Finland recently launched the national campaign named #IAmAntiracist to call society – organisations and individuals – to actively participate in eradicating racism. Since I saw the campaign and got all excited about it – not that a campaign is gonna solve every problem but this is the biggest action I saw on the topic since I moved here so yay – I resolved that I wanted to share my thoughts and a testimony from our (interracial) family life. I had several ideas going on in my mind: should I share (bark) my bitter opinions on racism? How we embed antiracism in our everyday life? How racism affects our life? The challenges of two white parents who grew up in la-la land concerning racism having to navigate racial issues and topics with their brown child (looking forward to hearing his take on the matter when he’s older)? I pondered for weeks and didn’t succeed at placing all the thoughts and ideas in order. So I guess buckle your seat belt and follow me in this hopefully-not-too-messy post.

Antiracism In Our Daily Life

Antiracism is fundamental value of our parental guidance. Before educating children, parents should educate themselves. I collected in this post ideas and resources specifically for adoptive parents. For other families there are tons of resources out there. As a rule of thumb, privilege those developed by BIPOC since they have first-hand experience of racism and are best-equipped to treat the matter from different angles and with greater depth. A good start is Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad (which comes paired with a useful workbook).

Once parents open their eyes to the several ways in which racism and racial bias manifest in daily life (and more importantly, I know it’s hard to hear, in themselves), the rest is downhill. Unfortunately there is no “how-to” guide or amount of tips that can save you that deconstruction work and continuous learning.

In our family practicing antiracism values in everyday life means, for example:

• exposing our children to media that shows diversity (and in an equitable way aka BIPOC being main characters and not just sidekicks) and openly discussing when diversity is lacking;
• triggering conversations about diversity, why it matters and how it manifests in daily life (beyond race this includes disability, neurodiversity, and so on);
• breaking out of “the bubble”, for instance privileging activities where we meet people with different backgrounds. Sometime this means that we have to face our own discomfort and do new things (which is a bit scary but lots of fun);
• cultivating empathy and emotional intelligence. While they are not strictly correlated with race, it’s a foundation of antiracism.

It Takes a Village

We are lucky to be surrounded by supportive professionals in our life. We parents have been proactive in recommending educational resources and having conversations about our concerns with E’s daycare and pre-school caregivers. From their side, they have been very open to learn and have always worked with us to find solutions when issues presented. We have suggested concrete ways to celebrate diversity and promote inclusion in the classroom. Experimenting with these ideas that translated into new activities has been a rewarding experience for all those involved.

For now we never had to face resistance (or even downright racism) from people in our life. Knowing my extended family I know this would be a source of stress and arguing if we lived close. Silver lining of being expat parents, I guess!

In Finland there is a growing antiracist movement and I want to recommend the education work promoted by two associations I follow: Familia ry and Yhteiset Lapsemme ry. Familia published a groundbreaking report on racism experienced by multicultural families in Finland and recently launched a toolkit for parents and professionals. YL regularly runs workshops for school-aged children and teachers to educate on inclusion and antiracism and they publish educational materials on adoption and racism for parents and teachers.

What We Planted Is Growing

Raising children is planting seeds we may never witness grow. It’s a work of faith, trusting that our work will impact their lives and the lives of others. I have no other choice but hope that our efforts on cultivating antiracism values in our family will grow our children’s awareness and make them agents of change. Yet I want to share a few glimpses that gave me hope for the future:

• R really loves to draw (imaginary) people and I have noticed she spontaneously draws people with various skin colours.
• I was once reading a children’s book with E and he asked why there were no adults with dark skin illustrated in the book. He had noticed the author had included children with different skin colours but all adults were white. We had a really good conversation about it and I helped him write this feedback to the author. I was really proud that he claimed that space!
• In several occasions E talked about difficult feelings he experience in connection to skin colour and race. While the content of these conversations makes me sad, I take it as a positive sign that he feels safe talking openly about these issues and that he has a vocabulary to do so.

My hope for my children is that they will learn to spot racial bias in themselves and others, that they will have tools to understand power dynamics and spot social injustice, and that ultimately they will be agents of change. As a parent I will keep doing the hard work within myself and though my day-to-day actions make this vision a reality.

Featured Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash