In light of the police murdering Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, my blog post I Fit the Description has been making the rounds again. It is understandable, of course, and I have learned to protect and steel myself for the responses.
What is new and what I think is very telling is that people-mostly white and white adjacent-are asking me what they should tell their children about what is happening in the US right now. They are shocked about police violence against Black people that is coming into their homes via the video of Mr. Floyd being murdered by members of the Minneapolis Police Department. They want to shield their children from the terrible images of his murder. They tell me about “difficult conversations” they are having with their kids. They usually tell their kids to “look for the helpers” as Mr. Rogers told us, but the helpers are the ones who are the agents of violence against Black people. They are at a loss and they reach out-to someone on the internet who wrote a blog post-on how to talk to their kids.
I am guessing there are no Black people with children in their social circle, at their kids’ school, on the soccer team, in their churches, in their homeowners’ association. I am guessing there are no books, movies, essays, historical societies, or any information at all available to them that would help them talk to their kids about the history of uprisings that are sparked as a result of police violence against Black people. I guess for a lot of them, this is the first time that this has ever happened.
If they allowed themselves to get proximate to Black people as people-if they actually were in community with their fellow Black citizens of the country they share-they would be able to talk with their children about what their fellow Americans suffer at the hands of the police. Black people in America have had this conversation with their children since they arrived on this shore. I am not talking about the “Talk” where they are warned about interacting with the police, I am saying that Black life is organized around the fact that white supremacy does not allow white people to see Black people as equal (and in many cases as human). When most Black children are “looking for the helpers” they are very careful when the look to the police.
So the fact that people are asking me for advice on how to talk to their children is very sad to me. It means that they are segregated from Black people. And that segregation is by choice and it is reinforced by the police and sustained by white fear and white willingness to weaponize the police against Black people accessing civic life, services for which they have paid, or homes for which they pay rent. If Black people try to inhabit spaces where white people think they do not belong, white people will call the police. And the police do what they are trained to do to Black people. Black people know this and they teach their children to be mindful of this every time they leave the house and navigate space. And even though they are moving through their country they still know that the right to be secure in their persons is suspended when they enter spaces that white people have decided they do not belong.
So what to tell your children?
It is time to abandon white racial innocence and stop lying to white children. Children are not stupid and they learn white supremacy as quickly as they acquire language. They are well aware that people are treated differently based on skin color. Emmett Till was a child. Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carol McNair, and Carole Robertson were children. Tamir Rice was a child. White children need to know-like Black children already know-that being a child is not an insulation against white supremacy. They can know the same things Black children know. Because if you want to stop white children from growing up to be white police officers who murder Black people, you have to tell them the truth about white supremacy.
And this notion that they are too young is specious. White children used to be brought to lynchings. (I highly recommend James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man.”)This was a way to show white children their place and to inculcate them in the ideology of white supremacy. That is part of our history. (I did an entire cycle of artworks about violence against Black people as necessary for the creation of a white domestic identity.) A big part of this problem is that children-white children-are being subjected to images of violence against Black people by the state and no one is talking to them about it. No one is explaining in simple terms to them that there are bad people who think that Black people are not the same as them and because of that they hurt them. No one is making the link for them and so the violence is just coming from bad people but no one is telling them what makes these people bad.
Men and boys pose beneath the body of Lige Daniels, a black man, shortly after he was lynched on August 3, 1920, in Center, Texas. (James Allen,ed., et al., Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 117-118.)
Lastly, it is really way past asking Black people what to do. You need to see how crazy making it is to ask Black people how to dismantle white supremacy while we are trying to not be killed by it. You KNOW what to do. You do not need to talk about MLK like he was Santa Claus. You can talk about him as someone who was murdered by the same kinds of people who are killing Black people now. You can stop talking about “dreaming” and read to your kids what King said about poverty and about state violence against Black people. Our shared history is full of white people who have chosen humanity. You can look to their example and share examples with your kids. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a memorial to the martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement. Read those people’s stories to your kids. Tell them about Viola Liuzzo, James Reeb, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, William Lewis Moore, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, and Bruce Klunder. Tell them about the courage of the Freedom Riders. Tell them about Juliette Hampton Morgan, the librarian in Alabama who struggled with anxiety and agoraphobia and still fought for justice. Tell your schools about The Black School, Teaching Tolerance, Jane Elliott, Robin D’Angelo, and Tim Wise.
It is not enough to feel badly about something you read or feel guilty about being white. People being subjected to this kind of state violence cannot spare energy to make you feel welcome or comfortable for being “supportive.” This is a human rights issue. Black people cannot absolve you or make you feel better about what is being done to them. It is past time to go to organizations in your community and nationally and ask them what you can do to help. And then you have to do those things. You have to let Black people lead you. Your actions are what matter; not your feelings and not your children’s claims to an innocence that is not available to Black children.
You can no longer say you don’t know what to do. If you don’t do it, it’s because you don’t want to.