As Donald Trump’s second inauguration looms ahead on Jan. 20, I am reminded of a troubling experience my realtor husband had a few months ago while visiting a client for an in-home consultation. To my surprise, while he was on this visit, I received a video displaying shaky footage of a 360-degree view of the client’s bathroom covered from counter to ceiling in racist blackface memorabilia. From watermelons to sambos to mammies, this space easily rivaled the extensive collection within the walls of the Jim Crow Museum. Almost as disturbing as the memorabilia was the irony that this client was willing to work with a Black professional while proudly owning and displaying these items. My husband stood in that bathroom facing a conundrum Black Americans so often face — so much progress, yet so far to go. In today’s times right in Metro Atlanta, a Black man found himself deep within the outlandish imagination of a racist white man, the most dangerous place for any person of color to be. In Jordan Peele fashion, after quickly documenting, he knew it was time to get out!
As an Atlanta native, raised in the Black Mecca of Civil Rights and being a grandchild of community activists, I have had a front-row seat to the growth of a thriving, Black-majority metropolitan area, but I also know all too well the regressive past of the sundown towns surrounding it. I have had the safety of living in community with Black judges, doctors, and teachers, yet the fear of dwelling in the deep South where our hospitals, schools, and libraries are often adorned with the names of white supremacists of yore. The Jim Crow Museum urges that to truly use “objects of intolerance to teach tolerance,” we must, as a society, continuously witness, understand, and heal. What my husband saw that day has led me to wonder if much of America is stuck at simply witnessing with no care to understand or heal. As my husband walked out of the bathroom that Wednesday, he noticed something very different: the many pictures of the homeowners’ grandchildren throughout the home. When he told me about this, I thought back to memories of my grandparents’ house: the savory aroma of soul food and hallways lined with pictures of family, friends, and good times. However, the grandchildren of these homeowners were learning a far different lesson, taking in the unsavory, pungent aroma of white supremacy. Without saying much, they are teaching their grandchildren a mouthful by this choice of peculiar home decor. As an educator who has taught from the Bay Area to the shores of Georgia on a small island, I have passionately planted social justice as a pillar of my teaching to ensure that my students did not just learn how to read and write, but also how to show compassion, respect, civically engage, and lead in their community. As I thought about the grandkids that visit this house of horror, my heart ached as I questioned if the work I had done with my students was enough for them to boldly advocate, activate, and disrupt injustice when they witness it throughout life, even if it is within their own family. I wondered what these grandchildren thought about the objects and how they translated those ideas to the people of color they see in the world.
While I created my classroom to be an inclusive safe haven, I vividly remember the racial tensions among my students that showed up all too often in their community. I remember when a Black student shared that he saw his best friend (a Latinx male) at a neighborhood playground over the weekend. He then expressed his sadness and frustration in overhearing his friend’s parents say that they could not play together because he was Black. I also remember when a white student invited everyone to her birthday party except for the few Black students in our class. While I used this as a teachable moment to discuss inclusion with my students, my frustration was more with the parents who created this situation than the kids who were collateral damage in a situation that they could not fully digest. Racism, you see, is like a nefarious virus that spreads and spreads, never seen yet always felt. I cringe at the vicious attack on conversations about race in U.S. classrooms through the never-ending anti-critical race theory bans because little do these legislators know that the kiddos are the ones who are longing to discuss their confusion, sadness, and anger about the scary “R word.” Contrary to ignorant beliefs, we, the ”woke teachers,” have no desire to indoctrinate, but a commitment to affirm, educate, and liberate all of our students. While Black and Brown kids have never had the privilege to not know, in a particular way, the white kids have always known, too. Throughout history, they knew when they watched their parents yell racist vitriol at Black people, they knew when they could never bring their Black friend over for a play date, and they knew when they witnessed injustice with no explanation other than the question of race at hand.
In a Trump-era America, where the quiet parts are often screamed for all to hear, we must no longer pretend that our kids are too fragile to digest the topic of racial injustice. To be clear, not every white child with racist grandparents will become racist; many will push back and disrupt injustice, but let us not make it hard for them to do so. Initiatives like Project 2025 have plans to erase all of the ugly parts of American history and replace it with lies that will leave our youth miseducated and ill-equipped to become civically engaged change-makers in our world. Parents, now is not the time to assume your kids are learning everything in school. It is your time to shine and introduce your children to culturally inclusive literature and discussions. While we can’t change who is in the White House, we can change what conversations we do and do not allow in our communities. Our fight is in our voice. Let us not be quiet about the things that matter most. While they yell the racist parts out loud, let us mute their lies with bold and undying truth that disrupts inequity and fuels racial justice.
Melanie N. Latson is a Public Voices fellow on Racial Justice in Early Childhood with the OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute. She is the Founder and CEO of March on, Kid!, a youth social justice collective. She is also a Doctoral student in Education Policy and Leadership at the American University.
