In the face of Baltimore: Reflecting on conversations with my son about Ferguson
My son is 4. He is Vietnamese and White (Irish and Russian), I’m a White woman and his dad is Vietnamese, the first of his family born in the US.
During the weeks after the Ferguson non-indictment, I listened to many stories on the radio about Mike Brown. I thought about each one and whether the radio should stay on or off (when my son was present). I usually turned the radio off when there was a really gruesome description, but otherwise I left it on.
Parenting and Baltimore: Where to begin
During the weeks after the Michael Brown and Eric Garner non-indictments, various White friends asked me whether I thought they should be talking about these issues with their school-aged children. My daughter was just two-and-a-half at the time and I was not talking about it with her…but to my friends with four and five-year-olds, I answered unequivocally “yes.”
How to explain racially-charged interactions (and gentrification) to my daughter
As a born and bred New Yorker, I expect an occasional terrible experience with a stranger. My worst stranger story involves a White man who spit in my on 5th avenue. So it isn’t always about race…but sometimes it is.
Last winter, I was sitting on the steps in the lobby of an apartment building in my neighborhood, trying to get my one-and-a-half-year-old to put on her shoes. I had just gotten her to sit down and was forcing her feet into the shoes and fastening the Velcro when a Black man entered the building and commented “Stairs are not for sitting.”
