December 30, 2024 • 50 mins
Carol welcomes renowned civil rights leader and legal scholar Sherrilyn Ifill for an important conversation about parenting during times of uncertainty and division. Together they explore how families can stay grounded and thrive.
In this riveting episode they discuss:
• Helping children navigate misinformation and find reliable sources of truth.
• Building resilience through connection to history and community.
• How to protect your family’s values and well-being amid societal change.
• Sherrilyn’s practical advice for parents and children on civic responsibility.
These are just a few highlights from this discussion—you won’t want to miss the full episode. With wisdom drawn from her career, historical insight, and parenting experience, Sherrilyn reminds us that this is “planting time”—an opportunity to build a foundation of strength, integrity, and hope for future generations.
Tune in for this insightful and empowering conversation filled with actionable tips for every parent.
Follow us at @GroundControlParenting and on groundcontrolparenting.com!
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Substack newsletter for behind-the-scenes info, bonus parenting tips, and more!.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
To the oppressors. Now you are strong, and we are
but grapes aching with ripeness. Crush us, squeeze from us
all the brave life contained in these full skins. But
ours is a subtle strength, potent with centuries of yearning,
of being kegged and shut away in dark, forgotten places.
(00:28):
We shall endure to steal your senses in that lonely
twilight of your winter's grief.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting a blog and
now a podcast creative of parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with some really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. The poem
you just heard is called to the Oppressors by Paully Murray,
(00:59):
and the reader of that poem is my special guest
on this bonus episode, Charylyn Ifil Charylyn, a constitutional law
scholar and civil rights leader, is the Vernon E. Jordan
Junior esquire En Dowed Chair and Civil Rights at Howard University.
She is the former President and Director Counsel of the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and in twenty twenty one Time
(01:20):
named her one of the one hundred most influential people
in the world. Shortly after the election this year, Charylyn
wrote a powerful post on substat called The Truth That
Began with that poem and went on to talk about
what the election results will mean for Americans going forward,
especially for those Americans who did not support the president
elect or his policies.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Over the years with Ground Control Parenting, I've written about
how parents should talk about major, traumatizing national events with
their children in ways that are helpful and supportive. The
results of this election were traumatizing to many of us,
especially many black and brown voters who have watched the
president electing new supporters work to discredit and stroy the
concepts of diversity, equality, and inclusion in our country. I
(02:04):
was just wrapping my head around how to write about
this when I came across Cherylyn's post, which has great
practical advice which parents should hear. I am so happy
to have her join me today on this bonus episode, Cherylyn,
Welcome to Ground Control Parenting.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Thank you so much, Carol. I'm thrilled to be talking
with you.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Ah, so thrilled to have you, and I thank you
for sharing your post with us. All So, you were
the president and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund during the first Trump administration, during which time the
Legal Defense Fund regularly soothed the administration and fought the
battle over voting rights. Then the battle escalated over the
four years in office, and here we are facing the
(02:44):
next Trump administration after a brutal campaign in which many
believe put the future of American democracy in peril. You've
been a champion of protecting our civil rights, and you're
also a parent who understands our responsibility to help our
children grow up in the world feeling as safe and
protected as possible. So my first question, how should parents
(03:04):
talk with their children about the election outcome without focusing
on their anxiety about it?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, Carol, I mean I am not an expert in parenting.
For sure, I'm sure my kids would stand by that.
But what I would say is the name of the
piece is the truth. And telling your kids the truth
about the world and about their country I think is
really important. I tried to do that with my children
(03:30):
when they were young. You know, my children were young
people during nine to eleven and during the Iraq War
and the Afghanistan War. We had very candid conversations about
the meaning of that conflict and what happened on nine
to eleven, and why we think it happened, and who
(03:53):
we needed to be and who we were supposed to
be in the face of that kind of tragedy. Mostly,
what I want wanted my children to understand was how
to have a heart that's open enough to feel the
grief that we all felt that day. I actually had
a brother who worked in the World Trade Center and
was on his way to work when the tower he
(04:14):
worked in fell, So we felt it fairly personally. But
you know that we could open our hearts to the
grief of it, and we could also hold that while
we challenged what we thought was a disproportionate and certainly
wrongly directed response in terms of the Iraq War. And
(04:37):
so even just teaching your kids that you can hold
a couple of things in you at the same time
is really important, because one of the challenges of being
in a country that has abandoned democracy or that becomes
an authoritarian country is holding your core. And that's a
lot of what I wrote about and have been writing about.
(04:58):
And that means, you know, holding to the things the
elements of your values, the principles by which you live
your life. Holding your heart open and vulnerable to suffering
is critically important. So I think being truthful with your
children that this is a difficult time for this country.
(05:19):
It is no matter how many times you say it.
It's impossible for young people to understand the long arc
of life and how things change. So that's you know,
that just makes the conversation difficult because you can be
saying it, but they can't really feel it, because they
can't really see it. But you can assure them your
kids believe you, and I think it's important then to
(05:41):
tell them that things do change, that I have seen it.
I tell my kids all the time. And you know,
I said, this seems right now, it seems intractable. It
looks like the things that we stand against are winning,
and it's going to look like that for a very
long time. But when it changes, it changes fast.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
So be ready. I'm thinking about parenting children who are
young girl who don't already have their their perspectives fully formed.
How do we help them understand how to seek truth?
I mean, we talk about truth, but you know, there's
so much misinformation disinformation, and as parents, we are we
(06:22):
have our fully formed opinions and we hold true to them,
but we have to give our children opportunity to see
the world and come to some of them wrong conclusions.
How do we do this in this in this current
state where so much information can be trusted.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, I do think that it is an important time
to tether not just young people but parents as well, okay,
to what is real, you know, and not just what
is online. In the piece I wrote, I talked about,
you know, teaching your kids how to cook, you know,
making sure your kids know how to do cursive writing
(07:00):
so that they have their a signature that's all their own,
going to see live theater, going to the park, playing sports,
all of those things that compel us to actually, with
our own eyes and five senses experience and see the world.
That's how we're going to know what's real. And we
have to exercise that muscle. That muscle has weakened in
(07:21):
all of us because we spend so much time online
focusing our attention on what people say and not actually
experiencing what is So I would say this is a
time more than any other when we have to value
human experience. I say all the time when I give
speeches around the country, you know, and look at a
packed auditorium and I say, isn't this wonderful because we
(07:43):
have to come out and see each other, you know,
we have to see each other. It's not enough to
know I have this many followers, you know, on a platform.
And so I think upping that part of your life
with your kids. You know, don't try to get them offline.
They can't get offline, but I think it's imant. I
think taking them to the library so they can experience
that space when they then, you know, hear controversies about
(08:07):
books and libraries. Take them for some unconstructed time in
the library where you go off into your section, and
you'd leave them, you know, in the kids section and
let them explore so that they will have a point
of reference to understand what that experience can be like.
And so I think taking advantage of those opportunities to
engage with public life, to be in the park and
(08:27):
to walk in the park, to ride your bike in
the park, to really touch grass, as the kids like
to say, in a really consistent way. I actually think
old school styles of research are important too. You know,
I've been telling people that you know, print out articles
that are important to you or that you think raise
(08:48):
issues or provide information that maybe you haven't seen other places.
You should not feel reassured or certain that you will
be able to find those articles online in the coming years,
So make sure that you keep a file of writings
that are important to you. Maybe that sounds over dramatic
to you. I don't think so, because I'm writing a
book and I've had the experience of being unable to
(09:09):
find online things that I know I saw online, you know.
So I think we're learning that this is not trustworthy
and that we have to have our own resources, you know.
Building a library for your children if you haven't already.
It was one of the first things I started to
do with my children when they were very young. But
I think for children to have their own library of
books is really important. Also to understand the books are
(09:30):
things that you can pick up again and again and
return to. So I think there are lots of ways
that we can create a tangible life for our children
that helps to counter what may become a kind of
disorienting information bubble and a kind of disorienting wall of
rhetoric that we are confronting over the next four years.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Absolutely. Oh, I love everything that you have just said.
I am sitting in front of us bookshelf of books,
and I agree, go to the library, see the books
on the shelf. There is such a value in appreciating
the written word as something you can hold in your hand.
You talk about this in your post, sort of going
to origin sources, listening to speeches, listening to the original
(10:17):
speech as opposed to clicking on some reference to a speech.
Now you can do some of this researcher online, but
it really is. It does sound old school, but there
is value to old school, such value in holding it
in your hand and being able to refer to it
over and over again, as opposed to just getting all
your information from the screen and getting information which may
(10:40):
or may not have been altered. We can't know this.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Is what's going to happen, and so we have to
engage with primary sources of information. When I teach my class,
my fourteenth Amendment class, I teach a fourteenth Amendment seminar
at Howard Law School, and I'm launching a fourteenth Amendment
Center for lawn Demindocracy there in twenty twenty five. And
the fourteenth Amendment is I think the most important provision
(11:05):
of our constitution. It was ratified after the Civil War.
It is, in its all of its five sections designed
to ensure that black people are full first class citizens
in the United States. I'm not sure everyone knows that
there is a constitutional amendment whose purpose is that. In fact,
there are three constitutional amendments thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteen. But
in any case, the fourteenth Amendment has had a transformative
(11:28):
effect on our country. It's not just applied to black people.
And I try to ensure that my students, you know,
see actual things right from that period that we're reading
excerpts of debate that we're reading the report that you know,
President Johnson's you know, kind of ambassador to the South
(11:51):
wrote after visiting the South after the Civil War to
understand the conditions that black people were living in. You know,
we're reading excerpts from the Kuklu clan hearings that were
held in eighteen seventy one, as black people described what
they were suffering under clan violence, which led to the
passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act. I try to
ensure that they hear the voices of people from that
(12:14):
period and not just people writing about what those voices
said so that they can understand that these were real people.
And how that helps us is, you know, I've been
telling my students that the kind of conceit of my
course is that we have to feel that we are
empowered to become founders and framers of a new America,
(12:34):
just as after the Civil War a new America was founded,
and that we have permission to do that. In fact,
it's our right, our obligation to do that. And the
only way you can do that is by seeing the
struggles of the people who were trying to create the
new America that we ended up living in. Right, It's
why the Civil rights movement is so important, and reading
actual excerpts from people involved in campaigns during the Civil
(12:57):
Rights movement. I include excerpts from Eyes on the Prize.
My students have not really heard of the Sleeping car
Porters Union, the first Black labor Union, and to just see,
you know, those men and what they were trying to create,
and the women's auxiliary and the way in which, you know,
the attempt to buy off a Philip Randolph by offering
(13:18):
him a million dollars which he turned down. Like I
want them to know that those things happened in the
nineteen thirties, you know, and that people stood up to that,
and maybe they didn't see the fruit of it until
the Civil rights movement, But there would have been no
civil rights movement without those black sleeping car workers in
the thirties who became the parents and grandparents of those
who were in the Civil rights movement. So showing people
(13:40):
things that are real, So I think really engaging in
that kind of work is really important. Something really interesting
I just have been doing with my grandson lately is
I bought him a children's diction a big fat children's dictionary,
and you know, and I create new vocabulary words. I
asked them to look them up and then use them
in a sentence. That's pretty simple. But what's interesting in
(14:02):
the beginning was watching dictionary skills. You know that there's
a word at the top that shows you you know
where you are, Like, maybe we take that for granted.
I don't know if they're even teaching kids that anymore.
You know, you can look up words online. I use
dictionaries online for sure, but you know the ability to
look in this big book and to know how to
look for a word and to go down the page
(14:23):
and find your word and see the pronunciation and see
how they use it, and see that there's more than
one meaning and all of that stuff that we probably
take for granted because that used to be a part
of education. I think just returning to some of those
things are also helpful because it's going to give a
sense of educational agency to our children, which I think
(14:44):
in the age of misinformation, they will need. I don't
mean that like I did my own research and so
I know everything about vaccines. I mean, you know, because
that's another thing is that people really feel like, well
I have I am, you know, an agent of my
own education. I spent all time online, and I'm just
saying we are in the stage now where with deep
fakes and all the other stuff we can't necessarily always
(15:07):
trust what we see online and developing a critical faculty.
And if I can't just say one other thing, Carol,
you know, when I was a kid, we watched the
news every night, for sure, and my dad was very
politically oriented, as I know your family was, and we
watched the news together, but we were not silent consumers
(15:28):
of the news. You know. My dad would be talking
to the TV and saying that didn't happen. What's he
talking about, Well, that's his job. He shouldn't know, he'd
be saying all kinds of stuff. But in many ways
it sharpened our critical faculty, Like we never believed we
were supposed to just passively here, and as black people,
we always knew what was left out. You know, people
said we want the age of Walter Cronkotte and Roger
(15:48):
Mudd and David Brinkley, but they were missing things too.
And so I think even consuming news in front of
your children in a way that allows them to see
what it looks, that you get to talk back to it,
and that you don't have to just be a passive
consumer of what they're telling you is the story.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back to
the show. We're raising our children in a world now
where we have an incredibly divided nation, incredibly and this
election showed it more so than ever before. Our children
are going to be in school with people who don't
see the world the way that they see it. I mean,
(16:27):
well the way that we see it, let's say. And
I'm trying to sort through our obligation to our children
to help them deal with people that. Let's say, to
the extent that our children have political beliefs that they
already have established, to help them properly defend them, but
not to help them deal in a world where they're
(16:48):
going to be talking to people who don't agree with them.
And you and I both know we've had legal training.
It's important to be able to talk to people that
don't agree with you one hundred percent. And what I
fear now in the way that we are going is
we operate in these silos. I mean, even watching the news,
you can choose to watch a news program that will
tell you things that align with the way that you think,
(17:09):
versus hearing sort of an impartial approach to what's gone on.
How do we help our children deal with people who
don't see this world the way that they see it.
How do we think about arming them to be able
to have their own opinions and defend them in a
world where it's important for us to be social and
(17:29):
humane with one another.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You know, I'm not as worried about that, Carol, for
the simple reason that that is always true, and especially
for those of us, you know, I mean, this is
where the generations come in handy. I think actually, you know,
those of us who first were busted to integrated schools,
you know, made great friends with some white kids, and
(17:53):
then some white kids not so much. You know, we've
had to navigate environments that have been diverse. You know,
maybe we led ourselves to believe right that our kids
would be in this bubble, when in fact they're in
the world and they will find and navigate their way. Now,
I think what is critical is to be clear that,
(18:14):
at least in my view, your children do not have
to engage with people who do not believe in their
humanity and their dignity, you know, and so you know,
people who engage in racial slurs and misogynous slurs and stuff,
and kids do that. You know, these experiences I've seen
(18:35):
with my grandson very early, and so I think you
have to be very firm about you know, your number
one job is protecting your kids, and so protecting them
from the kind of spiritual assault that happens in those circumstances.
I think is very important show that be proactive. If
(18:55):
they come and tell you something, you know, don't get
all emotional about it, but show that your firmness that
you are going to go and talk to the teacher
about it, that you are going to talk to the
school about it, that you know that your child can
come to you and tell you something that someone said
to them that made them incredibly uncomfortable. So I think
making sure that space is available, making sure that your
(19:18):
school understands what their obligations are, what you expect their
obligations to be, especially in this difficult time. In fact,
I strongly encourage that that parents, you know, let school
officials understand that walking into this period without a plan.
You know, what does the school conduct code of conduct
(19:41):
look like? What does it say, what are the infractions
this is whether it's public school or private school. Make
sure you understand what those are and that you're going
to hold them to it, you know, pull that down
off that website and print it out and make sure
you know so that when something happens, you know, you
know what steps the steps that you can take. So
(20:01):
I think that's important to protect your kids against that
kind of harm. And then I think you know they
will navigate their way. They will navigate their way almost instinctively.
Kids are very rare to say I don't speak to
that person. That's an adult thing. You know, kids kind
of speak to everybody, now how they speak to them,
maybe you don't another story, but they don't, you know
what I mean. So I don't worry as much about
(20:23):
kids being you know, if they are in a segregated environment,
that's different. But if they're in an integrated environment, you know,
in all kinds of ways, they're going to talk to
people that they don't agree with in one way or another.
But I do think that what we do have to
worry more about is our kids being made to feel
(20:46):
uncomfortable and teachers being afraid to protect them. So I'm
a little bit more worried about that than I am
about whether our children will know how to talk with
people who are not like them, because we had to
do it too, and I probably you and I didn't
get like a whole instruction on like how do we
can do it? Just we navigated it, but we figured
(21:07):
out how to do it, and I think they will too.
But I'm much more worried about when things cross a line,
whether you know. So much of what is happening right
now is a sense of intimidation, particularly of teachers, and
whether teachers will feel like disarmed from offering the kind
of robust protection that they should to children who may
(21:29):
experience some of this.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Absolutely, so tho'se some great tips. I mean, parents should
definitely check in with the teachers and the administration just
to let them all know that you are focused on this.
And it probably goes without saying that you should encourage
your children to talk to you about things that are
going on without and as parents who have to be
(21:52):
you said, keep your emotions in check, you know, poker faced,
so that you don't react as if it's happened to you,
because that will alter how your child interprets it and
alter how your child feels empowered to interpret it. And
also this dives back to what we were saying about
resources and helping our children understand their history and understand
the facts of their history. When our children are armed
(22:14):
with more information about who they are and where they
come from, it makes it easier for them to deflect
any commentary to the contrary. I mean, I always talk
about building our children's self confidence starts with us giving
them reasons why they should be really confident. We have
a history that commands confidence because but for all the
(22:37):
sacrifices of our ancestors, we certainly wouldn't be here. So
that's really helpful. Now, Cherylyn, your post goes beyond giving
us sort of encouragement. It gives us practical things to do.
And I just want to touch on a few more
that I thought were just so helpful to think about.
I just have to quote a little bit of the
article because I thought it was so well said. You
(22:59):
say our goal should be to survive this dark period
with as much of our values dignity, integrity, work, financial stability,
and physical and mental health as possible. I found that
heartening and correct and sort of yes, we must do this,
and here's how we do it. You let us know
(23:21):
you talk about focusing on local service, which I very
much liked in thinking about in terms of what families
can do to focus on local service. What kind of
things can we do in our communities with our children
to support what we believe in and to help those
in need? I mean, And isn't this a good time
to get smart on local issues with our kids?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
For sure? I mean part of I think the pressure
of this moment and let me just say, let me
just backtrack and say something about when I wrote this piece,
this is a very painful period for me as well.
So I'm not I'm not writing from a perspective of
like I've figured it all out. I'm writing from a
perspective of, you know, this is deeply painful for me.
(24:05):
I've been a civil rights lawyer for more than thirty years,
and this is my life's work, and I've always done
it with the belief that we could open up and
expand opportunity and equality and justice for particularly for black people,
but for everyone. And that's and I'll never stop believing that.
(24:26):
You can't make me stop believing it. But this is
a significant setback and a very alarming and frightening period,
not only in this country but in the world. So
part of what I was writing was a way for
me to walk through how I'm seeing this moment and
what's necessary as well. And a big part of this
is to make you feel disempowered, to make you feel
(24:50):
like you have no power and as though your world
is being controlled by outside forces, maybe forces that you
don't that you vehemently don't agree with. And so part
of holding your power is understanding that power operates at
multiple levels, and that you use the power that you
(25:10):
have where you have it, and the most important thing
is going to be to build those local connections and
feel that you are connected with your local community because
that is actually where you live. You actually don't live
in the White House. You don't live in the halls
of Congress. You really don't. You live in wherever it is,
(25:31):
your neighborhood. You have neighbors on either side of you
that if something happens, you hope that they know your
name and that they will come to your aid. You
have a library in your community that you hope they
won't close. You have schools in your community that you
hope have the resources they need to be able to
educate children. And you have a political system in your city,
(25:53):
your town, your county. You have a mayor, you have
city council persons, you have county commissioners, and those people
are controlling much of what happens in your life on
a daily basis, much more so than the president. Right.
You have a police chief in your neighborhood. Right, So
I think that we can sometimes forget. And one of
(26:14):
the things I said in the piece was like, you know,
we're not watching the Trump Show again. You know, I'm
not saying that you shouldn't be abreast of news, but
I mean twenty sixteen, it was almost like a new
thing that we had never seen before, someone quite like this,
And so we watched the show relentlessly. And I don't
think we need to watch the show like that. In fact,
(26:35):
I think it would be harmful for us to do so.
So I think it's important to stay abreast of what's
happening politically, to be involved where you can. You still
have senators and House members who should be hearing from
you in terms of what you expect of the federal government,
but you have a whole nother level of government that is,
as I said, probably having a greater effect on your life.
The local DA and the chief of police, and the
(26:57):
mayor and the county commissioner are probably have a bigger
effect on your life on a day to day basis
than our national politicians. And so connecting with your community
and it's a way of showing your children how to
do civic life, which is I think the great unraveling
(27:17):
of this country that has left us so vulnerable to
this moment is that we have really loosened the bonds
of civic life and civic connection. And so part of
what I think we can do for the future, for
the things we can't change now, is to incubate the
(27:38):
kind of world that we want to see on the
other side of this and that world will only happen
with strengthened bonds of community and a heightened sense of
civic education that allows people to understand what their obligation
is living in a democratic community. We can still do
that with our children, and we should for as long
(28:01):
as we can.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
We can start by spending some time with our children
sorting out how our neighborhood operates, who is in charge,
who represents us, and so these are things to understand,
to learn about, to and to inform our children about.
That's that's really really important.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And you have them walk through what accountability looks like.
You know, you cross the same uh intersection in your
neighborhood and every time you say, you know, there really
needs to be a light here, you know, right, well,
walk through that with your kids. You know, we're going
to call the city council. We're we write they help
me write this letter. You know, we're going to send
this letter in or we're going to send this email
(28:41):
into the city council, and we're going to race and
then we're going to go to the meeting, you know,
and we're going to write and that you know, we're
going to get other people to sign or whatever is
the process in your community. I mean, these are all
things we can we can walk through and model. And
what we're modeling is the expectation of accountability from the
people who represent you, and that's critically important.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
We're also modeling being good public service minded citizens, proactive,
and our children need to understand that because, I mean,
the thing about our governmental system is no one is
in power forever. We have elections, and so they will
come to this information. Now is a good time to
get smart on all of this, as you have said,
(29:24):
because it is useful now and it will be even
more useful as we go forward. What I loved, in
addition to and you talked about this before, just sort
of reorienting us to think about the real things we
can do, like going into nature and teaching kids how
to cook. But you also gave really pragmatic financial things
to do, and you know, like figuring out if you
(29:48):
and this is advice that my parents gave me, notwithstanding
the political perspective, but figure out what happens if you
lose your job and get prepared for six months of
not having job. I mean I thought when I read that,
I was like, oh, yeah, that's what that's what you're
supposed to do anyway.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Anyway, it's a huge I mean, we're talking about once
you get past the rhetoric of you know, massive amounts
of money being cut from the federal government, right, and
what does that mean when you get to closing the
Department of Education. I don't know whether any of these
things will happen, but these are the stated intentions right
(30:26):
of the incoming administration. Do people understand that thirty percent
of federal workers are workers of color? I think twenty
percent are African American. We constitute a huge portion of
those who work for the federal government. So when they
talk about cutting a trillion dollars, if you know that's
even possible for them to do, which a doubt, but
(30:46):
it'll be something, right, A lot of people are going
to lose their jobs. A lot of people are going
to lose their jobs. Let's just be honest, and do
we want those people to also lose their homes? So
we have to be really honest about this, you know,
we have to be honest about what it would mean
for the Department of Education. The Department of Education funds
(31:10):
all of the IEPs, right, the individual educational plans for
students who require special education and special services, and they
pay for them all over the country. What's the implication
of them cutting that budget to your child? Does your
child have special needs that requires an IEP in school? Is?
(31:32):
Are you a teacher who a special education teacher? I mean,
like I so at some point we have to kind
of get past just the headline and get to the
part that is about real people and the effect on
real people. And we have to then begin to prepare
ourselves and inoculate ourselves against that. You know, this talk
of tariffs, which is kind of, you know, extremely grandiose,
(31:56):
but we should remember in the first Trump administration he
did in pots teriffs and the result was that we
had to do a multi tens of billions of dollars
in bailout to American farmers in order to make up
for what I had called at the time Trump's folly.
But these tariffs, so, yes, things are going to be
more expensive. So are you stocking up on some of
(32:18):
the basic things now, you know, the paper goods and
so on and so forth, at least to the extent
that they're imported, you know. So I think that's something
that you can think about, not don't go crazy, don't
room forward, but just to give yourself a little breathing
room at the start of the year. I do think
making sure you have cash in your home is really important.
(32:38):
We know that trying to that hackers, trying to take
out various systems in our country is just part of
modern living at this point, and that the current administration,
the new administration is likely to poke the bear. And
I'm not going to define what that bear is, but
whatever it is, they're going to get poked, and that
may reduce some retaliations. And so what happens if all
(33:00):
the ATM machines are down, or your credit cards don't work,
or do you have enough cash in the house right
that you could walk up to a gas station and
get gas in your car, you know, So making sure
that you have you know, some cash on hand that
you just keep in the house that you don't touch
it seems to be also really important. These are just
some of the things that I think are are just
(33:22):
really pragmatic. And I talked to people about their electronic
devices as well, and making sure that they're as secure
as possible, and that you regularly do the updates, and
that you know. These are things I think are important
that we just have to tighten up. It's unfortunate to
have to live that way, but I think it's a
mistake to pretend that nothing's going to happen. Something's going
(33:46):
to happen that's going to be different, and we need
to make sure that we're inoculated against what the worth
circumstances of that might be maybe short term, but you know,
just make sure that you're you're ready.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Speaking of anulation, you also focus on health, which I
thought was really a helpful perspective. Get the vaccines that
you need, now, do it now.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Listen. I don't know what's going to happen, you know,
but when I hear someone who thinks that, you know,
we don't need polio vaccines, I'm a little concerned. So
I would say, uh, yeah, you know, make sure you
have your your last COVID booster, make sure you have
your flu shot. You know, if the incoming administration is
an anti vaccine administration, can't even believe I'm saying those words,
(34:31):
But I am saying them, then I think you should,
you know, work on making sure you're up to date,
and getting your kids inoculated, you know, as soon as
you can, right if they if they aren't already, and
making sure that you know, in the new year, you
do those things as quickly as possible before policy changes
might affect your health insurance and what your health insurance
(34:53):
covers and so on and so forth. So you know, again,
don't know whether what will happen, but I've said, and
I think I said in the piece, you know, one
of the things I regret about twenty sixteen is that
I think many of us suffered a failure of imagination.
We didn't believe that what could you know, what did happen,
(35:14):
could happen. And I vowed after that that it would
never happen to me again, especially at that time leading
a civil rights organization, that we should assume everything. And
it's interesting because you know, people, we all talk about
January sixth, two thousand and one, and how devastating that
was to watch the attack on the Capitol. But I
would say, you know, when we expected something to happen
(35:39):
in the election, and we were semi prepared, we didn't
know what would happen, but we expected something to happen.
In fact, when the election, right before the election, we
had our entire senior team get satellite phones so that
if powers went down, we would stay in contact. Like
That's how prepared we were. That's the difference between twenty
(35:59):
sixteen and twenty two. You know, I had just changed
my thinking about having an imagination for things that seemed unimaginable,
and so I just think that that is important. Also
is to especially as parents, your job is to be
prepared and to protect your children, so you don't have
the luxury of engaging in magical thinking, Oh, it won't
(36:21):
be that bad. Maybe not, But what if it is,
are you ready for it? Right? You know, maybe they
do do massive cuts or you know, do a government
shut down, or you don't want to lose your home,
you know. So I think it's important to try to
be ahead of the curve because it's going to be unpredictable,
(36:43):
and I suspect after January twentieth, it's going to move quickly.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yes, yes, And then just finally, your focus on our
obligation to have a parent's obligation to have a civic focus.
You suggest that we it's a great suggestion subscribe to
a foreign news service that is not going to be
filtered through American perspectives, and making sure our government IDs
(37:13):
are up to date. And when I was thinking about this,
you know, you're talking about passports, but also there is
a national real ID coming and it's coming soon, It's
coming in May, and so this is just a heads
up to everybody.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Now.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Of course, we would all be doing these things anyway,
but instead of taking the whatever trauma we may feel,
and instead of feeling burdened by this information by our
current circumstance, your post really helped me to feel emboldened,
like there are active things that we can do to
feel ready, Yes, to feel as ready as we can feel. Remember,
(37:48):
during the pandemic, we just felt better about going through
each day because we were as ready.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
As we needed to be. Yeah, I think that sense
of preparation is important because one of the things that
is most destabilizing and frightening is uncertainty, you know, And
I think I think we're going to be made to
feel uncertainty by kind of the national zeitgeist, because we're
(38:15):
going to be hearing a lot. And I did say
this and the piece also that one of the things
you need to do is have a plan to protect
your spirit, you know, and to protect your core, because
we're going to be just hearing really ugly stuff and
difficult stuff, and you know, you have to be prepared
to guard against, you know, the loss of your home,
(38:38):
but also the loss of your spirit and and damage
that can happen to by just being in that environment.
I have been, you know, suggesting absolutely nature for sure,
you know, the Japanese always talk about taking a forest bath,
which I love, going on a nice hike and just
being in the in the forest. But I've been suggesting
people take art baths. And I know Carol, this will
resonate with you because you regularly take ours. But I
(39:02):
do too, and I think it's really important that you
engage with art. We have artists in this country that
are doing some of the most extraordinary work that is
directly connected to our vision of who we are as
a people and what it means to live in a democracy,
and what it means to be who we are, you know,
(39:24):
people who believe in equality and justice in an environment
and at a time when those things are no longer
put at a premium and so I think engaging with art.
There are so many amazing exhibits, not only in New
York but across the country everywhere, and find them, find
(39:46):
the galleries that you know are free, and walk through
you know, and exhibit, and go here singing, and go
to community theater and go on Broadway if you can,
and try to really use art as a way to
refresh your soul, but also to take you away, to
(40:09):
give you a respite, to be a spiritual oasis. And
for those of you who have a faith tradition, lean
into that faith tradition and have your quiet contemplative time,
become more active in your church or your temple or
but really it's a time for us to re engage
as human beings and all the things that actually strengthen us,
(40:31):
and not give undue attention to the things that drain USh.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Absolutely so so well, said CHERYLN. Thank you so much.
I want to end by returning to the poem that
you read at the beginning of the episode, which speaks
of a strength born of endurance. We've certainly endured a
lot historically, and we've survived and we've even prospered, So
how can we continue to draw on the strength the
(40:57):
strength of our endurance in order to encourage our children
to do so as well.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Well. I think first and foremost is connecting your children
with that past, you know, which I mean. They may
be rolling their eyes sometimes, but it nevertheless is so important.
It's been interesting. I've been, you know, in these various
news programs, and I myself have done it, you know,
you know, engaged in conversations with folks from Eastern Europe
(41:24):
and other places in the world that have seen their
democracies unravel and like what the stages are and how
you cope, And it's been these have been really fascinating conversations.
But what I have also done is I have insisted
that we don't actually need to consult foreign sources for
this information, because you know, we have a whole set
of people in this country who lived under authoritarian regimes,
(41:46):
and there are black people in the South. You know,
your grandparents and your great grandparents lived under that. And
so to the extent we can consult our elders. Many
of them have passed on now, but we still are
the beneficiaries of their experiences. But we should believe that
we have some indigenous knowledge to share about how one
(42:09):
endores in this kind of circumstance. And you know, I've
shared this story in other interviews that in twenty sixteen,
right after Trump was elected, it was like a week later,
I was on a panel, kind of pre planned panel
wasn't about the election, with Taylor Brandt, the great civil
rights historian, and Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitz Surprise winning writer
(42:32):
who wrote The Warmth of other Sons and also Cased
And Isabel said she believed that we were entering the
Nadir or the nator. And for those who don't know,
the Nadir was a phrase coined by the historian Rayford
Logan to describe the period that he said was the
(42:53):
lowest period for black people after slavery. It's the period
of the highest level of lynchings, the absolute you know,
wealth drained from black people. You know, millions of black
people living in near peonage, in the sharecropping system, convict leasing,
all of it. So the lowest period for black people.
(43:14):
And she so that's what she said, She thought we
were entering a nadeir, And I wanted to disbelieve her,
and kind of pretended I did. But Isabelle Wilkinson is
kind of a Cassandra. She sees things, and so I
knew that she was probably right. So I got curious,
what did we do during the Nadeir? You know, do
(43:36):
we just have plusy versus Ferguson? And then it was
nineteen fifty five, you know, and I think a lot
of people think that, and you know, as a legal
historian myself, I'm always like so interested in that period,
and so I spent a lot of time thinking about
what did we do in the NADEA And what I
(43:57):
took from this new study of the period after this
panel with Isabelle is that this is the period in
which we grew and strengthened our own institutions. This is
when the NAACP was created. This is when most of
our fraternities and sororities were created. This is when many
of our HBCUs were created and strengthened. This is when
we you know, our black churches were strengthened. The truth
(44:21):
is that the Nadir is the period in which we
created the foundation for what became right, the kind of
civil rights era. So I've been describing this and I
describe it and the piece as planting time this is
the time in which we are. This is not the harvest. Sadly,
(44:41):
we would all love to live in the harvest. You
and I, Carol, are beneficiaries of a harvest. This is
not harvest time. And as we see affirmative action being
dismantled and all of the things that were designed to
open doors and provide opportunity are being dismantled in and
shut down. But it is planting time. And that's what
(45:03):
those people did, and they attended to the institutions that
ensured that we would be prepared when there was an
opening to make change and transformation. You know, we had
an educated class of black people because of our HBCUs.
We had strong churches and so we had strong spiritual
(45:27):
connection and the connection of our music. We had jazz,
We had the Harlem Renaissance, you know, the golden age
of Black art. Right. This is during what was the
worst period for black people after slavery. You know, we
sometimes forget that, right, and so I think that's the
lesson I took from it, and we should remember that
(45:51):
that was a time of tremendous accomplishment. We maybe think
about accomplishment differently. We think about the civil rights movement,
or we think about black corporate leadership or having first
black president, or all of those things we think of
as accomplishment, but actually creating the first Black labor get
union with the Sleeping car Porters as I referred to earlier,
was a huge accomplishment. And you know, the Harlem Renaissance
(46:12):
was a huge accomplishment, and you know, the creation of
the NAACP was a huge accomplishment, you know, without which
all the rest doesn't happen. Right, So I think I
think we have to think we have to orient our
brains a little bit that it's not always the harvest time.
Sometimes we're planting. And if this is planting time, that
is work. That's good work, that is good work. And
(46:37):
we may be the only generation untethered from, you know,
the farming past of our forebears, who think that it
should always be the harvest.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Can't planting time? That is that should resonate with all
of us and stay with us as we gear ourselves
up for the next four years. Charylyn, I am so
happy that you came to talk with me. I'm so
happy that we've had this conversation. I'm going to wrap
it up here. I thank you so much. Your conversation
(47:07):
today is all that I had hoped. It would be heartening, instructive.
I know parents everywhere are going to really appreciate it.
Right before you go, I'm going to ask you to
play a mini version of the Lightning Round, the GCP
Lightning Round.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
I have two questions for you.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Your favorite poem or saying.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I do love this poly Murray poem that I that
I selected, and I love I love Sha Shakespeare's sonnets.
You know, you know I have a very eclectic mix
of poetry that I love. And obviously we just lost
Nikki Giovanni. Oh and I posted on Instagram her nicki
(47:45):
rosa poem about you know, it's it's it's hard to
have remembrances as a black child, you knows, and how
the happiness that can exist as a child and just
the simplicity of your family being together despite all the
things that others would write about as trauma. And obviously
ego tripping is her you know signature poem.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Yeah, we need to we need to read a lot
of Nikki. We need we can lean into Nikki in
we got to lean in so yeah, yeah, absolutely, okay,
And two of your favorite children's books, The Friends by
Rosa Guy, and I loved this book so much as
a kid.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I never forgot it, and I I've even read it
as an adult. And it's about a girl who's Caribbean
American her her mom dies of breast cancer. My mom
died of breast cancer when I was young, so I
think that's why the book resonated with me. And it's
her coming of age in a public school, living in Harlem,
(48:42):
with her with her dad, and it's very powerfully written,
incredibly beautiful. I'm going to share one that just stayed
with me. I would I wouldn't if someone asked me
necessarily call this a favorite book, but it affected me
in the way that I still remember the last line
of the book. And I read it when I was
very very young. It's a book called Ann and the Lion,
which you may remember also or Androcules and the Lion,
(49:05):
and it's about a little boy's encounter with a lion.
And I don't remember all the details of the book,
but the last line of the book is and Andy
took the book back to the library. In other words,
the entire book had been a fantasy world. He was
in reading a book, so we were reading a book
(49:26):
that someone was about someone's experience reading a book, and
I've never forgotten that line. I don't think i've ever
even encountered the book again since I read it when
I was seven or eight, and I loved it so
much because that's how I feel about reading, and that's
how I felt about the library. You know, she just
entered this other world so much so that you thought
it was real, that it felt like it was real
to you, and that always stayed with me as kind
(49:48):
of the descriptor of my relationship with books and with
libraries as well.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
That is so great. I'm going to go find those
two books. Thank you so much, Cherylyn, Thank you again
for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
This was great.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation that you'll come
back for more. Please subscribe, rate and review where you
find your podcasts and tell your friends. For more parenting
info and advice, please check out the Ground Control Parenting
website at Wwwgroundcontrolparenting dot com. You can also find us
on Facebook and Instagram at ground Control Parenting and on
LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis. Until the next time, take
(50:30):
care and thanks for listening,
To the oppressors. Now you are strong, and we are
but grapes aching with ripeness. Crush us, squeeze from us
all the brave life contained in these full skins. But
ours is a subtle strength, potent with centuries of yearning,
of being kegged and shut away in dark, forgotten places.
(00:28):
We shall endure to steal your senses in that lonely
twilight of your winter's grief.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting a blog and
now a podcast creative of parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with some really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. The poem
you just heard is called to the Oppressors by Paully Murray,
(00:59):
and the reader of that poem is my special guest
on this bonus episode, Charylyn Ifil Charylyn, a constitutional law
scholar and civil rights leader, is the Vernon E. Jordan
Junior esquire En Dowed Chair and Civil Rights at Howard University.
She is the former President and Director Counsel of the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and in twenty twenty one Time
(01:20):
named her one of the one hundred most influential people
in the world. Shortly after the election this year, Charylyn
wrote a powerful post on substat called The Truth That
Began with that poem and went on to talk about
what the election results will mean for Americans going forward,
especially for those Americans who did not support the president
elect or his policies.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Over the years with Ground Control Parenting, I've written about
how parents should talk about major, traumatizing national events with
their children in ways that are helpful and supportive. The
results of this election were traumatizing to many of us,
especially many black and brown voters who have watched the
president electing new supporters work to discredit and stroy the
concepts of diversity, equality, and inclusion in our country. I
(02:04):
was just wrapping my head around how to write about
this when I came across Cherylyn's post, which has great
practical advice which parents should hear. I am so happy
to have her join me today on this bonus episode, Cherylyn,
Welcome to Ground Control Parenting.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Thank you so much, Carol. I'm thrilled to be talking
with you.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Ah, so thrilled to have you, and I thank you
for sharing your post with us. All So, you were
the president and Director Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund during the first Trump administration, during which time the
Legal Defense Fund regularly soothed the administration and fought the
battle over voting rights. Then the battle escalated over the
four years in office, and here we are facing the
(02:44):
next Trump administration after a brutal campaign in which many
believe put the future of American democracy in peril. You've
been a champion of protecting our civil rights, and you're
also a parent who understands our responsibility to help our
children grow up in the world feeling as safe and
protected as possible. So my first question, how should parents
(03:04):
talk with their children about the election outcome without focusing
on their anxiety about it?
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, Carol, I mean I am not an expert in parenting.
For sure, I'm sure my kids would stand by that.
But what I would say is the name of the
piece is the truth. And telling your kids the truth
about the world and about their country I think is
really important. I tried to do that with my children
(03:30):
when they were young. You know, my children were young
people during nine to eleven and during the Iraq War
and the Afghanistan War. We had very candid conversations about
the meaning of that conflict and what happened on nine
to eleven, and why we think it happened, and who
(03:53):
we needed to be and who we were supposed to
be in the face of that kind of tragedy. Mostly,
what I want wanted my children to understand was how
to have a heart that's open enough to feel the
grief that we all felt that day. I actually had
a brother who worked in the World Trade Center and
was on his way to work when the tower he
(04:14):
worked in fell, So we felt it fairly personally. But
you know that we could open our hearts to the
grief of it, and we could also hold that while
we challenged what we thought was a disproportionate and certainly
wrongly directed response in terms of the Iraq War. And
(04:37):
so even just teaching your kids that you can hold
a couple of things in you at the same time
is really important, because one of the challenges of being
in a country that has abandoned democracy or that becomes
an authoritarian country is holding your core. And that's a
lot of what I wrote about and have been writing about.
(04:58):
And that means, you know, holding to the things the
elements of your values, the principles by which you live
your life. Holding your heart open and vulnerable to suffering
is critically important. So I think being truthful with your
children that this is a difficult time for this country.
(05:19):
It is no matter how many times you say it.
It's impossible for young people to understand the long arc
of life and how things change. So that's you know,
that just makes the conversation difficult because you can be
saying it, but they can't really feel it, because they
can't really see it. But you can assure them your
kids believe you, and I think it's important then to
(05:41):
tell them that things do change, that I have seen it.
I tell my kids all the time. And you know,
I said, this seems right now, it seems intractable. It
looks like the things that we stand against are winning,
and it's going to look like that for a very
long time. But when it changes, it changes fast.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
So be ready. I'm thinking about parenting children who are
young girl who don't already have their their perspectives fully formed.
How do we help them understand how to seek truth?
I mean, we talk about truth, but you know, there's
so much misinformation disinformation, and as parents, we are we
(06:22):
have our fully formed opinions and we hold true to them,
but we have to give our children opportunity to see
the world and come to some of them wrong conclusions.
How do we do this in this in this current
state where so much information can be trusted.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah, I do think that it is an important time
to tether not just young people but parents as well, okay,
to what is real, you know, and not just what
is online. In the piece I wrote, I talked about,
you know, teaching your kids how to cook, you know,
making sure your kids know how to do cursive writing
(07:00):
so that they have their a signature that's all their own,
going to see live theater, going to the park, playing sports,
all of those things that compel us to actually, with
our own eyes and five senses experience and see the world.
That's how we're going to know what's real. And we
have to exercise that muscle. That muscle has weakened in
(07:21):
all of us because we spend so much time online
focusing our attention on what people say and not actually
experiencing what is So I would say this is a
time more than any other when we have to value
human experience. I say all the time when I give
speeches around the country, you know, and look at a
packed auditorium and I say, isn't this wonderful because we
(07:43):
have to come out and see each other, you know,
we have to see each other. It's not enough to
know I have this many followers, you know, on a platform.
And so I think upping that part of your life
with your kids. You know, don't try to get them offline.
They can't get offline, but I think it's imant. I
think taking them to the library so they can experience
that space when they then, you know, hear controversies about
(08:07):
books and libraries. Take them for some unconstructed time in
the library where you go off into your section, and
you'd leave them, you know, in the kids section and
let them explore so that they will have a point
of reference to understand what that experience can be like.
And so I think taking advantage of those opportunities to
engage with public life, to be in the park and
(08:27):
to walk in the park, to ride your bike in
the park, to really touch grass, as the kids like
to say, in a really consistent way. I actually think
old school styles of research are important too. You know,
I've been telling people that you know, print out articles
that are important to you or that you think raise
(08:48):
issues or provide information that maybe you haven't seen other places.
You should not feel reassured or certain that you will
be able to find those articles online in the coming years,
So make sure that you keep a file of writings
that are important to you. Maybe that sounds over dramatic
to you. I don't think so, because I'm writing a
book and I've had the experience of being unable to
(09:09):
find online things that I know I saw online, you know.
So I think we're learning that this is not trustworthy
and that we have to have our own resources, you know.
Building a library for your children if you haven't already.
It was one of the first things I started to
do with my children when they were very young. But
I think for children to have their own library of
books is really important. Also to understand the books are
(09:30):
things that you can pick up again and again and
return to. So I think there are lots of ways
that we can create a tangible life for our children
that helps to counter what may become a kind of
disorienting information bubble and a kind of disorienting wall of
rhetoric that we are confronting over the next four years.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Absolutely. Oh, I love everything that you have just said.
I am sitting in front of us bookshelf of books,
and I agree, go to the library, see the books
on the shelf. There is such a value in appreciating
the written word as something you can hold in your hand.
You talk about this in your post, sort of going
to origin sources, listening to speeches, listening to the original
(10:17):
speech as opposed to clicking on some reference to a speech.
Now you can do some of this researcher online, but
it really is. It does sound old school, but there
is value to old school, such value in holding it
in your hand and being able to refer to it
over and over again, as opposed to just getting all
your information from the screen and getting information which may
(10:40):
or may not have been altered. We can't know this.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Is what's going to happen, and so we have to
engage with primary sources of information. When I teach my class,
my fourteenth Amendment class, I teach a fourteenth Amendment seminar
at Howard Law School, and I'm launching a fourteenth Amendment
Center for lawn Demindocracy there in twenty twenty five. And
the fourteenth Amendment is I think the most important provision
(11:05):
of our constitution. It was ratified after the Civil War.
It is, in its all of its five sections designed
to ensure that black people are full first class citizens
in the United States. I'm not sure everyone knows that
there is a constitutional amendment whose purpose is that. In fact,
there are three constitutional amendments thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteen. But
in any case, the fourteenth Amendment has had a transformative
(11:28):
effect on our country. It's not just applied to black people.
And I try to ensure that my students, you know,
see actual things right from that period that we're reading
excerpts of debate that we're reading the report that you know,
President Johnson's you know, kind of ambassador to the South
(11:51):
wrote after visiting the South after the Civil War to
understand the conditions that black people were living in. You know,
we're reading excerpts from the Kuklu clan hearings that were
held in eighteen seventy one, as black people described what
they were suffering under clan violence, which led to the
passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act. I try to
ensure that they hear the voices of people from that
(12:14):
period and not just people writing about what those voices
said so that they can understand that these were real people.
And how that helps us is, you know, I've been
telling my students that the kind of conceit of my
course is that we have to feel that we are
empowered to become founders and framers of a new America,
(12:34):
just as after the Civil War a new America was founded,
and that we have permission to do that. In fact,
it's our right, our obligation to do that. And the
only way you can do that is by seeing the
struggles of the people who were trying to create the
new America that we ended up living in. Right, It's
why the Civil rights movement is so important, and reading
actual excerpts from people involved in campaigns during the Civil
(12:57):
Rights movement. I include excerpts from Eyes on the Prize.
My students have not really heard of the Sleeping car
Porters Union, the first Black labor Union, and to just see,
you know, those men and what they were trying to create,
and the women's auxiliary and the way in which, you know,
the attempt to buy off a Philip Randolph by offering
(13:18):
him a million dollars which he turned down. Like I
want them to know that those things happened in the
nineteen thirties, you know, and that people stood up to that,
and maybe they didn't see the fruit of it until
the Civil rights movement, But there would have been no
civil rights movement without those black sleeping car workers in
the thirties who became the parents and grandparents of those
who were in the Civil rights movement. So showing people
(13:40):
things that are real, So I think really engaging in
that kind of work is really important. Something really interesting
I just have been doing with my grandson lately is
I bought him a children's diction a big fat children's dictionary,
and you know, and I create new vocabulary words. I
asked them to look them up and then use them
in a sentence. That's pretty simple. But what's interesting in
(14:02):
the beginning was watching dictionary skills. You know that there's
a word at the top that shows you you know
where you are, Like, maybe we take that for granted.
I don't know if they're even teaching kids that anymore.
You know, you can look up words online. I use
dictionaries online for sure, but you know the ability to
look in this big book and to know how to
look for a word and to go down the page
(14:23):
and find your word and see the pronunciation and see
how they use it, and see that there's more than
one meaning and all of that stuff that we probably
take for granted because that used to be a part
of education. I think just returning to some of those
things are also helpful because it's going to give a
sense of educational agency to our children, which I think
(14:44):
in the age of misinformation, they will need. I don't
mean that like I did my own research and so
I know everything about vaccines. I mean, you know, because
that's another thing is that people really feel like, well
I have I am, you know, an agent of my
own education. I spent all time online, and I'm just
saying we are in the stage now where with deep
fakes and all the other stuff we can't necessarily always
(15:07):
trust what we see online and developing a critical faculty.
And if I can't just say one other thing, Carol,
you know, when I was a kid, we watched the
news every night, for sure, and my dad was very
politically oriented, as I know your family was, and we
watched the news together, but we were not silent consumers
(15:28):
of the news. You know. My dad would be talking
to the TV and saying that didn't happen. What's he
talking about, Well, that's his job. He shouldn't know, he'd
be saying all kinds of stuff. But in many ways
it sharpened our critical faculty, Like we never believed we
were supposed to just passively here, and as black people,
we always knew what was left out. You know, people
said we want the age of Walter Cronkotte and Roger
(15:48):
Mudd and David Brinkley, but they were missing things too.
And so I think even consuming news in front of
your children in a way that allows them to see
what it looks, that you get to talk back to it,
and that you don't have to just be a passive
consumer of what they're telling you is the story.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back to
the show. We're raising our children in a world now
where we have an incredibly divided nation, incredibly and this
election showed it more so than ever before. Our children
are going to be in school with people who don't
see the world the way that they see it. I mean,
(16:27):
well the way that we see it, let's say. And
I'm trying to sort through our obligation to our children
to help them deal with people that. Let's say, to
the extent that our children have political beliefs that they
already have established, to help them properly defend them, but
not to help them deal in a world where they're
(16:48):
going to be talking to people who don't agree with them.
And you and I both know we've had legal training.
It's important to be able to talk to people that
don't agree with you one hundred percent. And what I
fear now in the way that we are going is
we operate in these silos. I mean, even watching the news,
you can choose to watch a news program that will
tell you things that align with the way that you think,
(17:09):
versus hearing sort of an impartial approach to what's gone on.
How do we help our children deal with people who
don't see this world the way that they see it.
How do we think about arming them to be able
to have their own opinions and defend them in a
world where it's important for us to be social and
(17:29):
humane with one another.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You know, I'm not as worried about that, Carol, for
the simple reason that that is always true, and especially
for those of us, you know, I mean, this is
where the generations come in handy. I think actually, you know,
those of us who first were busted to integrated schools,
you know, made great friends with some white kids, and
(17:53):
then some white kids not so much. You know, we've
had to navigate environments that have been diverse. You know,
maybe we led ourselves to believe right that our kids
would be in this bubble, when in fact they're in
the world and they will find and navigate their way. Now,
I think what is critical is to be clear that,
(18:14):
at least in my view, your children do not have
to engage with people who do not believe in their
humanity and their dignity, you know, and so you know,
people who engage in racial slurs and misogynous slurs and stuff,
and kids do that. You know, these experiences I've seen
(18:35):
with my grandson very early, and so I think you
have to be very firm about you know, your number
one job is protecting your kids, and so protecting them
from the kind of spiritual assault that happens in those circumstances.
I think is very important show that be proactive. If
(18:55):
they come and tell you something, you know, don't get
all emotional about it, but show that your firmness that
you are going to go and talk to the teacher
about it, that you are going to talk to the
school about it, that you know that your child can
come to you and tell you something that someone said
to them that made them incredibly uncomfortable. So I think
making sure that space is available, making sure that your
(19:18):
school understands what their obligations are, what you expect their
obligations to be, especially in this difficult time. In fact,
I strongly encourage that that parents, you know, let school
officials understand that walking into this period without a plan.
You know, what does the school conduct code of conduct
(19:41):
look like? What does it say, what are the infractions
this is whether it's public school or private school. Make
sure you understand what those are and that you're going
to hold them to it, you know, pull that down
off that website and print it out and make sure
you know so that when something happens, you know, you
know what steps the steps that you can take. So
(20:01):
I think that's important to protect your kids against that
kind of harm. And then I think you know they
will navigate their way. They will navigate their way almost instinctively.
Kids are very rare to say I don't speak to
that person. That's an adult thing. You know, kids kind
of speak to everybody, now how they speak to them,
maybe you don't another story, but they don't, you know
what I mean. So I don't worry as much about
(20:23):
kids being you know, if they are in a segregated environment,
that's different. But if they're in an integrated environment, you know,
in all kinds of ways, they're going to talk to
people that they don't agree with in one way or another.
But I do think that what we do have to
worry more about is our kids being made to feel
(20:46):
uncomfortable and teachers being afraid to protect them. So I'm
a little bit more worried about that than I am
about whether our children will know how to talk with
people who are not like them, because we had to
do it too, and I probably you and I didn't
get like a whole instruction on like how do we
can do it? Just we navigated it, but we figured
(21:07):
out how to do it, and I think they will too.
But I'm much more worried about when things cross a line,
whether you know. So much of what is happening right
now is a sense of intimidation, particularly of teachers, and
whether teachers will feel like disarmed from offering the kind
of robust protection that they should to children who may
(21:29):
experience some of this.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Absolutely, so tho'se some great tips. I mean, parents should
definitely check in with the teachers and the administration just
to let them all know that you are focused on this.
And it probably goes without saying that you should encourage
your children to talk to you about things that are
going on without and as parents who have to be
(21:52):
you said, keep your emotions in check, you know, poker faced,
so that you don't react as if it's happened to you,
because that will alter how your child interprets it and
alter how your child feels empowered to interpret it. And
also this dives back to what we were saying about
resources and helping our children understand their history and understand
the facts of their history. When our children are armed
(22:14):
with more information about who they are and where they
come from, it makes it easier for them to deflect
any commentary to the contrary. I mean, I always talk
about building our children's self confidence starts with us giving
them reasons why they should be really confident. We have
a history that commands confidence because but for all the
(22:37):
sacrifices of our ancestors, we certainly wouldn't be here. So
that's really helpful. Now, Cherylyn, your post goes beyond giving
us sort of encouragement. It gives us practical things to do.
And I just want to touch on a few more
that I thought were just so helpful to think about.
I just have to quote a little bit of the
article because I thought it was so well said. You
(22:59):
say our goal should be to survive this dark period
with as much of our values dignity, integrity, work, financial stability,
and physical and mental health as possible. I found that
heartening and correct and sort of yes, we must do this,
and here's how we do it. You let us know
(23:21):
you talk about focusing on local service, which I very
much liked in thinking about in terms of what families
can do to focus on local service. What kind of
things can we do in our communities with our children
to support what we believe in and to help those
in need? I mean, And isn't this a good time
to get smart on local issues with our kids?
Speaker 1 (23:40):
For sure? I mean part of I think the pressure
of this moment and let me just say, let me
just backtrack and say something about when I wrote this piece,
this is a very painful period for me as well.
So I'm not I'm not writing from a perspective of
like I've figured it all out. I'm writing from a
perspective of, you know, this is deeply painful for me.
(24:05):
I've been a civil rights lawyer for more than thirty years,
and this is my life's work, and I've always done
it with the belief that we could open up and
expand opportunity and equality and justice for particularly for black people,
but for everyone. And that's and I'll never stop believing that.
(24:26):
You can't make me stop believing it. But this is
a significant setback and a very alarming and frightening period,
not only in this country but in the world. So
part of what I was writing was a way for
me to walk through how I'm seeing this moment and
what's necessary as well. And a big part of this
is to make you feel disempowered, to make you feel
(24:50):
like you have no power and as though your world
is being controlled by outside forces, maybe forces that you
don't that you vehemently don't agree with. And so part
of holding your power is understanding that power operates at
multiple levels, and that you use the power that you
(25:10):
have where you have it, and the most important thing
is going to be to build those local connections and
feel that you are connected with your local community because
that is actually where you live. You actually don't live
in the White House. You don't live in the halls
of Congress. You really don't. You live in wherever it is,
(25:31):
your neighborhood. You have neighbors on either side of you
that if something happens, you hope that they know your
name and that they will come to your aid. You
have a library in your community that you hope they
won't close. You have schools in your community that you
hope have the resources they need to be able to
educate children. And you have a political system in your city,
(25:53):
your town, your county. You have a mayor, you have
city council persons, you have county commissioners, and those people
are controlling much of what happens in your life on
a daily basis, much more so than the president. Right.
You have a police chief in your neighborhood. Right, So
I think that we can sometimes forget. And one of
(26:14):
the things I said in the piece was like, you know,
we're not watching the Trump Show again. You know, I'm
not saying that you shouldn't be abreast of news, but
I mean twenty sixteen, it was almost like a new
thing that we had never seen before, someone quite like this,
And so we watched the show relentlessly. And I don't
think we need to watch the show like that. In fact,
(26:35):
I think it would be harmful for us to do so.
So I think it's important to stay abreast of what's
happening politically, to be involved where you can. You still
have senators and House members who should be hearing from
you in terms of what you expect of the federal government,
but you have a whole nother level of government that is,
as I said, probably having a greater effect on your life.
The local DA and the chief of police, and the
(26:57):
mayor and the county commissioner are probably have a bigger
effect on your life on a day to day basis
than our national politicians. And so connecting with your community
and it's a way of showing your children how to
do civic life, which is I think the great unraveling
(27:17):
of this country that has left us so vulnerable to
this moment is that we have really loosened the bonds
of civic life and civic connection. And so part of
what I think we can do for the future, for
the things we can't change now, is to incubate the
(27:38):
kind of world that we want to see on the
other side of this and that world will only happen
with strengthened bonds of community and a heightened sense of
civic education that allows people to understand what their obligation
is living in a democratic community. We can still do
that with our children, and we should for as long
(28:01):
as we can.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
We can start by spending some time with our children
sorting out how our neighborhood operates, who is in charge,
who represents us, and so these are things to understand,
to learn about, to and to inform our children about.
That's that's really really important.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And you have them walk through what accountability looks like.
You know, you cross the same uh intersection in your
neighborhood and every time you say, you know, there really
needs to be a light here, you know, right, well,
walk through that with your kids. You know, we're going
to call the city council. We're we write they help
me write this letter. You know, we're going to send
this letter in or we're going to send this email
(28:41):
into the city council, and we're going to race and
then we're going to go to the meeting, you know,
and we're going to write and that you know, we're
going to get other people to sign or whatever is
the process in your community. I mean, these are all
things we can we can walk through and model. And
what we're modeling is the expectation of accountability from the
people who represent you, and that's critically important.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
We're also modeling being good public service minded citizens, proactive,
and our children need to understand that because, I mean,
the thing about our governmental system is no one is
in power forever. We have elections, and so they will
come to this information. Now is a good time to
get smart on all of this, as you have said,
(29:24):
because it is useful now and it will be even
more useful as we go forward. What I loved, in
addition to and you talked about this before, just sort
of reorienting us to think about the real things we
can do, like going into nature and teaching kids how
to cook. But you also gave really pragmatic financial things
to do, and you know, like figuring out if you
(29:48):
and this is advice that my parents gave me, notwithstanding
the political perspective, but figure out what happens if you
lose your job and get prepared for six months of
not having job. I mean I thought when I read that,
I was like, oh, yeah, that's what that's what you're
supposed to do anyway.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
Anyway, it's a huge I mean, we're talking about once
you get past the rhetoric of you know, massive amounts
of money being cut from the federal government, right, and
what does that mean when you get to closing the
Department of Education. I don't know whether any of these
things will happen, but these are the stated intentions right
(30:26):
of the incoming administration. Do people understand that thirty percent
of federal workers are workers of color? I think twenty
percent are African American. We constitute a huge portion of
those who work for the federal government. So when they
talk about cutting a trillion dollars, if you know that's
even possible for them to do, which a doubt, but
(30:46):
it'll be something, right, A lot of people are going
to lose their jobs. A lot of people are going
to lose their jobs. Let's just be honest, and do
we want those people to also lose their homes? So
we have to be really honest about this, you know,
we have to be honest about what it would mean
for the Department of Education. The Department of Education funds
(31:10):
all of the IEPs, right, the individual educational plans for
students who require special education and special services, and they
pay for them all over the country. What's the implication
of them cutting that budget to your child? Does your
child have special needs that requires an IEP in school? Is?
(31:32):
Are you a teacher who a special education teacher? I mean,
like I so at some point we have to kind
of get past just the headline and get to the
part that is about real people and the effect on
real people. And we have to then begin to prepare
ourselves and inoculate ourselves against that. You know, this talk
of tariffs, which is kind of, you know, extremely grandiose,
(31:56):
but we should remember in the first Trump administration he
did in pots teriffs and the result was that we
had to do a multi tens of billions of dollars
in bailout to American farmers in order to make up
for what I had called at the time Trump's folly.
But these tariffs, so, yes, things are going to be
more expensive. So are you stocking up on some of
(32:18):
the basic things now, you know, the paper goods and
so on and so forth, at least to the extent
that they're imported, you know. So I think that's something
that you can think about, not don't go crazy, don't
room forward, but just to give yourself a little breathing
room at the start of the year. I do think
making sure you have cash in your home is really important.
(32:38):
We know that trying to that hackers, trying to take
out various systems in our country is just part of
modern living at this point, and that the current administration,
the new administration is likely to poke the bear. And
I'm not going to define what that bear is, but
whatever it is, they're going to get poked, and that
may reduce some retaliations. And so what happens if all
(33:00):
the ATM machines are down, or your credit cards don't work,
or do you have enough cash in the house right
that you could walk up to a gas station and
get gas in your car, you know, So making sure
that you have you know, some cash on hand that
you just keep in the house that you don't touch
it seems to be also really important. These are just
some of the things that I think are are just
(33:22):
really pragmatic. And I talked to people about their electronic
devices as well, and making sure that they're as secure
as possible, and that you regularly do the updates, and
that you know. These are things I think are important
that we just have to tighten up. It's unfortunate to
have to live that way, but I think it's a
mistake to pretend that nothing's going to happen. Something's going
(33:46):
to happen that's going to be different, and we need
to make sure that we're inoculated against what the worth
circumstances of that might be maybe short term, but you know,
just make sure that you're you're ready.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Speaking of anulation, you also focus on health, which I
thought was really a helpful perspective. Get the vaccines that
you need, now, do it now.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Listen. I don't know what's going to happen, you know,
but when I hear someone who thinks that, you know,
we don't need polio vaccines, I'm a little concerned. So
I would say, uh, yeah, you know, make sure you
have your your last COVID booster, make sure you have
your flu shot. You know, if the incoming administration is
an anti vaccine administration, can't even believe I'm saying those words,
(34:31):
But I am saying them, then I think you should,
you know, work on making sure you're up to date,
and getting your kids inoculated, you know, as soon as
you can, right if they if they aren't already, and
making sure that you know, in the new year, you
do those things as quickly as possible before policy changes
might affect your health insurance and what your health insurance
(34:53):
covers and so on and so forth. So you know, again,
don't know whether what will happen, but I've said, and
I think I said in the piece, you know, one
of the things I regret about twenty sixteen is that
I think many of us suffered a failure of imagination.
We didn't believe that what could you know, what did happen,
(35:14):
could happen. And I vowed after that that it would
never happen to me again, especially at that time leading
a civil rights organization, that we should assume everything. And
it's interesting because you know, people, we all talk about
January sixth, two thousand and one, and how devastating that
was to watch the attack on the Capitol. But I
would say, you know, when we expected something to happen
(35:39):
in the election, and we were semi prepared, we didn't
know what would happen, but we expected something to happen.
In fact, when the election, right before the election, we
had our entire senior team get satellite phones so that
if powers went down, we would stay in contact. Like
That's how prepared we were. That's the difference between twenty
(35:59):
sixteen and twenty two. You know, I had just changed
my thinking about having an imagination for things that seemed unimaginable,
and so I just think that that is important. Also
is to especially as parents, your job is to be
prepared and to protect your children, so you don't have
the luxury of engaging in magical thinking, Oh, it won't
(36:21):
be that bad. Maybe not, But what if it is,
are you ready for it? Right? You know, maybe they
do do massive cuts or you know, do a government
shut down, or you don't want to lose your home,
you know. So I think it's important to try to
be ahead of the curve because it's going to be unpredictable,
(36:43):
and I suspect after January twentieth, it's going to move quickly.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yes, yes, And then just finally, your focus on our
obligation to have a parent's obligation to have a civic focus.
You suggest that we it's a great suggestion subscribe to
a foreign news service that is not going to be
filtered through American perspectives, and making sure our government IDs
(37:13):
are up to date. And when I was thinking about this,
you know, you're talking about passports, but also there is
a national real ID coming and it's coming soon, It's
coming in May, and so this is just a heads
up to everybody.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Now.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Of course, we would all be doing these things anyway,
but instead of taking the whatever trauma we may feel,
and instead of feeling burdened by this information by our
current circumstance, your post really helped me to feel emboldened,
like there are active things that we can do to
feel ready, Yes, to feel as ready as we can feel. Remember,
(37:48):
during the pandemic, we just felt better about going through
each day because we were as ready.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
As we needed to be. Yeah, I think that sense
of preparation is important because one of the things that
is most destabilizing and frightening is uncertainty, you know, And
I think I think we're going to be made to
feel uncertainty by kind of the national zeitgeist, because we're
(38:15):
going to be hearing a lot. And I did say
this and the piece also that one of the things
you need to do is have a plan to protect
your spirit, you know, and to protect your core, because
we're going to be just hearing really ugly stuff and
difficult stuff, and you know, you have to be prepared
to guard against, you know, the loss of your home,
(38:38):
but also the loss of your spirit and and damage
that can happen to by just being in that environment.
I have been, you know, suggesting absolutely nature for sure,
you know, the Japanese always talk about taking a forest bath,
which I love, going on a nice hike and just
being in the in the forest. But I've been suggesting
people take art baths. And I know Carol, this will
resonate with you because you regularly take ours. But I
(39:02):
do too, and I think it's really important that you
engage with art. We have artists in this country that
are doing some of the most extraordinary work that is
directly connected to our vision of who we are as
a people and what it means to live in a democracy,
and what it means to be who we are, you know,
(39:24):
people who believe in equality and justice in an environment
and at a time when those things are no longer
put at a premium and so I think engaging with art.
There are so many amazing exhibits, not only in New
York but across the country everywhere, and find them, find
(39:46):
the galleries that you know are free, and walk through
you know, and exhibit, and go here singing, and go
to community theater and go on Broadway if you can,
and try to really use art as a way to
refresh your soul, but also to take you away, to
(40:09):
give you a respite, to be a spiritual oasis. And
for those of you who have a faith tradition, lean
into that faith tradition and have your quiet contemplative time,
become more active in your church or your temple or
but really it's a time for us to re engage
as human beings and all the things that actually strengthen us,
(40:31):
and not give undue attention to the things that drain USh.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Absolutely so so well, said CHERYLN. Thank you so much.
I want to end by returning to the poem that
you read at the beginning of the episode, which speaks
of a strength born of endurance. We've certainly endured a
lot historically, and we've survived and we've even prospered, So
how can we continue to draw on the strength the
(40:57):
strength of our endurance in order to encourage our children
to do so as well.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Well. I think first and foremost is connecting your children
with that past, you know, which I mean. They may
be rolling their eyes sometimes, but it nevertheless is so important.
It's been interesting. I've been, you know, in these various
news programs, and I myself have done it, you know,
you know, engaged in conversations with folks from Eastern Europe
(41:24):
and other places in the world that have seen their
democracies unravel and like what the stages are and how
you cope, And it's been these have been really fascinating conversations.
But what I have also done is I have insisted
that we don't actually need to consult foreign sources for
this information, because you know, we have a whole set
of people in this country who lived under authoritarian regimes,
(41:46):
and there are black people in the South. You know,
your grandparents and your great grandparents lived under that. And
so to the extent we can consult our elders. Many
of them have passed on now, but we still are
the beneficiaries of their experiences. But we should believe that
we have some indigenous knowledge to share about how one
(42:09):
endores in this kind of circumstance. And you know, I've
shared this story in other interviews that in twenty sixteen,
right after Trump was elected, it was like a week later,
I was on a panel, kind of pre planned panel
wasn't about the election, with Taylor Brandt, the great civil
rights historian, and Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitz Surprise winning writer
(42:32):
who wrote The Warmth of other Sons and also Cased
And Isabel said she believed that we were entering the
Nadir or the nator. And for those who don't know,
the Nadir was a phrase coined by the historian Rayford
Logan to describe the period that he said was the
(42:53):
lowest period for black people after slavery. It's the period
of the highest level of lynchings, the absolute you know,
wealth drained from black people. You know, millions of black
people living in near peonage, in the sharecropping system, convict leasing,
all of it. So the lowest period for black people.
(43:14):
And she so that's what she said, She thought we
were entering a nadeir, And I wanted to disbelieve her,
and kind of pretended I did. But Isabelle Wilkinson is
kind of a Cassandra. She sees things, and so I
knew that she was probably right. So I got curious,
what did we do during the Nadeir? You know, do
(43:36):
we just have plusy versus Ferguson? And then it was
nineteen fifty five, you know, and I think a lot
of people think that, and you know, as a legal
historian myself, I'm always like so interested in that period,
and so I spent a lot of time thinking about
what did we do in the NADEA And what I
(43:57):
took from this new study of the period after this
panel with Isabelle is that this is the period in
which we grew and strengthened our own institutions. This is
when the NAACP was created. This is when most of
our fraternities and sororities were created. This is when many
of our HBCUs were created and strengthened. This is when
we you know, our black churches were strengthened. The truth
(44:21):
is that the Nadir is the period in which we
created the foundation for what became right, the kind of
civil rights era. So I've been describing this and I
describe it and the piece as planting time this is
the time in which we are. This is not the harvest. Sadly,
(44:41):
we would all love to live in the harvest. You
and I, Carol, are beneficiaries of a harvest. This is
not harvest time. And as we see affirmative action being
dismantled and all of the things that were designed to
open doors and provide opportunity are being dismantled in and
shut down. But it is planting time. And that's what
(45:03):
those people did, and they attended to the institutions that
ensured that we would be prepared when there was an
opening to make change and transformation. You know, we had
an educated class of black people because of our HBCUs.
We had strong churches and so we had strong spiritual
(45:27):
connection and the connection of our music. We had jazz,
We had the Harlem Renaissance, you know, the golden age
of Black art. Right. This is during what was the
worst period for black people after slavery. You know, we
sometimes forget that, right, and so I think that's the
lesson I took from it, and we should remember that
(45:51):
that was a time of tremendous accomplishment. We maybe think
about accomplishment differently. We think about the civil rights movement,
or we think about black corporate leadership or having first
black president, or all of those things we think of
as accomplishment, but actually creating the first Black labor get
union with the Sleeping car Porters as I referred to earlier,
was a huge accomplishment. And you know, the Harlem Renaissance
(46:12):
was a huge accomplishment, and you know, the creation of
the NAACP was a huge accomplishment, you know, without which
all the rest doesn't happen. Right, So I think I
think we have to think we have to orient our
brains a little bit that it's not always the harvest time.
Sometimes we're planting. And if this is planting time, that
is work. That's good work, that is good work. And
(46:37):
we may be the only generation untethered from, you know,
the farming past of our forebears, who think that it
should always be the harvest.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Can't planting time? That is that should resonate with all
of us and stay with us as we gear ourselves
up for the next four years. Charylyn, I am so
happy that you came to talk with me. I'm so
happy that we've had this conversation. I'm going to wrap
it up here. I thank you so much. Your conversation
(47:07):
today is all that I had hoped. It would be heartening, instructive.
I know parents everywhere are going to really appreciate it.
Right before you go, I'm going to ask you to
play a mini version of the Lightning Round, the GCP
Lightning Round.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
I have two questions for you.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Your favorite poem or saying.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
I do love this poly Murray poem that I that
I selected, and I love I love Sha Shakespeare's sonnets.
You know, you know I have a very eclectic mix
of poetry that I love. And obviously we just lost
Nikki Giovanni. Oh and I posted on Instagram her nicki
(47:45):
rosa poem about you know, it's it's it's hard to
have remembrances as a black child, you knows, and how
the happiness that can exist as a child and just
the simplicity of your family being together despite all the
things that others would write about as trauma. And obviously
ego tripping is her you know signature poem.
Speaker 2 (48:06):
Yeah, we need to we need to read a lot
of Nikki. We need we can lean into Nikki in
we got to lean in so yeah, yeah, absolutely, okay,
And two of your favorite children's books, The Friends by
Rosa Guy, and I loved this book so much as
a kid.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I never forgot it, and I I've even read it
as an adult. And it's about a girl who's Caribbean
American her her mom dies of breast cancer. My mom
died of breast cancer when I was young, so I
think that's why the book resonated with me. And it's
her coming of age in a public school, living in Harlem,
(48:42):
with her with her dad, and it's very powerfully written,
incredibly beautiful. I'm going to share one that just stayed
with me. I would I wouldn't if someone asked me
necessarily call this a favorite book, but it affected me
in the way that I still remember the last line
of the book. And I read it when I was
very very young. It's a book called Ann and the Lion,
which you may remember also or Androcules and the Lion,
(49:05):
and it's about a little boy's encounter with a lion.
And I don't remember all the details of the book,
but the last line of the book is and Andy
took the book back to the library. In other words,
the entire book had been a fantasy world. He was
in reading a book, so we were reading a book
(49:26):
that someone was about someone's experience reading a book, and
I've never forgotten that line. I don't think i've ever
even encountered the book again since I read it when
I was seven or eight, and I loved it so
much because that's how I feel about reading, and that's
how I felt about the library. You know, she just
entered this other world so much so that you thought
it was real, that it felt like it was real
to you, and that always stayed with me as kind
(49:48):
of the descriptor of my relationship with books and with
libraries as well.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
That is so great. I'm going to go find those
two books. Thank you so much, Cherylyn, Thank you again
for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
This was great.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation that you'll come
back for more. Please subscribe, rate and review where you
find your podcasts and tell your friends. For more parenting
info and advice, please check out the Ground Control Parenting
website at Wwwgroundcontrolparenting dot com. You can also find us
on Facebook and Instagram at ground Control Parenting and on
LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis. Until the next time, take
(50:30):
care and thanks for listening,
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