I try to convince myself that my family’s progressive values will shield my son from becoming a racist, but will they?
My 3-year-old has an uncanny ability to bust me on curse words. The whole ride home from school he ignores my questions about his day, dinner preferences, upcoming activities but then, sure as sh ... sugar:“Oh I was talking about a ... uh ... thing,” I stammer. He’s referring to when I expletived about a man blocking a busy parking lot aisle.
When the 1992 Los Angeles riots happened, I was 13 years old, living in a Los Angeles suburb. I was glued to the TV along with my parents, my brothers, and everyone else I knew. The lens for my experience was not the unjust acquittal of the four officers who beat Rodney King — no one on the local news was talking about social justice. They were talking about “looters” and violent people burning down “our” city.
Children are not colorblind and my son is at a point of inflection when it comes to learning to discriminate between people. I’m scared because this, right now, age 3-5, seems to be when the bias kicks into gear. Who he chooses to sit next to in the sandbox speaks to how he’ll treat people at work. I’m not willing to risk punting a conversation about racially coded language down the road. I see what “when he’s older” looks like.
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