A Letter to My Children

Dear Ariel and Aaron,

I spent most of the past year trying to wake myself up to racism and gender inequality in America. This is my attempt to tell you about some of the things I have done to re-educate myself, and to also acknowledge that I had very shallow viewpoints on these subjects during your growing up years.

The awareness that I was lacking in perspective, and the decision to make the effort to find out more about the real history of inequalities began several years ago. If I have to try and state the moment that I became aware of the privileged lens through which I had previously read and learned, I think I’d have to say it was when I read a 2014 Atlantic essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates about reparations. But it took me four more years before I seriously began reading, thinking, and forming my own thoughts about issues regarding race and sex—trying to distance myself from the very white-only language and myths that had informed the texts of my early education. My goal was to process enough substantive information so that I could have a discussion on these topics using clear and accurate historical information—maybe even learn to be persuasive. And so, I began. Or perhaps I should say I began with new intention.

I certainly was not ignorant of the writings of Malcolm X, Betty Friedan, Shulamith Firestone, and Martin Luther King, to name a few influential writers. I had read about the history of slavery, of the genocide of our Native American populations, of the history of feminism, and I knew about inequalities and white supremacy. But, I did not know to what extent the current economic and government systems still support so much of what I thought was behind us.

The first book I read was Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving. I’m not going to go into the details of what I learned, but I can say without equivocation that I found myself to be pretty clueless. I followed that book up by listening to a podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University called Scene On Radio. The second season, “Seeing White,” is a 14-part series on race and ethnicity in America. I listened to the episodes when I walked, but then I supplemented with additional reading: Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates; and Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I still have three more books on my list: The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter; Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi; and The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

The third season of Scene On Radio, “MEN,” debuted soon after I finished Season 2, so I started listening to it. I supplemented this series with the book: Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne. And I think I’m going to go back and reread Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, and Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique because I think reading these texts again will be a completely different experience.

The reason I’m telling you both this is because I’ve come to understand how much my own background as a privileged white woman, who also was very much influenced by the patriarchy, came to inform how you were both raised. Thankfully, you have both had many many experiences of your own in an age when waking up to both racism and sexism in America is happening pretty frequently, and all around you. Though I’m essentially apologizing to you both for any racist and sexist lessons I taught you through my own ignorance, I want you to know that I have not by any stretch completed my education. Among my dearest hopes is to bring as many of my peers along with me as I possibly can. In the meantime, I am proud that you are both much more enlightened, much more open, and much more articulate about these issues. You have taught me much.

Love,
Momma

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2019