I fully support the expulsion of the ringleaders of Sigma Alpha Epsilon "bus of bigotry" at Oklahoma University. I do not agree with those who say that this is too harsh a punishment.
However, some commenters have made valid points about how difficult it is to raise anti-racist children in a racist society and on not blaming the parents for everything, etc. I well remember how I felt when the Right Wing noise machine blamed "liberal parenting" during the Bush years when some middle-class white young adults joined al-Qaeda or the Taliban, etc. (And we see the same thing now with ISIS recruiting here and in the UK, etc.) Children are never wholly the products of their parents or environment--but parenting and environment are important.
My own parents were Southern whites who were, in their words, "bit players" in the social drama that was the Civil Rights movement. I grew up with pictures of John Lewis and Fannie Lou Hamer in our home. I remember the Tallahassee campaign and the Daytona campaign.
When my wife and I became parents in '95, we thought very carefully about how to raise our kids--both daughters, it turned out. We knew we couldn't do everything perfectly. We knew that instilling values is hard. But we knew we'd need to try. We lived, intentionally, in multi-cultural neighborhoods and (out of necessity, at first) in areas where incomes were low. We chose an inner-city church with a female pastor (and my wife took a position as Minister to the Homeless for some years) and a multi-cultural staff and congregation. We are still there. Our daughters grew up with an unofficial "godmother" (Baptists don't really have godparents the way those in denominations which baptize infants, do.) who was also African American and a church deacon--who later came out as lesbian.
They became friends across lines of race, ethnicity, culture, and language.
We sent them to the public schools and volunteered in them. We encouraged them to seek out friends from all groups--especially ones who were being ignored or marginalized by others. After 9/11, both our daughters deliberately befriended Muslim girls who wore the hajib and were targets of bullying. They were openly against the War on Terror despite conflicts with teachers and administration (all while keeping 4.0 GPAs).
When they had questions, we talked openly and frankly with them. My wife, who is from Tennessee and slightly older than me, told them what is was like during the transition of segregation. She spoke openly about having family members on "both sides" during the Civil War and during the struggle to end Jim Crow. She spoke with pride about the discovery in family papers of an ancestor who was part of the Underground Railroad--but, then, when my daughters were feeling proud, explained that this came as such as surprise because he had had to keep this secret even from his own family--that some of her ancestors were slave owners and would have helped the town lynch the Underground Railroad ancestor. No leap-frog Disney versions of family history. No highlighting the good and skipping over the evil. Own it all.
My oldest daughter was six when she asked me to explain racism and racial justice. I did my best, using examples from both history and current events. I, also had her put herself in the shoes of the victims. I asked repeatedly, "How would you feel if this kind of exclusion/rejection/prejudice/oppression was aimed at you?"
When a racist incident happened at my younger daughter's middle school several years later, she was embarrassed that one of the bullies was her first "boyfriend." (Quotation marks because we don't allow dating before 15--and, by that time, this daughter had come out as bi-sexual!) She asked me if I would still love her if she ever did something like this boy did. I replied that, of course, I would always love her. She could never do or say something that would make me NOT love her or make her unwelcome in our home. But I also said that if she ever did or said something like that, I would be ashamed and embarrassed, instead of being the proud father that I am. I would see it as a failure.
Raising children to be anti-racist, to be feminist, to be anti-homophobic, to be pro-peace, pro-justice, caring, compassionate, and for human rights, etc.--is not easy. You have to watch the information they get elsewhere and counter it. You have to give them experiences that break down stereotypes rather than reinforce them. You have to lead by example. You confess your own imperfections and that you struggle to do better. (I told my children of find out my own latent prejudices in high school while dating an African-American girl--and learning to my own embarrassment that the only alternative to being a RECOVERING racist in this society was to not recover.) When my youngest daughter came out, we were very supportive, but I also confessed that I wasn't always a straight ally-and recounted my struggles in the '80s and '90s to get over my homophobia.
What you cannot do is simply assume that children will grow up anti-racist or feminist or whatever AUTOMATICALLY. All your parenting may not work, but it has to be deliberate.
So far, our choices appear to have paid off. My oldest daughter is studying Peace and International Studies with a double major in Spanish and a minor in human rights--at a school without fraternities and sororities. She's currently doing a cross-cultural semester abroad in Guatemala and Cuba. She plans to work at the UN or Human Rights Watch or the Carter Center, etc. The youngest is still in high school and, in addition to being a leader in the gay-straight alliance is part of the Louisville Youth Philanthropic Council, volunteers at the church homeless center, and helps teach English to refugee children.
And the colleges she's looking at do not have a Greek Life, either.
