by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Maegan “la Mala” Ortiz
I live along what is arguably the most diverse subway line, in the most diverse borough, of the most diverse city. This has provided me with more teaching moments than I would like. Lessons that I knew I would have to teach my 10 year old daughter anyway but wish I could on my terms, not as a reaction/defensive/protective move. As a NYC mami, you teach your kid the basics of safety. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t make eye contact. Watch what you touch. But as the NYC mami of a brown young woman, the lessons go beyond that. They go to the core of who she is and her budding sexual identity.
Lesson 1 : Language, Status, and Mami Has More Privilege Than You
When we take the Flushing bound 7 subway home between 5:30 and 6:30 pm, there is a certain fear in my 10 year old’s face. We’ve run into him twice already, a towering white older man who pushes his way into the elevator with us and other mamis wielding strollers, toddlers and shopping bags at 74th Street Roosevelt Avenue. Once on the elevated platform, he continues to push himself through the overwhelmingly brown crowd without a word of excuse me. Instead he yells, “What, people in Mexico don’t have manners? Do you speak English. Do you understand me?” He gets unsettlingly close to a mother with a small girl. The mother looks away as does my daughter, who moves closer to me. He eyes her and me and looks confused, like he’s not sure if she is my child. I don’t look like the other mothers, but my children look like their subway mates, undeniably Latina.
When the train rolls into the station people swarm towards the doors. Again the man begins is tirade, “Esperate!” he says with his New York accent. “Wait and let me the f**k through”. He looks at my girls and me again and when the doors open urges me to go in before him. I take a seat offered by another rider and he gives my 10 year old a push towards me, “Stay close to your mother” he orders her before sitting next to the mother with the young girl. “Do you speak English?” he asks the mother. The mother doesn’t answer with words or gestures. She avoids eye contact.”Do you speak English?” he asks her again, a little louder, a little more threateningly. “Don’t you want to be an American?” He angrily asks her, not really expecting an answer, not really understanding that the Latina mother likely already considers herself an Americana. Centroamericana, Latinamericana. “Damn immigrants,” he spits out, before exiting the train at Junction Boulevard.The scene repeats itself one more time, on another subway ride.
Lesson 2: How to Act Around the NYPD
It is the afternoon after a Latina baby has been left in a cab just blocks from where we live. On my way onto the elevated platform from the elevator I loudly grumble about being pushed around by rude people even though I have a toddler strapped to my body. A white New York City police officer asks me as I turn the corner, “Who’s messing with you?” “No one, ” I tell him and move down the platform a little. “Did you hear about the baby left in the gypsy cab? We think the mother is dead, probably has no papers,” the officer tells me. I nod my head. “It’s a shame really. That mother kept her baby really clean and well dressed. A nice family I’m sure.” He continues. I’m disturbed by the implication of clean Latina babies and pull my children a little closer.
“Did you do your homework?” the officer asks my 10 year old. She doesn’t answer. She’s been taught not to answer police except for the most basic of information. I have too long a history with the NYPD. She has been to enough rallies, marches, and memorials of young men of color shot in the back by officers. It’s not a nice position to be in, to be a 5th grader told in school to confide and rely on police when everything else around her tells her otherwise like the way officers on our block harass a woman selling tamales or check IDs on a bunch of kids only a bit older than her standing outside a barber shop. “Well did she?” the officer asks me. I lie and say she did wanting to avoid him giving her a lecture on the merits of homework. “Good girl,” he says looking at her. As we enter the 7 train, he tells us to be safe. Once inside the train my 10 year old asks, “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk to cops mom?” “Sometimes you have to play nice,” I tell her.
Lesson 3: Public Displays of Affection Are Not Always Welcome
We have just left the 7 train and are on my way to my mother’s, on the R/V line. An express train empties a crowd of teenagers onto the Jamaica bound platform. Among them is a lesbian couple, an African American young woman holding hands with a Latina. The African American girl is crying. “Why would they do that? I’m only 16 and that guy was an old man, telling me that I need a good d**k and not p***sy”. Her girlfriend comforts her suddenly realizing that I am standing within earshot with two children. “Sorry, you didn’t need to hear that, ” the Latina tells me. “No, you guys didn’t need to hear that. What assholes,” I respond. They smile and begin playing with my baby daughter all while discussing the intolerance they face as a young lesbian couple of color.
Maegan “la Mala” Ortiz is a Queens, NYC born and bred radical Nuyorican mami writer, poeta, activista, blogger, and academic coach (trying) to work at home with her two chicas, La MapucheRican (10) and the Poroto ChileRican (7 months) and her very patient partner just known as “el Chileno”. She is an editor at VivirLatino and (poorly) maintains her personal blog Mamita Mala. She wants to write a book or two and is graciously accepting offers for babysitting.
Photo by Lodigs
Thanks for this. My 4.5yo daughter loves riding the train, but we don’t do it often. I’ve found myself hedging when talking to her about what to do if she were to get lost in a store, mall, outside. How do we teach them to go to the police when we have a not-so-trusting view of them too?
I was just wondering, did this white older gentlemen say these things when there were men around or just women and kids? I just feel like coming from a dude’s point of view that he probably wouldn’t pop off at the mouth if there men around.
Our rule is: if you are lost and you can’t find mommy- go to the nearest OTHER mommy WITH KIDS and ask her for help.
I know it is not fool proof… but the best I came up with.
Maybe that man walking around on the subway is mentally ill. I just can’t even imagine him having the audacity otherwise. Surely, he is playing with fire!
Oh there were men around. Not a one said a thing.
Julia, good rule
I have to say that I am just not feeling it for this post. I think you are doing your daughter a disservice by teaching her to fear police. It is basically just another stereotype you are supporting. My dad and Uncle were AA police in the 60 and 70s in NYC and my bro has had his share of driving while black incidents, but I would want my child to grow up believing that they are there to help. That you cannot judge everyone by the actions of a few. Also it seems to me that the interaction you described with the officer was fairly benign, if not positive. I think it is important to be aware of the baggage from our own experience that we load onto our kids, especially if we are raising them to be anti-racist.
I get what you’re saying Stephanie, I would also want my kids [when/if I have them] to grow up believing they are there to help.
However, those were the messages I got from school, Sesame Street, and home [and my uncle's a policeman] – and I grew up pretty distrustful of the police. Certainly, there are plenty of great officers out there – I know a few. But the trust thing…that’s hard.
“Our rule is: if you are lost and you can’t find mommy- go to the nearest OTHER mommy WITH KIDS and ask her for help.”
that’s our rule too…that you look for a woman with kids, if you can’t find any, look for two women together, if you can’t find any, look for a woman, if you can’t find any, look for a man with kids, and above all, trust your instincts, that is, look for someone who you feel good about.
and yeah, you can learn lots and lots about people on public transit.
>Also it seems to me that the interaction you described with the officer was fairly benign, if not positive.
StephanieW, what did you think about the other 2 incidents? Regarding the police: Maybe it’s Maegan’s style, maybe it’s because I was constantly talked down to as a kid by any authority figures who weren’t my teachers or immediate family, but the officer’s comments came across as condescending, not positive. At 10, a comment like that would have made me think a cross between, “Wait, what about not talking to strangers?” and “Why should you care about my homework? Aren’t there crimes to solve?”
“Clean and well dressed” isn’t far from “clean and so articulate.” And I can see where the homework comment can even be a reference to Latino stereotypes of being poorly educated, if you’ve gotten that your whole life.
I’m in Philly and the predominantly white suburbs – my mother’s family taught me to respect police, and I do. At the same time, I speak the Queen’s English when I do encounter police, keep my hands visible at a traffic stop, all the goodies, regardless of the color of skin behind that uniform. One or two incidents don’t cause the level of suspicion that is levied on the police in PHiladelphia or New York – systemic abuse of power does. Yes, most cops are OK. But the system isn’t. Until racial profiling isn’t a factor in who gets questioned, held, and arrested, it’s going to be the elephant in the room.
I live in Italy and here you don’t see many white parents with black children. I was on a tram with my 4 yr old when an old man asked me “is that your son?” after hearing my son call me Mamma. I said yes. He asked me, is yr husband black? I said no, my son is adopted. He then asked me (much to my dismay), “WEREN’T THERE ANY WHITE KIDS?”?
I replied, I wanted a black son. The other old man next to him, promptly said to him, “If you live in Italy, then you’re Italian”.
And what do you plan to do if and when your daughter is a victim of a crime? You’ve taught her that the police aren’t to be trusted, can’t be gone to for help, and that she shouldn’t even talk to one who’s trying to be nice to her. An anti-snitch culture in the cities contributes to major crime on the streets and makes society less safe for all of us.
You encountered a crazy man on the subway who uses racist language as part of his pathology. Teaching your kid to disengage from him seems smart. But the cop was attempting to be nice to your daughter and had not done anything to justify your unreasonable assumption that he couldn’t be trusted. The guy making conversation about the unfortunate circumstances of the baby and her mother didn’t say anything overly objectionable either. It’s a tragedy when a kid is abandoned; it’s noteworthy if a family that this man knows to have kept her clean and cared for has done this. Again, what’s the issue there? You risk raising a kid with a chip on her shoulder a mile wide, who looks for and, hence will find, racism around every corner and assumes ill intent even where it doesn’t exist. You might take a closer look at your own attitude here. There’s something wrong with it.
I take the 7 train regularly and white men (and sometimes women) say things like that pretty often.
I understand your distrust of the police because they are human just like everyone with prejudices and biases. Those of us who live in minority neighborhoods have watched them ignore crime with a look of indifference. It is only now that our neighborhoods have become gentrified we are starting to notice a police presence. Now suddenly they care about the same crime we have been victimized by for years. We would like to think they care about us as much as whites but time and time again they have proven they hold stereotype prejudices just as much the next guy. It is sad but sometimes we do have to approach them for help but often are turned away or go from being the victim to the criminal suspect. It has happened to me more than once.
Here is what bothers me about this post. If it is said different way it would come out like this…
My daughter and I were waiting for the bus. There was a Hispanic gentleman waiting next to us and he started talking to me about the elections and what I thought of Hillary. I spent years dating a Hispanic. I know these guys. I know this guy thought that Hillary should be back in the kitchen and pregnant. Hispanic men don’t like women who think they have brains. After years of being controlled and mistreated by my boyfriend I am going to make sure that my daughter knows not to trust Hispanic men. It isn’t just the controlling, dominating and threatening but after spending months with my boyfriend sitting through his brother’s trial for rape and murder I don’t want her to end up like that poor girl.
I was as polite as possible to the guy at the bus stop but got away as soon as possible. Afterward my daughter asked me, “I thought we weren’t suppose to talk to Hispanic men, mom” I said, “sometimes you have to play nice.”
Judging someone by their skin color or their clothes is WRONG. Even if you have great experiences to back it up. By the way, my above experiences are true but I don’t judge all Hispanics based on my experiences.
**Judging someone by their skin color or their clothes is WRONG. Even if you have great experiences to back it up. By the way, my above experiences are true but I don’t judge all Hispanics based on my experiences.**
I thought she judged the first man because he was an asshole, completely out of line and threatening…not because he was white or because of any past history with white men.
As for the cop…we fail to learn from our negative and fatal experiences with them at our (and our children’s) peril. Believing this and teaching our children accordingly, doesn’t somehow bely the existence of good cops. I don’t know why that doesn’t go without saying.
If I arm my children with tools to minimize their chances of being assaulted by a cop, and they run into some good cops, great! Teaching children to be aware and cautious isn’t the same thing as teaching them not to snitch. What a leap. Reporting a crime and assisting with a criminal investigation has absolutely nothing to do with chatting with a cop if you don’t feel like it, or if you don’t feel his questions are appropriate or warranted. Whatever that cops motivation, friendly or otherwise, Maegan (and certainly not her child) had no obligation to respond.
Some parents are terrified of what cops may do to their kids, and these are fears born of experience, theirs and others. I believe it belittles the thought and effort such parents put into this aspect of their parenting to paint it as some kind of reverse racism or pathology.
Here’s one mother’s efforts. I have a hard time believing she does this because she just has it in for cops or because she wants to give her kid a chip for his shoulder. I think she does it because she loves her kid.
http://christinaspringer.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-boy-tasered-to-death-teach-your.html
This doesn’t mean that people who don’t parent as she does or as Maegan does, don’t love their kids. Again…something else that should go without saying.
To clarify:
**Judging someone by their skin color or their clothes is WRONG. Even if you have great experiences to back it up. By the way, my above experiences are true but I don’t judge all Hispanics based on my experiences.**
I thought she judged the first man because he was an asshole, completely out of line and threatening…not because he was white or because of any past history with white men.
Adding: The crazy man is the one who initially racialized the encounter, not Maegan. If he had been black or Hispanic making the similar comments, he wouldn’t have been any less threatening and inappropriate. But the fact is, he was white.
I completely support your attitude towards law enforcement, which historically, repeatedly, EMPHATICALLY targets people of color and sexually assaults, imprisons, harasses and murders us, often in the name of protecting us.
Police brutality is no joke. To teach a child the truth, and tell her how to protect herself, is an honorable thing.
Lyonside :
You hit in on the head. Tone is hard to detect on the internet, but the interaction was far from benign on a number of levels.
As for my daughter’s relationship with the police. We live in a neighborhood where the police regularly harass people. I don’t have to teach her that. She sees it. What of that? How is she expected to distinguish the good cop from the bad cop? Just cross my fingers and hope for the best.
I’m radical in my thoughts about this, and I am aware of that, but I believe way more in the power of community than the power of an institution whose roots are fundamentally racist.
Colleen : What is missing from your offensive and racist comment is the power paradigm.
I do not have , my daughter has no power over the white policeman, or over the police as an institution.
Ditto what Maegan said in the previous comment. The presence of power in the race paradigm is what makes “reverse racism” a non-starter, in my opinion.
This post is right on the money. The power is everywhere – in the institutions that Maegan discusses, and others, like the predominantly white mainstream media.
Trust has to be earned, and in my opinion these white institutions haven’t earned it.
Excellent post, Maegan. For a blog about ARParenting, the level of critical thought… or lack there of, is astounding.
Why so quick to assume the white man has a mental illness? There’s nothing in Maegan’s narrative to hint that he was mentally ill. The assumption is apologetic while insulting. I see this type of behavior by functional white men when around only women and children of color almost daily.
As for the police and state-sanctioned violence by the police, mothers of color often have to say very little to their children. As for women and children of color as targets of violence and what are we to do then? Well, one does wonder when the police and the structures that back them up are part of the problem. If we are lucky enough we belong to a community that practices restorative justice… all to often we are not and we learn to get by, live with the injustice. I know very few women of color walking around with the individualistic, white-women’s-syndrome induced delusions that the police are going to be there to help us if we are assaulted, raped and/or murdered.
You might take a closer look at your own attitude here. There’s something wrong with it.
How would you manage, Maegan, without random strangers telling you how to respond to your own life?
Colleen, are you actually saying that a Latino man has the same sort of economic, cultural, and institutional power as a White man who’s a police officer?
REALLY?
The two things are *not* the same. I am really tired of White folks who get so defensive over their privilege that they go and draw false equilvalencies. White people are *not* systemically targeted by the cops, we are *not* disporportionately represented in prison, and we are more likely to get good jobs (even when education and experience are the same. Check out MIT’s Poverty Action Lab if you don’t believe me).
To say or imply that it’s just as WRONG to protect yourself from people who have the power to fuck with your life is breathtakingly ignorant. To save your sermon for a woman of color, and NOT for your fellow Whites who pull this crap, is hypocritical.
Colleen, are you actually saying that a Latino man has the same sort of economic, cultural, and institutional power as a White man who’s a police officer?
REALLY?
The two things are *not* the same. I am really tired of White folks who get so defensive over their privilege that they go and draw false equilvalencies. White people are *not* systemically targeted by the cops, we are *not* disporportionately represented in prison, and we are more likely to get good jobs (even when education and experience are the same. Check out MIT’s Poverty Action Lab if you don’t believe me).
To say or imply that it’s just as WRONG to protect yourself from people who have the power to fuck with your life is breathtakingly ignorant. To save your sermon for a woman of color, and NOT for your fellow Whites who pull this crap, is hypocritical.
OK, can everyone here who’s scolding Maegan about teaching her kids to be wary of cops please take a step back and look at what they’re saying? Firstly, they’re her kids, she gets to decide what to teach them. Secondly, who are you to assume that you understand the circumstances those kids are growing up in better than their mother, who’s living in the same circumstances, does? Thirdly, sure, there are some good cops, maybe even most of them are good, but all it takes is one bad one to cause a child all kinds of problems. Sometimes a little caution can protect a child from some really bad stuff. Fourthly, if you don’t believe that POC in American cities have good reason to be wary of the cops you haven’t been paying attention.
Hell, the rules for what to do if you’re a kid and you’re separated from your mom that Lyonside described? My mom taught me those same rules and I’m white. Those are smart rules. Especially if you’re a kid who’s not white.
A few months ago I ran into a kid whose Mom had obviously taught her those same rules…I was in BART (Bay Area local trains) and a little girl came up and grabbed my hand, clearly lost and asking for help. Turned out she had gotten separated from her Mom in the Christmas crowds. Now there were BART police around (lounging in the booth with the ticket collectors not doing much), but you know what? Looking for a friendly-looking female adult was the smartest thing that kid could have done. Statistically speaking probably a much safer thing to do even if she had been white, which she wasn’t. The idea of a Latina kid approaching some white rent-a-cop for help…nope, I don’t think that would have been a particularly advisable thing to do. People may not like it but that’s the reality. Even if most cops, or rent-a-cops, are decent people, why take the risk of your kid running across one of the bad ones?
And again…the best judge of how to keep kids safe is almost always their mother. Let’s try to keep that in mind here.
I thought this post was right on.
There is nothing wrong with the way Maegan is raising her kids, nothing. Teaching a kid to engage with someone they aren’t comfortable with is teaching them to ignore their instincts in favor of blind submission to authority, which isn’t good for anyone. Sure there’s good cops, but all cops have unreasonable power and too many of them abuse that power. The safest thing is to treat all cops with caution.
As for colleen’s false analogy, wow! that’s is incredibly offensive! Really, really, deeply offensive!
Maegan, I’m so glad you post here. You’re obviously striking a nerve and I’m sure it’s hard to get mean and ignorant and defensive responses, but I think far more of us appreciate your perspective and are really glad to read it here.
Since it’s a blog, I’m assuming feedback is asked for. That was mine. I have no idea what it’s like to live in a big city or to be Latino, so I’ll take you at your word that it’s a pain in the butt, people harass you, and you want to prepare your kid for what she’s likely to encounter. On the other hand, I can make an educated guess about what it might be like to be that particular cop you encountered, patrolling a neighborhood filled with people who seem hostile or wary, who may run again and again and again into the kind of tight-lipped, suspicious front that you and your daughter presented him with. It sounds to me like he was trying to help you out, trying to be friendly, trying pretty hard to practice his soft skills in hope that your kid WON’T be suspicious of him and might go to him if she’s ever in trouble. Maybe he’s the racist big bad cop who harasses everyone on the street corners; maybe he’s like the guy who comes in with guns blazing and kills innocent kids reaching into their front pocket for a wallet or a toy gun. Maybe not. Maybe he’s just a good, probably desperately underpaid, police officer trying to do his job. You’ve already said you’re teaching her not to trust him on the assumption that that’s the sort of cop he is. I hope your approach works, but I suspect that community alone doesn’t always keep people safe. Blacks and other people of color are victims of crime at a disproportional rate and the perpetrators of those crimes are more often than not people in their own household or other people in their neighborhoods — other people of color. At some point you might need the help of that cop.
it’s sad that in an anti-racist site there are some many responses denying or belittling the experiences and opinion of a woman of color.
the police system is a racist one, and it’s just normal that a mother would want to protect her kids from that and teach them to be safe. that doesn’t mean, as stated above, that every single cop is racist and that there aren’t good ones, but how big are the chances you’ll find one of those, and how would you know?
As a young Black woman who navigated the foster care system and is now studying governement, I agree with Maegan about teaching her child to answer only the most basic of questions when dealing with authorities.
I can’t tell you how many caseworkers and police officers would phrase questions to get me to admit my mother did things (like sexual abuse) that never happened.
That’s not to say I don’t trust people in those positons, but I am aware how even the most benign (sp) comment can open a can of worms.
**Blacks and other people of color are victims of crime at a disproportional rate and the perpetrators of those crimes are more often than not people in their own household or other people in their neighborhoods — other people of color. At some point you might need the help of that cop.**
And that cop is charged with giving that help whether Maegan’s daughter answers his question about her homework or not. One has nothing to do with the other.
Yeah, I know the 7 line well.
“I thought she judged the first man because he was an asshole, completely out of line and threatening”
uh, yeah, hello.
In general, the subway is a place to be on your guard; it’s just how it is.
and yeah, that cop isn’t so Officer Friendly: I’d pick up menace too, from the whole “nice clean family” and then not just asking your kid if she did her homework but then -insisting- on a response from Mom when she doesn’t answer. He may not have been overtly threatening, may not even have intended to be (yeah, nuance is hard to tell in text), but just from the description alone I think “creepy and invasive” at minimum.
funny, that. I’m white, and generally cops tend to leave me the hell alone, which is fine by me. coincidence? maybe. maybe not.
this isn’t about individual officers, andrea. I think what many are saying is that as an institution, the police have a vested interest in promoting a dual image of themselves that can be very dangerous for people of color if we buy into it. In this country we think that police are here to “protect and serve” when in reality they, as an institution, preserve property and safety for capital and a privileged few. Even the “good” cops are dangerous. Because the police as an institution create an environment of suspicion, mistrust and division in communities of color and poor communities, even the ones who are just doing their jobs pose a threat to our children, incorrectly leading them to believe that they will get the same service and protection, that they are a tool to solving problems & decreasing violence. In the United States that is simply NOT what police do. Police are the business end of the prison industrial complex, they are the conduit by which our children are disproportionately filling up the juvenile prisons and more and more the adult prisons of this country.
Someone (colleen?) said the anti-snitch culture is what makes our cities less safe. That is completely backwards. A system that the community can’t trust is what makes us less safe.
Racism, racial profiling, police brutality, harrassment and misconduct is what makes the public safety system fail for everyone.
For a better understanding of this please do some research. Check out Beth Richie’s article in the INCITE! anthology.
Maegan, hey girl. Thanks for staying strong and teaching your girls what’s up. I am going to teach mi’jo that about looking for a woman with kids. I had a time when he was two where he pointed at a police officers and yelled, “you’re a jerk!” we have been having many, many, many conversations about what you can and cannot say to police and how to act around them. Its super complicado.
I’m gonna be up around your way this next weekend. I’ll text you!
Rosana,
Amorcita, I’m in need of serious amiga power so yeah text moi/email moi!!!
all the cop cars and stations in seoul, corea have little cartoon piggies on it (instead of NYPD name or something)… their rep was so bad and so notorious with all the beatings that they have to make their image “cute” to try and soften people’s perceptions.
Agreed to wha Rosana just said. The idea that the police exist to protect the citizens…where did that come from? Do people actually believe that? The police exist to “maintain order”. The specific problem for POC then being that the idea of what “order” means is inherantly racist.
The idea that anyone is actually walking around thinking that the police are good samaritans whose only role is to help people out when they’re in trouble…what?
Cripchick:
I must say to my American sensibilities, it’s kind of ironic that the cop cars you describe choose cartoon PIGS, of all animals they could have chosen, given that historically in the U.S. “cops as pigs” has represented anything but cute!
Who said she was raising her daughter to have a chip on her shoulder a mile wide? I have to agree with that statement. As a mother of color, this column was eye-opening in that I don’t ever want to be that mom who thinks Everything! In! The! Whole! Wide! World! Is! Racist!
Trust me. If you met my daughter or myself, you wouldn’t find a chip anywhere on us. We just have a good sense of the reality we’re living in.
First of all to those saying we should not be “telling Meaghan how to raise her daughter”. I thought the point of this blog was exactly to discuss how to raise Anti-racist children. Meghan posted that she thought this was the right way some of us repsectfully disagree.
All I am saying is that it is one thing to let your children benefit from your experience in the world and another to make them carry around baggage from your experience. In my opinion teaching them some of these things, just ends up chipping away at our children’s self esteem.
—-Because you are a POC these people will be mean, because you are a POC you can’ t trust all the institutions of government, because you are a POC, Because you are a POC…… —-
How can hearing that every day not make them shrink inside.
I know that that fool on the train shouting at those people is wrong. That power is the difference between prejudice and racism. That some police are bad. That they are not always out to “protect and serve”. But should our children, raised to be anti-racist, believe that whole swaths of the population, by virtue of their job category, are suspect!
Sometimes stuff happens that is racist, often it is also just plain rude and offensive. I want our children to grow up believing that they deserve better simply because they are human with worth and dignity. They should give, ask for and expect respect for no other reason.
I respectfully suggest that people read or reread ” I’m Chocolate, You’re Vanilla” on raising healthy Children of Color in a race conscious world.
Everytime someone brings up this book, I have to say something. As a person in the field of Early Childhood Education, this is a pet peeve of mine.
I’m Chocolate, You’re Vanilla is getting a lot of credit for being this great resource, and I fail to see why. It has *some* useful info, but much of the info it presents is just plain inaccurate. Not every book that’s published is a good one.
If you want something more useful and based on accurate information, try the Teaching Tolerance website: http://www.tolerance.org.
I think people like ICYV because it reinforces this picture of children as innocent of bias. Kids get differences, people! They don’t get them like we get them, but they are learning and they learn fast!
I respectfully suggest that if you pick up ICYV, you should put it back down and find something better.
Also, Meagan
You go, Mama! Parenting is the transmission of culture, and part of some people’s culture is dealing with certain authority figures in a better-safe-than-sorry kind of way. Baggage or not, if your daughter is resilient, she will know what choices to make when she by herself on that train one day.
Who among us doesn’t have some sort of baggage from our parents? If we parent well enough, our kids will work it out. Such is life.
Atena, thanks for the web site tip. I ‘ll check it out.
Look, I’m sorry if Maegan feels hurt by the comments she got to this blog. I see on her personal blog that she felt besieged and had all her negative feelings confirmed by “people who just don’t get it” and thought she’d been uncontroversial. On the other hand, people are not necessarily going to agree with her opinions or her child-raising methods and I think they’ve said so in a fairly respectful manner. Those opinions are there for her to look at, accept or reject as irrelevant if she so chooses. I think teaching a kid that the cops are NEVER to be trusted is a really bad idea. On the other hand, even white kids are taught that you don’t speed in the presence of a patrol car, you don’t mouth off to an officer. When the cop came to my door late one night and wanted to search the premises for an escaped fugitive (probably because I lived in a bad neighborhood), I told the guy very politely that he wasn’t there and I didn’t know who he was. He still wanted to come in and search. I told him “no” and he had to respect it. I knew he couldn’t come in without probable cause; the place was a mess and I didn’t feel like dealing with him. I said as much, very sheepishly, with a smile on my face. Some of that was a facade. I had nothing to hide, but I also knew that a harmless front was going to get rid of him sooner. He went away to search elsewhere. I think it’s very reasonable to teach a child his or her rights and to mind her p’s and q’s in the presence of a cop but a cautious, but respectful wariness is different from certainty that you’re going to be screwed over because you’re poor or Latina or black or whatever. I would hope that she’s also raising a kid who won’t have a problem reporting a crime to the police if she ever is the victim of one or a witness to one and a child who will obey all the laws and be a good citizen.
Atena,
Thank you and you know what? There is just some baggage that I still need. Plus I would like argue that my position on the police is more than just a race-based perspective. It is a national perspective, based in years of harassment at the hands of the FBI and other federal entities that people in Puerto Rico are dealing with right now. It is a very real fact that in my neighborhood immigrants are scared because of the latest ICE sweeps across the country.
I think Maegan puts it out there that even if you don’t want to deal with the cops, sometimes you have to, and sometimes you have to “play nice.”
I didn’t read anything that suggests that she’s poisoning her child against all police everywhere. But just as it would be a bad idea to poison one’s children against all police everywhere, so would it be to instill in them a blind trust and faith in law enforcement based on what popular opinion states that police SHOULD be doing. Protect and Serve, yes, but certainly not everyone. Read up on some history, people. And not FOX News history.
Many, many cops are dangerous. It is a profession frequently chosen by people who have a desire to exercise power over others. This is a fact. I’d rather my child know this and learn how to determine who to ask for help.
Andrea,
Since Maegan offered these additional perspectives/reactions to the reactions here on her blog, and not in this forum…I’m wondering why you are sharing these comments here. By doing so, while at the same time repeating at length comments you already made, and venturing into areas of Maegan’s child-rearing that she has not offered up for our conjecture (“I would hope that she’s raising… a child who will obey all the laws and be a good citizen.”)–this just reeks of going beyond discussion, to a personal axe to grind.
Maybe you’ve got the chip a mile wide we’ve been hearing so much about?
Re: “Look, I’m sorry…” Really? But fwiw, Maegan never said her feelings were hurt anyway. That’s another case of people hearing/reading what they want to hear/read, what someone is actually saying, bedamned.
And no, I’m not the ARP police, but thanks for asking.
“I’m sure.. it’s [being Latina] a pain in the butt”
Did I misread this statement? Because if I didn’t, it’s incredibly offensive to me. Please, try not to dismiss the racism (inherent in our current police system) as being like a sore bum or hemrrhoids or something. Sadly, you have managed to make Meaghan’s blog post sound like she was just complaining, waaaaa waaaaa waaaaa. When in fact, this was not the case. She was sharing her perspective, based on her ACTUAL experience, the experience of her family, her friends, her community, on how and what she teaches her daughter about the police, how the behave around the police. Conjecturing that being a POC and dealing with a police system that has demonstrated time and time and time again that it can be incredibly racist, to even a violent degree, is anything but a huge problem is, as I said, offensive.
Personally, I was taught, as a young Latina girl, not to trust the police for one second. Does this make my interactions with police/other uniformed authority figures somewhat uncomfortable as an adult? Hell, yeah. Do I regret that my mother taught me this way? No. Because she taught be better to be safe than end up in a bad situation primarily because of who I am/what I look like. Just because there are good cops out there (and certainly there are!), doesn’t mean that we should assume that all police officers are to be trusted, unfortunately. At least until the system is radically different! And I know that Meagan is not advocating that her daughter spit on all cops cos they are all bad, just that she maintain her distance and be safe. Frankly, I think this is probably a better strategy than my mother, who taught me (by example only, but still!) to call cops pigs.
Thanks for this valuable perspective. “Safety” is a funny word, it means opposite things to different groups often times. We live in Brooklyn, and my family is white (dad is European immigrant, I’m from the south US). I teach my daughter what I believe to be true, that there may be individual police officers that care and try to do a good job, but that it is a racist and oppressive institution. We are very wary of the police. I would _never_ advise my daughter to find a police officer, were she lost.
In my closest dealings with the police, as a community organizer, having to work (reluctantly! LOL) with the local precinct at times, all of my worst impressions were reinforced a hundred-fold. As an entity, they literally had very little to do with safety in the community. Except to the wealthy few blocks, which they policed totally differently than the rest of the neighborhood. I once saw a cop almost back over a child on a “playstreet” closed off to cars.
I can’t speak to the experience of those in other cities, but the NYPD has a long history that really makes it hard to have good expectations.
Just to clarify, my feelings aren’t hurt. For some odd reason, I continue to be surprised whenever my experiences as a mother of color get so blown up and instead of people stepping back and asking, hmmm why does this Rican mother feel this way, people put a chip on my shoulder (I’m doing Obama’s brush off here), and tell me what a horrible disservice I’m doing to my children.
My children are pretty damn awesome if I may say so.
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