I came across this story in another discussion. It was a fascinating read. I posed a similar question on that thread, but wanted to broaden it to this Parent’s forum to get more insights
As a person who values inclusiveness and diversity, I found Derek’s conversion uplifting. I also find Don Black’s views quite repugnant. But after reading the story, I stopped looking at Don Black as the white nationalist leader for a moment and just looked at him as a father and as a parent I tried to put myself in Don Black’s shoes and wondered how I would feel if I sent my kid away to school and she came back having lost her “family faith” and worse yet, converted to another religion/faith whose views I completely disagreed with? How would I feel if she then told me that my views were terrible, backward and plain wrong?
I know that a lot of people are going to say, “It is her life to live” etc, but the pain of realizing that your child has rejected everything you hold dear and important would cut deep, would it not? We send our child to college to grow and become a more mature person, but if our child completely repudiates everything that we hold dear because of that education, would any of us be happy? Should we pay to have a college actively bleed our values and traditions out of our kids in the name of “growing as a human being”?
Or Should we send our kids to a school that will reinforce what we hold dear?
Is it OK to let our child swim in the “shark tank” of an antagonistic culture that is toxic to our very dearly held beliefs? As parents is it our right to expect that our kids will carry our culture, our values and our traditions forward? or is this just our hubris and pride getting in the way of our child becoming a fully responsible and functioning adult?
I don’t have any answers, just questions. Would love to understand how other parents have approached this issue, specially where the child, actively disagrees with what the parent holds quite near and dear to their heart after being away at school for a few semesters/quarters.
Fascinating read. My first two thoughts were - one, I would be as infuriated about a schoolteacher using the expression “ain’t” while educating my child as Derek’s parents were and two, isn’t it ironic that a white supremacist is named Black?
The rift in the family reminded me of many others I have known in my life: the friend who had no grandparents in her life because her mother’s Irish Catholic family refused to accept her father’s Italian Roman Catholic family and vice versa, the aunts and uncles of my mother’s, who sat shiva because one of their daughter’s married a Filipino man (in the 40’s) and the like. These and most others are the result of not having a true understanding of what other people really are like, in the simplest form.
I hope that Derek finds peace in his life and that his father, who seemed like he genuinely wanted to understand his son, comes to accept him and perhaps even change his own views.
This describes so beautifully the value of inclusiveness. Expose people to “the other” whether thru work or education, and prejudices fade. However he is to be commended for his intellectual rigor and essential honesty in owning up to what he learned and living in accordance with those values.
Of course, exposure to diversity in school varies, depending on the school. A residential college that draws from a whole state and beyond may cause more such exposure than commuting to a local college that serves primarily local commuters. Even the latter is likely to give more exposure to diversity than a local high school. But then the parents in this case home schooled the student specifically to avoid even that exposure to diversity in the local schools.
Exposure to diversity in schools varies. My two girls went to two different LACs. One was very diversity inclusive and celebratory, the other less so. I’d not have known that about either on first inspection. Actually, our local HS is extremely diverse. The nationally known university in town, less so.
But where I also see exposure to diversity working, is in the hospital where I am employed. Small town patients encounter caregivers of all races and ethnic backgrounds. For staff, we have learned from gay, immigrant and transgender co workers to value and celebrate each other. Same employer, 30 years, and the increasing diversity of that workplace adds so much richness to all our lives.
I toured New College of Florida with one of my girls. What were this guy’s parents thinking? Did they look around at all or look at the books in the room where the senior theses are displayed? It would be very hard for someone to get out of that college and be a narrow-minded racist. I’m glad he went there and became transformed. Very lovely story.
Many parents don’t tour colleges with their kids or if they do, don’t pay close attention to the curriculum/books or student culture.
This aspect doesn’t surprise me as several college classmates back when we were undergrads in the mid-late '90s came from very conservative/religious families who didn’t care/feel the need to bother to do enough due diligence before allowing them to attend Oberlin. Most only realized something was up only when said classmates were close to graduation or even after graduation.
Granted, some of this was because those classmates knew from the start that they didn’t agree with their parents/hometown/regional cultural/religious worldview in areas such as politics or sexual orientation and realized early on it was best to keep their parents/neighbors in the dark until they were nearly finished with their college educations or even after they graduated with degree and job and apartment in urban NE/West Coast in hand.
It also helped that they received near-full ride/total full ride FA/scholarship packages so their parents had no leverage on the financial front.
Even though there was no such thing as social media and the internet was much more limited back when I was an undergrad, the reputation of Oberlin and colleges like New College were such that the information was out there if the parents really wanted to research it even back then.
For that reason, I was actually shocked at how those classmates were able to keep their conservative parents/neighbors in the dark for as long as they did.
Kudos to the young man who invited the most hated kid on campus over for dinner instead of joining in the hate. It was a risky thing to do but that’s where change happens. Great story.
Fascinating read. As a person who values inclusiveness and diversity, I found Derek’s conversion uplifting, but as a parent I also found it sad in many ways.
I try to put myself in Don Black’s shoes and wonder how I would feel if I sent my kid away to school and she came back having lost her “family faith” and worse yet, she had converted to another religion/faith whose views I completely disagreed with? How would I feel if she then told me that my views were terrible, backward and plain wrong?
I know that a lot of people are going to say, “It is her life to live” etc, but the pain of realizing that your child has rejected everything you hold dear and important would cut deep, would it not? We send our child to college to grow and become a more mature person, but if our child completely repudiates everything that we hold dear because of that education, would any of us be happy?
Does that mean, we should send our kids to a school that will reinforce what we hold dear? or should we let her swim in the “shark tank” in some sense? As parents wouldn’t we all wish that our kids carry our culture, our values and our traditions forward? Should we be required to pay to have a college actively bleed this out of our kids in the name of “growing as a human being”?
I don’t have any answers, just questions. Would love to understand how other parents have approached this issue, specially where the child, actively disagrees with what the parent holds quite near and dear to their heart after being away at school for a few semesters/quarters.
I agree that I almost (almost) felt bad for his father who was clearly not angry but rather heartbroken. Also he really does come across as a good parent (despite being a person with hideous and hateful views which he wanted his child to adopt). He was clearly very loving to his child, was not threatened but rather thrilled that his child was “better than him” (this referred not to this son’s views but his basic personality), tried to support his child’s choices (like sending him to a very liberal college), and it seems would try to choose his relationship with his child over loyalty to his beliefs (like when he left his own birthday party to see his kid, even though no one else wanted him too.)
I sent my liberal kid to a liberal school and he came back more conservative than he started out. I’m proud that he thinks for himself and I listen closely to his reasoning on many issues (especially foreign policy). He knows a lot more about international affairs and military theory than I do and he keeps up with the reading too.
I’d like to think that Dad could change too, but it seems unlikely.
What happens when you are exposed to other people is you start realizing they are underneath it all not different than you. I have posted this before, but in one of Studs Terkel’s books he interviewed a guy who had been a grand dragon of the kkk who became a labor and civil rights activist in one of the Carolinas. He talked about growing up in a place where the jobs that existed (mills and such) didn’t pay well, where they struggled to live despite working hard, where the schools were crappy and people had very little to call their own. He said the problem was you are brought up to believe that anything is possible if you work hard enough, that if you try and do what you are supposed to, the rewards follow…and the problem is they didn’t, it was generation after generation facing the same thing. They couldn’t believe it was the system itself that was the problem,that it was tilted against them, so they looked for scapegoats and ideology like the KKK was all about that, especially when it came to blacks. When Terkel asked him what changed, he said it was when he finally saw black lives for what they were, and realized they were in the same boat, if not worse, thanks to the very ideology he promoted and realized they all were in the same boat.
I was listening last night to NPR, and they have a program about the possible resettlement of Syrian refugees to Montana and they had a town hall meeting. What you heard was not surprising, the rotten jellybean in a bowl of them, Shariah law (23 states have Shariah law, really) and the other stuff you hear…what also wasn’t surprising is that the population of the state, outside native Americans, is like 96% white and they had little exposure to anyone not like themselves (one of the saddest ones was one of the people talking about the sharia law coming there, and then said the US was a “Christian law” country…).
It also is not exactly a one way street, the same applies to those who are atheist or agnostic whose view of people of faith has been what is portrayed in the media or in certain political quarters, or what conservative can mean to someone who is more liberal (or vice/versa).
From reading the article it doesn’t sound like “an extremely liberal college bled the values out.” Rather it was simple interaction with, conversation with, and learning about, other people with different perspectives. How can that possibly be a bad thing, for anyone? But then, I’m on that side of the fence.