Dear White People: Impressionable Children are Always Watching

Reflections about white supremacy, Trump, and the future of our nation from a white mother of Black sons

There is not much that now-resigned Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has said that I agree with, but she has it right on this point: “Impressionable children are watching all of this and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgment and model the behavior we hope they would emulate.”

Our children are always watching, and the truth of this statement demands so much more than most white people have been willing to give.

Our children have witnessed each and every moment of Donald Trump’s campaigns and presidency. Throughout, they have heard racism and sexism directly from Trump and from those who enabled his rise to power. Our children witnessed unrelenting attacks on the very foundations of our democracy as Trump, DeVos, and his allies in Congress and the executive branch delivered on his campaign promises to lock people up, build a wall, and roll back generations of painstaking progress to protect the rights and safety of people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and so many others. In the first months of Trump’s presidency alone, they saw rapid-fire executive orders that demonized and criminalized people of color — including my Black husband and sons — and an unrelenting assault on the Affordable Care Act, which threatened my youngest son’s lifeline to insulin and medical care to treat Type 1 diabetes.

Unrelenting, and it did not stop for four long years. Women vilified for daring to speak their truth about sexual violence. So-called “very fine people” marching with torches, violently clashing with peaceful demonstrators, and killing in Charlottesville, Virginia — just as they had throughout the Jim Crow years and without any measure of true accountability. The racial disparities of COVID-19. The unjust killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many other Black women and men. The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and meteoric confirmation of her replacement in direct contravention of the politically-motivated machinations that were used to thwart President Obama’s nomination of a Supreme Court justice.

Our children watched as Trump revelled in racism and misogyny at every turn, and then saw 57% of white voters cast ballots to reelect him to office. While Trump ultimately lost his reelection bid, our children heard a clear message from the majority of white people: We agree with him. We choose his leadership.

This is the context in which our children witnessed the events of January 6, 2021. In the cold light of that winter’s day, as the twin pandemics of racism and COVID-19 continue to infiltrate every aspect of their lives, our children witnessed an insurrectionist siege of the U.S. Capitol by hordes of white supremacists incited to violence by Trump himself. And in the aftermath, our children are hearing everything that is said, unsaid, and silenced about the violent insurrectionist siege of the U.S. Capitol and all that it symbolizes about our nation.

For my part, the white supremacist insurrection shattered the mental, emotional, and spiritual armor I had carefully constructed following the 2016 election–an invisible box I used to imprison my despair, grief, and moral outrage so that I could hold the devastation of these last four years at bay.

At every turn, my armor has served its purpose. Bottle it up, stuff it down, carefully imprison the despair so that I could get through the day. So that I could think clearly enough and use my intellect to protect my family and do the work that was needed in the moment instead of allowing emotional grief to exhaust me. So that I could harness the inner strength and fortitude to honor with integrity the words of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel that have guided every significant choice in my adult life: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim… Sometimes we must interfere… Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must — at that moment — become the center of the universe.”

I get it. As a white woman of the South, a lawyer, and the daughter of a doctor, I have benefited from some of the finest educational, economic, and racial privilege that our nation has to offer. My 26-year marriage to a Black man, my motherhood of four Black sons, my quarter century of advocacy to advance racial justice in the courtroom and in the halls of Congress — none of these negate the privilege that I hold in this world.

Even the act of donning my armor to contain my inner moral outrage is itself a privilege that my Black husband and sons do not enjoy. Through four long years, they have absorbed into their Black bodies, minds, and spirits the unrelenting violence of white supremacy in Charlottesville, Minneapolis, Brunswick, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Tornillo, El Paso, and too many other places to name. And they have absorbed as well the racial dynamics of the past twelve days.

In this moment, we who by luck of birth and circumstance hold racial power, privilege, and voice have a choice to make about what all of our children hear, see, and learn in the days to come.

Will our children continue to hear the deafening silence of white people maintaining our own comfort, privilege, and power? Will they continue to see the rampant hypocrisy of white “surprise” at the violence incited by Trump and of white calls for “unity,” “healing,” and “moving on”? Will they continue to witness the deadly duplicity of white leaders’ gross mishandling of the threat of the white supremacist insurrectionists stand in stark contrast to their militarized response against those who march to ensure that Black Lives Matter?

Or will our children instead hear white people speak out when our families, friends, colleagues, and leaders falsely deny the racial motivations of Trump, the insurrectionists, and their allies? Will they see white political and religious leaders take action to ensure justice and accountability for those who foment racial violence to tear our country apart? Will they witness white people finally understanding that the collective fate of our nation requires us to relinquish our hold on racial power and privilege?

Through our words and actions, our children will either learn that white supremacy is a fact of our nation’s past and present that will endure into our future, or that the ideals of justice and equality have the power to sustain our nation through even the most violent times and to create communities in which all are free from suffering, persecution, and oppression.

Dear white people: As our children watch and learn, Elie Wiesel’s searing, prescient words tell us that in this moment, we must interfere. We must stand up, speak out, and take action against racial violence and oppression. With our children’s eyes upon us, will you meet this moment?