TV host Nicole Byer has some advice for parents on how to talk to your children about race

My kids are obsessed with the hilariously fun baking show Nailed It on Netflix.

And if you have watched it, you can’t have helped, I bet, just laughing out loud at both the disastrous baking fails and Nicole Byer’s hilarious hosting. She is flamboyant and vibrant and so, so brilliant.

However, in light of recent weeks’ events in the US, Byer clearly felt compelled to remind white parents that liking Black people on TV is not the same thing as standing up for them in real life.

In a recent Instagram post, Byer explained how amid the public discourse happening in the US right now, one of her followers recently commented on one of Byer’s Black Lives Matter posts to say that they would just “keep their head down and just let their kids watch nailed it.”

Se dette innlegget på Instagram

Hi hello I’m Nicole. I host a tv show called @nailedit a lot of kids watch the show. In an Instagram comment someone said they would “keep their head down and just let their kids watch nailed it.” (I turned off the comments so ya can’t find it and attack that person also dunno their ethnicity or anything about them) That made me boo hoo hoo. That you will allow your kid to watch me but not stand up for me. So I’ll do the work I’ll write you a conversation to have with your white child A good way to explain to kids #blacklivesmatter : “you like this black lady right? She’s silly? She makes you tee hee hee?You would be sad if a police officer hurt her right? Well this is the current country we live in where someone you like can be hurt by the color of their skin and people in charge aren’t doing a fucking (you can replace that with dang if ya kids are soft) thing about it. So they are protesting, and the looters… well some of it is staged as a distraction some are opportunistic and some are people who’ve been oppressed for so long it bursts. And nice cops? There are no nice cops because if a cop was nice they wouldn’t watch and participate in violence against black and brown people. If cops were really nice they would have spoken out about police brutality years ago and maybe walked out on their precincts to send a message that they are against this. Instead they dress up like your GI Joe doll and are very mean. The curfews the helicopters the police in riot gear is all because black people have asked to not be killed… that’s it. There’s literally nothing else to it. Now once a week let’s read about shit (stuff for the soft kids) that happens to black people that doesn’t get covered in schools like Juneteenth, black Wall Street, how black people have influenced most of pop culture today and aren’t credited or it’s just co-oped… and if you do this post about. Post about the black history you teach your white kid to maybe inspire another white parent to do the same thing. There I did it you can read it verbatim to your kids. Also I’m open to any additions. Raise kids who give a fuck and you gotta give a fuck #blacklivesmatter

Et innlegg delt av Nicole Byer (@nicolebyer) Juni 2, 2020 kl. 2:15 PDT

Byer, correctly, points out that ‘keeping one’s head down’ is not enough. Parents, she says, have to get their heads in the game, especially those raising white kids.

“That made me boo hoo hoo,” Byer wrote. “That you will allow your kid to watch me but not stand up for me. So I’ll do the work I’ll write you a conversation to have with your white child.”

Byer offers this script for white parents who aren’t sure how to teach their children that Black Lives Matter.

“[Y]ou like this black lady right? She’s silly? She makes you tee hee hee? You would be sad if a police officer hurt her right?”

“Well this is the current country we live in where someone you like can be hurt by the colour of their skin,” she writes, adding that the people in charge are not doing anything about this problem.

The TV host ends her post by suggesting parents read about black history to their children and educate them on important chapters in American history.