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When I interviewed Hershovitz, I asked him how he handled that moment with Rex. 'Because White people do lots of mean things to Black people. And that we need more.Īll of which brings us to breakfast many months later, when Rex had a big announcement. So he learned that the heroes are not done yet. "Rex caught glimpses of protests in the paper on the news. At around the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was growing in response to the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Hershovitz had been reading books to his son about civil rights activists like Rosa Parks and Jackie Robinson. Some people who have spoken out against school lessons that invoke systemic racism have voiced a fear that white children will feel ashamed of their race.įor Hershovitz, that seemingly scary situation happened when his son Rex was 4 years old - an anecdote he describes in his book. The fears parents have about being unable to answer their children's questions often live alongside the fears they have of fielding uncomfortable questions - which feels particularly relevant as efforts to ban books, legislate what can be said about LGBTQ people in schools and silence lessons that acknowledge systemic racism are prevalent throughout the country, and are often premised on the claim that such lessons can make children feel discomfort. It's a question tackled by philosophy of law professor Scott Hershovitz in his new book, "Nasty, Brutish, and Short: Adventures in Philosophy with My Kids" (Penguin Press). Our kids had naturally good questions and surprisingly perceptive insights, and now conversations about the "big questions" are part of our daily - sometimes hourly - lives.Īnd now I wonder - what were we so afraid of? We turned down the radio when we knew swear words were coming up in song lyrics, we found babysitters so they wouldn't have to attend our grandparents' funerals, we cringed as we anticipated the inevitable questions about sex.īut, as all those topics (and more we didn't anticipate) have come up over the years, we've realized that the questions, the explanations and the resulting conversations were much less scary than we worried about.
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How long to shelter them from death, when to explain to them that some people have same-sex relationships, how to confront issues of racism and inequality. When my kids were little, my husband and I would often talk with each other about how and when to introduce big topics.