Last Updated on October 21, 2020
A reader of the left-wing online magazine Slate penned a letter in a very serious tone asking for tips on how to force her 2-year-old daughter to be actively “anti-racist,” noting that “when we try to discuss issues like structural racism, intersectionality, or White fragility, she doesn’t seem at all interested.”
The letter to Slate’s Care and Feeding Column is addressed from a self-described “Anti-Racist Mom” and titled “My 2-Year-Old Doesn’t Seem to Care About Being Anti-Racist – Have we screwed up somehow?”
“My husband and I (we’re white) have a 2-year-old daughter and are doing our very best to be anti-racist parents. We’re making sure she has lots of multiracial dolls, only consumes books and TV shows with diverse characters, has no problematic Halloween costumes, and so on,” the letter states.
The reader goes on to write, “But when we try to discuss issues like structural racism, intersectionality, or White fragility, she doesn’t seem at all interested. She often walks away, asks for a cookie, or even falls asleep! Have we screwed up somehow? Has society’s disdain for the perspectives of marginalized people already infected her? How do we get her to appreciate the urgency of the conversation around deconstructing white supremacy?”
Though the themes discussed in the letter are not far removed from the ideology of critical race theory propagated by Black Lives Matter and the Democrat Party, Slate columnist Jamilah Lemieux dismissed the question as a “lazy troll.”
Lemieux typed out several paragraphs of satirical prose jokingly telling the reader to abandon their daughter, but noted at the end, “I most certainly hope I didn’t accidentally mistake an earnest letter for a lazy troll” because “if so, whoops, and you might want to relax a bit.”
