Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/10/02/how-to-avoid-accidentally-ra.html
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How not to raise Trump
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Neat. I’ll check it out. It’s unclear, though if this is meant to be listened to with children or without.
Not having your family inhabit a self-obsessed single race bubble seems to work for me.
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I don’t think that’s the kind of developmental problem a single podcast can fix.
(being serious, this is one of the thousands of things that makes Turmp such torture: he sets a new, wrist-slashingly awful benchmark for what we regard as exceptional racism)
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IMO, white guilt is the most useless cop-out white hand-wringers ever invented with regards to race. It’s usually a mechanism for whitey to assuage his or her own sad feelings by feeling reassured that they feel bad about racism whether or not they ever do anything material to address the issues. At best it’s a distraction and more often it’s simply an excuse for acedia and inaction.
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No such thing. You’re either raising active resistance or you’re complicit. Discomfort is not an excuse.
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I hope to raise this Trump persona, you might need to be old man Trump.
Gladly, the chances are well below 1%.
But it’s a good thing to talk about, because there are a whole bunch of people who honestly believe that internalizing racial equality means being color blind. “I want my kid to not even notice the color of people’s skin. And the way to do that is never to talk about race.”
It’s a nice sentiment, but it means that you and your kid will never understand why it is that centuries of oppression won’t simply disappear just because you think you can wipe the slate clean by not “noticing” race.
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I like that you mentioned internalization, because I think that is a central component of how people socialize race, sex, class, and other categories which is nearly always overlooked.
So I teach about these as categories which some people believe. It’s like religion, where it is easy to recognize that a group has beliefs, doctrines, rituals, and a certain amount of institutional power. YET outsiders typically do not internalize their belief system in order to navigate that group in their daily life. Because those beliefs are not universally applicable, despite the assertion of their adherents. They are “real” in the sense that we deal with them as institutions.
But when it comes to categories such as race, sex, and class - I think that many people who seem to know better do internalize the content, and act upon these categories as if they were universally valid. They neglect that layer of abstraction that holds such categories at arm’s (and mind’s) length. I would no sooner teach my kids that people are really either “white” or “PoC” than I would teach them that all people are really either Protestant or Catholic. Rather I teach them that the categories exist, many assume them, and they will encounter these.
If they internalize anything from this, I want it to be the methodology to ask people who they are, rather than assume based upon how their appearance may conform to stereotype.
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This is worth my time, because I’m the white kid who grew up between Arizona and Michigan, married a daughter of immigrants, and now have a mixed kid who’s gonna have to grow up with all the crap that never went away, and is bubbling back up furiously (to my view, that is – my wife knew full well and kept warning me).
Given that my daughter’s own extended family is now partially responsible for all this (as am I, of course, but in different ways), we’ll need all the tools.
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Racism and prejudice exists everywhere, though i’m sure i’m not blowing anyone’s mind here with such a statement. In the US because caucasians are the majority the concept of white privilege and white guilt comes up regularly. In other parts of the world there’s prejudice that can often be much much worse than what we see here in the US.
I am not sure racism will ever be a thing of the past, and despite the current political and social climate i like to think we’re still moving forward. We just need to make sure to not lose heart and continue the fight and education to strive for a more equal world.
Not having kids i don’t have to worry about it, but having been born in the US and then raised in Venezuela i’ve had somewhat of a cultural and identity crisis most of my life. I’ve never felt very Venezuelan, nor have i felt very American. I would give the advice to someone raising kids to make sure that their kids understand their mixed heritage but ultimately make sure that they take pride in who they are as individuals. If i could give myself that advice i would have saved myself a lot pain with my self confidence.
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Fuck Japan’s treatment of Ainu. Fuck Australia s treatment of Maori.
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As long as I’m using operant conditioning to brainwash my child I’m sure it’ll be OK with somebody, right?
Only partly kidding, really. My siblings and I have five distinct racial groups and two cultural groups and three religious philosophies in our family’s upcoming generation… we teach them to think for themselves, though, which is probably why one of them’s gone Chesterton Catholic.
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You know, this is something I really struggled with this when my kids were really little, but there are some subjects, like systemic racism and passive participation therein, that are pretty damn cut and dry. I generally believe that there is a whole lot more gray area than there is “good” or “evil” in the world and it is important to be clear about it when there is a distinct polarity.
Also, your family sounds really freaking interesting.
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When the nice social worker suggested we’d need to join an adoption support group to avoid social isolation my spouse laughed and said “our family is an adoption support group!”
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Did anyone listen to the show yet? I cannot believe how cliché the ad at the beginning is!
Bone marrow face cream, made in a artisanal science lab, in micro batches, in Brooklyn.
I was kinda shocked it was not satire…
Sorry for interrupting the more important and interesting discussion that was going on 
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The way to raise a kid who truly does value the content of people’s character rather than their physical characteristics is to make sure you explain as often as necessary that assholes come in every size, shape, color, and creed. So do decent human beings.
(Also: Granpa says those things because he believes them to be true, but he’s an ignorant hillbilly wholikes to hit or shoot things that disagree with him, so we just stay away from him. Far away. And know that both assholes and good people come in all colors.)
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Say what?
Australians committed genocide upon many peoples, but the Maori were not one of them.
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