By now, it is well known that Black, brown, and Indigenous mothers and fathers regularly have a very specific parenting conversation with their children that is generally unnecessary from the parenting conversations of white parents to their white children.
As a white mother with white children, I have been compelled over the last ten years though to have a very different conversation with my children. Mine is not about how my white children can attempt to stay safe in public, my conversation is about white accountability.
On January 6th when the Capitol building was attacked, my white husband and I sat and watched the news with our white children. And what was unsettling to me about them watching the event unfold was that my white children were mostly un-phased. They gasped when they saw the white man carrying the Confederate flag. They asked if those people were allowed to do that (why is no one getting arrested?). They asked if anyone was getting hurt. But for the most part they seemed desensitized.
Because, honestly, as long as they have been old enough to have memories, they have seen and heard about white people behaving badly and not getting in trouble for it.
White people marching with torches and confederate flags. White people taking guns to school and killing their classmates and being escorted out of the building. White people putting their hands on another person without their permission and then experiencing absurdly soft punishment. White people saying things on camera that they recognize as inappropriate and unkind. White people not following the rules. White people who try to endanger others to make excuses for not following the rules themselves. White people demanding that others do what they say under no authority and then acting like they are the victim.
So many examples of people who look just like us that are behaving badly and/ or dangerously who are then met with patience and an understanding of innocence before proven guilty. And to top it all off - a million ways to flip it upside down so that other white people can reason why THAT white person is not like them and their family.
That is not an opportunity that Black, brown, and Indigenous people are able to fall back on. If you are Black, brown, or Indigenous and you behave badly, you have now become a representative of all people who look like you. (Oddly enough, the opposite is also true. If you succeed it is because you are somehow exceptional; you are NOT like everyone who looks like you).
White people, we have a different experience - right? If a white person behaves badly we have a whole dictionary of excuses as to why that ONE white person did that bad thing: they have mental illness, they had poor parenting, they were bullied, they were misunderstood, they were told lies, they didn't get a fair hand, they are unstable, it's the videogames and music industry, they are evil....at the most basic level, white people reason - "bad" white people are DIFFERENT from me and my children. (and then on the other side, we also get to say as white people, if we succeed it is because we, individually, are exceptional. But also all white people deserve to be labeled as exceptional with all the trophies, gold metals, stickers, and compliments. Each individual white person is special and unique....hopefully you are reading my eye roll here.)
In 2012, I wrote an article for The Good Men Project after the Aurora Shooting about how as a mother, I look at my sleeping children and try to force myself to remember every day that as I whisper to them that they "can be anything when they grow up" that doesn't just include the good things that I hope for them. Just as I'm sure, the shooter's mother looked at her own son when he was just a little boy. Mothers don't see monsters hidden on the faces of their children.
And I read that article now, 8 years later, after having conversation after conversation with my children about the white people behaving badly on the news with seemingly no consequences and the article feels wholly lacking from that one glaringly obvious fundamental lens; race.
These "bad people" LOOK LIKE ME. My children are watching these scary things in the world happening and all the "bad people" look like them. And this is not "bad people" in movies and tv and video games (fake bad people). These are real "bad people" who live in the world we live in and in the world that our friends and family live in, some of whom are Black and brown.
These white kids, OUR WHITE KIDS, grow up believing that their own personal wants give them permission to do whatever and say whatever they please, and usually get away with it. Is it because they have a million examples of people who look just like them behaving badly and getting away with it? And if the "bad" white person doesn't get away with it, do our white kids hear the white adults in their life make every possible excuse to explain why that one white person is not like them; how that one person is different from them in some invisible way?
As Black, brown, and Indigenous mothers sit their children down regularly to have conversations on how to stay safe in our society, I worry that the white parents' conversation about white accountability is such a constant fight that white parents don't have the stamina to do the work. Because it is hard, unrelenting work at looking reflectively and critically at our own bias and awareness of the world. It is questioning and thinking critically at ways we ourselves as grown ups pass the blame for our problems onto every excuse in the book. How our expectations filter down into our childrens' ideas of what to expect and why and when and how. It is not making excuses for our own kids. It is not ignoring the very obvious connection we have to people who do bad things that look just like us.
It is watching the news with our kids and seeing people who look just like us behaving badly without consequence and as the parent, not staying silent about it.
Saying nothing sets the tone that this is accepted and expected.
Parenting is not passive.
more specifically,
White parents trying to raise antiracist kids can not be passive.
So, on January 6th while we watched the Capitol building insurrection, we had the conversation again with our white children.
"I know these people look just like us. But this is not acceptable or appropriate behavior. They are being dangerous and breaking the rules and making terrible choices that will follow them for the rest of their life. Just because it seems like they aren't getting in trouble for this, does not give you permission to ever behave like this. EVER. You know what is right and what is wrong. And if you don't, you have people who love you that can help you figure it out. We are white; we look just like these people who are doing bad things - but we can choose every day to be a better example of people who look like us."
Please, white parents of white children.
we must, MUST, do better.
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