Conversations about race in Black and White US families: Before and after George Floyd’s death

Research has shown that Black parents are more likely than White parents to have conversations about race with their children, but few studies have directly compared the frequency and content of these conversations and how they change in response to national events. Here we examine such conversations in the United States before and after the killing of George Floyd. Black parents had conversations more often than White parents, and they had more frequent conversations post-Floyd. White parents remained mostly unchanged and, if anything, were less likely to talk about being White and more likely to send colorblind messages. Black parents were also more worried than White parents—both that their children would experience racial bias and that their children would perpetrate racial bias, a finding that held both pre- and post-Floyd. Thus, even in the midst of a national moment on race, White parents remained relatively silent and unconcerned about the topic.

Mom, I love you. I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I’m dead. I can’t breathe.

—George Floyd

As George Floyd lay dying on the street in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020, the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin on his neck, he called out for his mother and children.For Black Americans, such violence is inherently familial and has been since the beginning of the United States when Africans were forced into slavery. Today, systemic racism remains a core aspect of the Black American experience (1), reinforcing racial inequality across major sectors of life, from education and employment to housing and health (2–5). Consequentially, Black parents frequently have “the talk” with their children, seeking to prepare them to experience and combat the biases that could one day kill them (6–8).White Americans are not only less likely to be harmed by systemic racism than Black Americans, they are often advantaged by it (9, 10). In contrast to Black parents, White parents are less likely to talk with their children about race (11, 12), and when they do, despite decades of research documenting the pitfalls of colorblindness (13–15), they often tell their children that race is inconsequential, a privilege Black parents do not feel they can afford (12, 16).Sampling nearly 1,000 parents—half recruited shortly before Floyd’s death and half recruited shortly after—we provide here a rare window into how Black and White parents in the United States talk about race and racism (see 17, 18). Other studies suggest that White parents mostly do not (19, 20). Our research goes further by systematically comparing the socialization practices of Black and White parents both before and after George Floyd’s death, a death that was followed by one of the largest racial justice movements in United States history.Table 1.Parent and child demographics

			Sample demographics M (SD)
Parent race	Time	n	Parent age (y)	Child age (y)	Parent gender (% male)	Child gender (% male)
Black	Pre-Floyd	260	37.1 (10.8)	10.2 (4.9)	40.8 (4.9)	52.7 (5.0)
	Post-Floyd	190	36.7 (9.6)	10.3 (5.0)	37.9 (4.9)	55.3 (5.0)
White	Pre-Floyd	279	38.3 (7.4)	11.2 (5.0)	43.0 (5.0)	58.4 (4.9)
	Post-Floyd	234	39.6 (8.9)	10.9 (4.7)	39.3 (4.9)	55.6 (5.0)

Open in a separate windowDemographics of the sample, broken down by parent race (Black or White) and time period (pre-Floyd or post-Floyd). Values are means (unless otherwise noted), with SDs in parentheses.One possibility is that the unprecedented response to Floyd’s death (e.g., international protests, media campaigns, calls for criminal justice reform) resulted in increased conversations about race and racism among Black and White families (21). Alternatively, these conversations may have increased in Black families but not in White families. For Black families, witnessing the killing of an ingroup member is a traumatic experience that is central to ingroup identity and is therefore discussed and processed with ingroup members, especially loved ones; whereas for White families, witnessing the killing of an outgroup member may not elicit the need to have such discussions (22, 23). Our data allow us to test these possibilities, thereby giving us insight into the potential impact of a national “moment.”We also move beyond prior research by not only focusing on parents’ broad conversations about race, but their conversations about racial inequality and racial identity (i.e., being Black or White) as well, which are interconnected and tap into meaningful aspects of the United States experience (10). Thus, whereas previous research has focused either on a specific killing after the fact or on generic conversations about race decontextualized from the timing of those conversations, here we provide insight into Black and White parents’ conversations about race, inequality, and identity both before and after a racially charged killing. Doing so provides a rare and more comprehensive glimpse into the role of such killings in parents’ racial socialization practices.