When Your Friends Make Ignorant Comments About Race: What I’ve Learned as a Parent and Teacher
The grill was going, the kids were in the pool, and I was standing by the cooler with a friend I’ve known since college. She was telling me about her daughter’s new school, the one she and her husband had worked so hard to get into. “The academics are amazing,” she said, “but honestly, it’s just so much harder now with all the… you know. The kids who don’t speak English at home. The ones who need extra help. It takes time away from the rest of the class.”
She trailed off, glancing at me. I knew that glance. It was the same one I’ve seen for twenty years now, the one that says, “You’re one of the good ones, so you’ll get it.”
I didn’t say anything. I just opened a soda and watched my son do a cannonball off the edge of the pool.
I’m tired. Not angry, though there’s some of that too. Just deeply, bone-achingly tired. Tired of being the resident translator for things white people say and then pretend they didn’t say. Tired of the mental math that happens every time someone makes a comment like that: Do I say something? Do I let it go? Do I ruin the barbecue?
The thing is, I’ve been on both sides of that conversation. As a teacher, I’ve sat in faculty rooms where colleagues say things about “those parents” and “these kids” that make me want to walk out. And I’ve also sat across the table from my own friends, people I genuinely love, who have said things that I know they don’t even recognize as racist because the systems they live in have never forced them to look.
Here’s what I’ve figured out, through years of trial and error, both in the classroom and at dinner parties.
First, I stopped being available for every conversation. There was a time when I thought it was my job to educate everyone. A friend would say something ignorant, and I would launch into a careful, calm explanation of why that comment was problematic. I thought I was being helpful. I thought that if I just explained it well enough, with enough patience, they would finally understand.
But here’s what happened. My kids would watch me do this. And they started to believe that their job, too, was to explain themselves. That when someone made them feel less-than, the correct response was to make it easier for the other person. To be the bigger person. To be the teacher.
So I stopped.
I remember the exact moment. We were at a family gathering, and a cousin of my husband’s said something about how our son would “do fine in school because he’s not like the other kids from his background.” Our son was sitting right there. He was about nine at the time, reading a book and pretending not to hear.
My old instinct kicked in. I opened my mouth to explain why that comment was actually harmful, to help this cousin see the assumptions she was making. But my son looked up at me, and something in his face made me stop. He didn’t need me to explain anything. He needed me to show him that we didn’t have to accept that kind of comment as normal.
So instead of a lecture, I said, “Actually, Cam is exactly like the other kids from his background. And they all do fine when people expect them to.” Then I went back to cutting the cake.
It wasn’t a big speech. It wasn’t a dramatic moment. But it changed something in our house. We started having conversations about boundaries that I wish someone had given me when I was young. Not about how to explain racism to white people, but about how to decide whether you want to spend your energy on a conversation at all.
That’s the practical piece I want to share with other parents and teachers.
Here’s what I tell my kids now, and what I wish more adults understood. You do not owe anyone your education. If a friend says something that hurts you, you get to decide what happens next. Sometimes you say something. Sometimes you don’t. Both are legitimate responses.
When we do engage, we try to keep it short. I’ve found that one clear sentence does more than a lecture ever will. “That comment lands differently for me.” “I don’t see it that way.” “Can you say more about why you think that?” The goal isn’t to convince anyone. The goal is to let them know, in your own voice, that what they said didn’t go unnoticed.
I also had to accept something hard. Some friendships are not going to survive this. When I stopped being the endlessly patient explainer, a few friendships shifted. There was distance, then less contact, then a slow fading that neither of us addressed. It’s sad. But it’s also honest. I can’t be the person who absorbs every ignorant comment in order to keep the peace. That version of me was exhausted all the time.
But here’s the part that surprised me. Some friendships got deeper. There were friends who, when I said “that comment lands differently for me,” stopped and actually asked a follow-up question. Not in a performative way. Not in an “I’m a good ally” way. But in a way that showed they were genuinely curious about what I was seeing that they couldn’t see themselves.
One of those conversations stands out. A friend told me about her son’s preschool, how the teachers kept calling him “a handful.” She was laughing about it. And I said, carefully, “Do you think they’d call him that if he were Black?” She went quiet. I thought I’d lost her. Then she said, “No. I don’t think they would.”
We didn’t solve anything that day. But we had a real conversation. Not a lesson, not a confrontation. Just two parents trying to figure out what our kids were going to face in the world and how to prepare them.
That’s what I try to remember on the tired days. Most of the parents I know, white and otherwise, are doing what they can with the tools they’ve been given. The school meetings, the homework struggles, the worry about whether our kids are happy and safe and challenged in the right ways. Nobody wakes up and decides to raise a child who makes other people feel small. But they do it anyway, because that’s what happens when you don’t look at your own assumptions.
I still get tired. I still have to mentally prepare myself for birthday parties and school events where I know there will be at least one comment I have to decide how to handle. Last week, at a soccer game, another parent told me how “refreshing” it was that my son was so articulate. I looked at her and thought about all the ways I could answer that. I settled on, “He’s always been a good talker.” She moved on. I moved on. That felt okay.
The other night, my son asked me if I thought his friend’s dad liked him. I asked why he was wondering. He said, “Because he talks to me different than he talks to the other kids. Like I’m younger than I am.” My heart sank, but I kept my voice even. “How does that make you feel?” I asked. He shrugged. “Weird. But I like his son. I just don’t want to hang out at his house anymore.”
That’s the reality. Our kids notice these things. They notice who gets treated like a full person and who doesn’t. They notice whether we say something or stay quiet. They notice what we whisper about in the car on the way home.
So here’s what I’m actually teaching, as best I can. Not how to win arguments or change minds in one conversation. But how to recognize what’s worth your energy and what isn’t. How to say one true sentence and then let it sit. How to teach your kids that they don’t have to make themselves small so other people can feel big.
I haven’t figured out the rest. I still don’t know what to do at that barbecue next summer, whether that friend and I will talk or just share a cooler of soda and watch our kids swim. Some things stay unresolved. Maybe that’s fine. The work is in the noticing, not the fixing. And the noticing is something I can do every day, at the dinner table, in the car, on the sidelines of a soccer game. It doesn’t take a big speech. It just takes staying awake.
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