The death of George Floyd at the hands of Officer Derek Chauvin in May in Minneapolis rightfully sparked widespread protests. It was an egregious abuse of power. Floyd’s death also reignited a quite heated discussion of the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement in the United States. Among the many articles, op-eds, essays, and tweets decrying police brutality, systemic racism, and white privilege, I also noted several mentions of “The Talk”.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of “The Talk”:

The talk is a colloquial expression for a conversation some Black parents in the United States feel compelled to have with their children and teenagers about the dangers they face due to racism or unjust treatment from authority figures, law enforcement or other parties, and how to de-escalate them. The practice dates back generations and is often a rite of passage for Black children.

In trying to understand this phenomenon more clearly, I came across the following essay: https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/white-parents-the-talk-racism-police-brutality.html

Please click on the above link and read the essay carefully.

I’ll wait…

Assuming you’ve done your assigned reading, I’d like share with you a few thoughts and questions that came to my mind.

The author tells us that after giving her version of “The Talk” to her seven year old in the wake of Floyd’s death, the child was brought to tears and he was terrified. She says he asked a lot of tough questions about hate and racism, and he ended by asking to leave the United States.

Well…okay then. Good talk.

If this is what results from “The Talk”, how is this in any way helpful? Instilling such fear in a child seems a bit counterproductive to me. As the Jedi Master Yoda told Luke Skywalker, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Now, I’m not generally disposed to taking my philosophical bearings from little, green, and yes, fictional creatures (sorry Star Wars true believers!), but old Yoda makes more sense to me than terrifying your child in the name of…what? Authenticity? Keeping it real?

There’s a big, and crucial, difference between creating awareness and creating an attitude. Its like the difference between giving a hitter a scouting report about a pitcher’s tendency to throw inside versus telling him the pitcher is looking to throw at your head. Who is more likely to get a hit? Who is more likely to charge the mound after one inside pitch?

Now, I’m no Pollyanna. I am not for one minute dismissing the reality of the Black experience in the United States. And it is not my purpose here to debate the complicated history of that reality. Frankly, I’m not qualified. But more pertinently, I don’t believe it would do much good. There is a time and place for discussions about the proverbial number of angels on the head of a pin. Preparing your child to succeed in an often dangerous world is not one of them. It reminds me of the scene in Apollo 13 where one of the engineers is frantically trying to convince Gene Kranz, the Flight Director, that he needs to inform the crew that their flight path is not quite optimal. The engineer has calculated, quite correctly no doubt, all the dire outcomes the crew might face based on their current situation. He feels compelled to share his expert knowledge with the crew as they are beginning their crucial entry into the atmosphere of Earth. Kranz, however, has a different focus. He interrupts the engineer in the midst of his “talk”, and asks him one simple question: “Is there anything they can do about it?” The engineer is forced to admit that at this point there is not. “Then they don’t need to know,” says Kranz. Kranz isn’t advocating ignorance or willful blindness. He is simply reminding the engineer that right then and there his mission is to help the crew get safely back. It doesn’t serve that mission to provide them with information not germane to that mission. All other concerns are secondary. There’s plenty of time for that in the post flight debrief. But first let’s get to the debrief. When I heard about “The Talk”, I assumed its focus was the same as Kranz’: Get them home safe. Maybe I assumed too much.

Now, I don’t know precisely what Miss McDonald said to her son. Maybe he is a particularly sensitive child. But the results of her talk are telling. In a few years, her son seems primed to forgo his fearful tears and charge the mound. Fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger…

Miss McDonald does, however, provide us some clues. After claiming that she would never presume to tell another parent what to say to their own child, she graciously provides some helpful hints. I found this bit illuminating:

Avoid using the word “tolerance,” and don’t try to teach your kids to be “color blind”—that’s not a real thing. Identity isn’t something to be put up with or ignored; it’s to be respected and celebrated. And it’s not enough to simply insist that they “acknowledge” their privilege. That privilege must be actively wielded as a shield for Black lives.

Autumn McDonald

I also found it deeply dispiriting. To think this is the sort of “Talk” young Black children are receiving from their parents is unnerving enough. But Miss McDonald goes further. In her desire for what she calls “allyship” from white parents, she urges them to have the same kind of “Talk”, with the same ideas expressed in the above quoted passage, with their children. Heaven forfend!

A perfectly tolerant and color blind society is not a real thing. I agree. As long as there human beings this will be true. It is, however, a noble aspiration worthy of societal striving. But Miss McDonald does not dismiss tolerance and color blindness because they are difficult, or even, truth be told, out of our worldly reach. She dismisses them because they are out of sync with her worldview. To her, color is identity. According to her, our most important concept of self begins and ends with our color. It is a view she shares, unfortunately, with many others today.

Sorry, Miss McDonald, I will not be your ally. I will not tell any child his skin pigment is the most important thing about him and everyone else in the world. I will not set him on the path to fear, anger, and hate, because it will lead to only sorrow, for him and the world.

I will tell him there are two kinds of people only: the decent and the indecent. I will tell him he is called upon by his Creator to treat every person as an individual. It will be difficult. He will be tempted, by his own inherent sinfulness, and by the indecent influence of others, to give into his fear of the other, the superficially different. But I will tell him he must not give into that temptation. He must not listen to anyone who tells him he should base his treatment of other people on such trivialities as skin color, ethnicity, religious belief, sex, or sexual orientation. I will tell him these things again and again. I will tell him the world is a difficult, often unjust, and sometimes dangerous place. And I will tell him this story:

One evening an old man told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside every man.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old man simply replied, “The one you feed.”