CHILDREN OF A TROUBLED TIME

An interview-based sociological study of the Trump administration’s effect on children’s views on racism and democracy.

Between 2017 and 2019, Hagerman, author of White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America, interviewed 45 children in Mississippi and Massachusetts about their views on race during the Trump years. Her sample included children between 10 and 13 “across race and class groupings.” When analyzing her findings, she focused on children’s “racialized emotions,” seeking to find out “how young people feel race,” and noticed a strong undercurrent of fear. For nonwhite children, this fear was often rooted in anxiety about an increase in racial violence or “that their family members would be deported while they were at school.” While some white children shared these fears, others supported Trump’s policies because of their fear of nonwhite populations including Black, Middle Eastern, and Latine people. The author believes that this fear is rooted in white children’s anxiety about “losing power as a racial group as people of color make further advances in US society.” Put another way, “these kids want to continue to experience the pleasure of feeling superior.” Hagerman ends the book with a series of suggestions to combat “racial apathy,” which she describes as a lack of empathy that she noticed in some pro-Trump white participants. Above all, the author urges adults to address not just “how kids are thinking” but also “how they are feeling.” She believes that this combination is the key to combating racist attitudes in American children. Hagerman’s data is chillingly thorough, and her argument is well supported and convincing. Although the prose is sometimes overly academic, the content is strong enough to render this required reading for antiracist parents, caregivers, and allies.

A significant study of children's “racialized emotions” during the Trump era.