This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Sarah McCammon. As people across the nation continue to call

for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless others killed

by the police, there's also been an urgent call for Americans to not just talk about racism,

but to speak out against it. You might be ready to do that with friends, maybe even co-workers,

but it seems to get even trickier when it comes to parents and elders. Egeoma Oluo is the

best-selling author of So You Want to Talk About Race. She joins us with advice on how to talk

to your parents about racism, and while her tips here mostly are geared towards non-black folks,

there's something for everyone in this episode. Egeoma Oluo is the author of So You Want to Talk

About Race. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me. Over the past couple of weeks,

we've seen protests across the country against police brutality, sparked, of course, by the video of

the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Obviously, conversations about this moment are

going to vary depending on each family and their circumstances, but I want to start by asking what

advice you might have for beginning a conversation about this moment with, say, a parent or an elder who

just doesn't really understand it. I think it's really important to start first from a place of

your own ignorance that you once had. I think a lot of times when we start conversations about

justice and social justice with people who may not believe that these issues are important or

understand why there's so much urgency around them, we forget that at one point we didn't think

there was urgency as well. And so I always advise people to think about what brought them to the

point where they realized it mattered and to kind of share that story with people as well, it kind

of removes any defensiveness and shows even if people aren't going to agree with you in the end,

that there is a logical progression of your thought. So just think, you know, I saw the story,

this is the impact it had on me, or I was talking to these people and I used to think this, but then I

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