Teaching racism is hurting children

Telling young children to focus on the evils of a skin pigmentation is a form of emotional child abuse. Don't believe me? Read on...

Note: This will be the first in a series of long-form essays on childhood, generational change, modern parenting, and how this all affects the wider culture. I will be posting them once a month or so. If you’d like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription, or share it with a friend!

Does anyone remember the thrill of scary stories as a child?

I remember visiting family in Belfast when I was little, in the late ‘70’s- early 80’s, a place where violence was a real and daily occurrence. My cousins and I were allowed to go down to the nearby shop to buy sweets. This was always an exciting prospect, even though the shop was about a minute’s distance from my granny’s front door. The excitement was partly due to the magical ability that all children have to make adventure out of the mundane. But it was also enhanced by a story fervently believed my little cousins, who conspiratorially shared it with me: that the streets of Belfast were stalked by a killer who drove around in a black taxi, looking for little kids to murder. Our trip to buy chocolate and crisps wasn’t just a walk down the block — it was a race to get there and back before we could be snatched and butchered. 

Sounds like a game that would send many of today’s parents screaming for the closest child psychologist. Times have really changed. When I was expecting my son, twenty-plus years after my adventures in Belfast, I found myself checking the website of a Park Slope day care centre, which proudly stated that the toddlers in its care were dissuaded from pretending to be superheroes. Instead, they were encouraged to enact more socially positive fantasy roles like…community organiser.

Let children be the heroes of their imaginations

But the dark fantasy game of my childhood was a remnant of an ancient practice among children — testing your own wits and bravery against a terrifying (if imaginary) monster. And winning.

At some point, in service to an idea of safety, we stopped allowing children to do that. At some point, adults began intervening in the private worlds of children — worlds that were fuelled not by real-life issues but by human imagination. It turns out, that was an important training ground for our developing psyches.

It’s becoming more widely understood that, starting with the Millennial generation, millions of children grew up in an over-protected environment that actually did them harm — from sterile homes causing a rise in allergies, to young adults entering the workforce totally unprepared for adult life.  

But while the focus of these stories has always been on how cosseted and comfortable children have been, an overlooked paradox is that even as they took away the physical danger of childhood, and greatly diminished all exposure to challenge, adults also saw fit to introduce racial and political conflict to the consciousness of the child.

I happened across my first example of this a few weeks after my son was born 12 years ago. Flicking through the TV channels while on maternity leave, I stopped on a documentary set in an elementary school near the town where my mother grew up. The focus was the school’s kindergarten class, and the kids were adorable, as five year old always are. The sweet innocence of the kids, gently led by a lovely young woman teacher, was perfect viewing for me on a wintry morning as I held my own newborn in my arms. But the cameras unwittingly caught the loss of that sweet innocence when the teacher introduced the topic of white racism to the class. The children in the multi-racial class shifted uncomfortably, suddenly side-eyeing each other. There was a palpable change in mood, as these beautiful little kids lost all solidarity with each other and very much looked like they noticed their differences for the first time. The snake had been introduced to the garden.

The movement to racialise childhood has only grown since then. 

You could fill a book with examples of this. For example, this gem: a children’s book that aims to introduce the idea of “whiteness” to white kids still young enough to have picture books read to them.

The plot line of the book involves a white child being traumatised by seeing a black man being shot dead by a cop on television. When the mother tries to steer the child away from the news, the book’s author (a white Brooklyn mother herself, not surprisingly)  clearly disapproves. The narrator purrs:

“You can face this. Understanding the truth takes courage, especially painful truth about your own people, your own family. Even people you love behave in ways that show that they believe they are the good ones.” [Emphasis mine.]

Interesting approach: teaching children to mistrust the fundamental building blocks of their life — the love and the bonds within their own family. This children’s book is planting the seed of doubt about the most important people in the child’s life. In other contexts this is known as grooming. Chairman Mao would be so proud.

The book goes on to totally age-appropriate topics like evictions and denied bank loans, because nothing gets a five-year-old’s imagination fired up quite like the bills their parents have to pay. Voter registration tests are exactly what kids need to hear about to help them master life skills like learning to tie shoe laces and washing hands after using the bathroom.

It ends — finally — in a crescendo of propaganda that mixes anti-Semitic iconography and straight up abuser manipulation, with the child being presented a “contract” that a devil is tempting her to sign.

“Want to know who’s liberation you’re fighting for? Your own. Whiteness is a bad deal, it always was. Here’s a contract. You get stolen land, stolen riches, special favours. Then there’s a little footnote that says ‘land, riches and favours may be revoked at any time, for any reason.  Whiteness gets to mess endlessly with the lives of your friends neighbours, loved ones and all fellow humans of colour, for the purpose of profit. The only price is your soul. Sign below.”

Behind the contract the author has drawn in a devil’s tail. The text box reads: “DUDE, we can see your pointy tail!”

And the book ends with the immensely creepy:

“Innocence is overrated. Knowledge is power.”

Why would you deliberately deprive children of innocence and encourage them to mistrust their parents and family? That’s what exploiters and molesters do. Why would you teach sell-loathing to white children based on an immutable characteristic: the colour of their skin? And why would you teach black children to mistrust and fear white friends and classmates? Why would you burden them with the false idea that their black skin will hold them back in life?

It is emotional child abuse. 

And yet, there is worse. Far worse. For example this essay: more emotional, hate-filled outburst than policy paper, but was nonetheless published on an education website. The essay stops just a hair’s breadth short of calling for violence on white children. And it was circulated by at least one fancy Manhattan prep school, where the children of former Fox anchor Megyn Kelly were students. The author states that:

“White children are left unchecked and unbothered in their schools, homes and communities.”

And it’s clear from the author’s tone she does not think this a good thing.

 “This time if you really want to make a difference in Black lives—and not have to protest this shit again—go reform white kids.

Because that’s where the problem is—with White children being raised from infancy to violate Black bodies with no remorse or accountability.”

Um, what? Last I checked, pretty much two generations kids in the US were raised watching and adoring black superstars — from Sesame Street, to the Cosby Show, to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, to Destiny’s Child and beyond. To think that somehow mainstream culture was simultaneously endorsing a message of bodily harm on people of colour is almost laughable.

But it’s far too damaging to be a laughing matter.

Which is worse: the outlandish and hate-filled claim that white infants are taught to commit violence upon black people (thus presumably making white infants fair game for retributive violence)? Or the fact that this piece of racism was approvingly shared among the millionaires and power-players of the New York City private school set? Clearly, in my view at least, the worse crime is being committed not by the unhinged author of some trashy piece of web content calling for revenge upon white children. She needs a very good therapist and a Xanax. Far worse is the overt endorsement her work received from the very people who are tasked with protecting, nurturing and educating children. 

Yes, this causes mistrust, fear, and hostility between children of different races. But almost worse than that is that it is so disempowering and debilitating to a small human’s malleable sense of self. Paradoxically, we now prevent children from slaying their own invented, imaginary monsters. Instead, we force feed them narratives about “real” monsters that the adults themselves are afraid of. It is telling children three things: a) monsters exist b) even adults are not brave or good enough to fight the monsters and c) the monsters may even be you.