Want to put to rest the idea that “bad parenting” explains teen/young adults’ racist & extremist beliefs & behaviors. There are racist parents out there-along w/too many who think that “colorblind” approaches to race (“we don’t see race”) are sufficient (They aren’t.) THREAD 1/

but I see so many ppl blaming parents -maybe as a way of reassuring themselves that their kid couldn’t do something racist or homophobic or misogynistic- that it’s worth saying: kids and teens are encountering extremist, exclusionary, racist ideas all over the place. They 2/

see & share memes that make jokes about the Holocaust & dehumanize racial & ethnic minorities. They share videos & memes that police women’s bodies, sexual behavior & “purity.” They encounter white supremacist propaganda in online gaming 3/

chatrooms & image board sites where they might have gone to share anime or funny jokes & memes. Extremist ideas are not a destination for the fringe- they are right in the mainstream. Every teacher, coach, mental health counselor & parent/caregiver should assume their kid 4/

has or will encounter this stuff- propaganda, disinformation, scientific racism, Holocaust minimization, misogynistic content, slurs, and worse- somewhere. How might we as a society approach the problem of radicalization if we understood the gateways are everywhere? We teach 5/

kids in elementary school how to recognize signs of online predators, how to protect their digital footprints. But we give them nothing about what propaganda looks like, how to recognize extremist ideas & rhetoric, what anti-democratic ideas are, how to think about sources. 6/

There are a lot of things we need in this moment, but expanding our ideas about what media literacy should look like is high on my list- for 5th graders & 50 yr olds. Parents matter but this isn’t just about parenting. & until we take some collective responsibility for public 7/

education needs, we are just going to be dealing w/ more securitization, more resources to intelligence & law enforcement, more risks to civil rights & ultimately, more violence. /END