After the death of George Floyd, the world woke up to a reality Black people have been living for centuries. Systematic inequality that necessitated a movement just to create awareness that Black lives even matter. Furthermore, it alerted White audiences to the reality that they may well have learnt about race through a more innocuous and immersive indoctrination into less obvious societal norms that disproportionately benefit White people. But if societal norms can be created and perpetuated, they can also be changed.

This project is a direct and concerted effort to help change these societal norms and start to deconstruct the inequality that – unless addressed – will continue to blight generations to come. It is the result of a partnership between IPG DXTRA, the anti-racism education non-profit We Are, the Ad Council, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

For generations, Black parents have had to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations with their young children to help them survive in a world full of racial violence. While this is a near-universal experience for Black families, 65% of White adults say they rarely or never spoke to their parents about racism. Race can mean life-or-death for Black families, while White families have the privilege of being able to ignore it altogether; either because it feels too awkward to tackle difficult conversations, or simply because it doesn’t feel like an issue that directly affects them or the people they love.

White parents better understand not just the importance of confronting racism, but the opportunity – in doing so – to shape a new reality for future generations. We just needed to help them take the first step and that’s where the Dear White Parents initiative comes in.

‘The Talk’ has been an unfortunate – but sadly essential – custom in Black households for decades. A conversation in which Black parents tell their children that they are not growing up in an equal world and could be victimised, treated unfairly or even harmed because of the colour of their skin.

But what if this teaching took place in the homes of White families where just broaching an uncomfortable subject could actively curtail the need for survival training to be a rite of passage for Black children?

By teaching White children to recognise and resist systems of race-based advantage and disadvantage, we can empower them to help disrupt a 400-year-old trajectory of racism; to save lives and contribute to a safer, more equitable future for everyone.

Working with White families, we found the barriers to talking about racism were two-fold. Firstly, while seen as an important subject, many felt it didn’t directly affect their children; secondly, having a conversation about racism was seen as potentially difficult or problematic.

To address this, we knew that we had to compel and inspire White parents into action rather than appealing to a sense of guilt or responsibility. So, our strategy was to show the opportunity that parents had to make their children agents of change – to be the ones who could help to break the cycle of systemic inequality.

We then employed nudge theory to help White parents take the first step. Our documentary film showed how to broach the subject and our dedicated website with tools and resources enabled them to make the shared learning an ongoing process.

Dear White Parents is an initiative designed to promote awareness and compel White parents to normalise conversations about structural inequities and race-based harm. It is a place for White parents to start. To learn and to pay forward lessons that could create a new reality for every generation that follows.

We started by filming with four White families to create a documentary that showed how this conversation could take place in different households. This directed audiences to a dedicated website where they could learn more and use tools and resources to directly employ – not to mention share and advocate with other families.

To faithfully represent the Black experience whilst sensitively appealing to White families, we ensured diverse representation across our entire production team – led by Academy Award- nominated director, Kevin Wilson Jr and Dr. Ronda Taylor Bullock, an anti-racism educator and executive curator of We Are.

Dear White Parents isn’t a project with a beginning and an end. It’s an ongoing initiative designed to fuel long-term change. However, over 2 million unique parents have already engaged with the project through social channels where sentiment has been overwhelmingly positive.

“This is SUCH a valuable resource. It has helped me feel ready to have these necessary conversations” @draso13 (Parent)

Most importantly, our above-average 12% website return rate shows that families are employing the resources to facilitate ongoing conversations and collectively deconstruct racial inequality.

The initiative has also been covered extensively in on and off-trade press in markets across the world.

“Dear White Parents’ shifts the burden of talking about race to families with the privilege to ignore it” - I-Hsien Sherwood, AdAge

“This powerful campaign gives white parents tools to raise an anti-racist generation” - Brittaney Kiefer, Ad Week