What should we do when kids say racist things?

In the run-up to the local elections last week, my teenage daughter showed me a conversation she’d had with another child on TikTok. He – a 14-year-old boy – had posted an image of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and added the caption “Go!”. When my daughter challenged him about it, asking if he was “serious”, the boy said: “I just want the country to be white, like it’s supposed to be." 

Since then, we know that Reform won the populist vote in many parts of the country, picking up more than 1,450 council seats and taking control of councils in former Labour and Tory heartlands Sunderland, Barnsley, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Suffolk, Havering and Essex – sadly, my home county (and I wrote about why I think the typical "Essex man" turned turquoise, here). 

We also know that within days of being elected, four Reform UK councillors have already been suspended – including newly-crowned Essex county councillor Stuart Prior, who allegedly celebrated on social media the rape of a Sikh woman in the Midlands, declared white people the “master race” and called Muslim people “rats”. You really couldn't make it up, could you?

These are the people being voted for – and the ones that, apparently, even young kids are holding up as some kind of "have a go" hero. But what should we do when kids say shocking things?

In the 2018 book So You Want to Talk About Race, author Ijeoma Oluo explains why it is important not to avoid talking about race just because you may feel uncomfortable doing so. “If you’re white, and you don’t want to feel any of that pain by having these conversations, then you are asking people of colour to continue to bear the entire burden of racism alone,” she warns.

Margaret Hagerman, a sociologist and the author of White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America, says that while it's important parents talk about race and racism, it is also essential they provide an example to their children through their everyday actions – such as conversations at the dinner table, which books and magazines they have around the house, how to react to news headlines, when to roll one’s eyes, what media to consume, how to respond to overtly racist remarks made by Grandpa at a family dinner and who their own friends are. “These small actions send subtle yet powerful messages,” Hagerman says. “Parents may not even be aware that they are conveying ideas about race through these behaviours, but children learn from them all the time. In this sense, when it comes to communicating with white children about racism, parents’ actions often speak louder than words.”

As a parent, I try to be conscious of all of the above – never letting a so-called "casually racist" comment go unchallenged, however uncomfortable it is, and involving my kids in conversations about major news events. We discuss inequality, injustice, the insidious intent behind the England flags they see strung up on lamp-posts in Essex and the dangers of Reform. They've seen me go on protest marches against the far-right, because I can't sit back and do nothing. But I constantly worry about whether I'm doing enough. After all, with the country's terror threat level now at "severe" – and the unwelcome presence of Tommy Robinson's gang on a rally through our home city of London this weekend – racism (overt or implicit) is all around them. 

In the end, though, I found some hope this week – and it came from my own child. She told the boy she had the TikTok interaction with in her own words that Reform UK "prey on people being frustrated and then turn that anger towards immigrants, climate action and basically anyone different instead of fixing actual problems". "A lot of what they say sounds simple and catchy, but falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds," she said, "and some of their politicians have said really embarrassing or offensive stuff, which just makes the country look worse, not better."

I couldn't have put it any better myself. And the really marvellous thing to come out of this exchange was that the boy took on board what she said – perhaps because she said it so calmly and without insult. "I didn't know that," he eventually admitted. "I do now."

To say I'm proud of her would be the world's biggest understatement. And when the world seems bleak and isolationist and increasingly small (and small-minded), it's her generation that can provide some much-needed light. That's why I'm fully in favour of reducing the legal voting age to 16 – because with these kids talking and listening to each other, I can start to believe, just for a moment, that everything will be okay. 

Get in touch

Do write in and let me know what you think about all things Reform and racism (and how you address this with your kids or younger relatives) by emailing me at victoria.richards@independent.co.uk.

Or, if you want more direct advice on love, work, family and relationships, send a message to dearvix@independent.co.uk.

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