Angelina Jolie Discussed How She Talks to Her Kids About Racism
Angelina Jolie is no stranger to change. She's worked as a Special Envoy of the High Commissioner for Refugees to bring attention to the challenges that refugees face around the world. With the current state of the world, which involves protestors everywhere fighting for racial equality, Jolie told Harper's Bazaar U.K. that she's sitting down with her family to discuss systemic racism and white privilege.
She told the magazine that she sees people fighting for change as a positive, but she knows that it's going to be a process that involves major changes to major institutions.
"It feels like the world is waking up, and people are forcing a deeper reckoning within their societies," Jolie said. "It is time to make changes in our laws and our institutions — listening to those who have been most affected and whose voices have been excluded."
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She went on to say that as things stand, certain things protect her as a white woman but leave her daughter vulnerable. She stated that inequality is "intolerable" and that everyone should take a closer look at the systems in place to institute real change. Police reform, she says, is only the beginning.
"A system that protects me but might not protect my daughter — or any other man, woman or child in our country based on skin color — is intolerable," she added. "We need to progress beyond sympathy and good intentions to laws and policies that actually address structural racism and impunity. Ending abuses in policing is just the start. It goes far beyond that, to all aspects of society, from our education system to our politics."
When the magazine asked Jolie for some advice on teaching children about race and racism, she had a simple reply, saying, "To listen to those who are being oppressed and never assume to know."
