A Child’s Unexpected Reaction to “The Talk” About Race And The Police

Like many African-American parents, Dana Canedy, the Pulitzer prize winning senior editor at The New York Times, recently decided to have "the talk" with her 8-year-old son about Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Michael Brown, and how he should to interact with police. She was not prepared for her son's response. Being a light-skinned person, he suggested that pretending to be white might be the safest course of action for him. Canedy’s story, "The Talk: After Ferguson, a Shaded Conversation About Race," appears in the December 13 issue of The New York Times Sunday Review.