How Baby

I’m always hesitant to post my thoughts at times like these, a combination of not wanting to add my voice unnecessarily, not wanting to say the wrong thing, knowing that I too am a product of a racist society and am in a constant process of unlearning, not wanting to position myself as a voice of authority when it is categorically not my place. However, one can’t be silent either, so here we are.

When I was going through school, the curriculum was heavily focused on teaching (largely, white children) about ‘multiculturalism’ – that we are all one people, all equal, and that colour didn’t matter. A lot of us took that to mean that being ‘colourblind’ was the most egalitarian approach to race issues.

You can’t be colourblind right now. It’s willful ignorance to ignore centuries of racial injustice to insist that we are all already treated equally. There is no equality in a world where, one week, armed white protestors can occupy a government building making demands without repercussion, and the next week a black man begs for his life under the knee of a police officer, or a black woman is shot in her home, or another black woman falls to her death during a welfare check. Where black workers, disproportionately employed in the service industry and already underpaid, are forced to return to (or continue to) work during a global pandemic, having received a pittance while corporations pocketed millions. Where the government can’t find enough money to supply PPE, but sure finds enough to mobilize a military response to people protesting the above.

I hope this is old news to you. I hope you’re nodding along. If you’re not, I don’t know how to tell you that you should care about other people. Listen to the black people who’ve been raising their voices for so long.

I have such a small sphere of influence – just this tiny corner of the internet, this little comic about parenting. To bring it back around to that: parents, white parents especially, we cannot raise one more Derek Chauvin. We cannot raise another oorah motherfucker who disrespects the badge to act out his racist fantasies, or anyone who would protect him. Talking about race with our children should be a part of our daily practice, so they grow up knowing that the work of justice is not over.

How to Teach Your Kids to Fight Hate: An Age-by-Age Guide

Your Kids Aren’t Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup

How to Talk to Kids about Race and Racism

There’s not a lot we have direct control over in this hell-world, this darkest timeline, this 2020 Calamity’s Greatest Hits. That’s terrifying, honestly. Every day, I battle my own grief that I am not giving Momo a better world – already, she is not white, and my body is heavy knowing that I will help heal her heart in the years to come. But for a handful of years in someone’s life, we can affect the adult they’ll grow up to be. Will that person need to unlearn your biases? Or will you arm them with a heart that burns for justice from the creche?

Parents, pick up the weapon you’re proficient in. We can raise better people than this.