What is it like to see young people exposed to so much anger? Heartbreaking, says a Times photographer.
In those final weeks, I remember being heartbroken that children were exposed to this anger, were learning from it and participating in it. I knew those parents loved their children just as I do mine, and that common bond was my reminder of their humanity and my own. I was searching for a way to connect in an environment that felt so toxic and violently polarized.
.. One of the most poignant photos from that time was of a boy, dressed as a fledgling Trump, in the front row of a rally with his father in Grand Junction, Colo., just two weeks before the election. Together, they chanted, “Lock her up, lock her up!” The father beamed with pride. Vitriol sputtered from his son Jaden’s mouth.
.. I photographed 10-year-old Gianna Musolino holding her father’s arm in the most tender and gentle embrace, her arms entwined around his, her head nestled in the soft bend of his elbow. There was no mistaking the comfort and protection she felt under his wing and the pride he felt in providing it.
.. I thought again about my son, as I have done so many times over these past few months, imagining with deep sadness what it would be like for him to be taken away from us and what it might do to him. How could any parent possibly support a president capable of this?
Integration Now, Integration Forever
Unfortunately, the mid-70s were, by some measures, a kind of a high-water mark. School integration peaked then, and American schools have been resegregating since.
.. there are two kinds of integration, objective and subjective. The former is about putting people of different races in the same classroom, office and neighborhood. The latter is about emotional bonds of connection, combining a positive sense of pride in group with an overall sense that we are a “we.”
.. Three-quarters of American whites have no close nonwhite friends.
.. if you looked at the average white person’s 100 closest friends, you would find that 91 would be white. If you looked at the average black person’s 100 closest friends, 83 of them would be black.
.. In retrospect, trying to integrate the country through the schools may have been a mistake.
.. But parents are super-paranoid about their children. It doesn’t matter how supposedly enlightened a white neighborhood is; if the government brings poor black kids into the school, many parents react with fury, or with moving vans.
.. If might have been better to lead with residential integration. If American parents are unwarrantedly fearful and race-minded about their kids’ environment, they seem to be less so about their own.
.. In 1967, 3 percent of Americans married outside their race or ethnicity. Now 17 percent do. Twenty-four percent of black men marry a woman outside their race, as do 12 percent of black women.
.. A renewed integration agenda would mean building public housing in low poverty areas, eliminating exclusionary zoning laws, and yes, accepting gentrification
.. (a recent U.C.L.A. study finds that gentrification is increasing diversity in District of Columbia public schools).