How do I talk to my child about race? He seems to believe a lot of what’s in the new. I understand social justice but how do I balance it so he doesn’t think all people are racist?

The news is a filter, not a map. It is calibrated to surface conflict because conflict holds attention, and a child who absorbs it without a counter-framework will naturally conclude that what is shown most is what exists most. That is a media literacy problem as much as a race problem. ## Start with what is true, not what is fair Racism is real. It has shaped history, law, economics, and daily experience in ways that are documented and worth understanding. Do not soften that. Children who are shielded from hard truths do not become optimists — they become confused adults who distrust the people who protected them. But also true: most people, in most moments, are trying to get through their day. Prejudice exists on a spectrum. Systems can be unjust without every individual inside them being a villain. Both of those things can be real at the same time, and holding both is not a betrayal of social justice — it is a more accurate version of it. ## Give him tools, not conclusions Ask him what he is seeing and what he thinks it means before you tell him what to think. A child who learns to reason about evidence is harder to radicalize in any direction. Then introduce the question: is this story showing me a pattern, or an exception that was dramatic enough to film? Help him build a habit of looking at his actual life alongside the headlines. Who are the people around him? What do their daily choices tell him about who they are? The news can tell him what happened somewhere. Only experience can tell him who people tend to be. ## What balance actually looks like Balance here is not splitting the difference between racism and colorblindness. It is teaching him that injustice is worth naming and fighting, and that the human beings on the other side of any systemic problem are still human beings. Those two ideas do not cancel each other out — you need both to actually change anything. The goal is a child who can see unfairness clearly, stay curious about people anyway, and not collapse the distance between a broken system and a broken species. That is not a naive position. It is a more useful one.