CANR

• White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America New York University Press (New York, NY), 2018
• Children of a Troubled Time: Growing Up with Racism in Trump's America New York University Press (New York, NY), 2024

1. Children of a troubled time : growing up with racism in Trump's America LCCN 2023036642 Type of material Book Personal name Hagerman, Margaret A., author. Main title Children of a troubled time : growing up with racism in Trump's America / Margaret A. Hagerman. Published/Produced New York : New York University Press, 2024. Projected pub date 2405 Description pages cm ISBN 9781479815111 (hardback) (ebook) (ebook other) Item not available at the Library. Why not? 2. White Kids : Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America LCCN 2018011911 Type of material Book Personal name Hagerman, Margaret A., author. Main title White Kids : Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America / Margaret A. Hagerman. Published/Produced New York : New York University Press, [2018] Description v, 261 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm. ISBN 9781479803682 (hbk. : alk. paper) CALL NUMBER E184.A1 H185 2018 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE CALL NUMBER E184.A1 H185 2018 CABIN BRANCH Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• The Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/white-kids-race/569185/

  QUOTED: "My overall point is that in this moment when being a good citizen conflicts with being a good parent, I think that most white parents choose to be good parents, when, sometimes at the very least, they should choose to be good citizens."

  How Well-Intentioned White Families Can Perpetuate Racism
  The sociologist Margaret Hagerman spent two years embedded in upper-middle-class white households, listening in on conversations about race.

  By Joe Pinsker
  A little girl plays with balloons
  Gretchen Ertl / Reuters
  SEPTEMBER 4, 2018
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  When Margaret Hagerman was trying to recruit white affluent families as subjects for the research she was doing on race, one prospective interviewee told her, “I can try to connect you with my colleague at work who is black. She might be more helpful.”

  Modern-day segregation in public schools

  To Hagerman, that response was helpful in itself. She is a sociologist at Mississippi State University, and her new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America, summarizes the two years of research she did talking to and observing upper-middle-class white families in an unidentified midwestern city and its suburbs. To examine how white children learn about race, she followed 36 of them between the ages of 10 and 13, interviewing them as well as watching them do homework, play video games, and otherwise go about their days.

  These kids and their parents display a range of beliefs about race. “Racism is not a problem,” one girl tells Hagerman, adding that it “was a problem when all those slaves were around and that, like, bus thing and the water fountain.” Meanwhile, the girl’s mother nods along. Other parents in the book have educated themselves better, but often, intentionally or unintentionally, still end up giving their kids advantages that, in the abstract, they claim to oppose. (White Kids is not, as Hagerman writes at one point, “a particularly hopeful book.”)

  I recently spoke to Hagerman, and that second group kept coming up in our conversation—how, despite their intentions, progressive-minded white families can perpetuate racial inequality. She also discussed ways they can avoid doing so. The interview that follows has been edited for length and clarity.

  Joe Pinsker: One reading of your book is that the way white parents talk about race with their children does matter, but that what you call the “bundled set of choices” they make about what types of people their children encounter every day might matter even more. Can you talk about that set of choices and what it determines?

  Margaret Hagerman: I use the phrase bundled choices because it seemed to me that there were some pretty striking patterns that emerged with these families in terms of how they set up their children’s lives. For example, I talk in the book about how choosing a neighborhood leads to a whole bunch of other choices—about schools, about the other people in the neighborhood. Decisions about who to carpool with, decisions about which soccer team to be on—you want to be on the same one as all your friends, and all these aspects of the kid’s life are connected to the parents’ choices about where to live.

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  I’m trying to show in the book that kids are growing up in these social environments that their parents shape. They’re having interactions with other people in these environments, and that’s, I think, where they’re developing their own ideas about race and privilege and inequality.

  Why color blindness is a counterproductive ideology

  Pinsker: Some of the parents in your book may see the problems with choosing mostly white neighborhoods or schools, but the explanation they usually provide for those choices is that they just want what’s best for their children. This rationale is generally considered understandable, even honorable, but can you talk about its dark side?

  Hagerman: One of the things I talk about in the book is what I call this “conundrum of privilege,” which is that these parents have a lot of resources economically as well as status as white people. They can then use those resources to set up their own child’s life in ways that give them the best education, the best health care, all the best things. And we have this collectively agreed-upon idea in our society that being a “good parent” means exactly that—providing the best opportunities you can for your own child.

  But then some of these parents are also people who believe strongly in the importance of diversity and multiculturalism and who want to resist racial inequality. And these two things are sort of at odds with one another. These affluent white parents are in a position where they can set up their kids’ lives so that they’re better than other kids’ lives. So the dark side is that, ultimately, people are thinking about their own kids, and that can come at the expense of other people’s kids. When we think about parents calling up the school and demanding that their child have the best math teacher, what does that mean for the kids who don’t get the best math teacher?

  Pinsker: What would it look like for a white affluent parent to make a choice not to give their children “the best”? Is it a matter of not calling the school to get the best math teacher? Or is there a more proactive thing a parent might be able to do?

  Hagerman: I think part of it is how we choose to define “the best.” Some of the parents in my book, they rejected the idea that their child needed to be in all the AP classes. They valued other elements of their children’s personalities, such as their concerns about ethics or fairness or social justice. There were a handful of parents in my study who resisted having a separate track for AP students, for example, which can sometimes be a segregating force within schools.

  There were also affluent parents who were very much opposed to having police officers in schools, and they were using their position of influence in the community to try to get the police officers out of there. Maybe others would be aware of their own presence at PTA meetings, making sure they’re not dominating them and making sure they’re not putting their own agenda ahead of their peers’ agendas. I’m not sure that I saw tons of behavior like that, but I certainly saw moments where some of the families were concerned more about the collective than their own kid.

  White privilege, quantified

  Pinsker: Some parents in the book seemed to think of diversity as something that could be let in selectively, to teach certain lessons to their kids. This came up with a lot of parents’ decisions to send their kids to public schools, which were more diverse than the private ones. Can you talk about how, for a lot of affluent white parents, diversity is something that can be toggled on and off as they please?

  Hagerman: I think the best example is when these two parents decided to pull one of their children out of a public school after a racist incident there. There was a lot of turmoil, and when things basically got too challenging, they just picked their kid up and took him to a different school, a private school. And the ability to do that was not only a reflection of their economic privilege—they had the resources to suddenly, mid–school year, send their kid to an expensive private school—but also a reflection of racial privilege in that you can somehow escape racism when you want to as a white person. Certainly that’s not the case for people of color.

  Pinsker: So far we’ve talked about how white parents shape their children’s views on race. But a big theme of the book is that kids themselves actively contribute to the formation of racist beliefs. How does that work?

  Hagerman: One of the things I was really struck by was how frequently some of these children used the phrase That’s racist or You’re racist. They were using this word in contexts that had nothing to do with race: They were playing chess, and they would talk about what color chess pieces they wanted to have, and then one of them would say, “Oh, that’s racist”—so things that had to do with colors, but also sometimes just out of the blue, instead of saying, “That’s stupid.” These kids have taken this phrase, That’s racist, and inverted it in a way such that it’s become meaningless.

  Pinsker: One question you occasionally bring up in the book is: What value does one parent’s action hold when going up against a systemic problem? And I’m not asking Does it have value?, because of course it does. But I wonder how you think about all the micro-level decisions that these parents are making in the context of the central conundrum.

  Hagerman: In my book, I’m trying to highlight this tension between the broad, overarching social structures that organize all of our lives and the individual choices that people make from within these structures. So yeah, if we had equal educational opportunities, people would not be able to make choices that would confer advantages to their child over someone else’s child, right? That wouldn’t even be a possibility. Certainly, the structural level really matters.

  But the best answer I can really give is that the micro level potentially could shape what goes on at the institutional or structural level. I really think—and this might sound kind of crazy—that white parents, and parents in general, need to understand that all children are worthy of their consideration. This idea that your own child is the most important thing—that’s something we could try to rethink. When affluent white parents are making these decisions about parenting, they could consider in some way at least how their decisions will affect not only their kid, but other kids. This might mean a parent votes for policies that would lead to the best possible outcome for as many kids as possible, but might be less advantageous for their own child. My overall point is that in this moment when being a good citizen conflicts with being a good parent, I think that most white parents choose to be good parents, when, sometimes at the very least, they should choose to be good citizens.

  The role of parents in improving school diversity

  Pinsker: I don’t doubt that you’re onto something, but, pragmatically speaking, wouldn’t that ignore a biological impulse to look after one’s own?

  Hagerman: So as a sociologist, I’m much more interested in how things are socially constructed rather than biologically constructed. For example, there are lots of families who have kids who are adopted, or where parents are taking care of kids who aren’t biologically theirs—I don’t have any children, but I care very deeply about other people’s kids, and would do things to protect them. So, I hear what you’re saying, but I wonder if even the way we think about what it means to be a parent is to some extent socially constructed. We have other societies that do things differently. I think when we look across time and history and geography, we can see that the way that we’re doing it—prioritizing your own child over everyone else—is one way, but I don’t think that has to be the only way. I don’t have any grand answer, but I think people could think in bigger ways about what it means to care about one another and what it means to actually have a society that cares about kids.

  Joe Pinsker is a former staff writer at The Atlantic.

• The African American Studies Program, Mississippi State University website - https://www.aas.msstate.edu/directory/mah1125

  Margaret Hagerman
  Maggie
  Department / Division
  Sociology
  African American Studies
  Title
  Associate Professor
  Contact
  Email: mhagerman@soc.msstate.edu
  Phone: 662-325-2495

  Address
  210 Bowen Hall
  Information
  Overview
  Summary:
  Margaret A. Hagerman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University and holds faculty affiliate positions in both the African American Studies and Gender Studies programs. She is a nationally recognized expert on white racial socialization. Using qualitative, child-centered methods, Dr. Hagerman explores how aspects of children’s social contexts—from families to neighborhoods to schools to geographic regions to the larger political landscape—shape how and what they learn about race, racism, and racial privilege, and what this means for racial inequality more broadly.

  Dr. Hagerman is the author of two books including Children of a Troubled Time: Growing Up with Racism in Trump’s America (NYU Press 2024) and White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (NYU Press 2018). Her research can also be found in publications such as Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Equity and Excellence in Education, and Ethnic and Racial Studies as well as in various edited volumes, including a recent publication by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Her work has been featured by a range of mainstream media outlets including PBS Newshour, Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time, Good Housekeeping, Libération, L.A. Times and on acclaimed radio programs including NPR’s Marketplace, BBC World News, and CBC’s The Current.

  Dr. Hagerman teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on race, families, education, children, inequality, and qualitative methods.

  Hagerman CV April 2024.pdf

  Education:
  Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Sociology, Emory University, 2014
  Master of Arts (M.A.), Sociology, Lehigh University, 2006
  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), English, Lehigh University, 2004
  Research interests:
  Racial Socialization; Racism; Race and Ethnic Relations; Children and Youth; Qualitative Methods; Families; Privilege; Education

  Publications
  Book
  White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America. New York University Press. 2018
  Book, Chapter
  “‘The Celebrity Thing’: Using Photographs of Celebrities in Child-Centered, Ethnographic Interviews with White Kids about Race. Researching Kids and Teens: Methodological Issues, Strategies, and Innovations. Sociological Studies of Children and Youth. 302-324 . 2017
  "Ignorance and Outrage: White Families (Don't) Talk About Race". Trayvon Martin, Race, and American Justice. SensePublishers. 73--78. 2014
  I Like Being Intervieeeeeeewed!’: Children’s Perspectives on Participating in Social Research. Children and Youth Speak for Themselves. Sociological Studies of Children and Youth. 61-101. 2010
  Journal Article
  Race Scholarship ‘With, By, and For’ Children: How Critical Youth Studies Can Inform Research on Race. Sociology Compass. Volume 11, Issue 8, Page e12501. 2017
  White Racial Socialization: Progressive Fathers on Raising ‘Antiracist’ Children. Journal of Marriage and Family. Volume 79, Pages 60-74. 2017
  Reproducing and Reworking Colorblind Racial Ideology: Acknowledging Children’s Agency in the White Habitus. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. Volume 2, Issue 1, Pages 58-71. 2016
  White Families and Race: Colour-blind and Colour-conscious Approaches to White Racial Socialization. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Volume 37, Issue 14, Pages 2598-2614. 2014

• Department of Sociology, Mississippi State University website - https://www.sociology.msstate.edu/directory/mah1125

  Margaret Hagerman
  Maggie Hagerman
  Division
  Sociology
  Title
  Associate Professor
  Contact
  mah1125@msstate.edu
  662-325-2495

  Bio
  Vitae
  Margaret A. Hagerman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mississippi State University and holds faculty affiliate positions in both the African American Studies and Gender Studies programs. She is a nationally recognized expert on white racial socialization. Using qualitative, child-centered methods, Dr. Hagerman explores how aspects of children’s social contexts—from families to neighborhoods to schools to geographic regions to the larger political landscape—shape how and what they learn about race, racism, and racial privilege, and what this means for racial inequality more broadly.

  Dr. Hagerman is the author of two books including Children of a Troubled Time: Growing Up with Racism in Trump’s America (NYU Press 2024) and White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (NYU Press 2018). Her research can also be found in publications such as Journal of Marriage and Family, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Equity and Excellence in Education, and Ethnic and Racial Studies as well as in various edited volumes, including a recent publication by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Her work has been featured by a range of mainstream media outlets including PBS Newshour, Good Morning America, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time, Good Housekeeping, Libération, L.A. Times and on acclaimed radio programs including NPR’s Marketplace, BBC World News, and CBC’s The Current.

  Dr. Hagerman teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on race, families, education, children, inequality, and qualitative methods.

  CV: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.aas.msstate.edu/sites/www.aas.msstate.edu/files/inline-files/Hagerman%20CV%20April%202024.pdf

• Inside higher Ed - https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/28/author-discusses-her-new-book-how-white-children-develop-ideas-about-race

  QUOTED: "White Kids is based on a two-year ethnographic study of 30 families who identified as white and who lived in a medium-sized Midwest city. I interviewed 36 children who were between the ages of 10 and 13 as well as their parents, and I observed these families in their everyday lives. I drove kids to soccer practices and piano lessons, I went to birthday parties and private pools at country clubs, and so on. I also returned to this community a few years later when the youth were in high school and conducted follow-up interviews."
  "white children notice and develop understandings of not only the position of others in society but also of themselves—they learn about their own power and privilege through observing and interpreting this world around them. My book tries to highlight how kids are making meaning of race through these interpretive processes."

  August 27, 2018
  ‘White Kids’
  Author discusses her new study of how white children develop ideas about race.
  By Scott Jaschik

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  American colleges struggle with racial tensions every year. Some white students -- in incidents that attract widespread attention or in everyday interactions with their minority peers -- convey a lack of understanding about race.

  A new book, White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America (New York University Press), explores how wealthy white children develop their ideas about race. The author, Margaret A. Hagerman, assistant professor of sociology at Mississippi State University, took a qualitative approach, following young white people as they grew up. She answered questions via email about the book and how her findings relate to current tensions at colleges.

  Q: Would you describe your research method? How many white wealthy young people did you talk to? How did you define privilege as you were considering whom to interview?

  A: White Kids is based on a two-year ethnographic study of 30 families who identified as white and who lived in a medium-sized Midwest city. I interviewed 36 children who were between the ages of 10 and 13 as well as their parents, and I observed these families in their everyday lives. I drove kids to soccer practices and piano lessons, I went to birthday parties and private pools at country clubs, and so on. I also returned to this community a few years later when the youth were in high school and conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of them and their parents. In addition to their racial privilege, these families also experienced class privilege: at least one of the parents in these families, though oftentimes both, held a graduate or professional degree, worked in a professional occupation, and [they] owned a single-family home.

  Q: High schools are increasingly segregated by race. How do young white people today learn about race?

  A: Many people think that white kids learn about race based on what their parents say (or do not say) to them about the topic. For instance, after a racist hate crime, I often notice a surge in parenting blog posts and op-eds published that urge white parents to speak to their children about racism in America. One of the most important lessons of my research, though, is that “actions speak louder than words.” Whether parents use colorblind language (“We don’t see race”) or color-conscious language (“We are antiracist”), what they say often matters far less than what they actually do -- and specifically, what they do to design their child’s social environment. When parents move to a segregated white neighborhood because the kids in the integrated neighborhood are “too rough,” or when they believe a “good” school is a whiter school, or when the only people in a child’s life are also white with the exception of the economically marginalized black and brown people at the soup kitchen whom they are told they must help “save,” white children notice and develop understandings of not only the position of others in society but also of themselves -- they learn about their own power and privilege through observing and interpreting this world around them. My book tries to highlight how kids are making meaning of race through these interpretive processes.

  Q: You write about young people (and also their parents) saying that they are not racist, and then having stereotypical attitudes about black people or behaving in ways that reinforce racial inequality. How do you explain this?

  A: None of the kids in this book want to be considered “racist,” but I did find variations on why this was the case. Some children believed this label would mean that they were hurting their peers of color, which they knew was a real possibility, even if unintentional. Other kids did not believe it was even possible for them to be racist because racism is “no longer a problem.” Race scholars like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva have documented extensively the prevalence of colorblind ideology in America. This research illustrates how white people can say racism is no longer a problem while simultaneously explaining the existence of inequality in our society by blaming people of color through the use of culturally racist stereotypes. Other scholars have also explored differences between what white people say about race and what they do. For instance, scholars like Amanda Lewis and John Diamond demonstrate how white parents advocate for their own children in ways that protect and defend the very systems of inequality they say they otherwise reject. Additionally, scholars like Joyce Bell and Douglas Hartmann show how white people engage in the “happy talk” of diversity while avoiding real confrontations with structural inequality and avoiding the realities of how they perpetuate inequality in their own lives. Certainly, in my research, I found similar patterns.

  Q: We are in a period of intense national debate about affirmative action in college admissions. What attitudes did you see among young white people that would influence their view of this question?

  A: I found variation in these affluent white kids’ perspectives on programs or policies designed to promote equal opportunity and fight institutional racism. For instance, one child told me that she did not understand the relevance of spaces like that of a Black Student Union. In her words: “Like, this one high school has, like, the Black Student Union and the Asian Student Union. I don’t really get it. Like, why do they have to be like, ‘Oh, you’re black, so you’re in your own little union.’ I mean, there’s not like the White Student Union!” Similarly, I witnessed a brother tell his younger sibling with a tone of disgust that he would never get into a particular summer program because the program was more likely to accept “black and Mexican kids than white kids.” And yet, other kids told me that they understood the need for policies and programs that would help make up for the legacy of racism in America. For instance, another child explained, “I think there is still a lot of discrimination in jobs and stuff, and there has been for a long time … Some people are not given certain opportunities that maybe someone would give white people just because they look different, which I think is kind of bogus.” This child was in favor of trying to find ways to fix these problems. “We need to do something about this,” he told me.

  Q: College leaders are stunned every year when white students (who deny being racist) pose in blackface or organize "illegal alien hunt" parties, etc. How do you explain this behavior, based on the attitudes you found?

  A: Not only do many of the white kids in my study express limited awareness of the history of racism or the realities of contemporary forms of racism and racial inequality, but they also express what sociologist Tyrone Forman describes as “racial apathy” or the “lack of feeling or indifference toward societal racial and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues.” From my perspective, racial apathy is at the heart of the day-to-day exclusionary practices of white supremacy prevalent on college campuses (e.g., microaggressions) as well as the much more incendiary racist events that receive national attention. My research shows that such apathy manifests itself in white childhood -- like when some of the young people tell me that they “don’t care” about black people who are killed by police because “when black people get shot, it is because they fucked up.” Kids who do not care about the suffering of people of color in middle school may not see a problem with hosting an “illegal alien hunt” party in college.

  Q: Based on what you learned, what would be your advice to college leaders who want to promote inclusive environments on their campuses?

  A: My research shows that many white kids are unprepared for living and learning in a racially inclusive environment because of their own white racial socialization in childhood and early adolescence. Integrating my own research with the important work of my colleagues, I think all students should be required to take classes designed to build their empathy, understanding and capacity to act in the face of racial inequalities -- classes based in critical race studies that, as sociologist Jennifer Mueller puts it, make “ignorance [or apathy] more difficult.” University leaders should support and value the faculty who teach these courses, recognizing the challenges of this work especially for faculty from racially marginalized groups. So too should university leaders work to address the consequences of racial apathy at all levels of the university -- e.g., syllabi that center white perspectives, administrative indifference to the concerns of students of color, uncritical hiring practices, inequitable service demands placed on faculty of color and so on. In order to challenge the normative nature of whiteness on college campuses, administrators first need to better understand the process of white racial socialization and the insidious power of racial apathy.

QUOTED: "Hagerman's data is chillingly thorough, and her argument is well supported and convincing. ... The content is strong enough to render this required reading for antiracist parents, caregivers, and allies."

Hagerman, Margaret A. CHILDREN OF A TROUBLED TIME New York Univ. (NonFiction None) $27.95 5, 14 ISBN: 9781479815111

An interview-based sociological study of the Trump administration's effect on children's views on racism and democracy.

Between 2017 and 2019, Hagerman, author of White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege in a Racially Divided America, interviewed 45 children in Mississippi and Massachusetts about their views on race during the Trump years. Her sample included children between 10 and 13 "across race and class groupings." When analyzing her findings, she focused on children's "racialized emotions," seeking to find out "how young people feel race," and noticed a strong undercurrent of fear. For nonwhite children, this fear was often rooted in anxiety about an increase in racial violence or "that their family members would be deported while they were at school." While some white children shared these fears, others supported Trump's policies because of their fear of nonwhite populations including Black, Middle Eastern, and Latine people. The author believes that this fear is rooted in white children's anxiety about "losing power as a racial group as people of color make further advances in US society." Put another way, "these kids want to continue to experience the pleasure of feeling superior." Hagerman ends the book with a series of suggestions to combat "racial apathy," which she describes as a lack of empathy that she noticed in some pro-Trump white participants. Above all, the author urges adults to address not just "how kids are thinking" but also "how they are feeling." She believes that this combination is the key to combating racist attitudes in American children. Hagerman's data is chillingly thorough, and her argument is well supported and convincing. Although the prose is sometimes overly academic, the content is strong enough to render this required reading for antiracist parents, caregivers, and allies.

A significant study of children's "racialized emotions" during the Trump era.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Hagerman, Margaret A.: CHILDREN OF A TROUBLED TIME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786185550/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=065acee6. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024.

QUOTED: "a complex and nuanced academic book."

Hagerman, Margaret A. WHITE KIDS New York Univ. (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 9, 4 ISBN: 978-1-4798-0368-2

A sociologist examines how affluent white children think about race.

Hagerman (Sociology/Mississippi State Univ.) spent two years immersed with 30 privileged white Midwestern families to produce this timely ethnographic study. "Race shapes the lives of everyone in the United States," writes the author, "whether people believe this to be true or not." Her assertion is borne out in these interviews with 36 children (ages 10-13) and their parents, who "design" their kids' social environments (neighborhoods, schools, etc.), shaping their interactions with and attitudes toward other races. She finds that these children "think about race and class inequality differently" depending on family experiences and daily interactions. Hagerman's writing is scholarly and sometimes stodgy, but she provides revealing portraits: The Schultz parents think that "if 'they' could behave exactly like 'us,' we would welcome them"; Victoria and Ryan Chablis believe "current racial inequalities are the fault of people of color"; and the "well-meaning" Norbrooks, who keep their children in public school, "fail to acknowledge inequality and racism...[and] are unintentionally complicit in the reproduction of it." Children, generally racially aware, often think for themselves: "Sometimes my mom is racist and tries to pretend like she isn't," says one 12-year-old girl. Yet while critical of racial inequality, the kids "believe they are better and more deserving than everyone else." Hagerman is especially good on the "conundrum of privilege." These families often want diversity but "choose to opt out of diverse spaces," giving children the benefits of their wealth with all-white dance lessons and vacations. The ironies abound: "While some parents of black children are teaching their kids how to navigate racism to stay alive, some parents of white children are teaching their kids that race no longer matters in the United States." The author concludes that white parents can fight racism "by rejecting the idea that their own child is more innocent and special and deserving," but individual choices may not matter much "as long as structural inequality persists."

A complex and nuanced academic book.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Hagerman, Margaret A.: WHITE KIDS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A544637959/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=34929647. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024.

QUOTED: "an original contribution to ethnography by shifting the usual focus away from relatively deprived children" "recommended."

Hagerman, Margaret A. White kids: growing up with privilege in a racially divided America. New York University, 2018. 261 p bibl index ISBN 9781479803682 cloth, $30.00; ISBN 9781479880522 ebook, contact publisher for price

(cc) 56-2163

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MARC

Hagerman (Mississippi State Univ.) offers an original contribution to ethnography by shifting the usual focus away from relatively deprived children. The book explores how white kids from affluent families are socialized into the "comprehensive learning" of the advantages that come from wealth and white privilege. Missing from the book is the intersectionality perspective postulating that gender is not experienced separately from class and race. The author narrows her focus to the socialization into affluent whiteness even though references to gender are not completely absent from the book. The ethnographic methodology should have been critiqued to challenge the assumption that socialization equals child-rearing. The author empirically highlights the autonomy with which children learn from social institutions outside family "habitus," the primary focus of the book. The author presents white privilege as being of benefit to white kids without reflecting on the extent to which affluenza and white supremacy also offend against white kids, turning some into activists against racism-sexism-poverty in articulation. This ethnography does not raise the frequency with which mass violence comes from privileged white males. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All readership levels.--B. Agozino, Virginia Tech

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association CHOICE
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Agozino, B. "Hagerman, Margaret A.: White kids: growing up with privilege in a racially divided America." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 56, no. 5, Jan. 2019, pp. 682+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A570198580/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dc12be72. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024.

"Hagerman, Margaret A.: CHILDREN OF A TROUBLED TIME." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A786185550/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=065acee6. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024. "Hagerman, Margaret A.: WHITE KIDS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A544637959/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=34929647. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024. Agozino, B. "Hagerman, Margaret A.: White kids: growing up with privilege in a racially divided America." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 56, no. 5, Jan. 2019, pp. 682+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A570198580/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dc12be72. Accessed 5 Apr. 2024.

• Foreword Reviews
  https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-separation/
  Word count: 383

  QUOTED: "Hagerman’s writing is crisp and riveting, pulling out the most telling quotes from her subjects and expertly narrating the neighborhoods and families she explores."

  WHITE KIDS
  GROWING UP WITH PRIVILEGE IN A RACIALLY DIVIDED AMERICA
  Margaret A. Hagerman
  NYU Press (Sep 4, 2018)
  Hardcover $30.00 (280pp)
  978-1-4798-0368-2

  Margaret Hagerman’s White Kids brings to mind two words: must read.

  Many crucial race studies focus on the struggles of disenfranchised folks. But by centering her research on white children, Hagerman studies the kids who benefit from systemic inequality. This book illuminates the often hidden, coded world of prejudice that lingers in white America.

  White Kids consists of interviews, anecdotes, character studies, and data that reveal much about affluent white children and their parents. Though the study focuses on a Midwestern county, the racial issues that exist there reflect the country as a whole. In fact, White Kids’s highest achievement is that it reveals the truly sinister underlying habits and assumptions that reside in all of us, too.

  Through accessible, well-turned prose, Hagerman unearths the segregation, income inequality, and racial biases which run rampant in her subjects’ lives. Parents send their children to homogeneous private schools for “a better education,” laugh at their daughters’ “ghetto booties” when they dance provocatively, and deny racism’s existence entirely.

  These notions become ingrained in their kids, who will one day have a vital role in the reproduction of (or resistance to) racism. Quotes from educated kids who believe that racism ended when “Eleanor Roosevelt” sat in the front of the bus are chilling. Yet there is some inspiration to be taken from the few antiracist parents and their progressive children who are profiled; they often join in marches for equality, read news, seek out diverse friendships, and recognize their own privilege.

  Hagerman’s writing is crisp and riveting, pulling out the most telling quotes from her subjects and expertly narrating the neighborhoods and families she explores. She puts forth a crucial analysis on the “well-meaning,” “colorblind” racism that her subjects perpetuate, stripping down the coded language of suburbia until it reveals the ugly truth underneath.

  Reviewed by Mya Alexice
  September/October 2018

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