Dear Nursery Families,

I had planned to write today about our incredible resilience as a community. It has undoubtedly been a difficult time, and I am so proud of the tireless work our teachers and parents have put into collectively holding our children and maintaining their sense of joy and connectedness, even in the midst of global fear and isolation. It has been deeply moving to see how our children, our parents, and our teachers have continued to come together with determination and warmth. Every Friday, as we sing together at Shabbat, I am filled with gratitude and hope.

However, I cannot find it in my heart to write that message today, having spent the past week watching black parents shed tears of anguish and exhaustion over the violence that children of color face every day. I will write the message I had set out to write another day, for the tremendous work every parent is doing right now to care for children in the midst of crisis is surely worthy of praise and celebration. But today I am too sad and, though much that we have experienced recently is unprecedented, this particular sadness is not. It rises up with devastating, numbing regularity. So today I am trying to listen to parents like Christy Oglesby, who are pleading for “white mamas to come running,” and I ask you to join me in listening and in thinking about what we can all do to respond.

I was born in Minnesota. I have written in the past about the sense of peace that I find in watching my son dig for vegetables in the Minnesota earth or in listening to a loon call across one of our many lakes. I wrote just a few weeks ago about the time my dad and I piled into a stranger’s minivan on a cold winter day, after we’d been in a car accident in front of a Minnesota mall. It is a place I have always felt safe, and I know that these have been my experiences, not only in Minnesota but in the world, in large part because of the privilege of my skin. If my dad had been a black man, it is very likely that standing on the side of the road on a December morning would have been filled with fear, rather than with the kindness of strangers. This is not specific to Minnesota. I am safer on any street and my father and son are safer on any street, in Minnesota or New York or any other city in our country, because the shade of our skin does not spark terror, which is a security we did nothing to earn.

Christy Oglesby writes:

“I heard [George] Floyd scream ‘Mama,’ and through my tears, even though I knew the events in the video had already unfolded to a tragic conclusion, I was still ready to fight. He wasn't my baby, but he was someone's child. And he needed someone with a mother's love to help him…I need the white mamas to share this burden. I need my white friends to love me and mine enough to come running, too. ‘Mama! Mama!’ I need them to hear that cry and to tell their sons and daughters that my child is a human. I need them to declare and believe that he's in danger, that I can't protect him by myself and that his life matters to me and to them. I need them to tell their white friends' children, too. My child's life is sacred. My child is not dangerous.”

These pleas echo through the centuries, and it takes humility and courage to listen. But from all the time I have spent in the classroom with young children and from the bottom of my heart as a parent, I can promise this: we will not traumatize white children by talking to them about racism, but we absolutely do participate in the traumatization and endangerment of children of color when we don’t, regardless of our intentions or beliefs.

These are unquestionably hard conversations. It is so hard to look into our children’s eyes and tell them about the things that are broken in the world. All any parent wants is for their child to be able to grow up filled with hope, confidence, and optimism. Shedding light on painful truths can feel like a threat to childhood itself; it is natural to want to preserve our children’s joy. But hard conversations are not inherently traumatic. If we talk to our children with honesty and care, they are capable of taking in difficult truths and responding with more empathy, understanding, and insightfulness than we often imagine. I have seen this again and again in the classroom and in my home.

If we are really listening to black parents in our country, we must also acknowledge that explaining these truths to white children, who are safe in their skin, is far less wrenching than explaining to children of color that their mere existence may be seen as menacing.

Though these conversations are difficult, it is possible to have them with our children with love and compassion. I know this, because parents of color, out of necessity, teach their children these lessons every day with gentleness and with profound love. Listen to them and listen to their children. I also know this because, through many holidays across the year in our classrooms, we share difficult stories about the history of the Jewish people with young children sensitively and thoughtfully. We trust that if we handle these conversations kindly, their understanding will grow over time.

As so many black parents express their grief, again and again, over shepherding their children into a world that does not value them, it is untenable for me to look into their eyes and make the choice to preserve some children’s innocence over other children’s lives.

When Bakari Sellers was asked last week how he teaches his own children to feel hopeful about their future, he choked back tears and said, “I don’t have that answer. Other than every day I just tell them that I love them. That’s all I can do.” I urge us all to listen to Mr. Sellers and to other parents of color, who are expressing their pain and exhaustion right now. Their ability to continue to convey hope to their own children rests on the willingness of white parents to find the courage to see their pain and to teach every child that no one’s freedom can depend upon abiding fear that robs others of their freedom.

These are not singular conversations. We do not need to unveil the whole of human suffering to our children all at once, nor can we afford to touch upon these topics only in moments of crisis. But research shows that the seeds of bias take root by the age of five if we do not actively disrupt the messages that permeate our culture and seep into our children’s consciousness. Children’s perceptions of which topics are too taboo to discuss with adults also crystalize in the first five years, and we cannot afford for race to continue to be one of these topics. If we begin these conversations early, if we approach them with love, and if we commit to revisiting them with growing complexity over time, our children will not be traumatized by the truth, they will become more tender, more insightful, and more active.

It is our job to create safe, loving childhoods for our children, and it is also our job to think carefully about how we are shaping the citizens and neighbors they will become in the future. Children have risen up remarkably as leaders in so many ways recently. They have led movements, calling on us to protect their classrooms and their planet. Children know that even small hands can help bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, and in my experience as a teacher and a parent they are usually eager to participate in shaping a better future, not frightened by it, as we sometimes assume they will be.

Until we are willing to look white children in the eye and tell them the truth about privilege, we leave black parents no choice but to tell their children about fear. Until the tears of every mother’s child ring in our ears and make our hearts race with the same urgency that we feel when our own children are suffering, and until we run to their side with the same fierce instinct that propels us to protect our own families, we will continue to bear responsibility for the breathless last cries of other mama’s babies. It is necessary and it is possible for us to do so much better for everyone’s children.

Later today I will send our schedule for the week, and I truly look forward to coming together as a community to read, to sing, and to celebrate this last week of school with your children, who have risen so beautifully to the challenges we all face right now. It fills my heart with joy as I see them looking for their friends at the beginning of each online session, snuggling with their favorite stuffed animals as they listen to their teachers read stories, and dancing with glee as Paul plays their favorite songs. Our community is strong not only because we embrace one another but also because we reach out with open arms toward others. This week, as we celebrate our children’s growth, I will find solace in the future that I believe they are capable of helping to create, for as Melody Cooper, sister to Chris Cooper, wrote this weekend, “You can transform your own world through how you teach your children.”

In sorrow and in hope,
Alicia

Resources for Parents

Picture Books for Beginning Conversations with Children