Navigating Today, Preparing for Tomorrow with Sherrilyn Ifill

In this powerful episode from the Ground Control Parenting archives, Carol sits down with renowned civil rights leader and legal scholar Sherrilyn Ifill for a deeply meaningful conversation about what it means to parent during times of uncertainty and division.

Sherrilyn shares how we can help our children navigate a world filled with misinformation, stay rooted in truth, and build resilience by staying connected to our history and community. She offers thoughtful, practical advice for raising socially conscious kids and protecting your family’s values in the face of societal change.

This episode is filled with wisdom, motivation, and hope. Sherrilyn reminds us that this is “planting time”—a moment to invest in our children’s futures by nurturing strength, integrity, and purpose in their lives by modeling these virtues in our own.

If you’re looking for guidance, inspiration, and a reminder that your parenting matters deeply in the world right now, you won’t want to miss this one.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, ground Control Parenting listeners. This week I'm bringing back
a powerful episode from the archives, my conversation with the
brilliant constitutional law scholar and civil rights leader CHERYLN. Eifel.
It's called Navigating Today, Preparing for Tomorrow Post election Parenting.
In this episode, charyln offers thoughtful, clear eyed advice on

(00:21):
how we can help our children and ourselves make some
sense of the current political landscape and stay grounded during
these uncertain times. Her words and advice, recorded last fall
remain just as insightful today. Whether you are revisiting this
conversation or hearing it for the first time, I know
you'll find it as inspiring and relevant as ever.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
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.

(01:11):
We shall endure to steal your senses in that lonely
twilight of your winter's grief.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
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 PAULI Murray,

(01:41):
and the reader of that poem is my special guest
on this bonus episode, Charylyn Iphil. 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

(02:03):
named her one of the one hundred most influential people
in the world. Shortly after the election this year, Cherylyn
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. Now. Over the years with Ground

(02:25):
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 his supporters work
to discredit and destroy the concepts of diversity, equality, and
inclusion in our country. I was just wrapping my head

(02:48):
around how to write about this when they 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.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Cherylyn.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Welcome to Ground Control Parenting.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Thank you so much, Carol. I'm thrilled to be talking
with you.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
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

(03:26):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
So my first.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Question, how should parents talk with their children about the
election outcome without focusing on their anxiety about it?

Speaker 2 (03:52):
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

(04:13):
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

(04:36):
we needed to be and who we were supposed to
be in the face of that kind of tragedy. Mostly,
what I 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 worked

(04:57):
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 so

(05:20):
even just teaching your kids that you can hold a
couple of things in your 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. That means, you know, holding to the things,

(05:44):
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.
It is no matter how many times you say it,
it's impossible for young people to understand the long arc

(06:07):
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
tell them that things do change, that I have seen it.
I tell my kids all the time, And you know,

(06:30):
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, So
be ready.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
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 have our

(07:05):
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 their own conclusions. How
do we do this in this in this current state
where so much information can be trusted.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
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

(07:43):
so that they have their 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

(08:03):
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

(08:25):
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 important. I
think taking them to the library so they can experience
that space when they then, you know, hear controversies about

(08:49):
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 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

(09:10):
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

(09:31):
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

(09:51):
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

(10:13):
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 1 (10:36):
Absolutely, Oh, I love everything that you have just said.
I am sitting in front of a 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

(10:59):
speed 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

(11:23):
or may not have been altered. We can't know this is.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
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 Law and Democracy there in twenty twenty five.
And the fourteenth Amendment is I think the most important

(11:47):
provision 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

(12:07):
in any case, the fourteenth Amendment has had a transformative
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 debates that we're reading the report that you know,

(12:29):
President Johnson's you know, kind of ambassador to the South
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 Ku Klux Klan hearings that
were held in eighteen seventy one as black people described
what they were suffering under clan violence, which led to

(12:49):
the passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act. I try
to ensure that they hear the voices of people from
that period and not just people writing about what those
voices has 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

(13:10):
of my course is that we have to feel that
we are empowered to become founders and framers of a
new America, 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,

(13:33):
It's why the civil rights movement is so important. And
reading actual excerpts from people involved in campaigns during the
Civil 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,

(13:55):
and the women's auxiliary and the way in which, you know,
the attempt to buy off a Philip Randolph by offering
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

(14:16):
the thirties who became the parents and grandparents of those
who are in the Civil Rights movement. So showing people
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 them a children's diction a big fat children's dictionary,

(14:37):
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
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 used

(14:58):
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
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

(15:19):
things are also helpful because it's going to give a
sense of educational agency to our children, which I think
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

(15:41):
own education. I spend all this 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 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 watch the
news every night for shor and my dad was very

(16:02):
politically oriented, as I know your family was, and we
watched the news together, but we were not silent consumers
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 sitting all crinds and stuff. But in many ways
it sharpened our critical faculty, Like we never believed we

(16:22):
were sposed 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 Cronkott and Roger 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

(16:42):
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 1 (16:50):
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, well

(17:10):
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 going

(17:30):
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,

(17:51):
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

(18:12):
humane with one another.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
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 integrated schools, you know,
made great friends with some white kids, and then some

(18:36):
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, at

(18:57):
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 misogynist slurs and stuff,
and kids do that. I've you know, these experiences I've

(19:17):
seen 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 they come and tell you something, you know,

(19:40):
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

(20:00):
that your 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

(20:23):
of conduct 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. What are the steps that you

(20:43):
can take. So 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, to speak to everybody. Now, how they speak
to them maybe at another story, but they don't, you

(21:04):
know what I mean. So I don't worry as much
about 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, it's our kids being

(21:28):
made to feel 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 do it? Just we navigated it, but we

(21:49):
figured out how to do it, and I think they
will too. But I'm much more worried about when things
cross a line, whether the 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

(22:11):
to children who may experience some of this.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Absolutely, So those 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

(22:35):
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

(22:57):
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 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

(23:19):
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 say,

(23:42):
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.

(24:03):
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 2 (24:23):
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 writing from a perspective of like I've
figured it all out. I'm writing from a perspective of,

(24:44):
you know, this is deeply painful for me. 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,

(25:06):
but for everyone. And that's and I'll never stop believing that.
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

(25:28):
is to make you feel disempowered, to make you feel
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

(25:53):
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,
you know, in the White House. You don't live in
the halls of Congress. You really don't. You live in

(26:13):
wherever it is 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

(26:34):
system in your city, 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.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
You have a police chief in your neighborhood. Right. So
I think that we can sometimes forget. And one of
the things I said in the piece was like, you know,
we're not why 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,

(27:11):
And so we watched the show relentlessly. And I don't
think we need to watch the show like that. In fact,
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,

(27:33):
as I said, probably having a greater effect on your life.
The local DA and the chief of police, and the
mayor and the county commissioner are probably having 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

(27:55):
do civic life, which is I think the great unwrap
leveling 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,

(28:16):
for the things we can't change now, is to incubate
the 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

(28:39):
do that with our children, and we should for as
long as we can.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
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 and to inform our children about. That's
that's really really important.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
And you have them walk through what accountability looks like.
You know, you cross the same 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'm going to write to help
me write this letter. You know, we're going to send
this letter in or we're going to send this email

(29:24):
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 1 (29:46):
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 a and so they will
come at this information. Now is a good time to
get smart on all of this, as you have said,

(30:06):
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

(30:30):
if you 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 a 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, it's a.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
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 of the incoming administration.

(31:10):
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 it'll be something, right,

(31:31):
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 all of the i EPs, right,

(31:55):
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 are you a teacher

(32:16):
who a special education teacher? I mean, like 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, but we should remember

(32:39):
in the first Trump administration he did impose tariffs, 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 the basic things now, you know,

(33:02):
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. We know that trying to that hackers,

(33:24):
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 the ATM machines are down or your

(33:44):
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 really pragmatic. And I've talked to people

(34:06):
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.

(34:28):
Something's going 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. May be short term,
but you know, just make sure that you're ready.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
Speaking of inoculation, you also focus on health, which I
thought was really a helpful perspective.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Get the vaccines that you need, now, do it now. 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, 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,

(35:12):
can't even believe I'm saying those words, 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

(35:33):
health insurance and what your health insurance 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

(35:54):
believe that what could you know, what did happen, could happen,
And 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

(36:14):
watch the attack on the Capitol. But I would say,
you know, when we expected something to happen 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
elect right before the election, we had our entire senior
team get satellite phones so that if powers went down,

(36:37):
we would stay in contact. Like That's how prepared we were.
That's the difference between twenty sixteen and twenty twenty. 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,

(36:59):
so you don't have the luxury of engaging in magical thinking, Oh,
it won't 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

(37:21):
try to be ahead of the curve because it's going
to be unpredictable, and I suspect after January twentieth, it's
going to move quickly.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
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

(37:55):
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 2 (38:07):
Now.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
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.

(38:30):
Remember during the pandemic, we just felt better about going
through each day because we were as ready as.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
We need it to be. Yeah, I think that that
sense of preparation is important because one of the things
that is most destabilizing and frightening is uncertainty, you know.
And I think we're going to be made to feel
uncertainty by kind of the national zeitgeist, because we're going

(38:58):
to be hearing a lot. And I did say 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, but also

(39:21):
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 do too,

(39:45):
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, people

(40:07):
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

(40:29):
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

(40:51):
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,

(41:14):
and not give undue attention to the things that drain us.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Oh, absolutely, so so well, said Cherylyn. 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

(41:39):
strength of our endurance in order to encourage our children
to do so as well?

Speaker 2 (41:45):
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

(42:06):
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,

(42:29):
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

(42:52):
endoors 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

(43:15):
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

(43:35):
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,
all of it. So the lowest period for black people.

(43:57):
And so that's what she said. She thought we were
entering an 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 Nadir? You know, do we just

(44:18):
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 nadeer and what I took from this new

(44:40):
study of the period after this panel with Isabel 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.

(45:03):
The truth 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, we would all love to live

(45:25):
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 and shut down, But it is planting time.

(45:45):
And that's what 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

(46:08):
strong spiritual 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

(46:29):
the lesson I took from it, and we should remember
that 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 the
first black president, or all of those things we think
of as accomplishment. But actually creating the first Black labor
union with the Sleeping car Porters, as I referred to earlier,

(46:50):
was a huge accomplishment. And you know, the Harlem Renaissance
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.

(47:11):
Sometimes we're planting. And if this is planting time, that
is work. That's good work. That is good work. And
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 can't planting time? That is

(47:32):
that should resonate with all of us and stay with
us as we gear ourselves up for the next four years. Cherylyn,
I'm so happy that you came to talk with me.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
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 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 any version of the Lightning Round,
the GCP Lightning Round. I have two questions for you. Your

(48:05):
favorite poem or saying.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
I do love this Polymurray poem that I that I selected,
and I love I love Shake Shakespeare's sonnets. You know, uh,
you know, I have a very eclectic mix of of
of poetry that I love. And obviously we just lost
Nikki Giovanni. Oh and I posted on Instagram her nicki

(48:28):
rosa poem about you know it's it's it's hard to
have remembrances as a black child, you know it's 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 1 (48:48):
Yeah, we need to we need to read a lot
of Nikki.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
We need we can to lean into Nikki in we
got to lean in. So yeah, absolutely, okay.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
And two of your favorite children's books, The Friends by
Rosa Guy and I loved this book so much as
a kid.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I never forgot it, and I've even read it as
an adult. It's about a girl who's Caribbean American. 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 with her

(49:25):
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 Andy and the Lion, which you
may remember also or Androcules and the Lion, and it's

(49:48):
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 that someone

(50:09):
was about someone's experience reading a book. And I've never
forgotten that line. 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, you 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 of the descriptor

(50:33):
of my relationship with books and with libraries as well.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
That is so great. I'm going to go find those
two books. Thank you so much, Chrylyn. Thank you again
for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
This was great.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation that you'll come
back for more. Please subscribe, rate and review where you
find your podcast, and tell your friends. For more parenting
info and advice, please check out the Ground Control Parenting
website at wwwgroundcontrol parenting 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,

(51:13):
take care and thanks for listening.