Dr. Nanika Coor welcomes Dr. Khadijah Cyril, a licensed psychologist specializing in children's mental health, to Project Parenthood. Dr. Cyril shares insights on racial and cultural identity development, emphasizing the importance of fostering a positive self-image in children. The conversation covers methodologies like cognitive behavioral therapy, stages of racial identity development from Dr. Janet Helms' model, and practical advice for parents on discussing race and culture openly with their children.
Dr. Nanika Coor welcomes Dr. Khadijah Cyril, a licensed psychologist specializing in children's mental health, to Project Parenthood. Dr. Cyril shares insights on racial and cultural identity development, emphasizing the importance of fostering a positive self-image in children. The conversation covers methodologies like cognitive behavioral therapy, stages of racial identity development from Dr. Janet Helms' model, and practical advice for parents on discussing race and culture openly with their children.
Dr. Cyril's Psychology Today page
Find a full transcript here.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Dr. Nanika Coor: Hi there, everyone. I'm Dr. Nanika Coor, and I am here now with Dr. Khadijah Cyril, a licensed psychologist who specializes in helping children, adolescents, and young adults navigate a range of mental health challenges, from anxiety and depression to behavioral issues, with a passion for providing researched-backed treatment.
She also has specific expertise in assisting individuals and families with racial identity challenges and those from high-conflict households. She's dedicated to helping her clients develop strategies to support their social and emotional needs. Welcome, Dr. Cyril. I'm glad to have you here on Project Parenthood to talk with us about helping kids with racial identity development. Thanks so much for being here.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Coor. I'm so glad to be here.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Well, before we jump into talking about kids and racial identity, can you just tell us a little bit more about your practice?
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yes. So, I work as a psychologist throughout the lifespan. I work with children, teens, and young adults with complex needs, such as depression, anxiety, complex trauma, and personality disorders if they are emerging or have already emerged. I like to use cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, and other eclectic approaches to really help people succeed in their lives and the circumstances they are going through at that current moment. And so, yeah, I love working with children and families, and I'm really glad to be here and have this conversation with you today.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Thanks for letting us know a little bit more about your practice. Let's sort of jump in and just talk a little bit about racial identity. When we're talking about racial identity, what are we really talking about? Can you talk a little bit about what racial identity is and why it is important? What's important about it for us to know as parents?
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah, that's a good question. There's a way in which children come into this world with features, whether it be a certain hair texture, skin color, or eye color that was not necessarily chosen but has a large impact on how they see themselves and how the world sees them. So, it's a really important conversation to have, regardless of what those features look like. I think making sure we develop children who understand some of the privileges and disadvantages of those features could create a place that helps support their mental health and wellbeing.
So, I think it's a very important conversation for us to have, and I'm glad we're having it. There's research that demonstrates that having a positive racial identity does support mental health and is a protective factor. So, while we might think it is a separate conversation, it is very much a prevalent and personal conversation for us to be having today.
Dr. Nanika Coor: I love what you're saying about that. You're talking about having a healthy racial identity supporting one's mental health, right? You also talked about this idea that we have particular features that correspond with a race that other people have assigned us. And that it comes with particular advantages and disadvantages. And when you said that, the word “disadvantage” really hit me. Like, “Man, that’s true.”
I think there's a swath of people who would disagree, saying there are no disadvantages, but there really are disadvantages. If I get followed around a store and someone else does not, that is a disadvantage for me. You know? I think it's so important that you put it that way. That really stood out to me. This idea that our racial identity being a healthy one, thinking how, like thinking in healthy ways about our racial identity, really serves our mental health and makes a positive impact on it.
I'm wondering if we can tease out a little bit the difference between racial identity and cultural identity. How are those two things different, and how can parents make sense of those two different things?
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah. Well, racial identity is based on features that were given to you, right? Like I said, your eye color, hair color, and skin color. Your cultural identity is more related to your family traditions, the food you eat, how you communicate with each other, and how you express yourself, right?
One is more prescribed onto people. Another one is more about how your family culture has developed through generations. I think that's also something important to discuss and celebrate too. When it comes to both aspects, racial identity and cultural identity, it's really important for children and teens to have a comfortable sense of who they are and for that to be valued and appreciated. It starts in the home, right? So, you know, I'm Haitian American, and I grew up eating rice and beans and chicken and sos pwa[HH1] , which is like a bean soup. That has an impact on how I navigate the world based on food preferences I have, while someone who may be African American might have different food choices and how their home environment might have looked, might have been different. But when we step outside of our homes, we are perceived very similarly, whether one is Haitian American, Nigerian American, or African American. We have been, we are looked at very similarly and, we are seen to have very similar experiences and that's where that racial identity umbrella is very helpful for us to understand that. So, even if we have different culture identities, that has an impact on how we see the world, right?
I grew up in an immigrant household where you have three choices: doctor, lawyer, engineer. But when you go into this world, you might see that, hey, because you have this skin color, we are going to perceive you in a certain way. So, I think it’s really important for both those identities to be developed in the household—how people perceive you outside the home, but also how you exist inside the home. Both should be valued and appreciated.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Yeah, I love what you're saying. The idea of cultural identity, being around generational traditions passed down through generations. It's interesting because a lot of people talk about people of color being the only ones who have a cultural identity, but that isn't true, right? If we're talking even about white folks from different regions of America, they're eating different things, listening to different music, and interested in different kinds of arts and culture experiences, right? Some people are at a monster truck rally or a NASCAR race, and some people are at the Met seeing opera, or some are at a baseball game, or some are at a football game, or some people are celebrating their perhaps Irish culture. I’m thinking of my own child, who there’s something at their school called a culture share, where kids bring in something from their family culture. Sometimes their family culture is just their nuclear family—like their parents and their siblings and themselves—not necessarily generations. People will bring in all kinds of food.
There’s one kid in my kid’s class who is very into riding horses and brought in all kinds of stuff about riding horses. That is the culture of their family; they are equestrians. Right. And I think it's so interesting. They're actually not even American. They're from another country, but they are equestrians and that's their thing, and they're super into it. This child writes every story about horses, and that’s really the idea of culture—everyone's got one. I think it is so important for parents to be explicit about…like here's, you know, what do you notice about the culture of our family? Right? Maybe the family just, that's in our home, but also our extended family. The culture of our neighborhood, the culture of our city, right? Those are all cultures too. And racial identity is, as you were saying, it's more about appearance and like a category that someone has put you in.
Although we might see a sea of Black faces, that doesn't mean that their culture is all the same, as you're saying. Some people are Haitian, some people are Nigerian, some people are Ghanaian, some people are Ethiopian, some people are Caribbean, from all kinds of places in the Caribbean. Right? You know, I live in Brooklyn, and you know, somebody from Trinidad is going to be very different from someone from Barbados, and somebody from Jamaica, and someone from Haiti, and someone from the DR. So, like, it's all very different, right? And it's really important for us to sort of be delineating that for our kids and letting our kids really sort of have some knowledge about their own culture, right? But also give them this idea. They also sort of need to know about that racial piece, like that the world is looking at you in a certain way that has nothing to do with who you are or what your culture is. Actually, that is just something else entirely.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: I love that you said this point, like culture is the idea of culture. Everyone has one. Everyone's got one. I, that's so true. And so, when it comes to a parent, right? I think sometimes when you're of European descent, it might be perceived as the dominant culture, and because you're the dominant culture, I don't have a culture because it's normalized, but you have a culture too. And so that might be something to start with, to explore. Like, what is my culture? What, how, what is my family traditions and backgrounds?
You're going to find, assess that there are certain things that are beautiful about your culture and certain things that can be worked on.
I can use myself as an example, right? My family, like education and working hard, has been a value that has been instilled in my family, my parents, parents, parents, parent’s parents parents. Like it's something that I find was a protective factor for me as I kind of navigated school, that education is a very strong value and working hard is important. But you know, maybe like talking about your feelings is not as valued in your family, right? Like, what do you have to complain about? You have food, house, shelter? You're doing well, right? And so that was something I may have. Those may not be as valued in my particular culture compared to like other things. And I think that's probably pretty similar for other cultural experiences too. I'm curious what your thoughts on, I don't want to
Dr. Nanika Coor: My culture is Black American culture, but like Black American southern culture specifically, which is, you know, a particular type of culture. You know, I am sort of, my parents were the generation of kids whose parents migrated to larger cities, right? And so, they may have been, so their own parents had been born and raised in the South, born and raised in, you know, the Jim Crow South. And then sort of migrated themselves to New York City and to Washington, D.C. So, they sort of had a city kind of upbringing, right? Even though their parents had a very rural upbringing, and both of them, both my parents were sent back to the South for the summers. And so, they had this sort of, you know, city life, country life that they were navigating these two cultures, and that kind of showed up in the way that I was raised, right? I was raised in this way of like knowing about the city and street smarts and all of those things, but also this, these sort of down-home country kind of background and food culture and that kind of thing.
But, you know, education was very important in my family too. That was the way that my family sort of rose the class ranks was through education, right? And, this is, and so I was taught that same thing, that idea of like education is the thing that is going to save you. And then also, as you were saying, emotions are just not on the table here. I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean? What do you mean an emotion? What do you mean feelings? Like this is not something that we had the time for or the, you know, we're busy surviving Jim Crow. We're busy surviving segregation. We're busy surviving great migrating. We're busy trying to get our kids through school and have them not, you know, be the victims of some kind of horrific racism or violence, and this is what our priorities are. This is not, we're not really here for your, you know, teenage angst. We're not really here for that.
And so, so yeah, those are part of my culture, was that sort of absence of talking about psychological health, mental health, how anyone is actually feeling or doing inside, like that really wasn't prioritized or really even known about, really. And so, that's another thing about culture, right? Like I can't shift that we have, you know, I can't shift my blackness, but I can certainly shift the culture of parenting itself, right? I'm going to parent my child in a maybe slightly different way. I want my kid to get all that background, all that yummy southern Black culture that's fun and awesome and yummy. But like, I also want to do something a little bit different. I like your inner space, your internal world. My child's internal world is just as important to me as my child's performance at school.
So that's how I've sort of shifted my own family culture in my own home. But, you know, now that we sort of have this idea of like racial and cultural identity, I thought we would talk a little bit about that, like the development of one's racial identity. And so, like Janet Helms [HH2] is an academic person who developed the people of color identity model, as well as other racial identity models, and I wondered if you could just sort of give us a little snapshot of that idea of like how racial identity, how Janet Helms views racial identity as developing across stages.
And, a little bit about that in terms of like how maybe underlying, we're not really thinking about it, but we all are sort of going through these stages of identifying with whatever our race might be.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah, and Dr. Janet Helms. Yes. She's a counseling psychologist, I think, and she's a professor right now at Boston College. I actually remember when I was in grad school going to one of the conferences and like seeing her briefly, and like, I guess that would be like that psychology nerd version of like seeing a celebrity because she's done very things in this field.
And yeah, she developed identity theory models on what it is like whiteness and being biracial or multiracial and black people, people of color. And so, I think that, you know, without getting too into the weeds, I think when I, when you look at those racial identities, there's this idea that you start off with like wanting to follow the dominant culture. And then as you go through those models, the end result is respecting your culture and respecting the cultures of other people and trying to help people who may have been marginalized and disadvantaged. Right? Because right now in American society, the dominant culture is people of European descent. And so, for people of color, there might be this inferiority complex that develops that like, oh, I need to do things that look or speech or behave or mannerisms or culture that exhibit people of European descent and whiteness and kind of downplay mine, right?
And for white people on the other side, there's this idea of like, oh, well I'm the dominant culture. I don't have to really consider other racial groups, right? And so, as you work through developing a healthy racial and cultural identity, it starts with first, right? Having an understanding of your own racial identity and cultural identity within your family, your neighborhood, your schools, your church. And then as you do that, right? Understanding other people's and their lived experiences and the ways in which you have, one person might have privileges and you might have privileges, and the other person has disadvantages. And how can I work to help people who have disadvantages regardless of just like racial and cultural identity? But class differences, as well, is something that can show up, and it can be heavily tied to racial identity as well in America.
So, it's a really good model. I highly recommend, like, if you want to look further into Helms's identity and see other people's racial identity versus your own and where you are in that model, right? Are you in more of a conformity phase where you're valuing whiteness and what that means over other identities, regardless if you're a person of color or a white person? I think that everyone should take a look and assess where they may be. And if you're listening to this podcast about racial and cultural identity, that's amazing. I encourage you to continue to do that work. I would want everyone, regardless of your background, to feel comfortable, and safe, and value their racial identity.
Right? The same way I didn't choose to be black presenting, someone didn't choose to be white presenting. I would want everyone to value themselves but also recognize there are things that are not fair about why certain aspects of how we come into this world have created places of marginalization for others and privilege for other groups.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Absolutely. I think that's really, really important, the idea of valuing your own racial identity, your own culture. But also understanding that whatever that identity is, in the context of other identities, right? The idea of your identity may be privileged over others. Your identity may be, as you said, marginalized, pushed to the side, or considered somehow negative, right? Especially to the larger, dominant society of European-descended people.
You talked about the conformity stage, which is the stage in the people of color identity model where individuals may unknowingly accept racial hierarchies, like the idea that whiteness is at the top and the other races are lower than that. I'm wondering if you've seen in your practice or have an idea of what some subtle signs are that parents might also notice that let them know their kid might be in that conformity stage where they think that whiteness is at the top, whether they're a white child or a child of color, a black child, or an indigenous child. Maybe there are some signs that your child believes that whiteness is best and everything else is not. You know, if you notice that, what might you do about that? Or, you know, what could be some things that you could do to help shift that ideology for your child, right? In baby steps.
Right? Because I imagine that it's a process, but if you are to notice that, I wonder if you've noticed that among the people that you've worked with, this idea that maybe the person of color that you're working with has internalized some racism. Right? And they see themselves, they see white people as higher than them or themselves as lower than white people somehow. Wondering if you've had any experience with that in your practice.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah. No, that's a good question. There are several experiences that are coming to mind. I think I'll bring up one. When I used to work as a preschool teacher's assistant when I was in college, right? So, it was like, again, I'm in a predominantly white community and, you know, I'm black and black presenting. I remember working with the kids, and they would ask questions about my skin color, right? These are preschool kids, three to four years old. Some of the times the teachers would be like, "Shh, don't ask," like it was a rude question, but it was sending this message that, hey, there's something wrong with that skin color, or there's a white skin color, and then there's that brown appearing person over there.
Those subtle messages of, "Oh, how come your skin looks like that?" are completely understandable for a three to four-year-old child to ask those questions, especially when they're growing up in a culture that predominantly presents one way that's pretty homogenous. And so, it's a subtle way, right? Like, "How come that person is darker?" I remember another instance of children making fun of another child's skin color for being darker than theirs, right? I actually prefer this term: more melanin-rich, because even the words light and dark have negative connotations. Light is better, and dark is like the villain and worse, right? Maybe we should even work on how we describe the language around skin color because there's some emotional charge around that as well. Like, "Oh, this person has more melanin than you," right? That's an objective statement.
Dr. Nanika Coor: That is a statement that I love, and that is a statement that I absolutely used with my own child, right? Like, "Oh, it looks like that person has more melanin in their skin than that person over there." It isn't necessarily just light and dark, right? Like, why is it light and dark because of melanin? That is why people's skin is lighter and darker. That's it. Some people have more, and some people have less. That's it.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah. I would love for us to get to a place with healthy racial identity and cultural identity where we look at it like, "Oh, some people have more melanin, right? That protects against the sun. Some people have less, right?” As we've moved across, we all started off closer to the equator as humans are nomadic people. As we move further away from the equator, some people needed less melanin because they needed to absorb more sunlight, and some people grew up really close to the equator and needed more melanin to protect from the sunlight. Right?
I remember having those conversations too as I kind of went through my different practicum experiences. As a psychologist, you have to do various trainings, lots and lots of trainings. So that was one of the conversations I had with children, right? Just talking about melanin and why people have more melanin and less melanin, right? Understanding that as an objective thing. I remember even in that preschool situation, I talked to the preschool teacher and said, "Hey, I don't mind doing a little fun assignment on color, right? On skin color and how people have different hair textures and skin tones and celebrate it," right?
I remember, the teacher got different paint, and I led it, and we painted with the kids. It was so cute, and it was more a place and became a celebration of diversity and differences as opposed to, "We don't talk about that," right? There's the norm, and then there's the other, right? No, we're a diverse community, and let's talk about it. Let's celebrate it and talk about it early on, right? Asking your kids what they notice, right? If they bring up those questions, it's okay to have some humility and say, "You know what? I may not know everything, and I'm trying to understand too. We can learn, read, and understand these questions together.” So, if your child's asking, "Why does that person's hair look like that?" don't say, "Shh, don't ask that question," right? Lean into it, right? From a pure helping perspective, it's great to encourage their critical thinking skills. "Why does that person have that hair texture versus our hair texture?” “I'm not sure, sweetie, but let's go home and find books and understand that together.” Right? "Why does that person have darker, more melanin-rich skin versus that person?" “I'm not sure, sweetie. Let's learn about that together.” I think those are really important conversations to have. It's important to have those conversations even before your child starts bringing them up because they are existing in a world where they're seeing differences and groups and economic privileges. Having those conversations earlier on is super imperative for a healthy racial and cultural identity. Right?
And I wouldn't want it to be that people look at, because I wouldn't want the same way I would want a person of color to have a healthy racial cultural identity. I also would want a child to have a healthy racial identity. I wouldn't want them to feel shame and guilt about certain privileges, while a person of color feels shame and guilt about having certain disadvantages. I'd want it to be like, okay, there are aspects of us that we did not choose. They exist. Let's talk about it. Let's celebrate it. Celebrate others too, right? That is ultimately what I would want culture, America, a culture in general to look like globally.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Yeah, I really love that. I think it's really important for everyone to feel good about themselves, at least neutral, right? Neutral to positive about themselves. And, you know, this idea of what you're talking about, sort of normalizing the diversity of skin colors, normalizing talking about the diversity of skin colors, like it's not impolite to notice, to say out loud what your eyes can see. Right? Like your eyes can see that there are people who have different skin colors here. I'm interested in why that would be because I'm three years old and I don't understand why that person's skin color is that way and that person's skin color is another way.
Right? We don't have to make it either/or, ours versus theirs, as you're saying. We can make it, everyone is different. Why might that be? Why might people have different hair textures? Why might people have different eye colors? We were just talking about this the other day. We were talking about; we came up with my child who was nine years old. The idea of like, you talked about all those different trainings you had in psychology, and I was remembering it when my child asked a question about eye color. I was thinking about, I remember learning about alleles, you know, in psychology, like learning about the genetics of like, you get this from this parent, you get this from this parent. And you know, if you have one blue-eyed parent, you know, if you have one brown-eyed parent and then the brown eyes are dominant, you know, and the blue eyes are recessive genes, and like talking about like red hair and blue eyes and how that happens, right? Like it's the science of it, right?
And talking about that with my kid was really interesting because it was just talking about chromosomes and like DNA and like just the interesting ways in which, you know, I think about it like that, you know, that big jar at a fair of like jelly beans, and it's like, guess how many jelly beans are in there? Right? It's everybody just has like a mashup of these jelly beans for their chromosomes and that sort of like, and whichever ones get selected, it's like that genetics that tells you what your skin is going to be like, your eye color is going to be like, your hair texture is going to be like. It's really interesting. It's really interesting to learn about how that happens and all of those things are, they're not, there's no value in that. It's not like if these chromosomes got selected and you got this eye color that makes it somehow better or worse than another thing. It's just very neutral. It's just that's what happened. Right.
And I think, and speaking about it in that way, talking about melanin, right? That's one conversation. Talking about melanin and eye color and heredity of genetic characteristics is one conversation. And then it's like another conversation about the meaning people made about those things, right? The people made very neutral happenings have meaning in the world, right? And that is a separate conversation, right? Like somehow whiteness somehow ended up being, you know, the thing that was quote unquote better. Right? But that's not actually true. It's actually just a neutral, random thing. Right? Not random in terms of what you were talking about—the idea of we moved all over the world further away and closer to the equator. Like that too is a neutral thing that over time people made meaning of for, you know, capitalistic reasons, but that's a different conversation.
But, I mean, when we're talking about just the racial identity development piece, the idea of keeping things in that neutral zone, right? Of just the facts of things. Right. And making it so it's okay to talk about those facts, right? Normalizing talking about these normal, neutral facts that your eyes are actually picking up. And we know that even babies six months old can perceive skin color differences. They know it's there. Not talking about it doesn't mean you are that the child is unaware that it exists, right? And when we shush children and say, you can't talk about it, we are putting in their minds that there's something bad about talking about these things. And there's something mysterious or something that is bad or something here that people are sort of—the adults here are saying that like something is bad here, don't talk about it. And we don't have to put things that way.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Agreed. And it perpetuates this idea that there is something, yeah, like you said, bad, and there's hierarchy here, right? If we have those conversations earlier on and maybe neutralize it and make it more of a dialogue, it could help combat some of the ways in which you've been socialized to perceive hair color, skin color, eye color in emotionally charged ways as either a positive or a negative thing.
There was a really influential study by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, right? That looked at different—they had children of different backgrounds look at dolls, right? Some were lighter and some were, well, yeah, some had more melanin and some had less melanin. And the children had to choose which doll was smarter, which doll was prettier, which doll was better. And that study actually helped with the case, I guess, Brown versus Board of Education to get rid of segregation in schools because it was showing that segregation is actually detrimental to children, right? That's its own conversation.
I could go really into that, but what made me bring that up is that like, we can't just ignore this. We have to acknowledge it because if we don't acknowledge it, we are going to just assume that it's better because the Black children and the White children both had a preference for the dolls with less melanin as opposed to the dolls with more melanin, right?
They thought the dolls with less melanin were better, smarter, right, prettier. So, they're getting messages so young, so it's such an important conversation to have with them so young to combat it, right? And you might think, oh, well this study was so long ago, it doesn't happen today. And I remember learning in school if you replicated that study, you would still get the same result. I still see it like in the 2020s, like kids talking poorly about other kids' skin tones. And you might think like, oh my gosh, we’re living in a society where we've overcome that, but no, these things are still very prevalent today. And so, talking about them in the family and trying to engage in critical thinking isn't going to dismantle it. But it'll be like maybe a gas mask against the poison that makes it seem as though certain skin tones and hair textures are better than others, right? Because it's still very prevalent in our culture today.
And so, it's going to take, you know, the home and communities and neighborhoods trying to work to dismantle it because it's been centuries of these belief systems that have been ingrained in us, right? The same way our food culture—certain foods we've eaten have been ingrained in us through generations. These beliefs about certain skin tones too.
And as I've actually, I remember one time being so fascinated about understanding colorism and it is global, right? In Indian culture, Asian culture, European culture, African culture—like it is global, right? And so, it's a very important conversation to have to try to neutralize it. And when conversations or discussions are occurring where someone is being viewed as less than, to combat it. Right?
I would give a tip that I think everyone should talk about a person as if that person is in the room, right? So, say I'm in a community, a homogenous community of only White people, only Italian people or Indian people or Chinese people—you should be talking about another culture or ethnic group as if they are in the room with you, right? And supporting that group and making sure that jokes or conversations that would continue to support those stereotypes are not happening privately. And that would be a form of allyship that I would love to see more.
Dr. Nanika Coor: I love this. I love what you just said, right? I love this idea of pretending that person is standing in the room. What would you say? And I mean, I know that we're talking about racial identity here. And you're bringing this up in the context of allyship with all other cultures and racial identities, which I think is amazing. But I am also thinking about it in terms of, you know, again, I'm raising a 9-year-old right now and, you know, just relationally, right? Like this idea that, you know, this is when bullying starts and those kinds of things. And like if we spoke about other people as if they could hear us, what words would we choose?
Right? Whether or not we have something challenging to say or we have something positive to say. How would we talk about it if that person were standing in front of us? And now listen, I mean, I went to PWIs—those are predominantly white institutions—and there were people who spoke right to my face, right to my face in ways that I was flabbergasted by. So, it doesn't necessarily mean that just because you're pretending that other people are in the room, you're going to say something that isn't…that you don’t say hurtful things, because sometimes you still do. But at the same time, you might choose your words more thoughtfully.
And I think that's what's really important. You may intentionally try to not be hurtful because sometimes I think that people have said things to me not with the intention to hurt me, but because no one ever had a conversation with them about race before. So, they're asking a question that is wildly ignorant and wildly insensitive, but they had no idea because they were raised in spaces where people shushed them if they brought it up. So, they don't have a way of talking about it. They're just saying the first thing that pops into their mind, and they don't realize how it's going to land on another person because we're not talking about these things. We're not having a conversation about how this could land on another person.
But I think that's an amazing tip, and I am taking that for myself. And I think speaking in melanin-rich and less-rich terms and speaking as if another culture or identity is standing in the room with you are two major tips for parents in engaging in conversations with their children about racial identity.
So, as we're wrapping up, you know, a lot of people—especially those who are raising children or working with children—have some fears about bringing up these conversations because they don't have a frame of reference for how to talk to kids about race. They want to have more conversations. They want to sort of pull back the curtain on racism, and they want to encourage their children to be anti-racist. They want to encourage their children to be inclusive, accepting, and curious, in a way like, "I want to learn more about lots of different things. And I want to know more about people who are, you know, not just about people who look like me and have the same culture as me, but I want to know and learn more about all the other people and all the other cultures outside of myself.”
Parents are afraid to bring this up because they're afraid of saying, you know, the wrong thing. Whether that's something that, as you were talking about before, something that will make my white child feel bad about themselves or my child of color feel bad about themselves or other people. And so, they have some fears, you know, about creating shame and guilt in their children about themselves or any other race. And so, they don't bring it up; they just remain silent. And so, do you have any ideas about how parents might engage in these kinds of conversations, even when they're kind of scared about saying the wrong thing?
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: I think being genuine, right? Like, "Hey, this is a conversation that we didn't talk about when I was growing up, and so I want to have these conversations. I might stumble, but I want to engage in these conversations.” Because I think it's better to have those conversations in your family group, right? So then when you're outside interacting with different cultural groups, that stumbling doesn't happen because you've never had those conversations because you were shushed as a child around them. So, I think first, starting early, having conversations about different racial and cultural identities earlier on. I think celebrating different racial and cultural identities is important. A child has that instilled within themselves, like, "Oh, I should value myself," right? Like celebrating others too and making sure that you're not using media that would perpetuate certain stereotypes of groups. Right?
So, if you want to learn more about Filipino culture, read a book where the protagonist is Filipino, and maybe the author should be Filipino too. So, it's learning about that culture through the perspective of that person. If you're living in a homogenous society, which is common—even in New York, there are pockets. Even it’s diverse, but it’s very, it’s still in a way. Making sure you branch out and have your, as a parent, making sure your friendships, if you notice, my friends all look like me. You should be asking yourself that question, why do all my friends look like me?
Social learning theory, kids learn through what is modeled in front of them, so you should be making friendships with different groups, exposing yourself to different cultures, and having conversations with different cultures. Really neutralize it. If your child is feeling shame or guilt about their culture or racial identity, regardless of what it is, right?
Ask them about it. Like, "What are you feeling right now as we're having this conversation?" If they say, "I'm feeling really bad about being white," you can respond, "I'm sorry; I don't want you to feel that way. What about this conversation is making you feel that way?" ”Well, like, I'm noticing that I'm driving this car and that my best friend drives in this car.”
And then that could be a great starter conversation to talk about different privileges and how, yes, there are certain people who have more than others, but how can we grow in our agency to help others? If you notice somebody on the street asking for money. “Mom, why is that happening?” you can say, "Honey, why is that happening?" Making sure not to blame that person. Right. Thinking, talking about different systems. “You know, there's certain ways in which life happened where certain people may be put in a place where they don't have as much as another person, but like, how can we work to help that person, honey? Well, maybe we could bake them cookies.”
Or some way where we, you can, in addition to learning about your racial culture identity, celebrating yourself, learning about other culture identities like giving your child the ability to recognize that they have some agency and making, you know, small changes and. in certain ways, to make the world a little bit better, right? Because we all just want to, hopefully as parents, I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, I definitely think you want to a, child that is like, you know, healthy and happy and has a good social emotional development, and makes the world a little bit better than it, than they left it. And so having those conversations and increasing their agency can kind of help with that and making sure that they know the child feels shame and guilt about their identity they come from is, I think, also valuable and really important.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Yeah. I really like what you're saying. You know, this idea of being curious about your child's shame and guilt, seeing if you can draw out what they're feeling guilty or shame about, and using these kinds of conversations as jumping-off points for larger discussions about various systems that might be oppressive and might lead to, I mean, they all seem to lead to the reality that there are people who have a lot and people who have much, much less. And there's an opening for larger conversations.
And also, this piece about agency—what can we do about these things? What are some things you would like to do about them? What changes would you like to see in the world? What changes do you feel like there should be in the world? And how can we, as a family, take some small step toward those kinds of changes?
And then also the idea of really letting your children know that, you said this earlier, you may not have had these conversations before, but that doesn't mean that we can't have them now, and we both can't learn together about them. I think that's really very important.
And so, you know, I want to—we could talk about this forever, but I want to sort of wrap up. This is a really wonderful conversation. I would love to talk to you more about this and perhaps another passion of yours or any other passionate things that you have to talk about in terms of your practice or the work that you do. As we were talking before we started this interview, you talked about how much you love the work that you do, and that it's even hard to take a break because you love it so much. So, I'm sure that we can find lots of other things that we could talk about. But, you know, ultimately, I wanted to have this conversation to start really just talking about ways that we can help our children grapple with the big questions, right? Like the big issues, the big questions. And so, thanks for being here today to help us, you know, take a small step in trying to do that. And I'd love to have you back to talk about other things as well.
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. This was a really wonderful conversation.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Thanks so much. And before we end, let the listeners know how they can find you if they want to work with you, if they want to follow your work, you know, where can they find you?
Dr. Khadijah Cyril: Oh, that's a good question. So, I think the best way to reach me is probably through Psychology Today for now. Yeah, my name is Dr. Khadijah Cyril, and you can look me up. I would love to get in contact with you, and even if I am not able to work with you specifically, I would love to just consult and help you in any way I can. So yeah. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Nanika Coor: Okay, well we will put your Psychology Today profile in the show notes. So, thanks again for being here and sharing your time and expertise with us.