I think I became aware of The Talk that African American parents have with their children a few years ago, most likely during the start of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is probably one of the surest signs that I have lived a life of white privilege. I’d grown up around casual racism with the N-word being an accepted part of many people’s vocabulary, so my not knowing about The Talk was par for the course.
Brendan Kiely had in some ways a similar and in others a very different kind of youth, and that’s led him to confront racism and write The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. He’ll appear with at this year’s virtual Ohioana Book Festival from Friday, April 29 to Sunday, May 1, 2022.
Listen in as we discuss his book and efforts at understanding racism and how he feels he’ll deal with it with his children.
I said, “But it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that exact thing.”
And my father said, “But Brendan, did you stop your friends?”
-Brendan Kiely
