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Real life racial socialization. My kid is the only racial minority on his baseball team of 12 players and one of maybe 10 max out of 300+ players ages 8-14. 1/
At their first game of the season, kids were joking around in the dugout. One kids starts pretending to speak other languages. You know where this is going, right? 2/
Then my partner overhears him say, “Ching Chong...hiya!” My son is nearby and hears it too. I learn about it later on and ask my son about it in the car. He replies, “Yeah you know, typical white kids stuff.” He gets it’s racist talk and also knows it’s normalized. 3/
Do we leave it there? I ask my son what he wants to do. Is it worth bringing up to coaches and other families? After discussion, we agree that I will contact the head coach who agrees we need to address it. 4/
Our plan — We agree to couch it under sportsmanship and expected behaviors. For now, we won’t involve parents. So we will talk w players today and specifically bring up this language used to correct behaviors. 5/
I could never imagine such collective efforts when I was growing up. Immigrant parents with limited English and lack of power and privilege. This is using the #KingsEnglish to change how we live. Language has power and we need to use it as our weapon to defend 6/6
