Kristin Davis gets candid on ‘Red Table Talk’ recalling her Black children’s experience with racism
The 'Sex in the City" actress sat down with Jada Pinkett Smith to talk about her experiences dealing with the racism that her two children -- both Black -- have had to endure
Kristin Davis sat down with Jada Pinkett Smith to talk about her experiences dealing with the racism that her two children -- both Black -- have had to endure
Jada Pinkett-Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris, dish with Sex and The City’s Kristin Davis about interracial adoption for the latest episode of the Daytime Emmy nominated show, Red Table Talk, which is now available on Facebook Watch.
Davis is opening up about being a white mom to two Black children — a baby boy she adopted in 2018, and daughter Gemma Rose, 7½, whom she adopted in 2011. In the sit-down interview, the actress becomes emotional recalling her daughter’s experience with racism when she was just an infant.
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Davis said she was left outraged when people remarked that her baby girl would become “a great basketball player” someday. She observed another example of “institutionalized” racism when Gemma was a bit older and “a young white girl holding a swing for her friend across the playground, even though Gemma had been patiently waiting her turn to,” PEOPLE reports.
When she complained about the issue to school administrators, Davis said they dismissed her and said, ” ‘We just see them all the same. We don’t see color,’ ” the mother of two recalled.
“It was a very harsh moment of understanding,” she shared. “I don’t know how every person of color has gotten through this. I don’t understand how you could take this every day.”
Being the mother of two Black kids has made Davis fully aware of her own white privilege.
“This is what I want to say, from a white person adopting [black children]: You absolutely do not fully understand. There’s no doubt. There’s no way you could,” she said in the video titled, “Should White People Adopt Black Kids?”
“It’s one thing to be watching [racism] happening to other people and it’s another thing when it’s your child. And you haven’t personally been through it. It’s a big issue,” she added.
Davis admits that her daughter’s experience with racism “lit a fire under me where I couldn’t be relaxed or casual [about racism].”
“I will never be black, no matter how hard I try. … That is the truth, and we have to accept it. And therefore I will never be able to say to Gemma, ‘I understand how you feel because this happened to me.’ That’s what’s painful and hard.”
Davis has made it her mission to put her daughter in situations “where I was the only white person.”
Before the interview began, Banfield Norris noted that she has “certain feelings about this whole interracial adoption,” and told her daughter it’s because “I think it’s really hard raising black children today.”
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