Chance the Rapper has some very important lessons for his little girl.
As the star shared with Parents, he and wife Kirsten Corley have been using this time amid the Black Lives Matter movement to impart some powerful knowledge on their 4-year-old firstborn daughter, Kensli.
"My kids are young," he told Parents of Kensli and daughter Marli, whose first birthday is Aug. 29. "Mainly, we've been teaching Kensli to love herself, to understand that her opinion is important, to understand that Black is beautiful and that Black power is her superpower."
"Marli," he noted, "I've just been trying to teach her how to walk."
In this historic time of change and progress, the 27-year-old Grammy winner also reflected on this moment and how he has better understood racism.
"I think freedom, or even just the lack of oppression and racism, starts with recognizing the humanity in others. And I think we're kind of indoctrinated to look at people who aren't in our same tier of social hierarchy as 'other.' This time is calling into question everyone's morality and everybody's sense of complicity and the oppression of people at large," he pointed out to the magazine.
"I think one thing that has helped me understand racism is realizing that people can adhere to racist systems and benefit from them without necessarily consciously doing so," he further shared. "And my understanding of that came from my being able to see how I could be complicit in patriarchy and sexism."
As an example, the rapper referenced how protests can be held disproportionately on behalf of Black men.
"When there are protests, they're mostly for Black men. Statistics show that Black women are also brutalized at an extremely high rate or, in some cases, killed by racist police officers," the star said. "So I think we're starting to address many issues: racism, patriarchy, capitalism, colorism. Until we can recognize the stem of each problem and how we all work within the system, we can't actually make it better."
While the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded nearly simultaneously, threatening lives and isolating people at home, the celebrity dad has not lost sight of the sweet silver lining—even if it involved tricky bicycle brakes.
"It was tough not seeing my parents for months. But for those of us who have not lost folks, and for whom the worst part is staying at the house, it's been an opportunity to connect in a substantial way with our children and spouses," he said.
"The spring was more a time of reflection than keeping the community alive. It's been an amazing growth point for me. Kensli and I do little arts-and-crafts projects. We did a volcano experiment, and we grew some sea monkeys. I built her a bike," Chance described. "The tough part was putting the brakes on. Like, it's actually one of the most difficult things I ever did, putting the brakes on the bike."