Anti-Racism & Parenting

(Good Morning America)

Following this recent anniversary of the Charlottesville Unite the Right White Nationalist Rally in 2017 that left Heather Heyer dead, the attempt of yet another Unite the Right White Nationalist Rally last weekend in Washington DC, and in the aftermath of last week's racist public statement by the powerful conservative television journalist Laura Ingraham, I feel compelled to share a recent event in my own family when I learned my 9 year-old white son used the “N” word.

The phone call came at 3:30 p.m. and I was still at work.

 

I saw the caller ID listed as my son’s elementary school, and my mind and heart did the whirlwind-thing of “what’s going on!” that every parent’s mind and heart does when they see the school is calling you out of the blue.

It was his 3^rd grade teacher.

She began, “Something happened at school today that I need to address with you.  Your son called another student the “N” word.”

 

At which point the whirlwind I had already been experiencing before I even picked up the phone turned into absolute shock.

 

“What??!!” I exclaimed out loud without even thinking about who I was talking to.

 

I went on to learn more of the details.

 

At recess that day, my son was playing basketball with his friend who is also in 3^rd grade, and is biracial African American and Caucasian.  And during this game, his friend began to talk about another classmate of theirs who is female, Black, and dark-skinned, and his friend referred to this black girl as the “N” word.

My white son said he had never heard this word before.

Fast forward 5-10 minutes later. 

My son was standing in line with his class to go back into the school, and another student, who is brown-skinned and Indian, does a behavior that upset my son, and my son decided to call him the “N.”

(Yes, it happened that fast.)

He said it was the first time he had ever used that word.

What’s more, within a minute of my son using the “N” word, another white student standing in the same line mimicked my son, and called the same brown-skinned Indian boy the “N” word a second time, and the Indian boy, the victim in this case, did not return to school for the next two days after this event.

When I asked my son later that day, in the context of a conversation with my husband to try to process with him what had gone on that day, when his friend initially used the “N” word on the basketball court, what did he think his friend meant?

And this is what my son said:

“I understood that it was a bad word used for black and brown skin people that put them down and it means they are not as good as I am.”

At which point my jaw dropped all the way to the floor of my living room, and I asked him (probably more rhetorically in pure disbelief): “You got all that context from just that one conversation with [friend’s name]??”

Now I should say here, that in this conversation with my son he was already sobbing, and absolutely refusing to look his father or I in the eyes because at school, after the racist incident in the recess line, my son had been called to meet with the school principal and the teacher, and it was in this earlier conversation that my son learned for the first time about the origins of the “N” word in the United States.

That’s right, my white son did not learn about the guts of the pervasive and institutionally racist history of the United States toward people of color in the form of the “N” word from his white parents, and I have come to believe that this was a dis-service to him.

In a way, I did not do my job as his parent.

But where does one even begin? 

Take my son's experience.  

How do you begin to talk about the complexity of a light-skinned biracial black boy using the "n" word toward a dark-skinned black girl? How do you begin to discuss the difference of the "n" word for a black child versus a Indian child? How do you begin to explain the way racism has evolved in this country over 4 centuries and this reality of white privilege?

 

The truth is, I don't know.

 

However, what I do know for sure is: you just do it.  You begin somewhere.

Just as, in a similar way, it would not be helpful to the over-all health or well-being of my daughter to not tell her that there is a strong history of breast cancer in our family going back generations, it would not be helpful to the over-all health and well-being of this nation to not tell my son that there is strong history of racism in this country going back generations.

Because that is her genetic legacy and racism is ours.

And like what we now know in genetics and epigenetics, and in my own experience as a psychotherapist, the pain that is not transformed, can be transmitted to the next generation in the same way that addiction, domestic violence, and sexual abuse move predictably and pervasively from one generation to the next.

Furthermore, like addiction, domestic violence, and sexual abuse, the mechanisms that sustain and give life to racism by well-meaning white antiracists like myself, are quite similar to those other national social problems stated above, and they include: guilt, shame, secrets, lies, and denial- all an attempt to avoid what is hard and true.

Corrosive and insidious, yet seemingly subtle mechanisms that have contributed to keeping racism alive.

Therefore, the purpose of this particular blog, is to act opposite to that shame, and instead encourage other white antiracist parents to consider for themselves when is the right time to begin to talk to our white children about the “N” word and the larger context of racism in our country.

Because the decision not to, as in the case of my family, may actually perpetuate racism into future generations.