As a white mother of two black children, Kristin Davis has struggled to understand the daily challenges of racism faced by people of color around the world. “It’s one thing to watch it happening to other people, but another to watch it happening to your child,” she told Jada Pinkett Smith on the Monday, July 8 edition of “Red Table Talk.” It’s a big issue and I think about it every day and every night.” Kristin grew tearful as she recalled examples of the behavior she encountered after adopting her daughter Gemma, now 7, as a baby. “When I was holding her in my arms, people would say to me, ‘Won’t she be a great basketball player?’ I would just have to be like … ‘This is a baby. How could you say that without just being mortified?'” the actress asked (via Us Weekly). She said the “next big turning point” came at a playground with Gemma. “This one girl in particular would stop swinging, would hold the swing, would call to another white girl across the yard and say, ‘I’m holding the swing for you.’ I’d just be like, ‘What the f—? What about my child?'” she said. “I don’t know how every person of color has gotten through this. I don’t understand how you could take this every day.” She added that because she “will never be black no matter how hard I try” and “will never be able to say to Gemma: ‘I understand because this is what happened to me,'” the single mom, who adopted a son last May as well, said she’s “on a mission” to expose her children to black communities and culture and to keep asking questions about talking to kids about issues like police brutality. “I don’t want to miss something or under the crazy white privilege assumption that everything is going to be fine,” she said. “We have to deal with reality and we have to prepare them.”
