Chamblee54

The facebook meme interrupted the cheerful October apathy. The meme was about an article, My 2-Year-Old Doesn’t Seem to Care About Being Anti-Racist. The colorful graphic did not have a link to the story, so I googled the title. Soon, there were lots of options for Pre-K social justice education.
The headline story was on Slate. The format is the anxious letter to an advice columnist. The subtitle was “Have we screwed up somehow?”
“Dear Care and Feeding, My husband and I (we’re white) have a 2-year-old daughter and are doing our very best to be anti-racist parents. We’re making sure she has lots of multiracial dolls, only consumes books and TV shows with diverse characters, has no problematic Halloween costumes, and so on. But when we try to discuss issues like structural racism, intersectionality, or White fragility, she doesn’t seem at all interested. She often walks away, asks for a cookie, or even falls asleep! Have we screwed up somehow? Has society’s disdain for the perspectives of marginalized people already infected her? How do we get her to appreciate the urgency of the conversation around deconstructing white supremacy? — Anti-Racist Mom.”
This is where the free story ends. “The rest of this article is only for Slate Plus members. Sign up to get more Care and Feeding every week. For just $35 for your first year, you’ll also get…”
Some of the results are boring. Anti-Racism for Kids … Is most notable for this observation: “ ‘I don’t know that I’d sit down with a 3-year-old and say, ‘Let’s talk about racism,’ says Dr. Schonfeld.”
6 easy ways … hits on a persistent theme in woke literature. “As humans, we are hard-wired to identify with members of our own community, which is why we will never live in a post-racial society. So-called color-blindness as a parenting strategy amounts to complicity in the problem.” Somehow, being color blind is seen as a bad thing. Whatever.
The dependably woke Washington Post populates their paywall with What white parents get wrong about raising antiracist kids … “One of the biggest misconceptions white parents have is that their children don’t notice race unless it is pointed out to them. The underlying assumption is that children only become racist if they are taught to be. In fact, research clearly shows the opposite: Kids develop racial prejudice unless their parents or teachers directly engage with them about it.”
In her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, “Spelman College psychologist Beverly Tatum writes that “cultural racism — the cultural images and messages that affirm the assumed superiority of Whites and the assumed inferiority of people of color — is like a smog in the air. Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in.”
“So kids breathe this racially charged air … and if their parents and teachers don’t help to explain to them what race means (and what it doesn’t), kids start to create their own narratives. They often infer that racial hierarchies exist because of innate differences between people of different races and so start to believe that whites are privileged because they are inherently better and smarter.”
Some of this material is by “experts.” There are probably people who disagree with these observations, and a lot of exceptions to the rules. I know next to nothing about raising children, and am a bad person to have opinions here. Still, I shake his head at this: “Looking for a way to talk about race with your preschooler? Try baking. Crack open a white egg and then a brown egg, and show your kid how they’re the same inside. Or you can present your child with two gifts—one wrapped in ribbons and glitter, another in crinkled newspaper. Fill the sparkly one with dirt and the other with a shiny bracelet. Then get the conversation going: ‘Can you really judge what’s inside by the outside?'”
Or this. “White- centeredness is not the reality of [the white child’s] world, but he is under the illusion that it is. It is thus impossible for him to deal accurately or adequately with the universe of human and social relationships.” If you were to substitute black for white here, someone would call you racist. And they would be correct. Sweeping generalization, based on skin color, usually are.
The last result on page one is an NPR interview with children’s author Renee Watson, and Ibram X. Kendi. “I want to go back to “Hair Love.” I think it’s important to bring in books that allow readers to see black people living their everyday lives. We don’t want to teach children that black pain and struggle is the only part of black life. But I also think it’s important to just let young people see that black people live lives. And they do their hair. And they play outside. And they have fun and that is an important part of the conversation, too.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in January 1941. “Steelworkers in beer parlor. Ambridge, Pennsylvania” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah

This content was originally posted October 4, 2016. … Bloggingheads.tv released a chat with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. With the election 35 days away, there was lots of talk about Donald and Hillary. It only took 1:44, to learn what is expected. The assignment is to call DJT a racist, and lament what a terrible thing that is. This is political discourse in 2016.
At 3:28, there was an aha moment. The line was that DJT, instead of an orange haired ogre, was really just a seventh grade bully. When I was in seventh grade, there was a mean person who gave him problems. This individual is now a facebook friend, and regularly posts memes supporting DJT. I like to know what the “other side” thinks. Ignoring the memes is always an option.
At 9:22, the importance of identifying racism in others is stressed. This is said to totally justify the appeal of DJT. Once you call someone a racist, you no longer have to work to understand their motives. When the scarlet R is super glued to somebody, that is all you need to know.
The Scarlet Letter is the rip roaring tale of Hester Prynne. She got caught fooling around, and had the scarlet A, for adultery, pinned to her chest. It was pinned to her chest, and she could see who did the pinning. In today’s “woke” world, the scarlet R, for racist, is super glued to the back of the terrible person. The person never knows who gave them this dreaded, irrevocable, label.
At 21:28, John tells an amusing story. He was talking to a well meaning white woman, said to be helpful in selling more books. At some point, the woman felt obligated to say that “we don’t like to talk about race.” John was too polite to laugh in her face.
The truth is that talking about race is the new national pastime. Does anyone listen? In all that talk, is anything worthwhile said? These questions are considered rude, and probably racist.
At 31:09, John said the n word. It is not known whether it ended with -er, or with -a. Since John is a POC, he has permission. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange took the social media picture in November 1938. “Sunday morning, Kern County, California. Many Texans, Oklahomans, Arkansans are settling in this county. Their cultures and forms of religious expression are being transferred with them” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah