I want my kids to think for themselves (not have my ideas as their own, unless they developed them separate from my influence)
I want my kids to think for themselves(not have the ideas of their teachers in high school or college professors)
their beliefs and morals can and should evolve with their life experiences.
The whole “Don Black is just like us, just racist” attitude that some posters here are spouting is a little laughable. No, I don’t feel sympathy for someone that’s openly racist and is fundamentally against my existence. There’s a difference between “Susie came home with purple hair and talking about advanced feminist theory” and “Susie is no longer a white nationalist”. Isnt parenthood is about teaching children how to be thinkers, not teaching them what to think? Yes it’s important to reach out to people different from you and try to relate to them (as this article proves), but that doesn’t mean that the values you talk to your kids about and the illogical bigotry that Black spews are analogous. Sure, it can be sad to see a child making decisions that you wouldn’t make, but you should also be happy that they’re coming into their own.
Beyond that, this article proves the importance of having diversity in school. So many posters here talk about needing admissions to be strictly by the numbers without regards to diversity (race, sexuality, religion, opinion, SES, etc.) but all that breeds is homogenous communities. In a homogenous community it is hard to be challenged in your views. So the next time someone argues that “XYZ” add nothing to the student-body on paper, tell them to read this.
OP, I was raised by extreme agnostic/new age liberal parents (they had an open marriage, grew pot in the backyard, had very few rules). They called themselves (or at least my mom did) intellectual hippies (my dad is still an agnostic Jew; mom’s no longer alive).
When I came back from college after my first year as a Christian, they were certainly shocked and dismayed, and we (including my sister) had many conversations about it, and certainly they questioned my beliefs. They eventually came to accept that my faith in Christ was core to my being, but my mom always tried to change/influence my kids to her new age-y point of view as often as possible. She was a loving gramma to my kids, and I am grateful for her help, but there was a point that I pulled back somewhat for a variety of reasons (including her lifestyle)-never stopped loving her, though, and was always there for her right to her last days.
I was attending a private (presumably liberal; I honestly don’t remember) college when I became a Christian, fyi.
As far as my own kids, they are finding their way. Of course our deepest desire for our kids is that they would be Christ followers, but we know that is out of our hands and in God’s hands. Older boys both went to liberal secular colleges, but both found Christian groups on campus. I actually think attending a secular school for a young Christian might be a better thing because you are forced to really think about what you believe and why. However, I will admit that there are some liberal schools that might be really oppressive to a Christian, just as there would be some conservative schools that might be really oppressive to someone with socially liberal views. A fascinating read on that topic is the book by Kevin Roose, The Unlikely Disciple:
https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Disciple-Semester-Americas-University/dp/0446178438
Re:#70 - I think Ohioans suffered the greatest number of casualties in the Civil War, which is why it seems especially ignorant for their descendants to exalt a symbol of secession.
One thing to keep in mind is that some who fly the Confederate flag may not necessarily be descendants of Ohioans who fought for the union during the Civil War. Instead, they are likely to be descendants of southerners who migrated northward sometime in the last 150 or so years.
Some could also be descended from some anti-war/pro-Confederate sympathizers in the north known as the “Copperheads” during the Civil War, including in Ohio.
One copperhead organization, Knights of the Golden Circle was founded in Ohio and 2 Ohio politicians such as Congressman Clement Vallandigham who was convicted by a Union military court of opposing the war and exiled to the Confederacy for the duration of the war.
He probably should have put some more thought into it and how it would make the people around him feel. I’m sure many (most?) people who fly the confederate flag don’t do so with bad intentions, but at some point, if you’re doing something that can be predicted to upset vast swaths of the population, then it’s incumbent on you to either change what you’re doing or admit that you don’t have compassion or empathy for vast swaths of the population and you hold that action above the real pain of real people.
I live in NJ and if I see the stars and bars on someone’s truck with an NJ license plate, I think it means, “I don’t like black people.” There isn’t any other reason to have it. It’s not like great-great-grandpappy fought at Antietam. The “Heritage not Hate” argument doesn’t fly north of the Mason Dixon line. i don’t know if it flies south of it either but I’ll leave that for those who live there to decide.
I read it and found it very interesting.
I do not consider white nationalism in the same category as a “family faith” nor the same as faith in God, which is often also a casualty of extremely anti-faith campus environments.
But it isn’t the environment. It was always in the son anyway. An environment can tip someone one way a bit, but isn’t the cause of what someone chooses to believe.
About how to preserve important values in our kids…I just don’t know.
I’ve seen great wholesome kids with strong values emerge from awful environments and from sheltered ones where parents tried to do their best by their kids.
I’ve seen kids who reject all good things from awful environments and from very sheltered ones where the parents really tried to do their best.
It’s frustrating. There doesn’t seem to be any formula.
“But it isn’t the environment. It was always in the son anyway. An environment can tip someone one way a bit, but isn’t the cause of what someone chooses to believe.”
I either don’t understand what you are saying or I disagree. I don’t think racism is some innate character trait that is or isn’t part of our makeup or DNA. I think it is some learned. So, I do think environment is a really BIG deal.
A few people have mentioned that they would like to teach their children how to think, and after that, they would be happy to let them form their own beliefs/opinions.
I agree with this, but I also agree with @romanigypsyeyes, that there are some things I would exclude from this rule. If any of my kids end up being anti-science or lack healthy skepticism, I would be very upset, and I would absolutely try to impose my beliefs on them.
There are so many people out there selling BS and there’s so much misinformation out there. I think it really puts someone at a big disadvantage in life if they’re easily swayed by others, without real science-based evidence.
My husband and I were both raised as atheists. ( we went to a Jewish Humanist Sunday school) But we wanted our kids to have more knowledge of the religious side of our heritage and make their own decisions. We sent them to a religious Jewish preschool and Sunday school. When our daughter was in kindergrten she came home from Sunday school and asked us how people know there’s a God if they can’t see Him. We’d never discussed our own views at this point. I told her that they " believed it in their hearts" And she looked the way you look when you’ve just figured out a difficult problem and said “OH I get it now, they make it up!” My husband, who is a scientist, take on this was that some people are born with a predisposition to this kind of thought. My mother who is a strident atheist was super proud of this. I don’t know. I have more respect for religion than my parents did. I’m sure if we’d been people who were affirmative in our own belief our daughter might have had a different take on things. But it’s interesting to wonder. I do think there is some predisposition to certain kinds of thought. I do think racism is learned but I think some people are predisposed to be scared or mistrustful of other people in general and especially those that look different than them and others like the young man in the article are predisposed to like and find commonality with other people. You can overcome that predisposition with a good or bad environment, but if the predisposition is strong enough it may emerge anyway.
“others like the young man in the article are predisposed to like and find commonality with other people”
Yes, maybe so. To me, this son sounds like he was born with a ton of intellectual curiosity and the brains to back it up. His environment couldn’t squash that. That this kid wanted to go to NCF for medieval studies in the first place suggests a lot of qualities that his parents didn’t instill. That curiosity led him to a new environment with different values and an exploration of those values.
This story reminds me of the kids who are born dancing. They just have this drive that seems to come from nowhere, and they’re going to end up dancing no matter what. They are often born to other dancers, but you get the same result whether they’re born into military families, professorial families, whatever. This kid was going to be an intellectual, and intellectuals have a hard time staying white nationalists.
I’d pay good money to watch them try! Good luck with that.
Derek Black, the subject of the originally posted article, has an opinion piece in the New York Times today:
http://nyti.ms/2gsHKfe
Thanks for that–he continues to be a remarkable young man.
Thanks, @lbowie Unfortunately, a very timely article.
Thanks for posting the article.