Teaching Slavery at South Mountain, Jefferson also involved in poor implementation of teaching the subject.

Klinker said:

MrSuburbs said:

What's wrong with letting the class have a slave auction?

I look forward to the class you will teach about the KKK. All of those 3rd graders will look so cute in their hats and robes.....

Seriously dude, this question..... I mean, if you have to ask.....

So while not the most respectful lesson, it at least ensured that our students learned more context and empathy for the difficulty of life as a slave than I learned in my pubic school education.

Woot said:

Klinker said:

MrSuburbs said:

What's wrong with letting the class have a slave auction?

I look forward to the class you will teach about the KKK. All of those 3rd graders will look so cute in their hats and robes.....

Seriously dude, this question..... I mean, if you have to ask.....

So while not the most respectful lesson, it at least ensured that our students learned more context and empathy for the difficulty of life as a slave than I learned in my pubic school education.

Or, empathy for slave merchants. If you are playing "Masters and Slaves" do you really think kids are going to be clambering to be the slaves?

I have a child in the class where the auction was held.

- The auction was one student's interpretation of how to show what life was like in the Colonies (the assignment).
- The student asked a number of classmates of multiple races and ethnicities to participate as slaves, including my daughter.
- The student asked the substitute if the video could be filmed while the students were working on their projects in class.

I am not suggesting that the auction was a good idea. And I certainly think the substitute should have stopped it once the subject matter became clear. That is another issue.

But it happened.

And I will say that the video -- and the community's reaction to it -- has been one of the best lessons for my daughter. We have had conversations with her and her younger brother about slavery - how it was allowed to happen, why people let it go on, how it felt just to play the role of a slave who is being sold and will likely never see his/her family again, and, of course, why it still resonates so deeply with people today. They have asked questions that would otherwise never have come up in our home. It has not only taught my children about our country's history but about the different angles from which we need to view that history to better understand it.

I would welcome a larger conversation in our school district and towns about how we teach these sensitive topics. But this has already been very educational for us.

Klinker said:

Woot said:

Klinker said:

MrSuburbs said:

What's wrong with letting the class have a slave auction?

I look forward to the class you will teach about the KKK. All of those 3rd graders will look so cute in their hats and robes.....

Seriously dude, this question..... I mean, if you have to ask.....

So while not the most respectful lesson, it at least ensured that our students learned more context and empathy for the difficulty of life as a slave than I learned in my pubic school education.

Or, empathy for slave merchants. If you are playing "Masters and Slaves" do you really think kids are going to be clambering to be the slaves?

As I said, there are better ways to do this. But some earlier posts argued that we should instead focus on positive aspects of AFAm history (which I know also already happens to some extent). I'd assume we should do both. And as shared above, this may have oddly improved people's understanding of what it must have felt like to be a slave.

Woot said:

And as shared above, this may have oddly improved people's understanding of what it must have felt like to be a slave.

...Because the school and families used this as a community-wide teachable moment as indicated here:

srowland said:

And I will say that the video -- and the community's reaction to it -- has been one of the best lessons for my daughter. We have had conversations with her and her younger brother about slavery - how it was allowed to happen, why people let it go on, how it felt just to play the role of a slave who is being sold and will likely never see his/her family again, and, of course, why it still resonates so deeply with people today. They have asked questions that would otherwise never have come up in our home. It has not only taught my children about our country's history but about the different angles from which we need to view that history to better understand it.

This improved understanding was not gained directly from participating in the mock slave auction, but from a family's empathy-focused debrief of the event afterwards.

I'd like to see the list of projects the children were allowed to choose from. If we removed "Make a Slave Poster" from the choices, will we have removed the only project that addressed the African American experience during colonial times, or was there another option?

If there was no other project option that addressed slavery or the African American experience in colonial times, that should also be examined. At the risk of making an extreme understatement, there are better ways.

What the hell is a "Colonization Project"?

sprout said:

Woot said:

And as shared above, this may have oddly improved people's understanding of what it must have felt like to be a slave.

...Because the school and families used this as a community-wide teachable moment as indicated here:

srowland said:

And I will say that the video -- and the community's reaction to it -- has been one of the best lessons for my daughter. We have had conversations with her and her younger brother about slavery - how it was allowed to happen, why people let it go on, how it felt just to play the role of a slave who is being sold and will likely never see his/her family again, and, of course, why it still resonates so deeply with people today. They have asked questions that would otherwise never have come up in our home. It has not only taught my children about our country's history but about the different angles from which we need to view that history to better understand it.

This improved understanding was not gained directly from participating in the mock slave auction, but from a family's empathy-focused debrief of the event afterwards.

Sprout, parents are supposed to teach. This issue aside, we can never count on anyone else to educate our kids. If something interests my son at school we certainly discuss it and expand the topic at home. I'm glad srowland posted, because that is the first unspun truly factual version of what occured that I have heard.

FilmCarp said:

Sprout, parents are supposed to teach.

Of course. But the issue's about what a school is supposed to do.

And if a school re-enacts slavery/slave auctions in a way that causes students emotional or physical distress, then the parents might teach their kids about how to sue a school district.

https://www.rt.com/usa/parent-lawsuit-slavery-school-trip-159/

African-American middle school students were forced to act as slaves, pretending to be sold at auction and standing in the darkness of a would-be slave ship, all while enduring racial epithets, a human rights lawsuit filed by a student's mother claims.

Of course, that isn't what happened here. But I do agree that we need to have a better framework in schools for this topic.

FilmCarp said:

Of course, that isn't what happened here. But I do agree that we need to have a better framework in schools for this topic.

No, that isn't what happened here. But that's likely to have been closer to the reality of slavery and slave auctions.

So, when considering the re-enactment of slavery and slave auctions, the choices seem to be:

a) re-enact it inaccurately

b) re-enact it with the emotional/physical distress that it actually caused

c) teach the topic without the use of a re-enactment.

I understand your point but with all due respect, one or two hours of reading will probably dispel the notion that anything recreated at the Jefferson School on one afternoon came anywhere close to providing an understanding of what an enslaved life entailed. Additionally, I don't think children need to imagine themselves as slaves to understand slavery any more than they'd have to imagine themselves burning to understand Auschwitz or having frozen feet and hands to understand the Trail of Tears. Children are quite capable of understanding positive preferential treatment versus negative treatment and deprivation based on arbitrary reasons. The lesson comes in asking and answering 'why'. The elementary school level would seem to be the perfect place and time to start talking about preferential treatment in society- when and where it was employed historically and why it's harmful.

Educating children about American slavery is never going to be as simple as drawing posters. In fact, drawing posters trivializes the issue. When appropriate kids should look at the real auction or wanted posters and then hopefully, after being given the proper context about what the poster represents, never ever want to see them again much less make their own with crayons and markers.

As long as we allow our schools to treat slavery as if it is a separate African American history and therefore optional and not simply American history and therefore required, we're going to have difficulties. I'm going out on a limb here but I think our practice of teaching Black history as a separate and special segment has trivialized the subject and allowed teachers and administrators to become lazy. 'It's African American history time' OK Harriet Tubman- check, slavery - check, Underground Railroad - check, Abraham Lincoln - check, Abolitionists-check, Civil War - check, Emancipation Proclamation- check and. we're. out. Next. I think in some cases this perspective allows teachers and administrators to treat the period as simply 'something that happened to Black people' and not something that happened to America. Something horrible that we still suffer from. Something that we all bear responsibility for understanding and rectifying to the degree that we can.

Separating the institution that provided the engine for American capitalism and created a worldwide economy from the rest of American history is academically disingenuous and historically inaccurate. If by the seventh grade students understood that Africans and Asians along with Europeans and various indigenous peoples were a part of creating the "New" World they'd have a different understanding of slavery and how it was allowed to catch on and become pervasive in this hemisphere. They should also understand the role that early explorers played in laying the groundwork for chattel slavery the same can be said for the founding fathers. Before Jefferson suggested that all men were created equal he wrote the notice attached below. Instead of a curriculum that places slavery within the framework of a developing superpower we have a curriculum that separates slavery from the rest of American history and by doing so relegates it to a simpler story about African Americans and being enslaved.

Woot said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Klinker">Klinker said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" woot"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Woot">Woot said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" klinker"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Klinker">Klinker said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" mrsuburbs"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/MrSuburbs">MrSuburbs said:

What's wrong with letting the class have a slave auction?

I look forward to the class you will teach about the KKK. All of those 3rd graders will look so cute in their hats and robes.....

Seriously dude, this question..... I mean, if you have to ask.....

So while not the most respectful lesson, it at least ensured that our students learned more context and empathy for the difficulty of life as a slave than I learned in my pubic school education.

Or, empathy for slave merchants. If you are playing "Masters and Slaves" do you really think kids are going to be clambering to be the slaves?

As I said, there are better ways to do this. But some earlier posts argued that we should instead focus on positive aspects of AFAm history (which I know also already happens to some extent). I'd assume we should do both. And as shared above, this may have oddly improved people's understanding of what it must have felt like to be a slave.

Perfectly put Filmbro. You put into words what I've been somehow feeling, but couldn't fully articulate, and didn't fully realize what the problem is. It's ALL OUR history, and this one month of the same stories (tho important) does not put it all into perspective, and show us the entire picture of this country. Just really well said, and something to work on for me personally when talking to my kids. Thank you.

lukeysboat said:

Perfectly put Filmbro. You put into words what I've been somehow feeling, but couldn't fully articulate, and didn't fully realize what the problem is. It's ALL OUR history, and this one month of the same stories (tho important) does not put it all into perspective, and show us the entire picture of this country. Just really well said, and something to work on for me personally when talking to my kids. Thank you.

It's more than just that. Absent race-based slavery and its legacy, we would be a different nation. Would we have even had a civil war? How would slave states have evolved differently if they hadn't been heavily militarized (organized militias, not standing military units) as a protection against slave revolts? Would socialism have gained more traction, as it did in Europe, if the oligarchy was unable to pit poor whites against poorer blacks. The list of topics for alternative histories is endless.

flimbro said:

I understand your point but with all due respect, one or two hours of reading will probably dispel the notion that anything recreated at the Jefferson School on one afternoon came anywhere close to providing an understanding of what an enslaved life entailed. Additionally, I don't think children need to imagine themselves as slaves to understand slavery any more than they'd have to imagine themselves burning to understand Auschwitz or having frozen feet and hands to understand the Trail of Tears. Children are quite capable of understanding positive preferential treatment versus negative treatment and deprivation based on arbitrary reasons. The lesson comes in asking and answering 'why'. The elementary school level would seem to be the perfect place and time to start talking about preferential treatment in society- when and where it was employed historically and why it's harmful.

Educating children about American slavery is never going to be as simple as drawing posters. In fact, drawing posters trivializes the issue. When appropriate kids should look at the real auction or wanted posters and then hopefully, after being given the proper context about what the poster represents, never ever want to see them again much less make their own with crayons and markers.


As long as we allow our schools to treat slavery as if it is a separate African American history and therefore optional and not simply American history and therefore required, we're going to have difficulties. I'm going out on a limb here but I think our practice of teaching Black history as a separate and special segment has trivialized the subject and allowed teachers and administrators to become lazy. 'It's African American history time' OK Harriet Tubman- check, slavery - check, Underground Railroad - check, Abraham Lincoln - check, Abolitionists-check, Civil War - check, Emancipation Proclamation- check and. we're. out. Next. I think in some cases this perspective allows teachers and administrators to treat the period as simply 'something that happened to Black people' and not something that happened to America. Something horrible that we still suffer from. Something that we all bear responsibility for understanding and rectifying to the degree that we can.

Separating the institution that provided the engine for American capitalism and created a worldwide economy from the rest of American history is academically disingenuous and historically inaccurate. If by the seventh grade students understood that Africans and Asians along with Europeans and various indigenous peoples were a part of creating the "New" World they'd have a different understanding of slavery and how it was allowed to catch on and become pervasive in this hemisphere. They should also understand the role that early explorers played in laying the groundwork for chattel slavery the same can be said for the founding fathers. Before Jefferson suggested that all men were created equal he wrote the notice attached below. Instead of a curriculum that places slavery within the framework of a developing superpower we have a curriculum that separates slavery from the rest of American history and by doing so relegates it to a simpler story about African Americans and being enslaved.

maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Woot">Woot said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" klinker"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Klinker">Klinker said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" woot"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Woot">Woot said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" klinker"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/Klinker">Klinker said:

maplewood.worldwebs.com="" profile="" discussions="" u="" mrsuburbs"="" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">maplewood.worldwebs.com/profile/discussions/u/MrSuburbs">MrSuburbs said:

What's wrong with letting the class have a slave auction?

I look forward to the class you will teach about the KKK. All of those 3rd graders will look so cute in their hats and robes.....

Seriously dude, this question..... I mean, if you have to ask.....

So while not the most respectful lesson, it at least ensured that our students learned more context and empathy for the difficulty of life as a slave than I learned in my pubic school education.

Or, empathy for slave merchants. If you are playing "Masters and Slaves" do you really think kids are going to be clambering to be the slaves?

As I said, there are better ways to do this. But some earlier posts argued that we should instead focus on positive aspects of AFAm history (which I know also already happens to some extent). I'd assume we should do both. And as shared above, this may have oddly improved people's understanding of what it must have felt like to be a slave.

All fair and well stated. And all largely ignored altogether in my/our education. But your requested curriculum might also be uncomfortable for our delicate preteens. And their judgemental parents.  

Woot said:

flimbro said:

[...trimmed..]
Separating the institution that provided the engine for American capitalism and created a worldwide economy from the rest of American history is academically disingenuous and historically inaccurate. If by the seventh grade students understood that Africans and Asians along with Europeans and various indigenous peoples were a part of creating the "New" World they'd have a different understanding of slavery and how it was allowed to catch on and become pervasive in this hemisphere. They should also understand the role that early explorers played in laying the groundwork for chattel slavery the same can be said for the founding fathers. Before Jefferson suggested that all men were created equal he wrote the notice attached below. Instead of a curriculum that places slavery within the framework of a developing superpower we have a curriculum that separates slavery from the rest of American history and by doing so relegates it to a simpler story about African Americans and being enslaved.

All fair and well stated. And all largely ignored altogether in my/our education. But your requested curriculum might also be uncomfortable for our delicate preteens. And their judgemental parents.

FWIW: What Flimbro is suggesting seems to be similar to the view of the new AP History curriculum (as of 2014-15). And why just provide this more comprehensive historical view to only those who pursue AP honors in high school? Note that the article indicates that pushback is from conservatives.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/republicans-hate-the-new-ap-history-exam-820

This fall, 500,000 American high school students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) US History will be taught from an entirely redesigned curriculum. Instead of quizzing students on presidential trivia and the heroic exploits of our founding fathers, the new test will ask students to think more critically about America’s past. Students will learn, for instance, how racism was a foundational ideology of the early colonists and that immigrants have long been exploited for their labor.

Kibblegirll..."No matter how poetic Ben Carson may sound, slaves were NOT immigrants to this country."

President Obama used that same analogy more than once and there was no uproar. Why? Both men are black -- wait, one was a Democrat!

There can be no "safe places" for our children however much we parents want to protect them.

Would the horrors of the Holocaust be better communicated to the world without the vividness of Ann Frank and the concentration camps, death trains, and survivors stories depicted for every generation in the decades since?

Back in the day, as PTA president at Tuscan an d president of the school district's president's council, this would have addressed. What has been said?

Perhaps, the sub had a vision of the students giving a depiction of slavery and the auctioning off of human beings as seen in their own minds? It could have provided a great learning experience for children and parents alike.

mtierney said:

Would the horrors of the Holocaust be better communicated to the world without the vividness of Ann Frank and the concentration camps, death trains, and survivors stories depicted for every generation in the decades since?

The Diary of Anne Frank is a book. How she later was deported to a concentration camp and ultimately perished is not usually re-enacted in the classroom. 

No one is objecting to the teaching of the topic of slavery or slave auctions. No one is objecting to including a vivid book or film in that teaching.

The objection is to the very strange obsession some people seem to have with encouraging children to act out (on each other), or draw their own depictions of, police brutality / children and parents being kidnapped away from their families and being dehumanized slavery and slave auction activities in the classroom.

I don't recall Obama referencing slaves as immigrants. If he did, I'd like to hear the clip of that.

Would just add that in our unique environment where our neighbors look and worship different than us, it's really piss poor for the psyche when your lovely friend/neighbor is now pretending to sell you to the highest bidder. IMO, it further strengthens, perhaps subliminally, that one race is superior and in control of the other.

kibbegirl said:

I don't recall Obama referencing slaves as immigrants. If he did, I'd like to hear the clip of that.

Would just add that in our unique environment where our neighbors look and worship different than us, it's really piss poor for the psyche when your lovely friend/neighbor is now pretending to sell you to the highest bidder. IMO, it further strengthens, perhaps subliminally, that one race is superior and in control of the other.

This. Most definitely this^!

Here's President Obama:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4660062/obamas-remarks-slave-immigrants

Obviously as with most things context is important. Ben Carson was including the middle passage in a section of his presentation that romanticized the yearnings of voluntary immigrants. He mentioned that slaves "worked for less" and that they dreamt of a better world for their children. This is true if you consider nothing to be 'less' and if you have difficulty discerning the difference between hoping that your children find a profitable vocation, a home and a suitable mate and hoping that your children aren't starved, raped, hobbled or murdered because their skin is black.

President Obama's statement came after he presented a long list of voluntary immigrants to America which included citizens of the African diaspora. He added (clumsily) enslaved Africans to that list as people who did not come here voluntarily and attributed to them the same aspirations, saying that they were inspired by "all those who had come before them." Once again, this is true if you equate not wanting to be burned at the stake to sleeping on a comfortable bed and having several changes of clothes.

Both men were wrong and both men know better. Obama is a gifted politician (with all the pluses and minuses that position requires) as well as an intelligent man at the top of his game. Carson is an intelligent man, a gifted surgeon and an awkward and abysmal politician who is hopelessly out of his depth. Both men are engaged in vocations that require them to support and cater to the status quo. Obama did a much better job of navigating those waters by promising much and delivering less. Ben Carson will say or do anything to curry favor with the beneficiaries of that status quo with little regard for Black people and as a result his stumbles are more evident and oftentimes seen as being more egregious.

The quote I found was (emphasis mine) "And perhaps, like some of you, these new arrivals might have had some moments of doubt, wondering if they had made a mistake in leaving everything and everyone they ever knew behind. So life in America was not always easy. It wasn’t always easy for new immigrants. Certainly it wasn’t easy for those of African heritage who had not come here voluntarily, and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves. There was discrimination and hardship and poverty. But, like you, they no doubt found inspiration in all those who had come before them. And they were able to muster faith that, here in America, they might build a better life and give their children something more."

He does specify that they "had not come here voluntarily" and adds in "and yet in their own way were immigrants themselves." As pointed out above, not worded in the best way, but he specifies clearly that they came against their will. Not the same as just calling them immigrants and leaving it at that.

Woot said:
All fair and well stated. And all largely ignored altogether in my/our education. But your requested curriculum might also be uncomfortable for our delicate preteens. And their judgemental parents.

You're probably right about some of the parents- it's always the old folks right? However, you might be surprised by the teens and preteens. I have an eighth grader and she is engaged, aware and outspoken as are the majority of her friends. She's not always right, but she's passionate and she pays attention. I think she's much more aware of current events than I was at her age and she's been that way since she was a preteen. Some of that is from her parents and grandparents but a great deal of it has to do with her generation and these two towns we live in. She's never lived anywhere where she wasn't required to interact with people who didn't look like her, worshipped differently, looked different, had two mothers or two fathers or just one grandparent, had a bigger house or a smaller apartment. She does in fact take people as they present themselves and that's good.

We have to catch them young- preferably in elementary school. By middle school they're already scratching Nazi and or racist epithets on walls at school. That's our fault. Twelve year olds aren't discussing Nazis and lynchings in school hallways unless they hear it at home. The only way to counteract that is by establishing the idea that this country and their environment wasn't created by one group. They have to know that a multitude of people were responsible for America and with that knowledge understand that we are all responsible in some way or another for how we move forward.

I consider myself progressive and enlightened. I grew up with activist parents and family and I've always been involved in some aspect of what some refer to as the 'movement'. Additionally, a considerable part of my professional life involves activism and speaking truth to power. However, my daughter pulls me up short all of the time and challenges me on my use of certain terms and my perspective- and I love it.

I grew up in Union county in the mid 70's and in my high school American history was supplemented by what was called 'Afro American' history and World history. These courses were created as a response to civil unrest in the late 60's and early 70's and offered as electives. They were well attended. As a result thousands of white, brown and Black students understood the true origins of this country. When the beginning of chattel slavery was glossed over in their required history class, they were able to trace the origins of the institution to the creation of papal bulls and the carving up of the African continent. When the standard civil rights section was taught in their required history class they already knew that Rosa Parks was a dedicated activist selected to sit on that bus as opposed to a tired domestic worker just trying to get home. They also knew that Parks' coordinated action followed the example set by Claudette Colvin and many others. They also knew that Martin Luther King became more of a threat to American society when he championed the cause of all poor people and labor and spoke out against the war in Vietnam.

My daughter benefited from my attendance in those classes. She was assigned the task of creating a diary written by a recent immigrant who arrived in New York via Ellis Island. Students were given the opportunity to select their country of origin. I thought it was a wonderful assignment since it required research and creative writing. She chose Ireland and did a great job of placing herself in the mindset of a young woman coming to America with a husband and two small children. They lived on the lower East side and she eventually found work as a domestic. I looked at the materials she'd been given about Ellis Island and after she was finished I asked her if she'd ever considered writing a diary from the perspective of an immigrant with roots in Africa. She hadn't. All of her material focused solely on immigrants from Europe. So we wrote a shorter second diary just for ourselves. I showed her examples of Black people arriving at Ellis Island from the Caribbean and she decided to be from Jamaica traveling with a girlfriend and her husband from St. Kitts. They arrived and lived on the upper west side. Eventually she decided to become a nurse and her girlfriend a teacher. She wrote entries in that second make believe diary for over a month. She was invested in it because she felt like part of history instead of a bystander to someone else's.

I think if we all felt that we were active participants in our history- good or bad, it would be harder to stage slave auctions or ask children to draw posters that advocated the ownership of other humans.

I disagree that kids writing Nazi/KKK symbols hear it at home. We don't know what motivated them, but to blame the home is irresponsible.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/

For those who doubt and discount anything outside their playbook

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

mtierney said:

thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/11-times-barack-obama-compared-slaves-to-immigrants/

For those who doubt and discount anything outside their playbook

Carson was trashed for saying similar thoughts. Why do you think?

I'll bite: Because Obama's use of the word "immigrant" wasn't under the microscope. Now it comes on the heels of immigration Executive Orders that were struck down by the courts, so to make use of the word 'immigrant' in such a way is a type of political theater.

You should be debating the merits of Carson's perspective. But instead you bit the Federalist's distraction from the current issue by saying 'Well -- he did it first!!'.

That type of excuse doesn't get my children from recognizing their own wrongdoing. Does that childish strategy get your kids get off the hook?

(FWIW: Just in case you weren't aware: Barack Obama is the son of a voluntary immigrant from Africa).

krugle said:

I disagree that kids writing Nazi/KKK symbols hear it at home. We don't know what motivated them, but to blame the home is irresponsible.

Why is that irresponsible? If you admit to not knowing what would possibly motivate such behavior how do you rule out the home? Do I think that some middle schoolers in this town live in households with crazy goose-stepping neo Nazis? No, of course not. Do I think that some live in households where parents or relatives have disparaging things to say about Jews and Black folks- absolutely.

flimbro said:



We have to catch them young- preferably in elementary school. By middle school they're already scratching Nazi and or racist epithets on walls at school. That's our fault. Twelve year olds aren't discussing Nazis and lynchings in school hallways unless they hear it at home.

I don't agree. Some DO hear it at home, but some children say or do things that leave their parents horrified and wondering how they could possibly have raised a child with such views. Recently there was a young local boy who was spewing a lot of hateful views on a social media platform (I don't recall which). A few members of MOL relayed that they knew the family and that the parents didn't know about the posting and were horrified when they read what their son had written.

spontaneous said:

flimbro said:



We have to catch them young- preferably in elementary school. By middle school they're already scratching Nazi and or racist epithets on walls at school. That's our fault. Twelve year olds aren't discussing Nazis and lynchings in school hallways unless they hear it at home.

I don't agree. Some DO hear it at home, but some children say or do things that leave their parents horrified and wondering how they could possibly have raised a child with such views. Recently there was a young local boy who was spewing a lot of hateful views on a social media platform (I don't recall which). A few members of MOL relayed that they knew the family and that the parents didn't know about the posting and were horrified when they read what their son had written.

Home = parents, siblings, relatives, social gatherings, family reunions, grandparents home etc. I think the incidence of a randomly occurring racist skinhead gene in a pre teen member of an open minded family is rare. But we can certainly agree to disagree.

When a child does something despicable and people say "they learned that at home" no one is thinking of the kid's second cousin once removed.