In a night were everything looked bleak, in a night where I honestly feared for the future of the world, the words of political activist Van Jones struck both my husband and me deeply as we watched events unfold. “It's hard to be a parent tonight.
In a night were everything looked bleak, in a night where I honestly feared for the future of the world, the words of political activist Van Jones struck both my husband and me deeply as we watched events unfold.
“It's hard to be a parent tonight. You tell your kids, ‘Don't be a bully.' You tell your kids, ‘Don't be a bigot.' Then you have this outcome,&” said Jones as CNN commentators discussed what, at that point, looked to be the election of Republican candidate Donald Trump last Tuesday.
“You have people putting their children to bed tonight and they're afraid of breakfast. They're thinking, "How do I explain this to my children?'&”
Suddenly, the biggest bully on the playground, inspiring the worst kind of bigotry and hatred, was being rewarded for his outrageous behavior with the most powerful post on the planet.
White supremacist groups were rejoicing even before Donald Trump was declared president last Tuesday night in a toxic election campaign, thanks to the legitimacy he brought their cause. Then came the reports of racist and violent attacks against schoolchildren, of Asians and Muslims being told to go home, of Latino children being cat-called at by their peers - “Build a wall, build a wall!&”
Hearing Trump talk, during the election campaign, of making Muslims register in a database, is part of why some of us feel like this is similar to the rise of Hitler in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
I am scared of the world's future, as scared as I was when I was a eight-year-old child, looking at the distorted map of a giant Russia, and learning about the Cold War and the possibility of nuclear war.
But I am more scared of the loss of common decency, of my children growing up in a world where the colour of their skin may matter more than the content of their character, where misinformation and lies is seen as more real and is more trusted than mainstream media, a world where it's OK to joke about sexual assault or denigrate a person because of their sex or their faith or because they have a disability.
My daughter was telling me the other day of an incident she saw where some other children began taunting a girl, chanting her name to tease her.
“And what did you do?&” I asked.
She said she didn't want to see what was going on, that she covered her head with her shirt and tried not to hear or be involved in something she knew was wrong.
I recognize that impulse. I wanted to hide my head in my shirt all night last Tuesday. I don't expect an eight-year-old to right the wrongs of the world. But I tell her, “Be a friend. Make sure she knows you're a friend.&”
As Van Jones said, it's hard to be a parent now. But I'm going to keep telling my children not to run and hide, but to stick up for themselves, each other, their friends, to keep trying to do the right thing. There have been dark times in the past, and there may be dark times yet ahead - although I hope not - but in the end, I will tell them, love will always trump hate.
