Maybe an odd question, so I’ll unpack it a bit. Back during the time of the Michael Brown shooting, I remember hearing about how black parents often have “the talk” with their kids about the pigs. About how they aren’t there to help, about how to stay safe around them, etc.
I’m white, my kids are white, and I realized I need to have my own ACAB talk with them eventually. This weekend, my older toddler said to me “the police keep us safe”. I’m guessing she picked it up from day care teachers because I don’t let her watch any TV that glorifies pigs and I live in a kinda reactionary area.
When she asked, I kinda fumbled and just said “not really, the police don’t keep people safe”. I knew that wasn’t a great answer but she’s little so she just sorta heard it and then moved on to her next unrelated topic. I’ve been thinking about it. I have some time, but at some point I need to talk to her and tell her the truth about cops.
Do you all have any advice about how to explain the reality of policing in America to white kids? I’m making that “white” qualifier for a reason. In white spaces and communities, the copanganda kids face is intense. The cops are portrayed as these kind, benevolent peacemakers who are only there to help. And frankly, the cops themselves do a great job propagandizing white kids. They make sure to have all these positive interactions with them when they’re young. That’s what I have to fight against. I know because that was my experience as a white kid growing up. I never really had negative interactions with cops myself. Shitting on cops was very much socially forbidden among my Mayo-American social circle. And the last mental domino to fall in me becoming a leftist was realizing how absolutely shitty cops are and their real role in the system. I really want my kids to be able to see the cops for who they are, even though I know how much of an uphill battle that’s going to be for me.
By the time I was about 10 years old, my family had a collection of cop stories. They found my mom on the side of a pitch black mountain road with a flat tire and two kids in the car and got on the loudspeaker and told her to move the car somewhere else, then drove away, offering no other help. When a deranged neighbor shot me in the face with a BB gun, the cops shrugged. Another one gave my brother a ticket for bringing his skateboard to the beach that had faded out “no skateboards” signs. Another cop we knew personally was later arrested for [you really don’t want to know, let’s just say he died in jail]. Cops gave themselves the reputation they deserve in my house
Jake on The Law - Adventure Time
Honestly, I’m not sure how you’d really explain it without also unraveling the very idea of America. One of the big things I’ve been doing these past couple of decades has been trying to unlearn all the mythology I was taught and it goes all the way back to the founding of the country, ya know? Zinn’s A People’s History was a big first step for me and they have a website with resources for teaching kids that might help as yours get older, because it’s not just gonna be cops you have to teach them about. They’re gonna get taught that Presidents are all good people, our military is always the good guy, etc…
Teaching People’s History | The Zinn Education Project
Real History: Myths of the Founding Fathers (FULL) Michael Parenti - YouTube
That website looks pretty cool. Great for “we’re learning about X in school”.
My kids school is basically across the street from a police station, and cops come into the school to give copaganda presentations regularly. My kids are white, but the majority of the school is racialized kids.
I also want to have a don’t talk to cops/dont trust cops talk, and it hurts me when they roleplay as cops and talk about sending bad guys to jail. I do tell them that I don’t like that kind of playing, and try to have a talk about bad guys – that there aren’t really bad guys on the sense that they’re taught.
I hope that someone here might have a good answer to your question, as I don’t have a lot of insight into this. And countering the full on propaganda that is taught to them by daycare and teachers and the cops themselves is going to take some care. Luckily, I think they do listen to me about knowledge stuff.
I do know that my kids are taught about racism, and a lot of their friends are non white, so I’m considering starting from that angle.
it hurts me when they roleplay as cops and talk about sending bad guys to jail
I really like how you handled this, though; because it’s probably inevitable that most kids are gonna role play this way at some point. Especially this idea of “the bad guys” which is so incredibly prevalent in US society.
Well… there are bad guys actually :pit:
My son is seven years old and white. The way I’ve explained it to him is that the Cops (and our troops for that matter) are basically the Stormtroopers from Star Wars or the Fire Nation in Avatar. When they say they’re “keeping us safe”, what they really mean is they’re making sure that they and the empire they serve stays in control and that we are behaving the way they want.
He tells me “All cops are bad” regularly and when they’re around says we have to be like Obi-wan and Luke in Mos Eisley with the stormtroopers laying low. No…I don’t know if I have gone about this in the best way, I’m 100% certain many of my peers would call it brainwashing, also mostly sure he’s saying it because he knows its what I want to hear more than anything else, and I am genuinely worried I may have to explain myself to a teacher or god help me somebody in a family courtroom…but this is how I have parented my child and I will own it for better or worse.
There was a comment made in the Pete/Kamala thread the other day that really resonated with me. It’s very possible that their parents just assumed that since their own Marxist views were correct that they didn’t need to be didactic and instead figured their kids would figure it out on their own. Look how well that turned out. If we want to grow the next the next generation of leftists I believe we do need to help guide them. Like, I do kinda resent the fact that I was raised to think the earth is only 6,000 years old and that evolution is a lie. But I resent it because it’s false, not because my parents impressed a view on me per se, if that makes sense. What you’re teaching your kid is true, and I think they will appreciate it when they’re older and see how the world works, IMO.
Star Wars has anti-fascism written all over it (1-6 anyway, haven’t seen the new ones) and it’s geared towards kids. That makes it really sink in for kids, but for me I probably wouldn’t have the left wing views that I do today if my parent wasn’t always ranting about fascist pigs like Bush and Reagan, big business, imperialist wars, listening to Chomsky and Parenti lectures, bringing home the occasional Marxist agitprop like the Class Struggle boardgame (good choice if you can find it btw, it’s like Monopoly but more based)
It’s all a bit confusing when you’re growing up so that’s where I think it really pays to be consistent and also be solid on the politics/history so when they do come to you for answers you can help them by giving clear and unambiguous answers as much as possible while helping them through the anxiety and cognitive dissonance that naturally come from gradually realizing that these authority figures are not ultimately on their side, they’re surrounded by nationalistic propaganda, and they live in a neoliberal-verging-on-neofascist dystopia
Just imo
lmao we stan. laying low from the stormtropers in mos eisley is :chefs-kiss:
To explain cops you first must explain whiteness to your children.
Great point.
“The police only protect rich people we aren’t rich. Don’t talk about it at school much cause it makes people upset. Here is a juice box”
I don’t have kids so take this with a massive grain of salt.
I don’t think it’s time just yet. If she’s that young, then a lot of what you say will be too hard to understand. Also if you unintentionally sound too bitter/angry when talking about it, she might assume she’s done something wrong. Just accept that you live in the kind of society where kids are taught that stuff and hold out until she’s a little bit older.
Then you can get into the history of the police. Talk to her about what police to homeless people. Kids have a lot of empathy so that’s a solid, real example to grasp. Police beating up people who have nothing, taking what little they do have, etc. Start pushing the relationship between the police and protecting property.
The racial aspect of it will probably be a little harder to get across. The best thing here is to make friends with non-white children and expose her to people who live under different circumstances. Kids will start picking stuff up from that.
Anyways, don’t get too caught up if she’s not a communist at a young age. I wasn’t. I don’t know many people who were. You also have people like Pete Buttigeig who was steeped in that stuff and then turned into a ghoul anyways.
I’m a zoomer who has absolutely no insight on parenting. However, I have a lot of middle class white friends who grew up to hate the cops. I think what happened, besides the 2020 protests, was bad experiences many of us had in high school. There was a school cop who clearly did absolutely nothing except make kids feel uncomfortable. There were also an awful lot of kids who got in trouble for things like possessing a single joint, while nothing happened the kids who did actual bad things. Also, a lot of us knew kids who had the book thrown at them for small things like shoplifting once. And of course many of us got speeding tickets and such when we started driving (which maybe we deserved).
At some point, your kids are going to encounter situations like this. I would think that the best thing to do is talk to your kids and get them to tell you about their and their friends experiences with cops. At some point, they’ll have some negative experiences, and that seems like the perfect time to explain the broader history of policing and its impact on minority communities. It’s probably not a conversation that they need to have right away, they’ve still got lots of time to figure it out.
Tell them that the only good cop is a dead cop and to murder as many as possible before they can legally be tried as adults
not recommended
