C.J. Pascoe
"Hagerman demonstrates the vital importance of listening to children. By foregrounding their stories of life under a Trump presidency, she shows us that fear, anxiety, anger, happiness, relief, surprise are racialized emotions that can sustain, reflect and challenge racial inequality. With her characteristic attention to the lived experiences of kids, once again Hagerman reminds us that kids’ voices matter and we need to take them seriously not only as political, but as social actors."
Jonathan M. Metzl
"Hagerman opens our eyes yet again. Children of a Troubled Time presents a brilliant, searing exploration of how children try to make sense of our racially and politically polarized nation; and about how, as she puts it, racism 'is not just a local phenomenon; it is a broadly American project.' This urgent and insightful book exposes how we let our children down, and teaches us how we can come together to save them. Children of a Troubled Time is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of, and future generations of, American democracy."
Amy Best
"With a keen ear and a real skill at weaving together narrative and analytical threads, Hagerman offers us a highly readable and thoroughly engaging account of the dynamic and too-often little understood processes of racial learning and the inflections of racialized emotions expressed by kids as they witnessed Trump’s bewildering ascension to presidential office despite his inhumanity. They watched an ugly and unapologetic racism operating in the full light of day, were forced to confront the limits of racial progress, an increase of anti-immigrant sentiments, and a lot of gender backsliding as they struggled to understand what this all means for us as a country and our fragile democracy. Timely, insightful, human-centered, consequential."
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
"With clarity, elegance, and precision and relying on rich interview data, Margaret A. Hagerman shows how the Trump moment has deeply shaped the racialized ideologies and emotions of children. Whether color-blind or white nationalist, children raised in this era will likely retain the scary imprint of Trumpism. I sincerely hope readers, parents, and educators take her suggestions of how to interrupt children’s racism to heart as the nation’s future depends on it. A marvelous book!"
author of Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
"With clarity, elegance, and precision and relying on rich interview data, Margaret A. Hagerman shows how the Trump moment has deeply shaped the racialized ideologies and emotions of children. Whether color-blind or white nationalist, children raised in this era will likely retain the scary imprint of Trumpism. I sincerely hope readers, parents, and educators take her suggestions of how to interrupt children’s racism to heart as the nation’s future depends on it. A marvelous book!"
author of What We’ve Become: Living and Jonathan M. Metzl
"Hagerman opens our eyes yet again. Children of a Troubled Time presents a brilliant, searing exploration of how children try to make sense of our racially and politically polarized nation; and about how, as she puts it, racism 'is not just a local phenomenon; it is a broadly American project.' This urgent and insightful book exposes how we let our children down, and teaches us how we can come together to save them. Children of a Troubled Time is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of, and future generations of, American democracy."
author of Nice is Not Enough: Inequality and t C.J. Pascoe
"Hagerman demonstrates the vital importance of listening to children. By foregrounding their stories of life under a Trump presidency, she shows us that fear, anxiety, anger, happiness, relief, surprise are racialized emotions that can sustain, reflect and challenge racial inequality. With her characteristic attention to the lived experiences of kids, once again Hagerman reminds us that kids’ voices matter and we need to take them seriously not only as political, but as social actors."
Kirkus Reviews
2024-02-10
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.
