4

“That’s So Racist!”

Interacting with Peers and Siblings

Me and my friend Liam were at the beach, and these two cars pulled up, and there were a bunch of teenagers who looked like they were Hispanic or something. They were wearing gangster-kind-of-looking clothes. They were drinking a lot of alcohol or something. So Liam was going, “Andrew, we have to leave now.” And so we biked for a while. They followed us, and eventually we were able to get away. But like afterwards, we were saying, “Oh my God, that was the scariest thing ever.” And we were going into all these different things about why they were doing that—maybe they were trying to actually attack us or something, maybe they were just trying to scare us. And then Liam was like, “Maybe they’re just trying to see how racist we are.” And I was like, “Really?” And he said, “Well, if you think about it, you’re not going to be as threatened by people who are white wearing gangster outfits, drinking alcohol and in two cars.” And I thought about that for a while, and I guess it kind of made sense. But it just didn’t really feel right to think that that made sense because it doesn’t. But at the same time it does.

—Andrew (12, Wheaton Hills)

Kids spend a lot of time with other kids. They play capture the flag together in their neighborhoods, they sit together in classrooms and school cafeterias, and they ride their bikes to the beach with their best friends. They wait at the bus stop together and ride together in carpool minivans. They have sleepovers and birthday parties, they play video games, and they participate in a range of kid-centered activities, such as Boy Scouts or baseball or soccer or swimming or science club or ballet. These everyday spaces are where kids interpret the world around them and produce their own ideas about race. These spaces are also where kids say and do kind and hurtful things to one another, ask one another questions, and contest one another’s ideas.

Andrew and Liam in the example in the epigraph work together to try to make sense of what happened at the beach. They critically analyze their own behavior and call into question the assumptions they both made upon encountering the teenagers. Andrew and Liam conclude sheepishly to each other that yes, race did inform their decision to run away from the Latino boys, even if their recognition of this fact makes them feel badly about themselves. They admit to each other that if the teenagers had been white, Andrew and Liam would have carried on without panicking or fleeing to the woods on their bikes and without thinking the encounter was “the scariest thing ever.” These two boys decide that next time something similar happens, they will try to behave differently. This entire episode, from the first moment on the beach to the kids’ talk later, happens entirely without the presence of any adults.

Andrew and Liam are not the only children in this study who talk with white friends about race when grown-ups are not around. Natalie (11, Sheridan) tells me about a recent sleepover she had with her friends: “I’ve been to a big slumber party, and everyone was like gossiping.… They were talking about other people and like how they’re not as good as us … and like how [the two black girls in the entire school] were not as smart and everything and how, like, they don’t have any friends and, like, how they don’t really feel too bad for them … and how, like, sometimes they would even say how [the black girls’] clothes are so ugly and all.” I ask her if her friends were talking about the race of the two black girls specifically. Natalie replies, “I think they were. I mean, I think they were just judging people like … a book on the cover. Like, a lot of [these girls at the party] wouldn’t, if they’re a different race, they wouldn’t include them … in their group.… Sometimes it felt like [the black girls didn’t] … have any friends. Because no one would really want to hang out with them.” I ask Natalie how she felt when her friends were gossiping. Her response is matter-of-fact: “That’s just what we do. We gossip,” she explains. Gossiping about other kids at school in private places such as someone’s basement during a sleepover party, a form of “backstage racetalk,” appears to be a common practice among middle-school-aged children.1 I hear kids constantly talking about other kids when they are not around over the course of this research. However, in this case, the gossip is very narrowly focused on the two black students at the almost entirely white Sheridan Middle School—girls who were not invited to the sleepover party. Natalie does not seem emotionally impacted by her friends’ behavior, and she describes their comments as typical and as just part of their everyday life. “That’s just what we do.”

Peers and siblings play a powerful role in shaping white comprehensive racial learning processes and outcomes. Kids learn about race, racism, privilege, and inequality in part through their interactions and conversations with other kids—both peers of color and peers who are white. These interactions and conversations happen on bike rides and at sleepovers but also at soccer practice, at the ice-cream shop, in the hallway at school, at the country club, in the living room, and so forth. Often, these conversations take place when adults are either not present or seemingly not paying attention to the children. In fact, many of the moments depicted in this chapter are incidents that children told me happened in exclusively child spaces with no adults present or are based on observations I made of kids when they were not paying much attention to my adult presence. Despite what is commonly assumed, both by parents I spoke to and by many sociologists writing theoretically about how racial ideologies are socially reproduced by whites, children do not simply take on the views of their parents or their environment. White kids do not uncritically adopt the dominant narratives about race in a way that is “uninterrupted” or in a prescriptive way that “creates … their view on racial matters.”2 Rather, all young people, regardless of their race, actively participate in the production of their own ideas. Rather than children simply mirroring the views of their parents, much of what they believe to be true is produced through interactions with peers as ideas are shared and challenged. The kids in this study specifically develop ideas within a particular peer culture; these ideas reproduce, rework, and sometimes even reject components of the dominant racial ideologies present in their particular context of childhood, such as color-blind ideology or different forms of antiracist ideology.3

Although parents have very little control over what children say to one another in adult-free spaces or the ideas kids collectively produce as they interpret the world around them, parents do play an important role in establishing these spaces in the first place—establishing, that is, another aspect of a child’s racial context. For instance, parents shape their kids’ friendship options when they decide where to live, indirectly determining with whom their child will play capture the flag, for instance. Parents also play significant roles in making decisions about their child’s participation in extracurricular and social activities, spaces outside of school in which children play and have fun with each other.4 When parents advocate for their kid to be on a particular soccer team or when they enroll their children in a high-level summer basketball program, parents are making choices about the possible interactions available to their kids. Of course, these spaces not only are where kids produce meanings about race but also are racialized to begin with, such as soccer teams with predominantly affluent, white or predominantly Latinx players or summer basketball camps with predominantly black kids. Similarly, when it comes to socializing or planning a sleepover or a laser-tag birthday party, parents often play a role in decisions about who gets invited, who gets left out, which child “lives too far away” to come, or which child “must be invited” even at the dismay of the birthday girl or boy.

Finally, parents also shape their own children’s perceptions of other children through their own behavior. For instance, I frequently observed parents talking about other kids at school or on the sports team in front of their own child, sending their kids subtle or overt messages about which kids are “good” and which are “bad,” which kids should be invited to the next party and which kids should be kept at a distance. Parents also talk openly about other parents sometimes in critical ways, drawing comparisons between parenting decisions, such as, “Yes, Sarah’s mother lets Sarah go to the mall on Fridays after school. But I’m not Sarah’s mother, and you are not Sarah. You’re not going to the mall.” These kinds of statements send children messages about both who has responsible parents and who has parents who are fun or cool.

In this chapter, I explore the ways that extracurricular activities are places where comprehensive racial learning processes occur. In these spaces, kids interact with siblings and peers, receiving, interpreting, and producing ideas about race. And although parents set up these kid spaces, kids do not simply adopt their parents’ views as they interact within them.

“You Don’t Know Anything!”: The Role of Siblings

All of the middle-school-aged kids in this study, with the exception of two, have siblings. Siblings shape how they make sense of race. In particular, older siblings often share information with younger siblings, telling them “how it really is.” Take for instance, Chris (11, Wheaton Hills) telling me that the girls running past the car are snobby (see chapter 3). He does this in front of Oliver (6), his younger brother, who may or may not be paying attention but who nonetheless is exposed to those ideas. In other moments, though, Chris interacts instead with his older brother, George (15), who is in high school. For instance, one late summer afternoon right before the start of the new school year, I observe Chris and George. Chris is very worried about how to use a combination lock—his old school had only lock-free cubbies. Chris twists the combination lock around and around and gets more frustrated every time his efforts do not lead to the unclicking of the lock. George looks on, giving Chris step-by-step instructions. After a few minutes of impatient struggling, George says, “Honestly Chris, this is going to sound racist, but just find a locker buddy who isn’t black, and he can help you if you need help. Plus, you won’t have to worry about him putting drugs in the locker.” Chris looks at his older brother with more fear in his eyes than at the beginning of the conversation. “What do you mean?” he asks timidly. George seems to suddenly feel a little bad for making things worse for Chris by introducing a new potential problem: black kids with drugs. Trying to lighten the mood, George says, “You know, if you learn how to open the lock with just one hand, you can totally impress the girls!” Chris looks skeptical. He thinks for a moment, and then his face lights up. He replies with a grin, “I know! What if I learned how to do it with one foot!” Chris waits expectantly for his brother to laugh, but George just looks at him and flatly states, “No. That won’t impress girls. But it might impress a bunch of guys. Or it might just be weird.” Chris frowns and looks down at the lock and starts twisting it again, muttering “22-15-3” under his breath.

George is (most of the time) the “cool” older brother who knows a lot about everything. While he is willing to help his younger brother, he is also not afraid to prod Chris’s anxieties and, on occasion, make Chris feel badly about himself. In this interaction, Chris takes George’s comments for granted; he accepts that what George is saying is accurate and does not question him. If anyone knows anything about lockers and black kids and drugs, it must be George. It is also important to note that this interaction is all happening in front of Oliver, who is playing Doodle Jump on my iPhone and humming to himself, seemingly ignoring everyone around him. Nonetheless, like the episode in the car with the cross-country team, Oliver is exposed to his two older brothers discussing topics that he might otherwise never hear about until years down the road.

Older siblings play a role in transmitting racial lessons and “common sense,” but their younger siblings are not always as receptive as Chris is to George in this particular interaction. I also observe children who push back at their siblings and kids who reject or at least challenge the racial logic their sibling insists is accurate. For example, one afternoon I am with the Avery children, and Alicia (14) is texting with her friend who goes to school in Petersfield. “Oh my God, Caitlyn is telling me that she is soooo mad because she couldn’t get to her locker today because the police were searching the locker next to hers,” Alicia announces to Lauren (12) and Edward (12). She goes on to tell us that Caitlyn’s locker is located next to a black student who “always has pot in there.” Lauren asks, “Has Caitlyn, like, actually seen it, though?” Alicia, glancing up and giving her sister a dismissive look, replies, “Oh my God, Lauren, you are so naïve. All of the black kids have pot on them at her school. You don’t know anything.” Lauren, immediately grumpy, shouts, “Well, how am I supposed to know that? God, you are so mean, Alicia!!” Lauren mutters something rude under her breath in the direction of both of her siblings about how they think they know everything when they do not. In this scenario, Alicia passes information to her younger siblings, explaining to them what “everyone” knows to be true. The content of this information is clearly part of “commonsense knowledge” passed around between many white kids in Petersfield, as this information is almost identical to what George conveys to Chris—that all black kids at public schools have drugs on them. While this may be a popular view of white kids in this community, Lauren is unwilling just to accept this as fact. Her legitimate question about whether Caitlyn has any actual evidence that the police search is warranted is met with a corrective “you are so naïve” from her older sister. The Avery children are secluded in predominantly white Sheridan. And yet, via text message and friendships with white kids in Petersfield, racial ideas are transmitted and discussed, and a particular racial logic is produced as a result. While Lauren’s challenge to this “commonsense” racial logic is brief, this moment is important in that it shows how siblings contest understandings about race, and many other topics, through their interactions, in this case, having a conversation that quickly turns into an argument with kids shouting at each other.

In addition to siblings talking to each other without the input of adults, I also record moments when parents’ interactions with older siblings are quietly observed by younger siblings. For example, when Jessica (11, Wheaton Hills) bursts in the door after school one fall afternoon, she yells in a singsongy voice, “Maaaa-maaaa! I’m hooooome!” throwing her backpack on the ground near the front door and tossing her shoes and light jacket aside, running in her socks to greet her mother and cuddle with her for a moment before taking off to the kitchen to grab a snack. Meanwhile, her high-school-aged brother, Josh, is telling me about how recently he got into a scuffle in the hallway with a peer. Josh reluctantly explains that someone came up to him in the hallway and attempted to rob him.

His mother interjects, “Describe this kid to Maggie.”

Josh mumbles, “What do you mean?”

“What race was he?” his mom prompts.

“Latino,” Josh states without making eye contact with me.

Immediately his mother looks at me and says definitively, “See. I think this boy is in a gang.”

Josh says in an embarrassed tone that he does not know, mutters something incomprehensible under his breath, and then leaves to go do his homework. Jessica, at this point, has returned to the living room and is settled nearby in an armchair with a bowl of grapes and her homework. I see her listening to the exchange among her older brother and her mother and me, taking it all in as she gets a folder out of her backpack. She observes her brother awkwardly tell me about getting beaten up at school. Even though Josh is reluctant to give his mother what she wants—a confirmation to me that the boy who stopped him in the hallway is a member of a Latino gang—his little sister sits by, observing the conversation.

The practice of older siblings “schooling” younger siblings on race-related matters either in explicit or implicit ways is a pattern across the families in this study. For instance, in another moment, one sister tells the other, “You should not call people ‘African Americans’ because some black people are not from Africa.” The younger sister follows her older sister’s lead and, during her interview, confesses to me about how confused she is and how she does not know what to call “people with dark skin.” In another example, an older sibling mocks a younger sibling for admitting that she cannot distinguish between Chinese and Japanese people. In another instance, an older brother tells his younger sister that she should be a distance runner and not a sprinter on the track team because “sprinters are black and distance runners are white.” An older sibling tells his younger brother that he will never get into the competitive summer program at the local university because the program is more likely to accept “black and Mexican kids than white kids.” How kids talk to each other about race matters because it is through these conversations that kids such as Chris and Lauren interpret, produce, and sometimes even challenge ideas about race.

“I Talk to My Friends about Important Stuff”: The Role of Friends

Friends also play a significant role in how white kids learn about race. As Conor (11, Evergreen) explains to me, “I talk to my friends about important stuff,” including immigration policy, welfare, unequal schools, unfair teachers, and racism. Unlike Natalie and her friends at the sleepover party who talk at the micro level, talking about the clothes that the black girls at school wear, Conor and his friends talk in more macro terms. These boys share their ideas about politics and race and discuss their opinions on broad issues. Although these topics are brought to these children’s attention by the media, parents, and teachers, it is with friends that Conor really hashes out his opinions on the matter, away from his parents with their strongly held views or his teacher who often “tries to control” the class discussion.

Similarly, Danny (12, Evergreen) tells me about conversations he has with his white friends in which they criticize how their teachers negotiate conversations about social injustice in his classroom. “They try to hide reality from us,” he tells me, “but my friends, we like talk about how you can hide stuff from students, but eventually they are going to figure it out.” I ask him what he means exactly. Though he does not use this term, he spends time describing to me how he and his friends cannot stand how color blind their teacher is: “By ignoring race, some people are still going to be in that stuck position where you think, ‘We don’t need to talk about it because we shouldn’t let that divide people. But when I talk about it, I always mess up and sound really racist, so we shouldn’t talk about it!’ And one person gets that idea, and then everyone gets that idea. And that’s the place we are at right now. The teachers do not want to talk about it. But we do.” Here, Danny and his friends, who are both white and black, have conversations that his teacher is unwilling to have—thus, it is not that these kids do not talk about race at school but that they just do so with each other when the adults are not paying attention. Danny explains that he and his friends have decided that their teachers not only avoid talking about race with students but also lie to them all the time about “real-world stuff.” Danny says that when his teachers are not listening, he and his friends make fun of them for their unrealistic portrayals of society:

Teachers say, “Oh, your dreams can come true! You can do anything you want!” But that doesn’t mean anything to me! Come on! Like, you can say that, but I mean it’s—it will only go so far. Because depending on where you are born and your race and how much money your family makes, you might not be able to go to college.… But if you’re born into a really rich family that pays for college easily and you live off your parents’ salary until you find the perfect job, that person is going to be—they will have a chance of finding their dreams a whole lot easier if they don’t need to worry about feeding themselves or feeding their kids or anything as long—because they are just living off their parents’ salary, and their parents are making so much money, they don’t feel a dent. And they just keep giving them money ’cause he’s looking for that dream job.… But that’s not possible for everyone, and it just won’t happen.

Danny goes on to give me an example that one of his friends devised about how no matter how hard someone works, he might not be able to achieve his dreams, like inventing an invisibility cloak: “My friend made a good point. He was like, ‘Say I want to make an invisible cloak.’ … I feel like people can come very close to their dreams, but you can’t really tell kids they can be or do whatever they want because it’s not true. And it’s not actually going to happen. There is only so far you can go.” Telling a child he can develop a magical cloak if he works hard is foolish in Danny’s mind. I ask him what he and his friends propose would be a better way to talk about “real-world stuff” at school or how he would prefer his teachers approach topics such as inequality. He replies,

We always talk about how the teachers need to start talking about more things in the real world rather than textbook stuff, ’cause I hate it when teachers use textbooks, and they say, “Okay! Chapter 3 in this textbook” and we are all like “Uggggh, we’ve learned about this stuff for the past four years. Giving us this worksheet, it will slip right through our minds, and there is nothing for it to stick to.” … But if you give us something to do, like this is something you can do to stop it, let’s go out into the world and help stop it! Or, like, these penguins have died because some guy is dumping sewage into the water. Let’s all write this guy a letter to tell him not to dump sewage. Just let the students, let them into the real world because not everything is going to be in a textbook and tell them the world is not a nice place and especially for black people, [the world] is not going to like you no matter what you do. So let’s go learn about it so all of us can help fix it!

Danny and his friends are outraged that their teachers are willing to present the standard American Dream story and ignore the ways in which race and class shape people’s lives and opportunities. Through talking—and complaining—with each other about their teachers and what is taught in their school, this group of kids, composed of both white and black boys, develops its own understandings about race, social stratification, and the difference between talking about problems and doing something to fix them.

Kids also use each other as resources to try to make sense of a topic that for some of the children in this study is frequently taboo. Unlike kids such as Danny and Conor (Evergreen kids), some children in this study are growing up in communities and in families where their parents do not think it is necessary or even appropriate to talk about race (although certainly they do communicate often in subtle, racially coded terms, perhaps without realizing it). These parents do not believe their children even think about race. They are confused when I tell them about my research and cannot understand what their child would possibly have to say about race. “I can try to connect you with my colleague at work who is black. She might be more helpful,” one Sheridan parent tells me when I invite her family to participate in this research. These parents have in fact gone to considerable lengths to reinforce color blindness: their children are not even allowed to accuse one another of being racist in school. Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, these children have lots of questions about race—questions that they attempt to sort out for themselves when their parents are not paying close attention.

While eating string cheese one afternoon, Edward (12) and his friend debate whether or not black people have an extra muscle in their leg that allows them to be more successful athletes, jumping higher, running faster, being stronger, and so forth. Edward is skeptical. His friend insists that there are anatomical differences between white and black athletes and points to the predominance of elite black basketball players to prove the point. Edward peels his string cheese, dangles it above his mouth, and chews this over. Without any direction from their parents, these two boys determine that race is biological.5

On another afternoon, Carly (12, Wheaton Hills), her younger sister, and a friend discuss the famous musician Rihanna. The girls disagree about what race the celebrity is, one believing that Rihanna is black “or at least a mix” while the other believes that Rihanna is white and is just wearing a lot of bronzer makeup to look tan. The girls spend a long time debating this and eventually discuss plans to rub as much bronzer makeup as they can onto their white skin to see if they can get their skin as dark as Rihanna’s. Carly really wants Rihanna to be “white with bronzer” like her, rather than black.

For all the kids in the study, moments of debate between children about race emerge organically in daily life.6 These debates do not necessarily happen often, but when they do, the kids are very invested in them. When these debates cannot be resolved by the children, the kids sometimes lose patience with each other and ask me what I think the answer to their question is. They ask me, “Do black kids have to wear sunscreen?” and “Are there Mexican gangs in Petersfield or just black gangs?” and “Are Asian kids actually smarter than white kids?” and “Why do all the black kids live over there?” and “How come so many homeless people are black?” Other questions they ask focus on black hair (e.g., “Do black girls wash their braids?” “How do you make dreads?” “How do the boys get it so flat on the top?”), “you-bonics,” the meaning behind lyrics in rap songs, how biracial kids understand their identity (and why “biracial girls are always so pretty” and Asian babies are “so cute”), and debates over whether “all Mexicans can speak Spanish” or whether all Latinos are Mexicans, and on and on. My response is often, “What do you think?”

“That’s Racist”: The Role of Peer Culture

More than anything else, these kids ask me, “Is this/that/xyz racist?” These white kids spend a lot of time worrying about, talking about, and joking about whether something or someone is racist. This practice is an aspect of their unique, white, kid peer culture. Some kids think talking about race is racist, some kids think not talking about race is racist, some kids think only people of color are allowed to talk about race, and some kids think white people need to talk about race the most. How children make sense of what “racist” means varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, but—surprisingly—all of these children use or know someone who uses the phrase “that’s racist” in moments that have nothing to do with race.7 For instance, as Meredith (12, Sheridan) explains, if a white kid does not do something for another white kid, such as share a snack, the first kid may call the second kid “racist.” In predominantly white spaces, in other words, “That’s racist” has become a joke among middle-school-age kids—a joke that insults, polices, and delegitimizes actual claims of racism in their everyday lives.

For children living in Sheridan, any mention of race could be considered racist. But few children here believe that anyone in their community is “actually” racist. Because so many kids accuse one another of being “racist,” the Sheridan public middle school has a rule in which kids are not allowed to identify people or things as “racist.” According to the children who attend this school, this rule was put into place because kids were using “racist” the same way kids were using the word “fag”—as an insult.

ERICA (13, SHERIDAN): They put signs with things that we shouldn’t say in our school up in every classroom.… One of them is like, “You shouldn’t call someone racist … or gay.” Like, there’s always better words to use. And if you’re hearing a conversation like, “Oh, that’s so gay,” or “Oh, that’s so racist,” you know, you can probably use better words.…

MAGGIE: So “racist” was one of the words that people aren’t supposed to say?

ERICA: Yeah, mm-hmm. Like there’s “fag,” “gay,” “racist.” So, yeah.

MAGGIE: What if someone is doing something you think is racist?

ERICA: Kids at my school aren’t racist, so that wouldn’t be a problem.

Kids in Sheridan are taking ideas of color blindness and combining them with ideas about sexuality in order to produce a new logic of color blindness.8 As a result, not only are these children minimizing racism, but they are doing so in a slightly new way. These kids are rearticulating color-blind ideology, adding their own twist to it. As Edward (12, Sheridan) explains to me, “Sometimes people just get mad at [each other] or whatever and, like, call each other racists. It’s just, like, an insult.” This aspect of these kids’ peer culture can also be seen as evidence of kids policing and upholding color-blind ideology. For many of these kids, any suggestion that racism exists threatens their interpretations of the world around them. Among themselves, these kids simultaneously reject that anyone is actually racist while using the term “racist” to insult one another. Racism may be a serious offense in their parents’ world, but in the kids’ world, it has become a joke.9

For children living in Wheaton Hills, there are no formal rules in place that prohibit kids from using the phrase “that’s racist,” but kids still use it. Similar to what Sheridan kids tell me about how other kids use this phrase in their community, the use of the phrase “that’s racist” is also frequently used as a joke relating to colors, such as when Matthew (12, Wheaton Hills) and his friend Alex are doing their social studies homework and Matthew asks Alex if he wants to use the black marker. Alex declines, and then Matthew, grinning, states, “You’re racist!” I also observe kids choosing chess pieces. They jokingly accuse one another of racism when they say they want to be white or black. When I talk to kids about this behavior, many of them tell me things such as, “It’s just a joke” or “It doesn’t mean anything—we are just kidding around.”

For children living in Evergreen, however, talking about race is a common practice and happens almost every day in their lives. Many report that their peers at Evergreen Middle School use the phrase “that’s racist” as a joke, but the kids I interviewed think it is offensive. For instance, Charlotte (12, Evergreen) explains to me her interpretation of why white kids do this:

Usually when a white person calls the other person racist, they really—they don’t mean it seriously at all. They try to make it as a joke. And sometimes people think it’s funny, and sometimes people, like me, don’t think it’s funny at all. So like,… we have pinneys for teams: white pinneys and black pinneys. And you will be like, “Oh, I want to be on the black team,” and then some white kids will say, “Oh, that’s racist,” and they are like, “ha ha.” I think when people call each other racist, it’s kinda like—they kinda want to point [race] out, but then they also want to be making a joke.

I ask Charlotte what she thinks they are trying to point out. “I think that—I think that people have this thing where they know people can be racist and they’re not quite sure how to point that out seriously, so they point that out through a joke.… It’s, like, the same with health class. You know the stuff is happening, like, in sex ed or whatever, and people can’t talk about sex or race or any of that stuff seriously, so they kinda have to say it through a joke.” Charlotte interprets the behavior of the other white kids at school critically, but she also tries to understand where they are coming from—what motivates them to engage in this behavior that she personally rejects. Conor is also critical of this aspect of his peer culture: “It’s kinda the same thing as when kids say, like, ‘Oh, you’re gay’—it doesn’t mean anything. It means they don’t know what else to say, but it is wrong.… It is just some stupid thing that people come up with because they don’t know what else to say. They can’t think of anything else to say when they are mad at you.” I ask him what he thinks when he hears kids call each other racist in moments that have little to do with racism. “You think, ‘Well, he obviously doesn’t have any idea what that even means.’ Then you get mad at him and think they are stupid because that is stupid, what they just said.” Conor tells me that there are real issues of racism to contend with—and there is nothing about racism that is a joke.

“Sometimes My Friends Are a Little Bit Racist”: Noticing Racism in Peers

Not all accusations of “that’s racist” are jokes, however. In some cases, children tell me about friends they think are actually racist or, as Robert (12, Wheaton Hills) puts it, “a little bit racist.” When I ask Robert if he has ever witnessed any racism at school, he tells me about the use of racist jokes:

ROBERT: Sometimes my friends are a little bit racist.… Like, this one time, one of my friends made this slightly racist joke, but I don’t think he was trying to be racist.

MAGGIE: Did anyone say anything to him after he did that?

ROBERT: Well, before he said it, he said it was kind of racist … but it’s still funny. Yeah. That’s what he said, I think.… It didn’t make it okay, but it was still better than not acknowledging it.

I ask Robert if he can think of any other examples of racism in his daily life. He replies, “I haven’t seen any open—haven’t really seen any people be openly racist. Maybe in private they say things, though.” I push Robert on his final point of the possibility of people saying things in private that are racist. “I mean, like, everyone has tiny prejudices with people,… tiny little things that I might not even know that you have them, like subconsciously thinking. I think that is where people don’t realize, like, if they are racist without realizing it.” Robert goes on to tell me that “light-skinned people” have “lots of advantages that they don’t even realize,” in addition to negative stereotypes about “darker-skin colors” about which they are unaware.10 Robert specifically references his friends when he discusses his observations—not in a way that demonizes his friends but in a way that seeks to understand them and where their “little prejudices” come from. Later, I ask Robert’s mom if she remembers ever hearing Robert talk about this, and she is surprised with her son’s answer, telling me that she has no idea where he came up with that. She laughs and tells me, “Raising children has made me realize how smart and perceptive kids really are.” His mom also tells me that she intends to discuss this idea further with Robert after I leave, evidence of how kids shape the way their parents think about race, or the transactional nature of comprehensive racial learning.11

Meredith (12), growing up in Sheridan, also shares with me an example in which she witnessed her friends “being racist”:

Like sometimes when I go downtown [Petersfield] with my mom or my friends, like if we see a group of black people, so, um, we … we—and they are all like shouting and loud, I don’t freak out about it because it’s just a stereotype that they’re going to jump you and hurt you. But some of my other friends freak out, and they are like, “Oh my gosh, we need to cross [the street] right now! They’re probably going to do something!” And I’m just like, “It’s going to be fine. I don’t think we need to move. Just be wary of your surroundings. Be aware of your surroundings but don’t be a racist!” This is like my best friends!

I ask Meredith why she thinks her friends behave this way and if she ever talks to them about this behavior. She replies with frustration in her voice: “It’s just because, like, they have these, like, stereotypes, but like, whenever I try to tell them, they just get mad at me. It’s, like, we can’t even have a normal discussion about [race] without them getting mad at me! It’s so stupid!” Interacting within a white, segregated context of childhood such as Sheridan, many of the kids have formed ideas about race that reflect hegemonic, color-blind racial ideology. Clearly, in this context, it is not “normal” to talk openly about race or to call each other out on racist actions.

Evidence that confirms Meredith’s comments about how unwilling her friends are to “have a normal discussion about race” can be seen in this representative interview interaction between Britney (11) and me. Britney also is growing up in Sheridan and is otherwise chatty and open with me. However, she literally shuts down when I ask her to talk about race:

MAGGIE: Do you ever hear kids at your school—or do you and your friends ever talk about race? Or talk about any of that kind of stuff?

BRITNEY: No [very quickly].

MAGGIE: Can you think of any times where you heard other kids like talking about race

BRITNEY: [shakes head no]

MAGGIE: Or making comments that you thought are not very nice about people of different races than them?

BRITNEY: No [avoiding eye contact with me].

MAGGIE: So you never talk about race at school or with friends?

BRITNEY: No [shifting in her seat].

MAGGIE: Why do you think that is?

BRITNEY: It’s not right.

MAGGIE: So outside of your school, do you think that racism is a problem in America?

BRITNEY: No. Like I said before, it’s not a problem! [Frustrated with me, looking around the room uncomfortably.]

Not only are race, racism, and privilege rarely discussed in Sheridan, but many children are very uncomfortable when these topics are brought up—not making eye contact, shifting in their seat, and expressing frustration, both with me as an interviewer and also to their friends such as Meredith who have a desire to talk about race. Of course, these are the same kids whom I overhear talking about race all the time with their friends, kids who—outside of the formal interview—ask me all kinds of questions about race.

“I Have a Friend Who Is Not White”: The Role of Interracial Friendships

Up until this point, this discussion has focused on the interactions among white children. What about interactions across race among kids of the same age? Does having a friend of color lead to a reduction in prejudice or encourage antiracist behaviors? Take, for instance, Jessica (11, Wheaton Hills). Out of her many friends, Jessica has two friends of color: one friend who is Indian and one friend who is black. All three girls attend private Catholic school, and Jessica’s two friends are both recent immigrants to the United States, a fact that is important to Jessica as it signals something special about these two girls. Jessica tells me that she was very worried about her black friend when her teacher made the class talk about race after reading the book Sounder, which includes racial epithets: “We had to talk about the racial barriers in the story and the Civil War and all that, and they used the n-word. And, um, so I think [my black friend] just kind of, you know—they didn’t feel like total outsider, shut out. I think they just kind of felt a little bit more awkward in that situation, especially my African American friend, um, just because, I mean, she knows that that’s out there, but she knows that none of her friends would ever [treat her poorly because of her race]. I hope she knows that!” I ask Jessica if she talked to her friend after class about the story or how her friend was feeling. “Not really,” she replies slowly with a sad tone. Then, swiftly changing moods, she says in an upbeat, cheerful voice,

I mean, we talk about how she’s sooo lucky because her hair is, like, soooo much more, like—the texture, it just looks so cool and different, you know? And she can do more spikey-type hairstyles, where mine is, like, just kind of there [laughing]. But I dunno. We just—we never really talk about how bad the skin tone is or anything like that. But, um, head lice was going around, and, um, she can’t get head lice because her hair is textured, and they can’t stay on. And so I was like, “Ugh, you’re soooo lucky,” and I’m, like, wearing my hair in a tight pony tail or a bun or something like that to keep it all up. (emphasis added)

Like her mom, Jessica is very excited to tell me that she has friends who are a different race than she. But when racist incidents happen at school, such as boys bullying her black friend on the playground, or when her class reads a story with racial epithets, Jessica does not know how to talk to her friends or be supportive of them. Despite having two friends of color, Jessica does not appear to have developed “affective knowledge” about “race-based suffering” or a “felt recognition of the wrongs of racism” through the intergroup contact that she has with her two friends.12

As social psychologists and sociologists have long debated, intergroup contact is one strategy cited as minimizing prejudice.13 Writing during the Jim Crow period of US history, the psychologist Gordon Allport initially theorized that prejudice can be reduced if meaningful, equal-status contact, under a very specific set of conditions, occurs. These conditions include equal status given the environment, a shared set of goals, intergroup cooperation, and the support of authority figures within the context. This theory of intergroup contact has provided the foundation for scholarship on the social psychology of race. However, what this example with Jessica illustrates is that interracial contact, or having a black friend or an Indian friend, does not necessarily mean that Jessica is immune from the broader, more deeply entrenched ideas, mythologies, and ideologies that operate around her and have operated in the United States before she was even born. For Jessica, caring about a person of color and developing some level of empathy toward a person of color is not enough to eliminate comments about “how bad the skin tone is” or suggestions that it is appropriate to objectify someone’s hair and play with it. Perhaps this is because the conditions of contact are not in place. So what about situations in which white children are some of the only white people in an otherwise black space?

Rosie (10) is a superb basketball player. Her family is wealthy, and she attends an almost exclusively white private school. She has been playing in highly competitive leagues since she was very young, and she hopes to go to college on a basketball scholarship, though of course she will be able to afford college without a scholarship. Rosie is one of the only white kids on her competitive basketball team. Rosie describes the team dynamics to me: “I’d say, a lot of us are friendly, except some people have their moments, like they are bad sports or something. I’d say there’s a lot of friendship going on there.… We have a black coach, and we have a white assistant coach. It’s just basically being around friends. We don’t find [race] to be a big deal.… I think they all come from good families and stuff like that, so it’s not a big deal.” Rosie tells me that she never talks about race with her teammates. She also explains that while she spends a great deal of time with her basketball friends on the court, she rarely sees her teammates otherwise. She never goes to their houses or has them over, and she does not know them very well, outside the basketball context. Rosie tells me that she knows she is “a lot more fortunate” than most of the other girls on her team. She tells me about how she has “more opportunities that they don’t have” because her parents can afford to send her to exclusive summer camps where she gets to train with collegiate coaches and athletes. Rosie also explains how much travel is involved and how difficult it is for some of the other girls on her team to make it to all the games and practices, which are spread out across the state and sometimes even beyond. Although Rosie is aware of her own advantages, she associates these much more with class than with race and, like Jessica, has not developed the “affective knowledge” about race-based suffering that some people may think she would simply by having friends who are black. While Rosie does not make comments the way Jessica does about her teammates, and while Rosie is familiar with being in spaces that are predominantly black, including spaces with a black authority figure, Rosie distinguishes between her own circumstances and those of her teammates on the basis of class. Due to residential segregation, Rosie does not live near her teammates, she does not have many opportunities for socializing outside of practice and games, and she does not have close bonds with her teammates off the court.

For other children in the study, though, having a friend of color does open their eyes to the realities of racism in the United States. For example, Aaron (11) shares his concerns with me about his close friend: “Well, my best friend, who is Korean, just recently moved.… And he—he’s moving to a very white town, and he is really worried about it. I would be too if I were him. I haven’t heard from him yet whether or not, you know, if they’re racists or anything. But from what I’ve heard in general about the area, they’re not very accepting of other races.… It actually makes me kind of mad, like, to know that maybe he will have to go through that.” Aaron’s final statement is one of the few moments when he expresses an affective response to racism. We talk a bit more about what it is like to have a best friend who is Korean and how he wishes he had more friends of color. Aaron tells me, “I feel like I don’t have the chance to meet people who are black, but I want to. Maybe when I get to high school, I will.” It is very true that Aaron has very few opportunities to meet people who are black given the choices his parents have made for him about his everyday racial context of childhood. I ask him why he wants to meet people who are black, and he responds, “I dunno, just ’cause. I learn a lot about Korea from my friend, so I think I could learn a lot about what it is like to be black if I had a black friend.”

Rachel (12, Wheaton Hills) tells me how she is friends with many of the Asian American students at her school, the gifted school, mainly because she goes to school with them and the kids are “forced to interact with each other”:

I think that kids are forced to interact with each other in a way that adults aren’t. Like, adults can kind of modulate who they want to like talk to or, like, be with, but, I mean, we’re placed in classes. And we are, like, partnered up with, you know, whoever the teachers decide to partner us up with, and we have to, like, work with them and get along with them.… I think the way that we are forced to be, like, social and interact with each other, we form, like—we have like these experiences that some adults just don’t have. And I think that that’s important, in, like, forming opinions about these types of issues. And that’s how we do it.

Finally, unlike every other child in this study, Tyler (10) has three close friends who are black. The boys hang out together all the time in Evergreen. They play video games together, ride their bikes together, go to soccer practice together, and so forth. They all hope to be in the same class at school, and they hang out at recess—all activities that signal “best friends” to the kids in Petersfield. Tyler tells me how he met Jerome, Shawn, and Derek: “Jerome and Shawn, we met in kindergarten. And we are still friends. That was a while ago, except I [specifically] remember meeting Jerome. I thought he was pretty funny and nice. He liked to play the games I played, and yeah. And then Derek, I met him in third grade because I saw him at [my elementary school] at first, and yeah, and I think, ‘He’s pretty funny.’ He, um, he really likes to jump off things, high things. He likes to jump off play structures and land. And I like to do that, so we became friends.” I ask Tyler if he has met his friends’ parents, and he says yes and tells me details about his friends’ families—how many siblings they have, the races of their parents (“Derek has a white mom and a black dad”), and so forth, information that clearly demonstrates his closeness to Jerome, Shawn, and Derek. Even though Shawn lives too far away for Tyler to walk to his house, he tells me, sometimes Tyler’s mom drives him over there, or Shawn’s dad brings Shawn over to Tyler’s house. Tyler also tells me that he thinks it is “really easy” to have friends who are a different race. I ask him if a lot of white kids at his school are really good friends with black kids. He says, “Yeah, a lot. Like, I know one guy, Shane, who is friends with Jerome. And my other two white friends sometimes hang out with us as a group.” Although Tyler perceives that many of the other white kids have close friends who are black, he can think of only a few examples.

I also ask Tyler if he and his black friends ever talk about race. He replies, “No, not that often.” And yet, one day after school, when I am spending time with his family, Tyler tells his mom about how Shawn got in trouble for having the hood on his sweatshirt up at school. (Other kids tell me that this “no hoods up” rule is one that a lot of kids break all the time—“They only enforce it only if the teacher really wants to yell at you,” as one child reports to me. Another girl tells me, “I wear my hood up all the time, and I never get in trouble.”)14 Tyler’s mom calmly talks with him about it, asking Tyler if the rule is applied to all kids or just Shawn. “Just him,” he says, telling his mom that he talked to Shawn afterward, that “he was really mad too,” and that they thought he got in trouble because Shawn is black. Tyler, usually an even-keeled kid, is clearly frustrated with the teacher. Before he can say anything else, though, his older sister interrupts and offers her perspective about how the black kids at school “always get in trouble.” The conversation shifts to her being the focal point. Tyler, who quickly grows tired of listening to his sister, takes his video-game device and wanders upstairs to his bedroom by himself.

Although this interaction is brief, it demonstrates how Tyler and his friends talk to one another, trying to make sense of their teacher’s behavior. In addition, Tyler seems to be upset about this incident at school largely because it is his friend who is getting in trouble. Unlike white children who do not care personally for black kids, Tyler’s relationship with his friend informs how Tyler reads the teacher’s behavior. While Tyler wonders if race played a role in this encounter, other kids tell me that the teacher yells at whomever she wants about the “no hoods up” rule. It seems, then, that although Tyler does not think much about the fact that he has close friends who are black, there are moments that emerge in his daily life that he interprets differently than he perhaps otherwise would as a result at least in part of having close equal-status bonds with kids such as Shawn.

Finally, as Tyler describes, he met these friends on the playground, approaching Derek because they shared an interest in jumping off the playground structure. Tyler would not have had the opportunity to befriend Derek and share in the jumping if they were not both on the same playground. In this sense, the choice of Tyler’s parents to send him to the public schools in Evergreen provided the racial context in which he could establish interracial friendships in the first place. Of course, not all kids who go to his school form these friendships with one another. There is no guarantee that by attending an integrated school, interracial friendships will develop. Even when these friendships develop, there is no guarantee that they will lead to more antiracist actions on the behalf of children. Still the potential for positive intergroup contact is greater in social spaces that are racially diverse than at a school that is predominantly white, like so many of the schools that I found.

“Sometimes My Kid Is Racist”: Challenges of Cultivating Antiracist Praxis

The popular myth that parents magically dictate or determine the sociopolitical views of their children is debunked when parents tell me how frustrated they are by some of the ideas their children produce—ideas that, as parents, they want their child to reject rather than to replicate. These are ideas that kids produce on their own, in many cases as a result of the things they learn from spending time with other kids.

For example, Margot shares with me her perspectives on some of the boys in her class at school:

I’m going to start [by telling you about] Malik. He’s black. He’s really disrespectful and, like, constantly talking out of turn. And like, he’s just, like—he’s just mean. Just mean. And he’s rude and he’s mean. He’s, like, rude to everyone. He’s rude to me. He’s rude to this kid Sarah I know.… It’s not like he bullies, but, like, it’s, like, kind of hard to explain. He singles out Charlie.… He teases or, like, [is] more annoying and, like, kind of mean to [Charlie]. And so, like, so sometimes, I, like, intercept and I’m like—like, one time he was pulling this girl’s hair, which I think he has a crush on. But it’s not very likely [that the girl likes him]. I mean, no one else likes him, but except for his friends Kerron and Bryon, who recently jumped like seven stairs.

Here, Margot pauses to take a gulp of water out of a cup before launching back into her story. “And I was at the bottom [of the stairs], and Bryon broke my glasses! He jumped down seven stairs and landed on me. I fell. My glasses fell off of my face. And my friend Rebecca, she was like, ‘Oh, your glasses are broke.’ I was sooo mad.” Margot explains how she first went to the nurse, who called her mom, who brought her an old pair of glasses from home. She continues her story, telling about how she stands up to these boys at school: “One other day, Malik sat next to Bree. And she kept moving away from him, and then he reached over farther. And I’m like, ‘If she doesn’t want to, she probably doesn’t want to [sit next to you].’ And he’s like, ‘Shut up talking to me.’ So it’s a combination of ‘shut up’ and ‘stop talking to me,’ which he says a lot to me. I don’t think I deserve it, and neither do a lot of people. But, like, I don’t really care because he’s just annoying and mean and kind of a jerk.” Margot goes on to tell me that her parents have taught her not to say “shut up” and that Malik’s parents must never have taught him that. “I have a moral code against saying ‘shut up,’ ” she explains to me. (Her younger brother yells from the other room, “You tell me to shut up all the time!” She scowls in his direction.) She tells me that she thinks Malik acts the way that he does “to get attention”: “He is rude to the teacher and then he’ll laugh about it with his buds,” she explains. “Mostly Bryon,” she adds and makes a disgusted face, still angry about the incident in the stairwell. She tells me that these particular black boys at her school always hang out together. “Mostly Malik is like the worst of them. And I have to sit next to him in two classes!” she tells me. I ask her if she likes the black girls in her class. “Yeah, there are a few girls, and they are not, like, mean. But Jasmine, she’s not like mean, but she’s, like, ehhhhhh.” Margot holds her hand out, palm facing down, shaking it back and forth, as if she is on the fence about how she feels toward Jasmine. She tells me that the black girls all hang out together too and are not very interested in being friends with her, from her perspective.

Another evening, when I am watching television with Margot and her mom, Margot talks about how the black girls at school always “segregate themselves off” at recess and in the lunchroom. Her mom, without missing a beat, without even looking away from the television, and without reacting emotionally, simply states, “You don’t think that you and your white friends segregate yourself off from them?” Margot pauses and thinks for a moment. “Well, I guess I never thought about it that way,” she replies. I talk to Margot’s mom later when Margot is not around about how she handles questions from her kids, such as the evening when the topic of segregation came up:

I just try to take kinda a mundane approach to racial stuff, where it’s, like, not a big deal to talk about it, even though it’s important to me that we do. Margot has had a few things where there’s people she doesn’t like, and then she brings up the fact that they are black or not, um, and I’m like, “Well, that’s not really relevant, right?” Like, you know, she is just like, “Jasmine doesn’t like me,” and often it is in the context of—she feels affronted because they claim some sort of status as being oppressed and having to deal with prejudgments or whatever, and Margot doesn’t really believe in that, and then she gets very sort of uptight about it.… I heard her telling you the other day how she was telling someone that you can be racist against white people. So I get the impression that she is hearing conversations in her school where the students of color are talking about being students of color and the consequences of it, and it seems like that is an issue for her to wrap her mind around. I usually try to be like, “Well, think about it” [in a stern tone]. She definitely understands the concept of stereotyping and discrimination, but I think she has a really hard time applying it to individuals she knows.… I have often framed things as, “Some people think this, and other people think this. This is what I think and do.” This is how we have always talked about God and religion and, like, “A lot of people believe in this. I don’t, but you can decide whatever, but here is why I think this way.” I think with stuff like race and gender, I’m probably more assertive about it.

I ask Margot’s mom if she worries about this knowledge Margot produces through interactions at school with other kids. “She is young and still figuring things out,” she tells me. “I think my asking leading questions is better than just me telling her what to think. I mean, there is just a certain amount of pushback where even if I’m like, ‘You should do this,’ I can’t actually make her believe or do the things I believe and do.” Margot’s mother recognizes her own child’s agency and freewill and attempts to balance out her desire to help her child formulate ideas with the reality that her child will come to her own conclusions.

Margot’s mom is not the only mother who talks to me about these moments when their children’s ideas, produced through interactions with peers, do not align with what the parents want their child to think. As Nicole, the mother of two Evergreen middle school boys tells me, her sons sometimes form ideas that reinforce stereotypes that she wants them to reject: “I’ll put [the kids] in contexts where they’re around a lot of other different people, but I guess research has shown that then there’s just as much prejudices that can come out of that as not. You know what I mean? [Pause] You know, I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re doing it right.” Nicole tells me that she sometimes overhears her boys talking to each other about how their black classmates do not care about school or act out in ways that disrupt class or are disrespectful to teachers. As a public school teacher herself, she is attuned to what goes on inside schools that reproduces inequality in a way that perhaps other parents are not. She tells me how she worries that her children will observe behaviors of teachers and administrators as they “let white kids off the hook while they suspend black kids for similar behavior” or learn to adopt stereotypes based on what other white kids say about black kids when adults are not around. She tells me that she is often less worried about what her children will think as a result of their black peers themselves but rather the way that other whites interact with these black children. She tells me that she notices this happen at her own school—white kids looking on as other white kids tease black kids, or white teachers scolding black kids unfairly—and wonders if similar interactions are happening in her own children’s social life.

Nicole also tells me that she does not know if she and her husband are “doing it right,” a concern that nearly half of the parents in this study articulate to me at one point or another. The anxiety these parents have about their children’s racial views are most obviously reflected by the fact that after my formal interviews with their children, nearly all the parents ask me, “What did my child say?” Some parents ask me if, in my opinion, they need to “do anything to intervene” or “address anything in particular” with their kids on the basis of what they had said to me. These parents face this conundrum of privilege: What is the best way to raise a white, privileged child such that the child not only thrives but also thinks and behaves in ways that challenge the very privileges from which they benefit? What is the best way to raise a privileged child in a society structured by inequality?

Nicole’s boys and Margot are not the only children who attend an integrated public school and produce negative ideas about black peers. Danny (12, Evergreen), for example, explains his observations of what happens when new black kids come to his school. “When they first arrive, they raise their hand in class! Or they try to meet new people! That might be because they are new at school, but they just do things that you wouldn’t necessarily see black people typically doing. Like, they seem more active. I mean, I hate to say it, but it’s true.” Danny tells me that new students who are black behave differently when they first arrive compared to a few months down the road. He tells me that the new kids are always nice and follow rules and try to be friends with white kids. Over time, though, they “close off” and become better friends with the other black kids. I ask Danny why he thinks this happens. “ ‘Yeah, all groups, they are like, ‘I have my friends, and I feel no need to move on, so I’m going to stay closed off,’ which doesn’t really help.” Unlike Margot, who does not easily recognize the role that white kids play in the segregation she observes at school, Danny thinks all the kids do it. He tells me that it is getting worse as everyone gets older. “Let’s say fifth and sixth grade, it starts to happen more, and you can see it. But before that, I think it’s still happening. It’s just less visible,” he tells me. Danny perceives that all the kids at his school are participating in a sort of norm within their peer culture to hang out exclusively with kids of their same race. I ask him why he thinks this is, and he tells me he does not know but mentions that some of the “really smart” black kids hang out with the “really smart” white kids—suggesting, perhaps, that the beginning stages of tracking are taking place at his school.

As a result of structural limitations that make positive intergroup engagement difficult to achieve, many of the white Evergreen children reproduce negative views about children of color despite their parents’ best efforts otherwise. These findings reflect not only the limitations and nuances of intergroup contact and speak to prior social psychological research on this topic but also demonstrate the complexity of and potential contradictions located within even the most politically “progressive” racial context of childhood. The parents in this study have only so much control over their children’s lives and experiences outside the family because kids ultimately produce their own ideas about the social world. In the case of parents such as Margot’s mom and Nicole, they attempt to cultivate antiracist praxis, or constant, everyday, proactive, civic engagement aimed at dismantling racism in their kids.15 However, despite their best intentions, these parents must negotiate a context that is at times hostile to the messages and practices they are trying to instill in their children about racial inequality and racial privilege.

The Power of Peers

From sleepovers to playing video games, from debating Rihanna’s skin tone to determining what is racist, the kids in this study form ideas about race in part through their interactions with one another. Much as the research of the sociologists Patricia Adler and Peter Adler illustrates, “Preadolescents do not perceive, interpret, form opinions about, or act on the world as unconnected individuals. Rather, they do all these things in concert with their peers, as they collectively experience the world, encounter problems, share their perceptions, and form joint solutions to those problems.”16 Instead of being told what to think or unquestioningly “adopting” a particular racial logic, children actively produce ideas about race in conjunction with other young people. Part of this interpretive model of socialization involves an “appreciation of the importance of collective, communal activity—how children negotiate, share, and create culture with adults and each other.”17 As such, peers and siblings clearly play important roles in the process of white comprehensive racial learning.