Why are white people so often unaware of racism and white privilege?

Tackling an issue like this is like kicking a nest of rattlesnakes. I was recently asked this question in an on-line forum and Í am very unlikely to please everyone with my answer no matter what I say. However, I think it is an honest question that deserves a real answer. 

I can easily see how it seems preposterous to people of color that most white people in highly developed, multicultural societies in the twenty-first century remain almost entirely ignorant of and oblivious to racism and white privilege. I mean haven’t we just spent the better part of a century learning the hard way about these issues? The civil rights movement came and went and we learn about it in school. We work, study and live with people of color—well, many of us do—so why does it seem that we are no wiser than we were seventy years ago? 

Original creative commons image by jamesapfairlie of flickr.com

Are white people just self-centered and willfully ignorant? That’s the question I hear behind the confusion of people of color when they ask how it is possible that white people still don’t get it. 

So, here goes. I’m a white person. And I honestly agree that most white people—including myself for an embarrassing number of years—are unaware of both white privilege and most of what constitutes racism. That’s the sad truth. But the other side of it that I have to say is that it isn’t because we are self-centered or willfully ignorant. It has to do with lack of experience and perspective. It is an honest lack of understanding. 

Let me start by illustrating the problem on my own sorry self. When I was a college student in the 1990s I thought that African Americans were constantly going on and on about racism even though the worst of it had been left in the past. I had nothing against black people. I grew up in a very rural place and the only African American I saw growing up was my mother's friend from college who came to visit. 

And I was brought up in a very anti-racist family. My mother was the only white student made an honorary member of the Black Students Association at her college in Michigan. This was not because my mother was a great activist for civil rights or something of the sort. It was simply because as a young girl thrown out of her home at the age of seventeen (in 1968), she crossed a bridge between St. Joseph to Benton Harbor and got herself a room to rent. I have a hard time seeing my mother, who has never been a big risk taker, in this role, but that’s what happened. 

So, this was my claim to lack of racism when I was a young white liberal. My mother was open-minded at a time when very few white people were. I, on the other hand, grew up in a rural, even isolated, place in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. I was told that people of color are just as good as anyone and that racism is bad. And I learned the history of civil rights and all that came before. It was history. I thought it was quite interesting, but I also thought it was over.

Thus—as I said—in college myself in the 1990s, I silently thought my African American classmates were a bit obsessed with the issue. I never said anything. I tried to be supportive, but I didn't really understand. I thought it was because of past trauma, because so many white people wanted to whitewash the past. I had no idea how much of it was still happening. I had no idea of the white privilege all around me.

I could very well say that this is because I am actually physically blind. I am. I could not see people's facial expressions and so there are certain social things that go over my head at the best of times. And perhaps a white person with as much desire to understand as I had could have understood sooner, had they been visually observant. but I couldn't be visually observant and the fact is that most white people are not even if they can see well. It is not willful lack of seeing, however. It is truly lack of understanding. It took me many years and some hard knocks to get it--at least to the degree that I have "gotten it.”

One such hard knock was spending several months studying in Zimbabwe at a time when race was a very hot subject. I walked down the street and felt like I wasn't white but rather neon-colored. I was harassed doing nothing—going to a store, hanging out with my Zimbabwean journalist friends. I applied for an internship and was yelled at and demeaned by an editor over a tiny mistake in my application. I was not angry. It was a few months, not a lifetime. It was a small country, not a bastion of wealth and power like my homeland in America. I could walk away any time I wanted to and I came to understand the first bit about privilege. Privilege is not being harassed just for being, not being yelled at over a triviality. Privilege is being able to walk away from such a situation and go back to a life where that won’t happen.

Then I spent a year following children in a racially segregated school in Central Europe to make a documentary. I spent another few years writing about ethnic conflict in the Balkans. And then the one thing that I think can really change a person's understanding happened. My family became racially mixed. 

Now when I walk into a school with my children or just down the street, I am no longer a "normal" white person. It comes up in a myriad of ways—constantly. And it's exhausting. I know the difference because when I walk down the street alone, it is different. And I know that it isn't long dead history.

But it took all that. It took coming from a family that was open with parents who vehemently wanted me to understand, it took trying out being the only person of my color at a night club in a country with racial tension, it took studying racial and ethnic conflict intensively and in the end it took being part of a family that isn't all white in a country that thinks it isn't racist but is.

One little example. My son is five and in preschool. He has a best friend named Johnny and they are inseparable. But they also fight. And my son is slightly bigger, so when they push Johnny falls down. It has happened twice now in two years that Johnny has been physically hurt in one of these incidents. Once he had a goose egg on his forehead. This time, he had a raw pink scrape on his back from falling onto the Lego pile at preschool. Another boy who is quite trustworthy saw the incident. He said both boys were pulling at a toy and then my son pushed Johnny and Johnny fell on the Legos. There is no real controversy over what happened. I expressed sympathy and my son had no evening video for two days and lost his allowance for a week. And Johnny’s mother is up in arms. She sends me hate mail and detailed photos of her son’s scrape. She has been telling other parents that my son is evil and violent. She tells me that she teaches her son to hit back, so that he won’t become a victim. She is angry and I can’t possibly belittle it. I was bullied terribly as a child. I won’t ever turn my back on a situation that could possibly be bullying. 

But here’s the thing. My son is the only non-white kid in his class. The teachers say he is no more violent than any of the other kids. One boy is known for staying out of the scrapping. But both my son and Johnny are fighters and they tussle and push and sometimes someone gets hurt. The teachers insist that my son isn’t a problem and the boys still want to play together, even though Johnny’s mother has made the school separate them. 

She teaches her son to hit back, but I can’t afford to do that. I must teach my son to be careful and meek. I don’t even teach him to stand up for himself with loud words and a strong stance. I tell him strenuously that he must not push and shove at school. There are serious consequences both at home and at school. First off, he has lost the ability to play with his best friend. He’s five, so I don’t tell him what the consequences may be when he’s older. But I know. 

I know how many young men and boys of color are shot, arrested and jailed for the tiniest infractions. I know that society will not give him the same leeway it will give Johnny. I know that Johnny’s mother can scream and yell at me in the schoolyard and Johnny can watch and learn that this is how to solve conflicts. And when he grows up if he yells at another parent, nothing much will happen. But I cannot yell back even though it is well within my feisty temperament and it costs me a great deal to remain calm. Because my son cannot yell at another parent when he is older. CANNOT. Ever. 

I owe him this. I owe him a good role model because for a man of color to become loud in this society is hugely dangerous and would result in much greater response from authorities.

This is what I now know about white privilege. By becoming the parent of a non-white child, I lost a bit of that privilege. I lost the ability to respond in an argument with an aggressive parent without incurring significant consequences for my child. This is what parents of color know from the get-go that I had to learn. They must raise their children to be more careful, more courteous. It isn’t just a matter of manners. In many places it can significantly affect the chances of survival as a teenager. To be allowed to sometimes be vehement in a discussion with a rude person in public--that is white privilege. A little piece of it at least.

So, I am not as unaware as I once was. But I still have empathy for white people who don't understand this. That may piss you off, but I don't know how to explain it to other white people with words, not words I would have understood and taken under my skin twenty years ago. Many white people will read my description of the problem at my son’s preschool above and still be confused about why that was about white privilege. They’ll scratch their heads, even though I just put it as clearly as it can possibly be put. 

I cannot tell my former self these things in simple terms and if I couldn't hear it then, there are few people who can. I wanted to learn and to understand. I wanted to "see" in that way and I might as well have been physically blind twice over. I could not "see" without experience.

This is why white people are unaware. Because they lack experience. They lack understanding. They don't see the social cues going on around them because they are not exposed to the consequences of them. They take much of what is going on for granted. It is not their fault individually that they don't see these things. We are fallible and human and it would help move toward a less racist society if people of color could come to understand that these concepts are not simple for us—that many white people do try.

I try to educate people, to change things for the better. I now live in the Czech Republic. Here the group of color which is most feared and hated is the Roma. They have skin only a shade darker than most Central Europeans. Many Americans can’t tell any difference. But people here can. And that is the identity of my children.  In a few years, my children will be looked at with suspicion when they enter stores. They will be the first Romani students at their primary school because school desegregation is just beginning here. So, I do what I can to educate. 

I volunteered at my children's preschool the other day. Race and ethnicity is so controversial here that the preschool teachers would not let me do a craft and story session on Romani culture. Their faces go blank when I mention it. So, instead I did it on Zimbabwe. I read story books showing black children in nice city houses, playing with toys and making messes just as children do here. I gave them plastic containers and led them in a snappy African drumming session. And at the end I pulled out my red, yellow, white and black paints and mixed them up several batches of gradated brown paint to demonstrate that we are all brown, just different shades of brown. 

The teachers were stunned and excited with new understanding. They had never seen anything like this before. And yet I have no illusions that I have made a dent in racism with these volunteer classes. They are a tiny breath of fresh air against a tide of smog. I do it not because I think I can change other white people or turn around a racist society. I do it because my children are sitting in the class too and any bit of the endless explanation to white people that I can bear is a bit they won't have to. And they are my children and when you're a parent, you bear whatever you can to make the burden of your children lighter. I know about the huge burden of endless explaining to clueless white people that people of color bear. That's one of the things I know about now.

If you explain and try to help white people understand this, you give a gift to the children of your community. It is very hard to know where to begin and it is a very long road to mutual understanding. I hope it may be worth it to some to try.

Walls: A documentary of segregated schools

In 1999 and 2000, I worked with two film students Matthew McLean and Dantia MacDonald to make an independent documentary about the struggle of Romani children for equal education in the Czech Republic. It was one of those hidden stories journalists search for--a significant but largely unknown injustice. At the time, 70 percent of Romani (sometimes called Gypsy) children in the Czech Republic were channeled into special schools for the mentally disabled. Before our documentary only a handful of articles had been written about the problem in the English press. 

I was a young reporter working part time for The Prague Post and I was handed the thick government report on the special schools because no one else wanted to tackle it. But instead of feeling put upon, I saw in it one of the biggest stories of the decade. I spent the next several years writing about the Roma, often about the special schools. And I finished the documentary Walls.

The film was the kind of documentary I'd always dreamed about--raw, a real-life story with "plot" and fiercely rebelious. Public trains provided our film crew transportation and the kitchen floors of ghetto homes gave us our base camps. The result is an incredible story following nine-year-old Karel and fifteen-year-olds Anezka and Pepino as they grapple with the segregated schools and their own growing understanding of their desperate chances in a deeply racist society.

It's been sixteen years now, enough time for another generation to grow up and pass through the schools. Today desegregation is still the hot issue it was then. The names of institutions have been changed to muddy the picture, but much of the problem remains the same as it was then. 

The film remains relevant for all of those reasons, but the way I view it now is quite different. I am no longer a young, idealistic, foreign reporter. I have made this country my home. And I'm a parent of adopted Romani children. I too have been told to put my child in a special school. Now the line between journalist and everyday life has been blurred.

Smrak 3: Gender specific toys and media that promote either ditsy

When my daughter was a baby I thought it would be simple. I would scrimp and save and buy her the best and most beautiful dolls on the market--the big ones with all the accessories, the ones made of good quality materials and none of that cheap plastic that releases toxins. Then she would never want Barbies. End of problem.

Creative Commons image by Thomas Hawk

Right…

Where I live cheap Barbie knock-offs are the most common gift given to children, after candy with artificial coloring. My daughter was given one by the organizers of a nature walk we joined. She has been given these horrid bits of soft, easily breakable, toxic plastic with extreme body-image issues, by relatives and visitors to our home on a regular basis. 

And of course, her friends have real Barbies, which are slightly less likely to fill the house with carcinogenic clutter, but are no better for girls to play with. And that’s usually all they play with. 

Why do I have such an issue with Barbies? You might ask. My daughter is incredibly slim with a perfect figure. She’s not one of the girls in most danger of poor-body-image problems. She’s the type others will envy after all. 

My issue is only partly to do with ridiculously long, skinny legs and waists that look like a pulled taffy. Those are problematic. But the feet permanently bent into the shape of shoes that are harmful to kids’ feet and require women to tiptoe through the world are worse. The focus on clothes, clothes, clothes, shoes, shoes, shoes, makeup, makeup, makeup, hair, hair, hair is simply nauseating. Girls should have other interests as well. 

I know the company has made some Barbie firefighter outfits and other less impractical garb, but these outfits are invariably extra baggy and ridiculous looking. Face it. Anything that actually fits on that doll well wouldn't allow for much freedom of movement in real life. Little girls don’t actually use the firefighter outfits and the focus remains on clothing that obviously allows for no activities beyond primping and attracting sexual interest.

That’s my problem. I have given in to everything being pink. What I can’t abide is the fact that the girl’s section of any toy store is entirely focused on appearance and primping, as if that is the only thing girls can be interested in. Some girls resist it. But my daughter doesn’t. She has a natural knack for these things and I want her to have fun learning to do her hair and dress up. Who doesn’t? It’s fun. 

Creative Commons image by Fortune Cookie of Flickr.com

But I also want her to sometimes do other things. 

On top of toy stores, there are the girl-oriented TV shows. Disney has done a relatively good job with some of their princess movies, despite the close resemblance between Disney princesses and Barbie dolls. At least some of them do things other than primp and they usually use fairly normal voices. 

But these are never the videos my daughter and her friends want to watch most. I made the terrible mistake of buying a Lego Friends DVD to take overseas with us because it claimed to support “diversity” and “friendship.”  The videos make me nauseous. The “friendship” promoted is only that within one’s own little clique and is not open to others. The girls in the video are constantly focused on primping and will often dash back home in the middle of an “adventure” to change clothes or make sure they look dazzling. This is all spelled out in detail and presents such an unhealthy message that as far from English-language videos as we are, I’ve had to disappear it.

The worst part of the video and many others I’ve seen are the little vocalizations that the girl characters emit. There are constant “Ooo!” and “Eeeeh!” noises as if someone is making fun of the women of the 1950s. Except that this is done in all seriousness and presented as girls being pretty and attractive. My daughter now imitates these noises for hours on end.  

When you were refugees

Where I grew up in northeastern Oregon, you sometimes hear a lonely soul remember that our families were once refugees--long ago. There's a fugitive whisper of remembrance when the topic of conversation turns to immigration.

Creative Commons image by Bengin Ahmad

The images and stories of early American immigration are usually fairly heroic. There are the Pilgrims and then the Pioneers. They are portrayed as intrepid explorers facing terrible danger in order to ensure our future.  We read Little House on the Prairie with childlike delight, never noticing that the little girl Laura was an illegal alien because her family was squatting on land that had been guaranteed to Native Americans by law and treaty. We rarely acknowledge the twin forces of hope and need that drove her family to become migrants. 

Today, I live in Central Europe, a land so settled and stolid that you would think it quite understandable that people here have even less empathy for immigrants.

But wait... 

Have you forgotten so quickly? It may sound like ancient history, but it is only a single generation since the land where I stand sent refugees fleeing, risking their lives and the lives of their children--desperate escape.

Creative Commons image by André Hofmeister 

My husband is fifty and he grew up in a village just four miles from the Czech-Austrian border. He remembers well the soldiers who came into the border villages to train children, including him and his younger brother, to watch for possible defecters fleeing their totalitarian homeland. The children were issued binoculars and notebooks by the army and taught to record the license numbers of all strangers. 

Today the Czech Republic is among the most anti-refugee countries in Europe. From newspaper accounts, we have yet to accept one single refugee from Syria. And yet we've had demonstrations condemning the refugees... preventatively. "They are different," the Czechs say. "They are not like us and they will change our culture."

And I fly back in memory.

I was a sixteen-year-old girl, barely old enough to understand and I was an exchange student in Germany just a few miles from the old Fulda Gap. The border was open then but it had only been that way for just three short years. And my best friend was an illegal migrant from Czechoslovakia. He played the guitar and spoke in a beautiful language I couldn't understand. He told stories of a hidden country the world knew little about. The German family where we lived kept him hidden in the basement--a debt paid to a family member left behind on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and still something to be ashamed of.

Uprchlíci

Stillking Films a režisér Martin Krejčí natočili pro UNHCR a agenturu Y&R spot Uprchlíci. Sami jsme byli uprchlíci.

Posted by BIO | OKO on Tuesday, February 23, 2016

(This is a powerful, short clip from a documentary about Czechoslovak refugees risking being shot to flee across the border into Austria in the 1980s. The quote in Czech in the video translates as, "It would be life or death, both or neither of us. That was all I could think of at the time.")

At my German school, I quickly learned not to speak about my friendship with the Czech. It was considered very odd that I would want to befriend such backward people. At home, the host family forbid the Czech man to speak his language to a Czech maid we knew. Everything from the east was considered less-than and possibly dangerous.

Today that man is a father of three with his own house and a teaching job. And he is afraid of refugees.

A cousin of my host family also came around sometimes, a guy from East Germany with intense fierce eyes. It was the family secret that his mother had been accidentally left behind, when the family fled from the east twenty-five years earlier. I thought he hated me because I was an American--the way is eyes would bore into me. 

Creative Commons image by Freedom House of Flickr.com

He wouldn't talk about it, but the others said he had fled over the Czechoslovak-Austrian border before it was open. He had escaped through that net of children with binoculars and soldiers with automatic weapons to join his aunt's family in the west. He had risked his life when he was little older than me--still a kid--because it was the only hope he could see in the world.

I will never forget the look in his eyes. I have seen it now many times over and I know now that he did not hate me. It was just fear, desperation, confusion and the expectation that I would hate him. You see the same look in the eyes of refugees today, people who have been forced to run from their homes by war, starvation, imprisonment or oppression. They are not entirely without understanding. They know that many people where they are going will fear and despise them. And yet they have to go, and so their eyes come to have that look of intensity. 

Junk food and people who feed it to my kids: Smrak 2

One day in Oregon, my kindergartner got off the school bus all hyped up with excitement. Her teacher was sweet and my little girl rode the bus with her best friend. It was lovely to see her doing so well.

She told me they had eaten green Jello at the end of the day and she loved it. Then I was worried. She often has adverse reactions to food coloring. 

A half an hour later she was shaking all over and screaming desperately, “I can’t stop! I can’t stop!” I held her on my lap, cursing inside. It took three hours before she could stop shaking and sobbing.

"Candy!" - Creative Commons image by Jeff of Flickr.com

When I say my child has allergies to food coloring and preservatives, most other parents sniff and change the subject. It’s like ADHD. Parents supposedly make up food-coloring problems to cover for bad parenting… or so they say. If I protest, they demand a doctor’s note, knowing full well that the medical establishment doesn’t look into this type of issue. 

One parent I know does understand though. He has a child with even worse reactions to food additives. His daughter had debilitating eczema as an toddler and they had her tested for allergies but the tests came back negative. Doctors told them it wasn’t allergies and they wanted to proscribe a pharmacy full of random drugs that “might help.” But the parents started to notice a correlation between the child’s problems and packaged food. 

After a consultation with a naturopath, they cut out all processed food and all non-organic food from their family diet. They went extreme. They make their own cheese, bread, crackers, cereal, sweets… everything. They buy only organic raw materials. It’s a huge amount of work. 
And their daughter is free of eczema. 

Scientists know that pesticides, chemicals released from packaging, preservatives, additives and food dyes are not good for us, but they are only a “little bit” not good for us. We can supposedly handle a certain level of toxicity. But some children are like canaries in a coal mine. They fall first, showing us that the concentration of harmful substances is accumulating. Every chemical has it’s maximum safe limit of parts per million, but no one has studied the effect of the maximum “safe” level of a hundred different somewhat toxic chemicals at once. 

Add to that the fact that our bodies evolved over millennia in which simple carbohydrates were hard to come by and most people today naturally crave sweets and other simple carbohydrates. Sugar acts on the body much the same way as an addictive drug. 

Then we are asked by the modern parenting movement to engage in “child-led feeding” because that is supposedly the “humane” way to parent--leaving children on their own to deal with dozens of unseen toxic chemicals and carbohydrate cravings programmed into their DNA during the Stone Age.

I keep a pretty good kitchen, not spectacular but decent—tortillas, chili, enchiladas, soups galore, spaghetti, curry, lasagna, stir fry, pizza, stew, salads of every description, dumplings, gravy, potatoes, baked fish… And sweets? Famous chocolate cake, pies beyond count, cookies, muffins and even homemade ice cream. 

My kids complain of course. They don’t like food that isn’t beige or sweets that don’t come in a shiny package. Like every other kid. But they are used to the fact that I win in the end, so mostly they eat it—while putting their approved least-favorite foods (mushrooms, olives, eggplant) on the edge of their plates.

That is most of the time, when they haven’t recently been at a friend’s house or had a discussion with other kids at school about food. At those times they refuse to eat and then engage in screaming fits when they aren’t allowed desert after not eating dinner. 
The situation isn’t any better on the other side of the world where we now live in the Czech Republic than it is in Oregon. I put a lot of effort into obtaining and growing food that isn’t saturated in chemicals. Then my kids go to friends’ houses and return full of chips and candy. 

Another reason their friends don’t come to our house: cookies, hot chocolate, homemade ice cream and popcorn are “stupid” and “boring.” Oh, and they “don’t drink water or juice.” Ever. According to the neighborhood kids, the only liquid they consume is pop. 

Creative Commons image by Felix M of Flickr.com

I tried volunteering with the school to put together a play day for the kids. They wanted me to run the refreshment stand, which consisted of handing out the Czech equivalent of Twinkies to the kids. I suggested I could bake some brownies, but the others all frowned at me and shook their heads. One of the mothers lectured me, “The whole point is to have snacks that the kids will actually eat. We know they’ll eat these.” 

Despite this, many parents do actually talk about healthy food but their most common phrase about food is “just this once” and every day is an exception. Some parents strain the vegetables out of soup before even giving it to their kids. They have given up on any semblance of healthful meals, because that is the only way to avoid conflict.

I’m less judgmental about what others do than you might think, given that I really do care about the health and my daughter has sensitivities to some additives. The thing is that I know how much conflict it causes. Who wants all that conflict in their dinner table? 

But here’s my question. Why is there conflict? 

Kids will eat vegetables—and quite readily—if they are fresh and appetizing and the child hasn’t been surrounded by unhealthy peer pressure or addictive sugars. I had absolutely no problem with my kids eating until they started attending preschool and seeing more of other kids. Adults were usually astonished at how well they ate even as stubborn toddlers and the fact that they would ask for salad when they had the nibbles.

If kids are told that “vegetables” are overcooked lumps of broccoli and brussles sprouts, of course they won’t want to eat them no matter what their environment. But neither will anyone else. 

Even this past week my kids were sure they wouldn’t like beet salad with nuts, kale, tomatoes and feta cheese in it and there were plenty of other good things for them to eat, so we didn’t waste it on them. But after a weekend without anyone pushing junk food, they asked for the beet salad and ate it eagerly. (It really is a treat. Bake the beets in thin strips and add lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil. Yum.)

But when addictive foods and junk are too prevalent they will refuse even their favorite meals, like spaghetti. They are still children and it is hard enough for adults to stop and realize what your body really needs. Children are not magically “more in touch.” In fact, amid the frenzy of play and the confusion of learning the social world, the opposite is often true.

My son now likes to say that at least he can have food coloring, because he doesn’t have the same sensitivities as my daughter. I attempt to explain to them both that it isn’t a question of one kid who can have them and another who can’t. It’s harmful to both of them, but one has more immediate reactions. 

It’s more difficult when my kids ask why their friends can eat chips and candy for lunch and then have white noodles with ketchup washed down with pop for dinner and they can’t. I don’t like to be negative in front of my kids and I don’t think their friends' parents are “bad” which is how my kids would interpret the full explanation with their childish ideas of absolutes. But in the end I have to tell them that part of the job of being a mother is making sure they are protected from harmful things, even if others don’t do the same.

Smrak: the techno-social malaise that makes rational living next to impossible

We know what is healthy and responsible. Why then is everything in our society engineered to undermine our attempts to live a healthy life?

I’m fed up with conflicting messages. 

“Everyone should exercise at least one hour every day; get eight hours of sleep; spend at least four hours with their children doing homework, having family meals and authentically connecting; you have to work and commute at least ten hours to have any chance at a successful career; and cook homemade food, for heaven’s sake, unless you want to doom your children to early death by cancer.” Sociologists and scientists give dire warnings of the consequences of a slip in any of those departments. 

Creative Commons image by Riley of Flickr.com

Then they add, “And it is essential that you make time to take care of yourself because otherwise you will be ineffective at all other tasks.”

Now wait just a blessed minute! 

You already used up every single hour in every single day with the first sentence. There are no more hours left for taking care of yourself--let alone taking care of an older relative, cleaning, keeping up social relationships, paying taxes or bills or even shopping for food (unless you count that as “time with the kids,” which we all know is hypocrisy.)

And those are just the bare basics. What about sending holiday cards? Are you nuts?
It isn’t just about time. But that’s often the crux when the issue is the adult lifestyle. You should exercise. REALLY! It’s essential. And if you want any chance at success in that competitive career, you had better devote more time to it. 

Got kids? Tough. If you can’t keep up a high-powered career because you insist on a bit of time for exercise or family, you’re making minimum wage. Your kids are eligible for the free lunch program! 

And it’s full of carcinogens. 

"Shame on you for being a leach on society!"

It’s hard enough to live a healthy and responsible lifestyle in this day and age. Exercise, healthy eating, meaningful work, being kind to others, pitching in for your community, doing your duty in recycling and responsible shopping, taking care of yourself… These things are often contradictory. 

Creative Commons image by Abigail G of Flickr.com

Add being a parent to that and the struggle becomes a war. It’s like Mama against the world—TV, video games, preservative-infused packaged food, the latest fashions, advertising… You name it, it’s lined up to produce parent-child battles and undermine your efforts for basic health and sanity. 

I’m going to coin a term here—smrak.

It’s like smog, except of the techno-social variety. The word “smrak” comes from two Czech words—”smrad” meaning stench and “mrak” meaning cloud. That’s how the technological and social environment feels to a parent trying to bring up kids with health and conscience. It's all the contradictory messages about what you must do and it's the plethora of obstacles put in your path--largely by other humans or by machines made by humans.

I’m going to devote a couple of posts to the different aspects of smrak--not to depress you, but rather to acknowledge what we’re all dealing with. 

The basic elements of srmak for parents are:

Smrak 1: Screen addiction and its pushers
Smrak 2: Junk food and people who give it to my kids
Smrak 3: Gender specific toys and media that promote either ditsy or violent
Smrak 4: The disconnect from nature
Smrak 5: A generation living in bubbles of bland sameness

(I’ll add links as the posts are done, so you click on them once they’re highlighted. You can also give suggestions for other aspects of smrak in the comments.)

When fellow parents are struggling to live in a healthy and responsible way, let’s support one another without so much judgment. None of us is perfect and we can do much better if we know we’re all battling smrak of one kind or another.

Smrak 1: Screen addiction and its pushers

I joke about being a Luddite but in reality I love technology. I’m legally blind and computers really do make the difference between freedom and imprisonment for many of us with disabilities. Many technologies are also essential for increasing the ecological sustainability of our lifestyles. 

Creative Commons image by  Lars Plougmann 

I even love the internet and social media. Social media is reason we have a serious presidential candidate in the United States who discusses issues of interest to people with regular incomes for the first time in my lifetime. The prevalence of social media has opened up opportunities for small businesses, homeschoolers, social justice activists and even organic farmers like never before. If we do ever find a large-scale solution to climate change, I believe it will be spread and activated through social media.

I’m not against technology. 

I’m just against kids being connected to some sort of electronic media more than SEVEN hours each day on average. That’s a staggering statistic. It’s often half of all awake time for kids. 
Yes, media is immediate, colorful, eye-catching, flexible and dynamic. It gives you the feeling of instant control. Change the channel, skip, scroll down, click a link, friend and unfriend. It’s all right there in a split second. No self-regulation necessary, no self-control required, no need to be flexible yourself and no time to notice slower things.

A terrifying phenomenon is building in this generation--people who don’t know how to deal with non-virtual reality. It isn't just the obvious stuff, like not knowing how to grow food or cook or get around without a map navigation system (although those are significant issues). It’s also the essential ability to observe the world in real time, to connect with one’s self and with the natural environment. It’s the ability to just be without the jitters reminiscent of an addict in need of a fix. 

Creative Commons image by  Devon Christopher Adams

You might say I should just manage my kids’ screen time and rest secure in the knowledge that at least my kids will gain technology skills without becoming addicted. But any of you who have actually tried this will be chuckling.

Easier said than done.

My kids are still in preschool and I am already under fierce pressure to allow them at least several hours of screen time every day. I attended a seminar on bullying prevention because my kids are in a high-risk category for being bullied, and the only concrete bit of advice the anti-bullying “expert” speaking had was: “Be sure to allow your kids to watch the fashionable TV shows and play enough video games, so they'll be up-to-date on what will be discussed at recess.” 

My kids report that some of their classmates already have smart phones. In preschool! For my second-grade ESL students, a smart phone is a basic school supply, like they used to have personal pencil sharpeners. 

Creative Commons image by  Yan Chi Vinci Chow

When my kids were toddlers, I eagerly awaited the day when their friends would visit us and they could visit their friends. But now their friends don’t want to visit us because, “the TV isn’t on.” And when I check or even just ask what they are doing at a friend’s house, there is no other activity other than TV, video games or Barbie dolls in front of the TV, in the case of girls. Their reading abilities are scanty for Facebook yet, but that won’t last long.

I’m going to catch some flak for mentioning that some other parents are becoming part of the problem on this one. But the thing is that most of these parents who put the kids in front of the TV or video games will tell you they don’t like to do it. They feel pressured to do it and they are exhausted. They usually insist to themselves that they are doing it "just this once" to save their sanity. Like me, they want their kids to have friends and be happy and this seems to be the price you have to pay. 

It’s a spiral of smrak, the term I am coining for the techno-social malaise of today's world, leading to kids spending most of their time in front of screens and having few real-world interests or skills. 

I’m not judgmental so much as tearing my own hair out. We need to stand together and stand up for a healthy amount of technology and other diversified activities for kids. We can’t use electronics as a way to avoid discussing life and health with our kids “just this once”--every single day. We must band together as humans of all ages to take back our lives and our minds. 

Technology is a wonderful gift. Let’s use it wisely.

Raising international boys: Peace soldiers not afraid to cry or care

He loves toy soldiers. He likes the swift, bracing feeling of their uniforms. He respects the steadfast pace of their tank tracks. He enjoys the tantalizing idea of their weapons.

He stands in bittersweet sorrow at the side of the road where a shrine marks the remembrance of a family for a soldier dead these seventy years--fled from an occupied homeland and lost on the eastern front. He vows that he will smite all those who harm children and invade small countries. 

Five years old and he asks me to remember to bring rubber gloves, so we can pick up litter on the way home from school. 

On the weekend we go to the grandparents and sit around the table in the kitchen where Nazi soldiers once stole the milk and left our grandfather hungry as a little boy. 

"Don't push me!" my little son sobs when his sister jabs an elbow into his middle while they wait for Grandma's soup. He clobbers her on the head with his spoon.

"Boys don't cry!" Grandpa bellows. 

The little boy stares at him with wide shocked eyes. It is possible--though unlikely--that this is actually the first time he has heard that old adage.

At our house, boys do cry and jabbing and hitting are the more serious offenses. Gritting my teeth, I handle the situation diplomatically. 

After dinner Grandma hands out gifts to the children, since we weren't here during the holidays--earrings for the girl, a nerf pistol for the boy. They are both very happy. Who am I to complain?

And yet I know that in this adopted country where we live (the Czech Republic) the chance that one's son will become a soldier and go off into a terrible war--where he may be killed or lose his sense of humanity--is minuscule. They don't understand that for American boys in families without wealth the stats are far different. He will not always be a boy here. He is a US citizen because of me and someday he will be a young man and a target for recruiters. 

I have two new teenage ESL students. More boys. They bring in an article from their English study magazine. It's about world peace. I ask open ended questions to get them using English grammar. Do you want peace? Yes. Do you think we should have a military? Well, only a very small one. If we have a small military, who will tackle an evil force such as Hitler when it comes again? The UN.

I do understand their perspective, but one of them is headed to the US as an exchange student in a few months. I have a talk with him about it, explaining about how Americans who study only American history see these things differently, how such well-reasoned statements can be considered highly controversial. 

Later my five-year-old is still playing with his tank and toy soldiers. He loves the sound effects of war. But when we write down wishes for the next year to put into our special wish jar, he says, "I wish all soldiers would be careful not to hurt anyone." 

And when scolded, even gently he cries. And that is okay because boys will be boys. A hug will fix it.

How do I explain the world of violence to small children? Or do they know already? Sometimes they ask the most discerning questions. I could swear they know the score all too well.

"Mama, why do presidents get to make wars?"