Topics: Race in the Media
Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children's Defense Fund,
of leading voices for social change.
Adults often start conversations with children by asking them what they want to be when they grow up. We tell them to dream big, and encourage them by giving them pretend doctor's kits, fancy dress-up clothes and other toys that let them imitate adult life.
Now, imagine you're a parent. In the middle of your neighborhood, there is a playground. Of course you'd want that playground to be a joyful, creative space. If your neighborhood were a crowded public housing development in the middle of a city, the chance to bring your children to a small outdoor sanctuary where they could stretch their bodies and imaginations would be even more precious. You might hope the jungle gym would include a pretend steering wheel, storefront, or spaceship, like the equipment in thousands of playgrounds across the country. Imagine, then, if instead the "sanctuary" the city provided for your children featured a pretend jail.
That's just what happened in New York City, where for years toddlers living in a violence-racked neighborhood in Brooklyn were encouraged to dream they were in jail at a city-funded playground. When the Reverend Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson, the executive director of the Children's Defense Fund's New York office, first heard about the design of the playground at the Tompkins Houses in Bedford Stuyvesant this spring, she had to visit and see it for herself. The photographs she took show the shameful truth: sure enough, the center of the play structure featured a bright orange square with the word "JAIL" in bold capital letters, cutout bars on a pretend window, and the image of an exaggerated lock on a child-sized door. She immediately called a local reporter to add her voice to the parents and community advocates demanding to have the playground jail removed. As soon as the story began receiving media attention, workers quickly arrived to try to paint over the words and images. But the damage had already been done.
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Someday, maybe there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit.
~ Eric Erickson
If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out..... If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.
~ Marian Wright Edelman
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