Children growing up in the United States are living in a world with ongoing public debates about race, daily displays of racial violence, and for some, an increased awareness surrounding inequality. Based on two years of ethnographic research with affluent, white kids and their families, this talk examines how white kids learn about race, racism, inequality, and privilege in the contexts of their families and everyday lives. This talk explores how white racial socialization is a process that stretches beyond white parents’ explicit conversations with their white children and includes not only the choices parents make about neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, extracurricular activities, and media, but also the choices made by the kids themselves. Featuring the actual voices of young, affluent white kids and what they think about race, racism, inequality, and privilege, this talk explores how white racial socialization is much more dynamic, complex, and varied than previously recognized.
Margaret A. Hagerman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University and is a Faculty Affiliate in both the African American Studies and Gender Studies programs. She is an award-winning author of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (NYU Press 2019), and she is a nationally recognized expert on white racial socialization. She teaches classes on racism, education, families, and qualitative methods. Dr. Hagerman received her B.A. in English and her M.A. in Sociology at Lehigh University, and she earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Emory University in 2014.