Perhaps, experience is the missing ingredient. For example, how often have you been the only white person at work, school, a social event, a public event, or someone’s else’s home? How often have you been interviewed for a job by a black person? How often have you had a black teacher, a black preacher, a black boss, a black doctor, or a black representative? How often do you invite black people to your home for dinner, or a party? How often do black people invite you to their home for dinner, or a party? How often do you hang out with black people, meet for breakfast, go shopping, or take your kids to the park together? Other than a retail store, how have you met black people and how often?

Do any of these questions make you feel uncomfortable, or defensive, maybe even angry? If you want to tell me it’s not your fault, are you sure?

If the answer to these questions is one, once or never, the lack of practical, first-hand experience would make it hard for you to see how racism has limited you – by putting you in a box and throwing the key away. Do you know how to get out of that white box. Are you afraid to leave that white box?

You are your son’s role model – right? It doesn’t sound like your son is interested in anything outside that little white box. Without realizing it, have you locked your son inside your little white box?

This is 2023, not 1950. Why do some kids have friends of all colours and creeds? How did these kids meet each other? How did they manage to spend enough time together to become friends, then stay friends so long, their kids are now friends? Do you secretly wish, you could say your son was one of these kids? If not, why not?

I ask these questions, because the little white box is getting smaller every day. If you don’t help your son find his way out of the little white box, his world will grow smaller and smaller.

You might start by reading both those books yourself, so that you can talk about them – together. Who knows, reading similar books might become a father-son tradition. Someday, two men might tell the story of how they found their way out of the little white box together.