“Now that Biden is President…are there still going to be jails?”
by Sachi Feris
As I often share in Raising Race Conscious Children’s workshops, when my son was in preschool, he often came home playing ‘jail’ and building jails out of manipulatives (blocks, magnatiles, etc). I was not a fan of this choice of play–so my son and I had frequent conversations about why I don’t like jails and prisons. During one of those times, I told him the story of Kalief Browder. (Kalief Browder was a 16 year old boy who was arrested for allegedly stealing a backpack. He was held without trial for three years, spending two years in solitary confinement. Following his release, Kalief committed suicide.) I shared a story about Kalief without sharing details of violence or suicide.
“Once upon a time there was a boy named Kalief. Kalief was a teenager so he was older than you, and much taller than you…but he was still a child. He lived with his parents and went to school. And Kalief was a boy who had brown skin. One day, Kalief was walking down the street with his backpack on, and the police stopped him because they thought he had stolen the backpack. But he hadn’t. He was wearing his own backpack. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But the police arrested him and put him in prison anyway. And this is totally and completely unfair. One thing that is really unfair about this is that this was not the first time something like this has happened to someone with brown skin. This happens a lot. The police stop people with brown skin and arrest them, even though they haven’t done anything wrong. But because we are White, we can walk down the street and not worry that the police will arrest us. It’s not fair that people with brown skin have to worry about being arrested or being put in jail when they walk down the street. But one thing that gives me a little bit of hope right now, is that so many people have been using their voices to say ‘this isn’t fair’ and ‘Black Lives Matter.’”
Despite the above–and many other–conversations, jails still come up in my two younger children’s play, and the conversation about how we don’t believe in prisons in our family is ongoing.
Fast forward to the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. My son, who is now in kindergarten, watched alongside me and asked, “now that Biden is President, are there still going to be jails?”
I explained that unfortunately it was not so simple as having Biden as President to get rid of jails. That conversation resulted in my son’s desire to write a letter to Biden and Harris, which he later dictated to me. Later on, my eight-year-old joined us and was dismayed that she hadn’t been part of the letter writing process. She helped us with a second draft and added some illustrations.. When my three-year-old came home, they asked if he wanted his name added to the letter, and he said he did:
“Dear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,
We are writing because we want you to close the jails, lots of jails, and turn them into schools. We read on the internet that there are 110 federal prisons and we want you to close all of them.
Especially, we don’t want any kids to be in jail or prison. That is why we want you to build schools instead.
Another reason this is important is because Black Lives Matter and we don’t think it’s fair that so many people with brown skin are in prison.
P.S. Thank you for reading this letter. We are so glad you are the President and Vice-President. We hope you consider our ideas.”
Through the writing and re-writing of this letter, another question emerged from my children, which was: “Why did prisons start?” or more simply, why are there prisons? To answer this question, it was impossible not to go back to the history of slavery in the United States and share that prisons have been used since emancipation to keep Black and brown people oppressed.
If current day inequities are left unquestioned or unspoken to, children will inevitably believe that the people in power (White people) have power because they’ve earned it or deserve it. As a White parent, I need to tell my children that the way White people have been able to accumulate wealth and maintain power is directly related to the oppression of Black and brown people. As my children grow older, I want them to continue using their voices to challenge elected officials to dismantle systems that created and maintain inequities and the oppression of Black and brown people.
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