It be a wonder we have gotten so far, if not for those long & difficult conversations with budding and innocent minds, like the one you’re having after writing this post.

Bless your heart.

I also find it important that you link your inner conversation to matters of public policy. The past is never dead, and the legacy of past injustice lives on. A lot of individuals I know choose to gloss over that fact, when making their cultural assumptions. One of the most insidious beliefs I’ve ever encountered is the constant and unspoken acceptance that “black schools” will never be held to the same standard or deserve the same support as “white schools.”

Remember, those stereotypes you must fight “with all of your strength” were designed and culturally transmitted that way for that reason. Jim Crow and segregation were far more than just laws on the books (and it ain’t like they been off the books that long). Culture matters, especially a culture developed and propogated for 400 years, and fighting it is like swimming upstream.

That’s no excuse, I know, but we’re really the first generation where there are enough people having this conversation to really make the sea change needed that will change that culture irreversibly. That’s what makes the local “reforms” so infuriating – their “changes” miss this point almost completely.

Because, let’s face it, if our governments treated “white schools” the same way they treated “black schools,” there would be rioting and protests all over suburbia.

Kudos to you, Liprap. Your concern means that your son will benefit. Like said previously, it’s the kids whose racial epithets and moronic statements are ignored who we have to worry about.

But what do you do? Is a talk, or several talks, enough when the world you live in is largely white? [Not specifying you here, Liprap.] How do you tell your child, convince your child, that brown people are equal when they only see brown people driving buses, sweeping classroom floors and getting arrested on TV? Do you diversify your friends? Hang out on a different block for a parade? Change soccer leagues? In the highly stratified society we have, in America and especially in NO, what do you as a white parent do? I’d like to hear.

Of course one of the biggest problems (as ye pointed out) is that parents AND educators need to have open discussion with the younger generation to stem the tide. This does not exclude or excuse the same open discussion happening with the OLDER generations (though kids may show less respect for them than previously, they still learn their habits).

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds. (Bob Marley)

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)

I think this exact same thought when I hear folks excuse overt and latent bigoted behavior with “Oh, I”m sure they didn’t mean anything by it.” That’s not the point – if we don’t talk to our kids and other people openly about this, they go around thinking it’s ok and, later on, resort to worse acts of bigotry to rebel against the PC taboo.

“we cannot make the mistake of saying that just because we got the old wood out, we can rest on the new and be confident that it is doing right by us.”

An easy, tempting way out of thinking, isn’t it? New doesn’t fix inherent inequality.

It was no surprise that in a liberal city like Austin, every parent was a welcoming multiculturalist, embracing diversity. But according to Vittrup’s entry surveys, hardly any of these white parents had ever talked to their children directly about race. They might have asserted vague principles—like “Everybody’s equal” or “God made all of us” or “Under the skin, we’re all the same”—but they’d almost never called attention to racial differences.

They wanted their children to grow up colorblind. But Vittrup’s first test of the kids revealed they weren’t colorblind at all. Asked how many white people are mean, these children commonly answered, “Almost none.” Asked how many blacks are mean, many answered, “Some,” or “A lot.” Even kids who attended diverse schools answered the questions this way.