Margaret A. Hagerman

White Kids is an important book that belongs in all school libraries and deserves to be widely read by every parent, teacher and policy maker. I bought this book as a readable introduction of race for students researching White privilege in their final-year major projects, but it’s reach is far wider than this. While the ethnographic research is specific to America, the complexity of children’s socialisation about race will easily be extrapolated in any Western country, making it a must-read for anyone who grapples with implications of White privilege while trying to bring about an end to racial inequality.
The author spent two years as a participant-observer in three upper middle-class White communities in Petersfield, STATE? – an almost exclusively White conservative enclave outside the city, a liberal suburb in which most White parents appear to send their students to private schools (since the public schools include Black and Latino students from the nearby lower SES suburbs) before taking advantage of opportunities such as AP tracking at the local public school, and an extremely diverse suburb with a high level of community activism. Drawing on interviews and observations of ten families in each suburb, Hagerman makes the case that “being a good parent must become entwined with notion of good citizenship” so that a “commitment to young people as a whole … can challenge ideologies of parenting that are deeply entwined with the legacy of White supremacy.”
This extremely readable account of what I assume was Masters or PhD research reflects upon the voices of the participants, examining the way that thirty-six 10-13 year-olds construct race though their location (which the participants’ parents tie to the availability of “good” schools – seemingly unaware that their definition of “good” is racially loaded), schools, interactions with friends and siblings, experience of Others through travel and volunteering, media exposure (especially to current events such as Black Lives Matter) and extracurricular activities. In particular, she highlights the inconsistencies and contradictions of various approaches to “the conundrum of privilege: how does one raise children in ways that truly cultivate antiracist praxis while still receiving unearned White advantage and the benefits of class privilege? Is it possible to raise privileged children at the individual level in a way that maps onto ideas of equality of the structural level?”
Knowing I’d be giving this book to a student in the next week or two, I grudgingly picked it up yesterday and devoured it in almost one sitting - I hadn’t expected to see so many of my own half-developed thoughts about race crystallised on the page like this. She discusses the concept of “post-racism” and as a way to avoid the discomfort of speaking about race from a position of privilege, describes the structures which maintain the “meritocracy” as the preserve of White Americans, reveals the racial subtleties of cultural appropriation through celebrity culture, and even looks at the way that volunteer programmes and international travel, while providing opportunities for empathetic understanding, can unwittingly inscribe the bodies of marginalised Others as “sites for the privileged to learn something about themselves.” In all these cases, she challenges the accepted theory of scoialisation as a top-down instructional process and elaborates on the transactional nature of child-rearing, focusing on ways that children inform and challenge each other’s (and their parents’) perceptions of race.
The picture that arises is not a positive one. While many of the parents in this study actively seek out diversity for their children, Hagerman makes it clear that these opportunities are not available for parent of Black children, who may also desire diversity for their children but lack the economic and political means to make this happen. White parents who are doing their best to teach their children anti-racism, also manage to teach them systematic bias: At one point she discusses the language of a father who criticises the racist system that allowed his White son to get off on a drug charge that would likely have had a Black child charged, but also teaches his son unconscious bias against Black families by stating “At least I was there,” implying that black father’s don’t care enough about their children to attend court. Schools which ban the word “racist” (along with “gay” or “fag”) limit the possibility of unpacking systemic discrimination – so that students are uncomfortable speaking about race to friends of colour, rending their culture invisible. Extra-curricular activities are limited by economic and cultural practices, which at best deny children a chance to make diverse friends who share their interests and at worst provides opportunities to collectively appropriate and experience aspects of Black culture as a joke (Hagerfield gives the example of “ghetto booty” aas shared mother-daughter humour at an exclusive synchronised swimming event).
In an epilogue chapter, Hagerman revisits the participants four years later to discover they are leading even more segregated high school lives that they did as middle schoolers. Students from the conservative suburb are still invested in a conception of race that consigns racism to the past, students in the integrated schools have become segregated through AP tracking (which I almost exclusively White) and socially aware students have not yet learned to think beyond “White saviour” models of activism. While this seems bleak, Hagerman identities two avenues for change: One is about honest engagement with race and privilege - “Whites can learn to shift their own ways of thinking and acting in the world if they allow themselves to face the discomfort that inevitably comes with honest confrontations of race” – the other is the social conception of what constitutes a “good” parent – “Ideologies about race, economic relationships and the role of children in society intersect with agreed-upon belief systems about what it means to be a “good” parent raising a “good” child…. part of being a “good parent” means pushing for more resources for their own child, even if those resources are part of a legacy of White supremacy. And when parents do not push for more – when they for instance pull their child from a private school or an honours class – they are questioned by other parents (and kids)as to whether.. that is in the best interest of their child.”
As an educated White reader with a professional job, this is a challenging read. I’m left with questions, rather than answers: As a teacher, how can I challenge the status quo in ways that don’t reinforce White privilege? How much of my own activism fits into “White saviour” concepts of education? What are the subtle ways in which hegemonic racial ideologies inform our school structure? In an upper middle-class school, what can I do to create opportunities for open dialogue about race? There’s a lot to think about here, and if more parents, educators and policymakers took these questions on board, we might understand better how to create a racially equal society.… (altro)

Free early reviewer book. Hagerman studies wealthy white kids from three Midwest neighborhoods, one of which was basically my neighborhood even though it’s halfway across the country. There’s the conservative suburb where many white parents use private schools even though they ostensibly moved there for the quality of the public schools; there’s the liberal suburb where many white parents move heaven & earth to get their kids into the “good” public school whose racial diversity is (wrongly) perceived to come from the children of immigrant PhD students from the local university; and there’s the progressive city neighborhood where many white parents are ideologically committed to public schools, agonize over whether it’s fair to give their children outside experiences like trips and tutors, but do it anyway. I felt very seen: that last neighborhood was populated by two types of cars: hybrid cars and cars over 10 years old, often with political bumper stickers (i.e., our last two cars). Part of this story, then, is increasing residential segregation among groups of white people, based on political/cultural differences.

Hagerman argues that kids don’t receive racial ideologies unchanged and unchallenged from their parents, but rather do a lot of the work of race-thinking themselves and with peers (and also influenced by media). Especially for the first two groups of white kids, their parents rarely mention race and may even teach that speaking about race—noticing race—is itself racist, even though they also often use racially coded or even explicit language (“ghetto” kids, Hispanic “gang members”). Those kids usually advocated color-blindness but also asked Hagerman lots of questions about race when their parents weren’t around, like whether blacks had different muscles that made them better at sports. “Racism” is the worst accusation many white kids can imagine, and it’s therefore also a joke (you asked for a marker of a particular color and that makes you racist!). The conservative parents teach color-blind ideology that ends up blaming minorities for their own subordination; the liberal parents teach that discrimination was a problem historically and remains in existence today, but as a matter of individual prejudice rather than structure; and the progressive parents teach that race is one of a number of linked axes along which power and subordination may operate, even as they also teach their kids that they are powerful and entitled to a good life in ways that can reproduce white dominance. There are no good answers, though I have to admit I was impressed by the progressive white kid who talked about protests of Trayvon Martin’s death by basically saying that whites’ role as allies was to listen and support, not to stand in front trying to lead the protest. I hope there’s a lot more of that kid out there.… (altro)

I highly recommend this book and suggest that one read it with a friend. I really wanted to talk about this with everyone. I found this to be a fascinating subject. The writing was pretty academic in style, but I was pulled right along by the topic and the interviews. I think this is a much needed book. I'm sorry that it was not more approachable in style. I very glad that Margaret Hagerman has shared her research with us and look forward to her next book. Well researched. Good bibliography. Really raised a lot of questions for me. It would be great to read this with others as it begs conversation. I'm grateful to NYU Press and NetGalley for sharing an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.… (altro)