NYT: Can my Children be friends with white people

[Dill]

(11-14-2017, 11:12 PM)michaelsean Wrote: He’s prejudging people based on their race. Not people who have lynched people or discriminated against them for military service. He’s talking about the next door neighbor or a classmate or a kid on the baseball team.

Sure, he is talking about them. He is asking if they can be trusted. The white man who shovels the walk for a black neighbor, but doesn't see why voting for Trump is a big a deal. It was just "necessary" to achieve political goals.

Sounds like he trusted lots of white people before. No doubt he knows lots of white people have "liked" him.  Now something has happened to make him very unsure of trust.

And he makes the reasons plain. Obviously white people can "like" blacks. But friendship requires something more, like trust and putting your soul on the line. The willingness to overlook Trump's behavior suggests to him that the trust he assumed had developed since the years of segregation was never really there. Black people aren't really equals in the eyes of people who can set accept their public denigration in behaviors like birtherism.

He remembers a time when black children were taught to be careful what they say and how they behave around whites. And whites did not have to worry at all. Perhaps he is old enough to remember Emmet Till.  He remembers the minimal racism of his adolescence. Seemed like it was going away. 

And now here is having to explain to his child what all those people in Charlottesville were demonstrating about. Some of them, no doubt "good people." 

Lucie seems to think the child will be ok if he just learns how to fight.