently and successfully. We teach the ABCs & I23s and show them how to sit, crawl, and walk.

Good parents concentrate on fostering their children's intellectual, emotional, social, and moral development. Great parents take on the responsibility of teaching their children kindness. The best parents encourage their children to strive to be better than they themselves have been.

But at what point do we stop listening to our parents and start paying more attention to what our peers are telling us?

I grew up in a very small town during the 1970s. Every year, for my birthday, I would invite the same group of girlfriends over to my house for a sleepover. I never thought much about my guest list; it was the same six friends year after year. I have the fondest memories of presents wrapped in cartoons from the newspaper, pink roses on birthday cakes, levitation tricks, and the feeling of being high from sleep deprivation.

In the first years of life, children are bombarded with messages from their environment that shape their beliefs and judgments about other people. Such messages don’t take long to stick. In middle childhood, kids begin to self-segregate by race. Children often naturally gravitate towards friends of the same race due to a combination of factors, including social proximity, shared cultural experiences, and a tendency to seek similarity in others.

By the time we were 13, our friend group had shifted to where we aligned ourselves with people who looked like us. It was such a gradual progression that I never realized how much it broke my heart until I had children of my own.

By middle childhood, children have a more sophisticated understanding not only of race but also of racism.  As children grow and learn, messages about race come from all corners: entertainment, peers, and, of course, families.

My mother told me recently that what seemed like an innocuous sleepover to me was a controversial event to others. Two of the six friends had nervous parents who were worried about letting their daughters of color spend the night in a white home.

In today’s world, concerns like this seem so outdated, but then I remember that our parents were raised during segregation.

I have a vivid memory of a little boy calling me a “saltine cracker” in kindergarten. I responded with, “Well, I guess that makes you a graham cracker.” I clearly had no idea what he was talking about.  Then, one day, while my father and I were watching Sanford and Son, the term "cracker" was used again.  I asked what it meant, and he turned off the TV and told me to leave the room. From that point on, my sisters and I were no longer allowed to watch shows like All in the Family, Chico and the Man, or The Jeffersons. But it was too late.

Prejudice is due in part to cultural learning from our parents, our schools, and messages in the media, and around 11, I started to understand that the color of your skin could be something someone else hates.

This would have been the perfect opportunity to have a discussion about prejudice and race. Families of color are often well-versed in having explicit conversations about race; as white parents, we often commit to the teachings of color blindness. There’s no way we’ll be competent parents if we haven’t first talked with ourselves about the real world.

We often perceive prejudice as something that only others, especially those deemed bad, possess in their hearts and minds. However, prejudiced thoughts can run through everyone’s minds — the key lies in how we decide to handle them.

This has a very strong influence on how people behave and interact with those who are different from them. Understanding prejudice and its causes is crucial for creating a more welcoming and equal world. Of course, there’s a lot of progress to be made, but I am seeing it in my lifetime. When my grandfather sold his house at 90 to come live with my parents, I remember him telling me that a “nice colored family” had bought his house. As a 15-year-old, I would have been mortified, but as a 50-year-old, I was a little proud. For a man who was raised in the deep South to believe in segregation, he had come a long way in his lifetime. But there is so much work left to be done.

When people hold prejudicial attitudes toward others, they perceive everyone who fits into a certain group as being "all the same." They generalize individuals with specific characteristics or beliefs, failing to recognize each person as a unique individual. Although it’s important to start teaching anti-bias messages as early as possible, it’s also valuable for children to understand that racist beliefs don’t have to be permanent.

It's important to maintain meaningful conversations, recognize personal biases, and seek a deeper understanding of others. My goal has always been to use social media as a tool to reach people through kindness and similarity. We are more alike than we are different, and the world is more beautiful in color, not just black and white.

Prejudice can easily infiltrate our minds, so if we’re going to combat it, we need to change how our minds deal with it. Own your bias, connect with other people’s perspectives, and commit to change. It is difficult to admit our complicity and to lessen the impact of bias, but with a little luck, and a whole lot of love, we can make this whole damn thing work out.