My kids shouldn’t have to color their Santa Claus figurines with brown ink like I did. “America is less and less white, but a melanin-deficient Santa remains the default in commercials, mall casting calls, and movies,” - Aisha Harris.
...according to the Children's Defense Fund, kids now constitute one-third of the 38.1 million Americans classified as poor and 70% of them have at least one working parent -- so poverty can’t be chalked up to parental indolence.
As long as white children are constructed as innocent, we must continue to demand that children of color are as well. The idea of childhood innocence carries so much political force, we can’t allow it to be a whites-only club. We argue that black and brown children are as innocent as white children, we assume that childhood innocence is purely positive. The idea of childhood innocence itself is not innocent: It’s part of a 200-year-old history of white supremacy.
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