Mary Boney Sheats, my professor in Religious Studies at Agnes Scott College, encouraged me to think about how I wanted to raise my daughter.
She posed the question, “Do you want her to be innocent or righteous?”
My answer: “Righteous!”
I realize now, more than I did then, what is required to be righteous. You can’t be righteous and uninformed. I allowed my daughter to be exposed to much of the injustice and hurt in the world. As a parent I directed her response toward empathy. I offered an alternative to despair: to work for justice with compassion. I let her know it was okay to be angry. I always pointed out the good or, as Mr. Roger’s mom taught us, ‘to watch for the helpers’.
The ‘innocent’ are walled off from the realities of life. Their protected innocence Isolates them from the complexities of the world and puts them at a disadvantage when they near adulthood. Of course, you give children only what is manageable for their developmental age but keeping children unaware of what is wrong or bad in the world leads to an unrealistic perceptions and expectations. I’m also of the mind that protracted innocence is a source of internal turmoil when one eventually confronts both the evil in the world and the shadow side of the self.
At a certain age innocence transforms into piety, a tricky thing, not all bad, but most often the party is misinformed and reduced to simplistic reasoning about complex issues.
All this thinking about innocence and righteousness points me to the ethical dissonance between the political and religious right and political and religious left. The divide comes down to piety (the right) and righteousness (the left).
Now I’m not saying pious people can’t be righteous but it is not a natural partnership. Righteousness implies a passionate commitment to justice and I just don’t see that as a natural consequence of piety.
Today and in the days to come we need a population of critical thinkers who value justice and admit to the complexities of a multicultural world. We need a population able to make difficult decisions not based only on ones self-preservation but with a commitment to universal justice.
We need to raise righteous children.
A more cynical view might call to light the number of those who carry their
“righteous” affectations like a badge of honor that is often tarnished by their deeds.
Good people don’t have to tell you because they show you. Raise children to be good people.
Important thoughts here – do you know about the group at Charis for parents (especially White parents) who want to raise race conscious children? One of the facilitators is Shannon who has two very young children. She writes a blog (Striving Parent) in which she addresses innocence as privilege – it’s quite good, got picked up by Huffington Post and she’s had death threats from some people – I shared it on my Facebook page.
thanks, Linda. just shared the link here.
Here is a link to the blog post Linda referenced:
https://strivingparent.com/2016/09/08/preserving-my-childrens-innocense-is-an-act-of-preserving-white-supremacy/