If society is racist, how to raise your children?

Please… insults are neither intended nor invited…
I truly believe in basic equivalence of all people, regardless of race, gender, age or ethnicity.

Let me paint the picture…

I live with my family in a country with an unsurpassed level of racism and discrimination along ethnicities and gender. Truly to a level that makes South Africa’s Apartheid look mild.

I notice that in this society, my kids are picking up quite some prejudices. And in all honesty, I cannot really blame them. They are continuously treated different based on their skin color and people around them continuously behave different based on their (obvious) ethnicity (for lack of better word).

This made me think… what if you can truly expect a different treatment from people, based on your own race? What do you teach your kids? That there is no difference? While ‘real life’ teaches them there is, every day?

I personally teach them, and I think they understand, that it is culture that defines people, not their birth. That regardless of difference, one person is not worth more than others. They understand, I think, and when back home they act that way.

However, here, where we live now, they have a whole of distrust towards other people, merely based on the way they are dressed. And in all honesty I cannot blame them… the distrust is reciprocal.