While we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I started reading Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey. I’d had this book in my “To Read” pile for a while, and I finally had the time to sit down and begin reading it.
As a pastor, a person of faith, and a human being, confronting my own privilege, prejudice, and participation in systemic racism is something that I have been wrestling with for a long time and will continue to wrestle with until the day I die. Now that Darick and I have added a tiny human into our family, it feels as though that hard work has become even more complex and challenging, as we are trying to figure out how to raise our son to be anti-racist and a champion of God’s justice in a world filled with injustice.
I imagine that many of you, fellow white people, fellow Christians, are also wrestling with what it means to be anti-racist in a society where white supremacists have been emboldened by the powerful, where xenophobia is spreading like wild fire, and where black and brown people continue to be targets of violent words and violent deeds.
Raising White Kids is providing me, as a parent, with much to think about, and much to act upon. I want to share my own wrestling with this book in the hopes that maybe it will help those of you who also want to raise anti-racist children. So, with that said, over the coming weeks (or however long it takes me to read), I will be writing about what I am hearing and struggling to understand and practice. I won’t be giving a summary of the book or a chronological blow-by-blow, but instead I will be reflecting on themes, ideas, even snippets of text that I am chewing on.
If anyone else wants to read this book as well and talk about it with me, in person or online, I’m all in!
-Cindy+
Collars With Sleeves 