Children of a Troubled Time - by Margaret A Hagerman (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Through listening to kids in Massachusetts and Mississippi talk about growing up in the era of Trump, this book reveals what kids today think and feel about racism in the United States-and what this might mean for the future"--

Book Synopsis

Provides a child's-eye perspective on how the culture wars are playing out in our nation's schools

Kids are at the center of today's "culture wars"--pundits, politicians, and parents alike are debating which books they should be allowed to read, which version of history they should learn in school, and what decisions they can make about their own bodies. And yet, no one asks kids what they think about these issues.

In Children of a Troubled Time, award-winning sociologist Margaret A. Hagerman amplifies the voices of children who grew up during Trump's presidency and explores how they learn about race in America today. Hagerman interviewed nearly fifty children between the ages of ten to thirteen in two dramatically different political landscapes: Mississippi and Massachusetts. Hagerman interviewed kids who identified as conservative and liberal in both places as well as kids from different racial groups. She discovered remarkably similar patterns in the ideas expressed by these children. Racism, she asserts, is not just a local or regional phenomenon: it is a broad American project affecting childhoods across the country.

In Hagerman's emotionally compelling interviews, children describe what it is like to come of age during years of deep political and racial divide, and how being a kid during the Trump era shaped their views on racism, democracy, and America as a whole. Children's racialized emotions are also central to this book: disgust and discomfort, fear and solidarity, dominance and apathy.

As administrators, teachers, and parents struggle to help children make sense of our racially and politically polarized nation, Hagerman offers concrete examples of the kinds of interventions necessary to help kids learn how to become members of a multi-racial democracy and to avoid the development of far-right thinking in the white youth of today. Children of a Troubled Time expands our understanding of how the rising generation grapples with the complexities of racism and raises critical questions about the future of American society.

Review Quotes

"Children of a Troubled Time will be of particular interest to readers concerned with racial socialization, racialized emotions, contemporary politics, and childhood. It is a highly readable book that will appeal to scholars and undergraduates, as well as the general public."-- "Social Forces"

"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."-- "CHOICE"

"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... required reading for antiracist parents, caregivers, and allies."--Kirkus Reviews

"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."--C.J. Pascoe, author of Nice is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High

"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."--Jonathan M. Metzl, author of What We've Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms

"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."--Amy Best, author of Prom Night, Youth Schools and Popular Culture and Fast Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines and Social Ties.

"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!"--Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, author of Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States

About the Author

Margaret A. Hagerman is Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in African American Studies and Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. She is the author of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America which won the William J. Goode Book Award given by the American Sociological Association's Section on Family.