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Care and Feeding: How should we punish our kid for racist bullying?
I really liked Nicole Chung's response to a tricky parenting question.
My Son Is Bullying His Asian Classmate About the Pandemic. He’s already suspended, but how else should we punish his racism?
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 9-year-old son was recently suspended, and may be expelled, for “teasing” (bullying) an Asian American student. My son harassed the other student and regularly insinuated that he caused the pandemic and got his classmates to join in. I’m appalled. I have no idea where he heard these types of messages, because neither my husband nor I have ever even come close to suggesting anything like that. He only goes to school and comes home, so it’s not like there are other adults in his life he could have heard this from. I’ve never heard any report of him bullying others—he was actually the one being bullied last year! He’s grounded from all electronics for six months, but that doesn’t feel like enough. What is the appropriate punishment for racism?
—Mortified in Maryland
Dear Mortified,
Our kids live in the same country we do. As Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote in her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria,
Resisting racist scapegoating of the type we’ve seen directed at Asians since the pandemic started requires more than the passive hope or assumption that your kid won’t hear such hateful things or believe them if he does. Given the society we live in and the narratives we’re all being exposed to whether we like it or not, helping our kids first recognize and then reject racist lies like this requires our active, ongoing work. There’s no neutral choice or position here: If we’re not challenging and educating our kids about racism, we leave them at risk of perpetuating it—or enabling it, standing by and silently watching while others are harmed. This, also from Tatum’s book, is something I think about a lot, because I know that I also have and will always have work to do in this area:
You wrote asking what the “appropriate punishment” is for racism. It’s not that I think there shouldn’t be consequences for bullying, but your child has already been suspended and may be expelled. If I were you, I don’t think I’d want to get too mired in the task of meting out just the “right” punishment. All the punishment in the world isn’t going to make someone less prejudiced. Even if your kid no longer says racist things because he doesn’t want to get in trouble at home or at school, it’s his thinking you want to change—it would not be great, I’m sure you’ll agree, if he went through the world believing awful things about his fellow human beings and just not voicing them. (And let’s be real: He would probably voice them! At least, he would if the only thing currently keeping him in check is that you’ve taken his iPad.) The question is not so much “How exactly should you punish your son for the one racist thing he’s said that you’ve actually heard about?” but “How are you going to talk with him about the racist thing he did and the other racist beliefs he might be harboring?”
The good news is that you can try to teach him and redirect his thinking. He did a terrible thing, but at 9, he’s probably still reachable. (I do want to warn you that you may have only so long to intervene before he finds his way to a scary part of Reddit or a far-right site focused on recruiting.) Since the example you have is his anti-Asian racism, you can start with that: He should receive the immediate, unequivocal message that racially targeting and blaming Asian Americans for the coronavirus is wrong. He should hear this from you, and you should help him understand why. It sounds like maybe you assumed he would know better just because you never personally encouraged him to be suspicious of or hateful toward Asians. But he clearly needs more than merely the absence of conscious, stated racism—he needs you and others to have real conversations with him about this, to challenge him on his lack of compassion for his classmate as well as his biased thinking, to point out how today’s pandemic scapegoating and attacks are part of this country’s long history of anti-Asian prejudice (which, in turn, can’t be considered without confronting anti-Blackness and the violence and harm done to other communities). You can make it clear that behavior like his could feed hatred and incite violence, that that is the legacy he’s part of when he targets his Asian classmate and gets others to join in.
It’s not too harsh to tell him this—he needs you to give him the truth and to make the implicit explicit. It will take more than one conversation, and that’s OK. These discussions with our kids are meant to be frequent and ongoing, and should increase in nuance and complexity as they are able to understand more. In the end, your son may not actually change his thinking based on what you say, but he should still be told that what he did was racist, that continuing to say and believe such things is racist, and that racist statements and behavior won’t be tolerated at school or in your home.
As a kid, I too was “teased” for being Asian. It started when I was younger than your son. A particular bully lived near me, and after a typical day of having him yell slurs at me during recess (which I think I still might prefer to being accused of causing a pandemic that’s killed millions), sometimes I’d see him around the neighborhood. One afternoon I tried to call him out, albeit feebly, in his mother’s earshot—it was the only time I told an adult what was happening, even in a roundabout way, and I couldn’t tell you what got into me, unless maybe I thought his mom was the one person who’d care about his behavior. She heard me saying he was racist for making fun of my eyes and calling me “names” (I didn’t know to call them slurs). She turned to her son and said, “If this is true, I don’t know where you learned it. I thought you knew better.”
Can you understand when I tell you that, to me, it’s never really mattered where he learned it, or whether he had his Game Boy taken away, or whether his parents punished him at all? What matters is that his mother had a chance to do something that day, with the new information she had. She could have decided to take necessary, ongoing action—perhaps uncomfortable for her and her son, but morally right and potentially life-changing for a lot of people, including him. She could have followed up with meaningful questions, reached out to my parents and our teachers, and, above all, started seriously, intentionally talking with and educating her son about the humanity of all his classmates and why he shouldn’t say or believe racist things. I suspect she did none of this, though I have no proof beyond the fact that he continued being a racist and a bully. The point is, as his parent, she had an opportunity then, just like you have an opportunity now. I hope, for the sake of your kid and countless others, that you take it.
My Son Is Bullying His Asian Classmate About the Pandemic. He’s already suspended, but how else should we punish his racism?
Dear Care and Feeding,
My 9-year-old son was recently suspended, and may be expelled, for “teasing” (bullying) an Asian American student. My son harassed the other student and regularly insinuated that he caused the pandemic and got his classmates to join in. I’m appalled. I have no idea where he heard these types of messages, because neither my husband nor I have ever even come close to suggesting anything like that. He only goes to school and comes home, so it’s not like there are other adults in his life he could have heard this from. I’ve never heard any report of him bullying others—he was actually the one being bullied last year! He’s grounded from all electronics for six months, but that doesn’t feel like enough. What is the appropriate punishment for racism?
—Mortified in Maryland
Dear Mortified,
Our kids live in the same country we do. As Beverly Daniel Tatum wrote in her book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria,
Prejudice is one of the inescapable consequences of living in a racist society. Cultural racism … is like smog in the air. Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent, but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in.Even if your son didn’t hear this garbage at home, the former president spent months shouting about the “China Virus” and the “Kung Flu,” and there are still all the other kids and adults in your son’s life—plus a whole internet out there.
Resisting racist scapegoating of the type we’ve seen directed at Asians since the pandemic started requires more than the passive hope or assumption that your kid won’t hear such hateful things or believe them if he does. Given the society we live in and the narratives we’re all being exposed to whether we like it or not, helping our kids first recognize and then reject racist lies like this requires our active, ongoing work. There’s no neutral choice or position here: If we’re not challenging and educating our kids about racism, we leave them at risk of perpetuating it—or enabling it, standing by and silently watching while others are harmed. This, also from Tatum’s book, is something I think about a lot, because I know that I also have and will always have work to do in this area:
Each of us needs to look at our own behavior. Am I perpetuating and reinforcing the negative messages so pervasive in our culture, or am I seeking to challenge them? If I have not been exposed to positive images of marginalized groups, am I seeking them out, expanding my own knowledge base for myself and my children? Am I acknowledging and examining my own prejudices, my own rigid categorizations of others, thereby minimizing the adverse impact they might have on my interactions with those I have categorized? Unless we engage in these and other conscious acts of reflection and reeducation, we easily repeat the process with our children. We teach what we were taught.[emphasis mine]
You wrote asking what the “appropriate punishment” is for racism. It’s not that I think there shouldn’t be consequences for bullying, but your child has already been suspended and may be expelled. If I were you, I don’t think I’d want to get too mired in the task of meting out just the “right” punishment. All the punishment in the world isn’t going to make someone less prejudiced. Even if your kid no longer says racist things because he doesn’t want to get in trouble at home or at school, it’s his thinking you want to change—it would not be great, I’m sure you’ll agree, if he went through the world believing awful things about his fellow human beings and just not voicing them. (And let’s be real: He would probably voice them! At least, he would if the only thing currently keeping him in check is that you’ve taken his iPad.) The question is not so much “How exactly should you punish your son for the one racist thing he’s said that you’ve actually heard about?” but “How are you going to talk with him about the racist thing he did and the other racist beliefs he might be harboring?”
The good news is that you can try to teach him and redirect his thinking. He did a terrible thing, but at 9, he’s probably still reachable. (I do want to warn you that you may have only so long to intervene before he finds his way to a scary part of Reddit or a far-right site focused on recruiting.) Since the example you have is his anti-Asian racism, you can start with that: He should receive the immediate, unequivocal message that racially targeting and blaming Asian Americans for the coronavirus is wrong. He should hear this from you, and you should help him understand why. It sounds like maybe you assumed he would know better just because you never personally encouraged him to be suspicious of or hateful toward Asians. But he clearly needs more than merely the absence of conscious, stated racism—he needs you and others to have real conversations with him about this, to challenge him on his lack of compassion for his classmate as well as his biased thinking, to point out how today’s pandemic scapegoating and attacks are part of this country’s long history of anti-Asian prejudice (which, in turn, can’t be considered without confronting anti-Blackness and the violence and harm done to other communities). You can make it clear that behavior like his could feed hatred and incite violence, that that is the legacy he’s part of when he targets his Asian classmate and gets others to join in.
It’s not too harsh to tell him this—he needs you to give him the truth and to make the implicit explicit. It will take more than one conversation, and that’s OK. These discussions with our kids are meant to be frequent and ongoing, and should increase in nuance and complexity as they are able to understand more. In the end, your son may not actually change his thinking based on what you say, but he should still be told that what he did was racist, that continuing to say and believe such things is racist, and that racist statements and behavior won’t be tolerated at school or in your home.
As a kid, I too was “teased” for being Asian. It started when I was younger than your son. A particular bully lived near me, and after a typical day of having him yell slurs at me during recess (which I think I still might prefer to being accused of causing a pandemic that’s killed millions), sometimes I’d see him around the neighborhood. One afternoon I tried to call him out, albeit feebly, in his mother’s earshot—it was the only time I told an adult what was happening, even in a roundabout way, and I couldn’t tell you what got into me, unless maybe I thought his mom was the one person who’d care about his behavior. She heard me saying he was racist for making fun of my eyes and calling me “names” (I didn’t know to call them slurs). She turned to her son and said, “If this is true, I don’t know where you learned it. I thought you knew better.”
Can you understand when I tell you that, to me, it’s never really mattered where he learned it, or whether he had his Game Boy taken away, or whether his parents punished him at all? What matters is that his mother had a chance to do something that day, with the new information she had. She could have decided to take necessary, ongoing action—perhaps uncomfortable for her and her son, but morally right and potentially life-changing for a lot of people, including him. She could have followed up with meaningful questions, reached out to my parents and our teachers, and, above all, started seriously, intentionally talking with and educating her son about the humanity of all his classmates and why he shouldn’t say or believe racist things. I suspect she did none of this, though I have no proof beyond the fact that he continued being a racist and a bully. The point is, as his parent, she had an opportunity then, just like you have an opportunity now. I hope, for the sake of your kid and countless others, that you take it.
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anyway, I totally agree with your observation here. The LW needs to teach her son.
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There's a gap in this story, and I don't know the exact shape of it or what it's hiding, but I don't like it.
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My nephew's school will expell for racist behavior after one incident. It's a weird little private school but I do like their stance on 'when we say this is inappropriate we mean it'.
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If this was happening "regularly", and they take it seriously, one does still wonder why they skipped over "talk to parents before it becomes a problem" though. (Assuming this really is the first LW heard if it.)
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The first offense (rather, the first time the school noticed something) was very likely something the teacher only noticed when it spilled offline into tears and "they're picking on me!" If the victim (who is NINE. And outnumbered. Poor kid.) isn't fairly specific about what's going on, the teacher can miss that it's racial, and miss that there is a ringleader driving the bullying someplace exceptionally nasty. So half a dozen kids maybe missed recess and wrote apologies or whatever they do these days, and then went quiet and gradually re-escalated.
Second offense is now. I have a strong suspicion the victim went to their parents, who could call the school and say "This is racist. How long has this been going on?" Then the school looks into it and sees it's been happening for months, and wants to convince the victim's family that they take it seriously.
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In a good school system obviously there's more nuance to something like that. But it's possible that the kid got witnessed by adults for the first time and the district policy is that inflexible.
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Great response from the columnist.