HOUSTON – As our kids watch the news or social media these days, many of them have encountered images of George Floyd in distress with a knee on his neck, or videos of protests all over our country.
Many parents and caretakers are asking themselves, what and how they should tell their children about what’s happening in our nation.
“They know that this man died, they see the outrage, they see riots, they see the fires, the protests. We can’t ignore this nor should we,” said Executive Director of Crime Stoppers of Houston, Rania Mankarious, who shared how to start a conversation at home and how to talk to them about injustice, police and race.
“It’s important to have age-appropriate and mature- appropriate conversations. Talk about what happened but put your own oxygen mask on first. Make sure you as a parent or the caretaker are in the space to have this conversation where it is productive. Talk about what happened to Mr. Floyd, but we’ve got to take a step back and talk about the history of our country. Where we’ve been, where we are now and what the solutions are moving forward,” said Mankarious, who thinks what happened in Minneapolis on May 25 was “wrong on every level.”
“We need to have a tough conversation about the requirements and what we expect of these very important people in our society. And where they make a mistake, where they show a lapse of judgment and an abuse of power, we are going to hold them accountable. It doesn’t mean they’re all bad, it doesn’t mean we throw out entire professions. It means we work together to make sure they do what’s right in all situations,” said Mankarious about the police. She also believes we should unite and “use that power to make some positive changes.”
“We’re trying to remind people that most of us agree than disagree. And that’s not to diminish in any way what’s happened to George Floyd or anybody else across this country. But we want to start on the progress,” said Mankarious, a mother of three who received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, Theology and Pre-Medicine from Boston College and a Doctorate of Jurisprudence completed at the University of Houston Law Center.