Nailed It's Nicole Byer offered a guide on educating white children about racism

Nicole Byer, host of Netflix’s amateur baking show Nailed It, is demanding that parents educate their white children on racism. In an Instagram post, she shared that because a lot of kids watch her show, she wanted to give white parents a script they could read verbatim, using herself and Nailed It as the starting point—though, to be clear, the onus is not on her as a Black woman to educate white America.

“I did the work now you do some,” she wrote on Twitter with text pictures of her script for parents.

Byer decided to share her post after a parent of a Nailed It fan commented on a different post that they would “keep their head down and just let their kids watch nailed it.” That didn’t sit right with the host. “That made me boo hoo hoo,” she wrote. “That you will allow your kid to watch me but not stand up for me.” Also, let’s reiterate: The show is about people baking ugly cakes, not about the historical and current issues of racism in America. So, Byer said, “I’ll do the work I’ll write you a conversation to have with your white child.”

Byer opened with a way to explain the meaning behind Black Lives Matter to kids, using herself as a reference.

“A good way to explain to kids #blacklivesmatter : you like this black lady right? She’s silly? She makes you tee hee hee? You would be sad if a police officer hurt her right?” she wrote. “Well this is the current country we live in where someone you like can be hurt by the color of their skin and people in charge aren’t doing a fucking (you can replace that with dang if ya kids are soft) thing about it. So they are protesting, and the looters… well some of it is staged as a distraction some are opportunistic and some are people who’ve been oppressed for so long it bursts.”

Then, she went on to talk about the concept of “nice cops” and the deeply rooted issues with the institution of policing.

“And nice cops? There are no nice cops because if a cop was nice they wouldn’t watch and participate in violence against black and brown people,” she wrote. “If cops were really nice they would have spoken out about police brutality years ago and maybe walked out on their precincts to send a message that they are against this. Instead they dress up like your GI Joe doll and are very mean. The curfews the helicopters the police in riot gear is all because black people have asked to not be killed… that’s it. There’s literally nothing else to it.”

She also encouraged parents to not only have this conversation once but to make a commitment to have recurring talks with their white children about racism.

“Now once a week let’s read about shit (stuff for the soft kids) that happens to black people that doesn’t get covered in schools like Juneteenth, black Wall Street, how black people have influenced most of pop culture today and aren’t credited or it’s just co-oped,” she wrote.

For the parents who follow Byer’s advice and have these conversations, she urges them to post about it. “Post about the black history you teach your white kid to maybe inspire another white parent to do the same thing,” she wrote.

To summarize her message, she ended with this statement, straight-forward and clear: “Raise kids who give a fuck and you gotta give a fuck #blacklivesmatter.”