NYT: Can my Children be friends with white people

[Dill]

(11-15-2017, 07:18 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Answer this one question: Why did he begin the article with his kid asking him how many people he could have as his best friend; if the kid was concerned about images from Charlottesville?

I have no problem discussing race relations with anyone and to think racism does not exist in modern society is ridiculous; however, when a father turns a question asked by his 4-year old son as to how many best friends he has into a racial issue, he is looking to bring race into any conversation. As do those in this forum that are applauding his words. 

When the child is asking the questions about friendship, he is only exploring the question/definition of friendship with the open, innocent mind of a child, as yet unclouded by racism and hate outside the home. That is what we are all like before we hear about the history of racism, before the first time a white kid calls us the n-word or a black kid takes our lunch money.  Friendship--the possibility thereof-- is thus raised in this pristine form to set the theme of the essay.

It's not clear that, and doesn't seem to be the point, that child or parent shifted a discussion of friendship to Charlottesville in mid-discussion.   
 
"But even a child’s joy is not immune to this ominous political period. This summer’s images of violence in Charlottesville, Va., prompted an array of questions."

So Yankah begins with the image of innocent questions about friendship, then changes the topic, not in the discussion with his son but in the essay, to what complicates the questions--the racism in the outside world. But the questions about Charlottesville "last summer" could have come before or after, the friendship questions, on different days, weeks or months apart.

The sets of questions are juxtaposed here 1) to produce the contrast between everyone's original innocence and curiosity about "friends" and that postlapsarian state in which we suddenly find out there are people who don't like us for who we are, something we didn't choose and can't change. (That is also why whites feel anger hearing about some "white privilege" which doesn't seem to be  benefiting them.)

And 2) to introduce the question of how racism, history, and the present figure into black families and parental relations at the current juncture.

So as far as I can tell, Yankah and his sons have not yet had the necessary "discussion" about race and friendship with whites. That he thinks it necessary at some point is what frustrated him into writing the OpEd.

I value the OpEd for the insight it gives into how some blacks are responding to the Trump phenomenon, what they believe it means for them and their future.