Harvey Milk Had Some Thoughts

“You have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow.” -Harvey Milk

This week as I was digging through boxes I came across Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders, conveniently during Pride month.

When I read it to Beckett a few days later, I thought it was significant that the book began with Harvey Milk, this champion for gay rights, laying in a field with his hands behind his head. He was in a posture of sheer relaxation, imagining the world filled with a rainbow, a symbol of hope. And that symbol of hope is so important, because, like Milk, before any action happens we have to sit back and stare at the sky and have some thoughts about how we think life could be different. This is usually where our big stories begin. That “oh shit” moment where the passivity of our thoughts meets the gifts we have been given. The moment where a still, small voice calls us to action in a way we just can’t ignore.

I don’t know what the future is going to look like for my boys. The sad fact of the matter is, as adults Beckett and Oliver may still be marching with their black neighbors or their daughters or for their right to love or out of fear of sending their kids to school in a world with AR-15s. I do know that right now I have to foster the ideas that come from my boys sitting back with their hands behind their heads like Harvey Milk, even though they rarely stay still that long. Eventually, their imaginations won’t merely develop unknown worlds in blanket forts or amalgamous characters composed of old Marvel superhero costumes and accessorized with Buzz Lightyear belts. Eventually, God willing, their ideas will be how to solve food insecurity or how to transform systems of power and privilege or how to reconfigure public education and public safety or how to use their gifts to foster their neighbor’s serenity. And when that day comes they need to know that it’s possible for their imagination to have credence, to take form. So, today, it's my job to let that happen during their childhood in messy, confusing and joyful ways.

#pride #lgbtchildrensliterature #childrenliterature #harveymilk #pathwaystochildrensliterature

I'm Going To Do Better

“‘Do they know they’re in the wrong place?’ I whispered. ‘Some rules have to be broken.’ Mama whispered back.”

I’ve never been in a situation where I had to break the rules to exercise my right for life, freedom or justice.

We read Freedom On The Menu this week by Carole Boston Weatherford, a picture book about the Greensboro Four at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, the movement kicking off the sit-ins. Beckett was thoroughly confused. He understood that the black people were treated very unfairly, and he didn’t want that to happen. He didn’t understand the protesting, despite the fact that this kid has been to quite a few protests since November 2016. His life, his freedom and his future success has never been on the line. Blissfully unaware, my little white boy, because the world has never been working against him.

Because of that, the protest is where his cognitive dissonance began, because the good guys in the story were breaking the rules.

The protestors were disrupting the peace.

The protestors were even being put in jail.

That’s when I began to see on such a base level the critical nature of the Civil Rights Movement and, now, the Black Lives Matter movement.

Protesting is loud, protesting is angry, protesting demands something break. There’s a disruption to the order of things that has to happen, and I see that real change won’t happen quietly or without literally and figuratively shattering reality as we know it. Although I know that I will never truly understand, I admire so deeply the incredible courage of these movements. I so admire the people that unite with bravery to disrupt the peace in order to be heard, to ignite change. This is not a distant past to which us white people can shake our heads and proclaim we would be on the right side of history. These horrors are right now. They are today.

I am going to do my part to respond with love in a braver and more courageous way. I am going to do better. As parents, we’re going to raise our boys to do better.

#carolebostonweatherford #childrensliterature #blacklivesmatter

Black Lives Matter

There are only five books on my boy’s bookshelves with black people.

And that matters, because black lives matter.

My boys aren’t actively cheering for black characters to win their story.

As woke as I want to believe that I am, I’ve listened enough to know that my scope as a white woman has been so limited, and I’m perpetuating that limit with my boys. This includes only posting about books by authors with dead white people that wrote about anthropomorphic animals or other white people. That’s part of the problem.

The reason I’ve been posting about them is because those were the books I was raised on, the books I was taught in school, the books I saw myself in. They evoke warmth and nostalgia and memories of reading by flashlight hours after I was told I had to be asleep. So what would happen if people of color were incorporated into my boy’s archive of nostalgic, magical characters? They will likely cultivate empathy, connection, admiration and love for their black neighbor.

Sure, reading books about the Civil Rights Movement once a year shows some incredible heroes. As a white liberal, of course I’m going to read about Rosa Parks in sheer awe. But if I want to start showing my privileged white boys that #blacklivesmatter, I’m going to have to start reading them more books with everyday black heroes being the protagonists, not just history book heroes. Their foundation of race can look different than mine.

Every black life matters, and my boys are young enough that a small change like this can be form the way they view the world. And, God willing, they will use their privilege to fight the systemic racism that is murdering our black men in the name of contrived safety for those that, let’s call it what it is, view themselves as more worthy of life.

Maybe reading them Kadir Nelson and Jacqueline Woodson and Kwame Alexander and Carole Boston Weatherford will contribute to them knowing that black lives do matter.

#blacklivesmatter #representationmatters #childrensliterature #jacquelinewoodson