Around 2 a.m. on November 6, once it was clear what the election outcome would be, I finally went to sleep. It was not a restful night. Every time I woke up, I thought about things like the people who depend on the Affordable Care Act for their health coverage, the people in disaster-prone areas, women with reproductive health issues, my friends who are LGBTQ+—everyone who will be harmed by the election of a far-right regime predicated on hate, fear, and superstition. Among these many unhappy thoughts, one I kept coming back to was, “How am I going to talk about this with my children?”
I believe in the importance of civic education even for younger citizens, though talking to kids about politics can come with challenges. Donald Trump has a habit of doing and saying things so crass or disturbing, it’s not possible to explain them to a small child.
For instance, my daughter did not know about the infamous Access Hollywood tapes until recently. We were grocery shopping, and I ran into a former professor. After we exchanged stilted greetings and parted ways I told my daughter, “That’s the guy who said we should vote for Trump even after he bragged about assaulting women.” That’s how I will always remember him. Not for his love of poetry. Not for his excellent oratorical style.
Yet here we are, socially connected to people who made this choice. They are part of our community. I don’t mean community in a warm, fuzzy way. There is nothing warm and fuzzy about being surrounded by people who would vote to have queer and immigrant families torn apart. But we are part of the body politic, and that comes with responsibilities to think about things beyond instant gratification and “I got mine.”
What do we do then, when the neighbors Jesus tells us to love are the same people who would walk by an immigrant, a trans child, or a woman suffering a miscarriage who needed a D&C if they were dying in a ditch?
We don’t like to think about this. Here in the United States, we love the idea that everyone is good, basically. We’ve all read To Kill a Mockingbird. You know the part at the end when Scout says to Atticus, about Boo Radley, “He was real nice,” and Atticus says, “Most people are, when you finally see them.” It gives us a warm, comfortable feeling to think this, as Atticus, good father and good lawyer, tucks his daughter in. Meanwhile, Tom Robinson is dead, murdered. Meanwhile, the people who killed him would do it all over again and teach their kids to do the same.
It’s generally recognized now that Atticus, beloved character though he is, staunch defender of justice though he is, is also politely racist. But I don’t think he’s just saying most people are nice to excuse racism. He loves his children and wants them to feel safe; they just survived a violent attack.
I sympathize with this, but I struggle with how to strike the balance between seeing the best in humanity and recognizing that we have frequently been monsters. It’s why I can’t agree with my fellow progressive Christians who are leery of the idea of original sin. Yes, the Genesis story is an origin myth, not factual history, and yes, it’s got that woman-blaming element. But the idea of original sin really does make sense when I look at history. Including the history we just made on Election Day 2024.
My teens are well informed about history, too. They know that America was never great. At the same time, our history has been punctuated by many movements of justice and progress, and looking only at the negative erases the heroism of those who spoke truth against falsehood. It negates the many joys we have all felt over victories small and large.
Right now, I am holding onto the stories of those who have gone before us, many of whom faced even greater challenges than the challenge of our present moment. Thinking about Harriet Tubman risking her life to help people escape enslavement, it feels pathetic to talk about giving up hope.
“Look to the helpers,” Mr. Rogers famously said when talking about how to comfort young people in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Even if the helpers are not right here in our neighborhood, they are out there in our nation, in our world, working tirelessly for justice, even in the face of daunting odds. They are the bright torches in our history, the abolitionists, the suffragists, the labor organizers, the civil rights leaders.
I’m not going to lie to my kids and tell them everyone is basically nice. Or maybe, I’m not going to tell them that being nice is all that morally important. Very nice Christian people supported white supremacy and the torture of Black Africans. Very nice Christian people sent Jewish people to the gas chambers.
But I am going to tell them the stories about courageous virtue. I want my sons to know the examples of the men who were genuinely strong and brave, not posturing sexist bullies. I want my daughter to know of the cloud of witnesses, bold women who stood up for themselves and others, throughout history. Talking to kids about politics means talking about these people, too.
Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Àvila, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sophie Scholl, Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Thea Bowman, Cesar Chavez—these people did not mince words about evil or coddle the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. They spoke truth even when it made people uncomfortable. Yet they also held onto their vision of what our community on Earth could be, if we chose to rise above the instinct to exclude and cause pain. These too are who we are, or who we can be, if we choose wisely and rightly. These, too, are our community.
Image: Unsplash/KE ATLAS
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