The Talk: What Parents Tell Their Children About John Derbyshire (great re-write)

One of the many national conversations that has followed the killing of Trayvon Martin focuses on "the talk" that many black parents give their sons. The New York Times summarized "the talk" as about "what it means to be a black teenager in a country with a history of regarding young black men as a threat" and "about standing up straight, dressing the part, keeping your hands in sight at all times and never, ever letting your anger get the best of you."

John Derbyshire, a long-time writer at National Review (which fired him over the piece, though he's been writing similar articles for at least 11 years) and other conservative publications, wants us to know that it's not just black Americans who should worry about their children's racial interactions in our white-majority society. "There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too," he writes in a much-discussed piece in an online publication called Taki's Magazine.
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Maybe, then, it's time for a new version of "the talk," one that parents of any skin color can give their children that warns of the dangers of racism and, yes, of racists. I don't have any children on whom to develop such a "talk," so rather than take the pains to construct it from scratch, I've used Derbyshire's as the basis. Here is his actual 15-point talk, modified (and, let's be clear about this: satirized) as a new 15-pointer for parents who want to tell children about racism in America.

(1) Among your fellow citizens are an unknown number who believe that certain human races are inherently or superior than others. Most likely, these beliefs manifest in ideas that people of certain races are "just different," and that these differences just so happen to provide easy assumptions about the merit or quality of a person of one race or another.

(2) Americans are descended from people from every corner of the globe. The circumstances of their arrival vary widely, part of why their treatment and status once they arrived also varied.

(3) Your ancestry is cause for celebration no matter where your family's origins, but racists will take it to be a determinant of your personality, abilities, and worth as a human being.
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more: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/the-talk-what-parents-tell-their-children-about-john-derbyshire/255578/


Ha!
That nails it!