Children with privilege are the only ones who matter.

I will asplain.

I just read this post on Womanist Musings: Oh Oh, Bigots Steamed Because Sheriff Woody Endorsed 'It Gets Better Campaign'.

According to Alan Chambers, an "ex-gay" fellow who spends not inconsiderable portions of his time turning his internalized prejudice onto his fellow GLBP folk, it is saddening and disappointing to see a children's movie character speaking up about something that, to quote a quote, "at this point children have no need to know about."

Where do I start with this?

Firstly, I assume he's talking about the bizarro version of gayhood wherein it is a horrible, horrible curse and everyone who has it struggles with their feelings of abnormalcy and just wishes they could be straight, unless they're complete perverts.

Secondly, he also seems to be talking about the bizarro version of gayhood that magically kicks in at puberty (whereas straight children are straight from the age of four or so).

And thirdly, as usual, the only children that Chambers is worried about are the straight children.

This is a typical claim from bigots who are trying to prevent education in "politically-charged subjects" from happening at an early age. (Ironically, these are usually the same people who believe that children need to learn Christian Creationism in public school science classes.) I read about this frequently on Womanist Musings. White people say that children don't need to learn about racism, because it is just too horrible for their delicate little minds and their innocence needs to be maintained - plus, by teaching them by racism we might encourage them to be racist! Onoez! Of course, "children" is a misnomer -as Renee points out repeatedly, children of color in the United States start learning about racism as soon as they are cognizant enough to understand what the words mean (pretty much as soon as they have a good grasp on English.) So what they're really worried about are white children.

The same argument has been made re: disability. In another post, Renee shares the story of a woman who, in the process of giving birth to her children, sustained an injury that has rendered her unable to move any part of her body except her eyelids. The children's father, with classic sympathy, took advantage of her incapacitated state, took the children, and ran. Since then he has refused to let the children see their mother because he fears that it might scar them.

Really? SCAR them?

Scare them, maybe. The kiddies probably aren't used to interacting with someone who is paralyzed (definitely, if Dad's behavior is any indication), and it will probably concern them, and they might not know how to act at first. But if they were actually allowed to spend time with their mother and interact with her, they'd get used to it. They could have a wonderful relationship and it wouldn't bother them in the slightest. Because KIDS ARE FLEXIBLE.

Which brings me to my next point.

Kids ARE flexible. They're also in a state of perpetual learning. Kids are open-minded, and often very compassionate (once they develop empathy). There is no better time for a person's life to begin learning about oppression and develop the desire to fight it than when they are a child.

And it doesn't take much. A child only has to witness one act of blatant discrimination to figure out that it's messed up (and yes, even privileged kids have the ability to figure out when someone is being put down) and speak out against it or even start a charity to fight it. (Not saying that the kid's going to be perfect at it, but the motive is there). You can read countless stories on the Internets and Highlights Magazine about a child who does something that seems incredibly plucky, like mowing lawns to earn money to buy shoes for poor kids, or refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance until true equality has been reached, or whathaveyou, all because they were given information about the issues in question.

But most children are not given this opportunity. Instead, we "shelter" them from these issues, protecting them from as much badness as we can. And what are they shown instead? Straightness, cis genders, whiteness, able bodies, single minds. At the point in their life when kids are most able to learn tremendous amounts of things about the world, we so rigidly filter their intake that they can only learn the most privileged side of the story. And the kids, being kids, suck it all in. Their understanding of the world, of society - of what behaviors and bodies "should" exist - becomes framed to prioritize these privileged bodies.

The result of this is that when these kids do begin to gain information about a new perspective, they have no idea what to do with it. When they begin to meet people who are fat, or need special equipment to move around, or have "weird hair," or "talk funny," they don't know how to react. They might know how to pity the crippled child, or to accuse the child who speaks out about racism of making things up or being too sensitive - the limited types of interaction that are conveyed in mainstream entertainment. But they don't have any real knowledge of how to handle these people on a tangible human basis.

Some kids are more flexible than others, of course. Some of them are very open-minded and will instinctively treat nearly everyone with some level of respect and kindness. But a lot more will not. Children who have learned that the world is a place of sunshine and roses and SCWAT bodies will freeze up when they meet someone who is different. They may refuse to deal with the "other" person. They may make fun of that person to assuage their own confusion. Or they may look to their peers to learn how to deal with the person - and their peers, having roughly the same upbringing, will teach them how to scorn the nonconformist.

As the privileged child ages, unless someone intervenes in xir life, nothing is likely to change. Instead, the problem crystalizes. By the time this "innocent" child has become a teenager or young adult, xe is now convinced that the world is exactly as xe learned it, or close enough, and xir reaction to a different perspective will likely range from disbelief to an outright refusal to consider the possibility. Sure, xe is now old enough that xir innocence is probably not considered an issue, and others might finally decide that it's time to teach xem about oppression - only to find that xe is lacking the core education needed to understand these concepts. The core education can be had, of course. And the education that builds upon it. And teenagers and young adults are, relatively, more impressionable than older people. But at this point there are two things stacked against them: firstly, they may not have access to the information they need, and secondly, they may simply decide that they don't want to learn because they have other things to worry about (like building their own life).

A young child doesn't have other things to worry about. A young child's job is to learn about the world. By preserving "innocence," by shielding them from anything that might be considered controversial or "too harsh" (apparently the real world is too much for children to handle), their parents are instilling a worldview that is one-sided and profoundly naïve. Not only does it hurt the marginalized - by implicitly training children to ignore their lives and struggles - but it hurts the child, by limiting xir ability to function with various "other" persons on a fully human level, as well as xir capacity to understand why extra work and sanctions are needed to protect marginalized persons.

As for gay children, transgender children, children of color, disabled children, and many others - all of them are getting a firsthand education in some form of discrimination. "Innocence" is a luxury that they cannot afford, at least for those realms to which they are privy. Through sheer happenstance of birth or life events, we were rendered clinically incapable of retaining this quality that is supposedly so valuable to a child's healthy development, and somehow we managed not to be ruined for it. Yet this inconvenient fact frequently gets swept under the rug by people who continue to insist that innocence is the most valuable thing a child could have - not understanding that maintaining the innocence of a privileged child often means destroying the innocence of marginalized children.