Abstract
With the U.S. presidential election imminent, the 2024 release of Margaret A. Hagerman’s Children of a Troubled Time: Growing Up with Racism in Trump’s America is timely. Trump’s exclusionary policies and hyperbolic rhetoric led to an increase in racial violence and discrimination. Hagerman’s book examines how this racialized political context was interpreted and experienced by children. At the outset of her research, Hagerman would not have known that the release of her book would correspond with Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election, in which he would advance an amplified version of his anti-immigrant, anti-critical race theory, MAGA agenda. It is within this racially violent political context that anti-racist readers may find Children of a Troubled Time especially chilling and urgent.
Sequel to her award-winning White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (2018), Hagerman’s second book deepens understanding of the processes through which racial differentiation, identity, and inequality unfold in and through childhood. Hagerman interviewed 45 racially diverse children aged 10 to 13 with varying political affiliations living in Massachusetts and Mississippi. Situated within the “new sociology of childhood” tradition, Hagerman’s work illuminates the ways in which children interpret, constitute, transform, and reproduce society. Children of a Troubled Time charts new terrain, illuminating the central role of childhood institutions in the ongoing evolution of dominant racial ideologies. Her work contributes both to the sociology of race and to the sociology of childhood and provides a springboard for future research at the intersection of childhood and the racial state.
When Hagerman conducted interviews with affluent White kids during the Obama administration, colorblind ideology prevailed as the dominant White racial frame. Regardless of political orientation, these kids talked about race and racism using a colorblind discourse that avoided overt racial hostility. Contrarily, in her Trump-era interviews, White kids engaged multiple racial frames (largely dependent upon the political orientations present in their families of origin) reflecting the equally complex racial landscape that surfaced during Trump’s presidency. She highlights patterns in children’s deployment of racial ideology, emotion, and expression. Patterns of coherence emerged along the lines of race and political orientation: anti-Trump White kids, pro-Trump White kids, and kids of color felt and dialogued about race differently.
Anti-Trump White kids narrated through their feelings of shock and disgust as their awareness of structural and overt racism was heightened during Trump’s presidency. But these emotions did not catalyze them to act for racial justice. Instead, they believed that post-Trump, the United States would return to an imagined colorblind society (Hagerman noted only three social justice–oriented White kids). Hagerman explains that their logic is emotionally driven; the colorblind racial frame alleviates White kids’ discomfort by exonerating them both from feelings of culpability for institutionalized racism and from holding their emboldened classmates accountable for racist attitudes and behaviors.
Pro-Trump White kids navigated discussions about race by drawing from multiple and contradictory racial frames, most commonly a combination of colorblind ideology and far-right racial ideologies (e.g., White nationalism). Their lack of empathy for their peers was apparent when they gleefully described playing “capture the Mexican,” or chanting “build the wall” in the school cafeteria. Unfettered by any adult intervention, their joy in such playground “games,” and their pleasure and satisfaction in achieving racial domination in peer settings, sheds light on the central role of political context in shaping children’s lives. Because racial ideologies are forged early in life, Hagerman conjectures that extremist racist views will become more mainstream in years to come. The dominant White ideologies expressed by the children in Hagerman’s book will likely be those that prevail as these children come of age. Consequently, Hagerman’s findings tell us much about the future of dominant White racial ideology.
Kids of color told Hagerman that White kids became “meaner” and more brazen when Trump became president. They reported the rampant use of racial slurs, anti-Asian and Islamophobic jokes, and the use of derogatory terms commonly used by Trump (such as “loser”). Instead of intervening, teachers and administrators cowardly made space for children’s reproduction of White supremacy; kids of color were berated when they stood up to their peers! The rise of racial violence and discrimination in schools and neighborhoods caused kids to feel anxiety, fear, and anger. These emotions galvanized children of color to study the history of race and racism and to organize for justice—they stood up against racism despite being punished for their indignation and bravely confronted peers, despite the lack of protection from teachers and schools. Through the voices of children, Hagerman reveals the persistence of childhood racism and racial trauma in a supposedly desegregated contemporary America.
Children of a Troubled Time demonstrates that childhood peer cultures and political context are mutually constituted, but not in ways commonly presumed. Hagerman’s interviews reveal that kids who participated in hostile racial practices, and those who bravely confronted them, were informed about current events, and were not simply imitating adults. Hagerman contradicts myths that children are apolitical, politically disengaged, innocent, and/or too fragile to learn about the history of race and racism. These myths, commonly perpetuated by White supremacist groups camouflaged as school boards and parent-teacher associations, are deployed to critique the alleged advancing of critical race theory in schools. Notably, Hagerman’s work offers empirical evidence that the hidden curriculum leans toward White supremacy, and that kids are central political actors in its reproduction.
Hagerman pinpoints children’s fears of dispossession and loss of social power as the root of their delight and satisfaction. According to children’s accounts, this fear is propelled directly by Trump’s rhetoric and his policies directed toward Black, Arab, South Asian, and Global South migrants. Kids celebrated the “Muslim travel ban” and felt safeguarded by the idea of a fortified U.S./Mexico border wall. While these ideas are reproductions of political discourse, Hagerman shows that the ways kids interpreted these ideas through peer culture were uniquely their own.
Children’s central role in the interpretive reproduction of the racial state is another contribution. An extensive body of sociological research examines the mechanisms through which White domination is reproduced by political, cultural, criminal-legal, and other social institutions. Hagerman’s research documents that the institution of childhood is also a central (anti-)synthesis of the racial state. Thus, it was perplexing that Hagerman’s multi-level theoretical analyses did not extend beyond the development of work on racialized emotions. The focus on emotions superseded systematic engagement with relevant bodies of literature such as theories of racial formation and postcolonial theory (i.e., Islamophobia, Orientalism), despite that these theories similarly bridge interpersonal and structural-level analyses and could have added analytic depth. For example, Hagerman’s interviews speak to the ways that children reproduce colonial and orientalist ideology through visual, digital, and play cultures (including children’s [re]constitution of Islamophobia) and guide theory-building regarding the childhood embodiment of the racial state. Hagerman acknowledges the need for future research, particularly surrounding the ways in which interconnecting domains of power influence childhood racial ideology.
In sum, Children of a Troubled Time shows how children’s articulations of race, racism, and resistance evolve as political contexts change. Hagerman’s centering of children’s voices highlights the dialectical interplay between family of origin, racial geography, political landscape, and children’s racialized emotions and interactions. Hagerman soberly reminds the reader that despite centuries of anti-racist struggle, kids continue to “feel race, generation after generation” (p. 102). She exposes a disheartening racial reality: White kids achieve satisfaction and experience joy in racial domination. Conversely, kids of color and their White allies will courageously continue to resist.
