Segregation At An Early Age

The national backdrop against which this report appears is one marked by racial turbulence—the Movement for Black Lives, the ongoing backlash against Muslim Americans, the movement for mass de-carceration, talk of immigrant deportation forces, and more. Racial attitudes and institutional practices continue to shape crucial outcomes from the makeup of our social networks to relations between police and the communities they “serve and protect” to the contours of our national politics.

Like all of us, each in our way, our children are taking it in. A recent report by the Southern Poverty Leadership Center found that the 2016 presidential campaign “is producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom.” This past spring, my 7-year-old daughter emerged from her room in tears an hour after bedtime. Why? She was afraid that the wall Donald Trump wants to build would literally divide our multiracial, four-toned family in half.

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